After Microsoft released Flight Simulator X two years ago, they announced another product called Microsoft ESP. ESP is an exciting milestone in the Flight Simulator series - for the first time it introduces the Flight Simulator technology as a commercial platform.
We had a chat with the ESP team about the ESP product and its future. And of course we wanted to know how ESP will influence the Flight Simulator series. Read on to find out what the future of the Flight Simulator series may have in store.
The mystery behind ESP
First of all we asked: "What actually is ESP?" Many simmers are confused about the difference between ESP and Flight Simulator X. Many believe the two products are the same, just that the licensing is the key difference.
First of all, Microsoft ESP is the software development platform upon which Microsoft Flight Simulator is built. One could describe it as the engine that drives Flight Simulator X. However, ESP is much more than that.
To put it into broad terms, Microsoft ESP is a visual simulation software development platform that brings immersive games-based technology to training and learning, decision support, and research and development for military and commercial organizations.
To put it into simple terms: ESP is a software kit that allows commercial and military 3rd parties to build solutions around training, decision making and research. For example, the company Adacel uses ESP for their own integrated flight and air traffic control simulation.
Our ESP vision is to transform the way people learn and organizations plan and prepare in many industries including aviation.
To clarify, ESP is not a commercial or professional version of Flight Simulator X. Microsoft ESP is the technology platform – the engine, tools and content – that powers Flight Simulator X. But ESP will eventually support scenarios and capabilities far beyond aviation. Microsoft's ESP vision is to transform the way people learn and organizations plan and prepare in many industries including aviation.
The story behind ESP
The idea to bring the technology behind Flight Simulator to the commercial market is not a new one. For over ten years Microsoft customers and partners have asked if they could use Flight Simulator technology for non-entertainment purposes. This would have been a violation of the End User License in Flight Simulator, however, so it was denied.
The inspiration for Microsoft ESP came from Shawn Firminger, Studio Manager of Microsoft ACES Studios. Earlier in his Microsoft career Shawn led the planning for a couple of releases of Microsoft Flight Simulator and his research back then revealed a lot of potential for a commercial Flight Sim offering, however the decision was made that neither the technology at that time nor the organization were ready to take on commercial markets so it was put on hold.
A few years later, during the development phase of Flight Simulator X, Microsoft realized that the technology had advanced pretty dramatically and could be ready for commercial audiences so a team was recruited to research the market. After extensively studying the market, the team realized that the best opportunity was as a simulation software development platform aimed at the broader $20 billion per year Modeling and Simulation market.
We want to drive costs down and increase the reach of simulation technologies - much like Microsoft Windows over the past twenty years.
The research revealed that the market lacked an affordable, powerful software development platform and was instead dominated by very costly proprietary solutions that had lengthy solution development lead times. Microsoft saw an industry operating under an older business model that focused on selling lower volumes of very high priced complex solutions to a limited set of wealthy customers.
Microsoft wants to democratize simulation software by offering a complete simulation software development platform at reasonable price points and with more flexible licensing terms to open up simulation to many new markets that can’t afford today’s offerings.
Microsoft decided that ESP would be a simulation software development platform and they have been recruiting and training developers and partners worldwide to build all of the ESP-based solutions. It’s a very similar model to those used by other Microsoft platform technologies.
The market and Microsoft ESP
Microsoft has had a terrific reception in the market thus far. Customers, press, analysts and partners have been very supportive and enthusiastic about Microsoft ESP. The military markets have traditionally been the largest customers of Modeling and Simulation assets and Microsoft has gotten very encouraging responses from them. There is still some work to be done to meet some of their exact needs, but Microsoft consider Microsoft ESP v1 to be very successful.
Customers are already using Microsoft ESP on commercial-off-the-shelf laptops, desktops and workstations to train their aviation-centric employees on new skills, cockpit switchology, mission rehearsal and decision support. Microsoft often hear compliments praising their SDK’s ease of use, the rapid solution development time frames, the flexible licensing terms and, of course, the cost savings.
The main difference between working for industry clients compared to working on a video game is that when you’re dealing with commercial and government markets people’s lives and careers may be dependent upon the technology so Microsoft must be extremely vigilant in their development and testing so they deliver the right feature set and as close to perfect quality as possible. It causes them to think differently about their end customers and the partners who support them.
Also, the development cycles between ESP and Flight Simulator are much different. Entertainment titles must ship on a rigid ‘Holiday-driven” schedule since a very large percentage of retail revenues are made in the fourth calendar quarter each year. It also ships as packaged products. Enterprise software is less date-driven and is sold primarily via Microsoft’s volume license program which does not use packaged product. The distribution models are the opposite of each other and the processes to deliver the software are unique to each market.
50% of the work force today have pretty much grown up with game controllers in their hands so they deeply understand immersive experiences.
Video game technologies have been in the training markets for many years. There is a rapidly growing category called “serious games” which takes entertainment-oriented games and applies the core technologies to help solve training challenges. The U.S. military is a major consumer of these technologies and solutions as they recruit younger men and women who love to learn via immersive games-based technologies.
Remember that nearly 50% of the work force today, those under 40 years old, have pretty much grown up with game controllers in their hands so they deeply understand immersive experiences. Microsoft has extensive expertise in game technologies on both the PC and the Xbox 360 so they are able to bring that energy and creativity into the ESP efforts.
With the acceptance of serious games in the Microsoft ESP v1 target markets and also the quality of the offering Microsoft has had minimal resistance to ESP. Once prospective customers and partners see the stunning visuals and the incredible levels of realism they move immediately beyond the game heritage into deep discussions of how this can help them solve their business problems.
Customers see Microsoft ESP as a very powerful tool today and they like the aggressive product development “roadmap” that will deliver great new capabilities over time. Microsoft already delivers a solid simulation platform and they already have partner relationships with many industry heavyweights including CAE and Thales.
As Microsoft ESP gains market share the hope is that an increasing number of customers and partners from small shops to the biggest heavyweights in the industry will embrace ESP’s platform benefits of standardization, affordability and ease of development. That will enable them to put more of their efforts into the solutions instead of the core underlying technologies. That will better serve Microsoft's customers, drive costs down, increase the reach of simulation technologies to new customers, and create significant growth in this industry, much like Microsoft Windows enabled with desktop software over the past twenty years.
ESP and the community
There are already many extensions available for Microsoft ESP. First of all, many of the over 200,000 add-ons for FS work on ESP. That’s a huge community doing terrific work and Microsoft want to see that great content being brought over to the commercial and government markets. Microsoft also has several hardware partners who are building compelling solutions around training and mission rehearsal that are having positive impacts on real world needs.
As a software development platform, Microsoft ESP’s success is closely linked to the success of Microsoft's partners so they are doing all they can to support the great work that this community is doing with ESP. Stay tuned as these great solutions and extensions come to the market in the coming months!
Microsoft has many software platforms and is quite good at developing value propositions and providing partner and develop support to help with partner recruitment and to build momentum. They have a full-time developer evangelist who understands the developer community very well and provides them with appropriate tools, support and code to accelerate their solution building.
We have announced that Microsoft ESP v2 will enable ground vehicle requiring a much higher level of fidelity, different physics models, faster frame rates and much more.
Microsoft has got a large team at work pushing the capabilities forward. The team is tackling very hard technical problems every day so that customers and partners can have a powerful, easy-to-use visual software development platform. We’ll see a lot of exciting new capabilities in Microsoft ESP v2 late next year.
Most of the work is around innovation and new features. For example, Microsoft has announced that Microsoft ESP v2 will enable ground vehicle capabilities. That requires a much higher level of fidelity, different physics models, faster frame rates and much more.
The new mission system in FSX is a strong point in Microsoft ESP. There are other strong points in Microsoft ESP and FSX that appeal to a wide variety of customers. From improved performance to missions to the new SimConnect API to the incredibly rich 3D graphics and the great new content, ESP brings a lot of power and capability to the market. Depending upon your area(s) of interest and your scenarios there is plenty to appeal to a broad cross-section of customers and developers.
The future of ESP and Flight Simulator
As we explained already, Microsoft ESP is the software development platform upon which Microsoft Flight Simulator is built. Therefore, it makes sense that as the technology in ESP advances, so will the capabilities of all products that are built upon it including Microsoft Flight Simulator. Since Microsoft ESP is aimed at commercial and government audiences, which typically have very demanding standards and requirements to meet, you can expect ESP to add some incredible technological advances that Microsoft Flight Simulator will be able to offer in the near future.
We fully expect that some of the ESP missions will make their way over to Flight Simulator.
It's very, very likely that some of the commercial and military-oriented Microsoft ESP missions will eventually make their way over to Flight Simulator to offer simmers some real world scenarios. And the good news is that ESP missions should be able to work on FSX without modifications. We can expect to get some very real and exciting missions into Flight Simulator.
While Microsoft ESP version 1.0 has been optimized for aviation, there is a solid mid-to-long term “roadmap” for Microsoft ESP to expand its capabilities into ground and maritime operations, indoor and avatar-centric simulation. (We already mentioned that Microsoft ESP v2 will have ground vehicle capabilities.) Microsoft ESP’s future holds countless possibilities. Just imagine a simulator that allows you to fly planes, drive trains, race cars and walk around like a person.
It's interesting to note that it has been reported that Microsoft ESP is being integrated with Virtual Earth. Recently, Microsoft acquired a company called Caligari, which produces a software for 3D environments called trueSpace. It has been reported that Microsoft plans to integrate trueSpace with Virtual Earth. We couldn't get Microsoft to comment, but imagine of what a product could look like that integrates Flight Simulator, Virtual Earth, and trueSpace.
Maybe in 10 years time we'll have a super-simulator that allows you to drive/fly/operate any kind of vehicle in a superrealistic environment? We'll leave you with that picture...
Thanks very much to Sarah Tatone and the ESP team for their time!
Christian Stock
What is better than owning a copy of Microsoft's new FSX? Some people may argue their FS9 setup does just fine, but how does FS9 in a fullblown Boeing 737-800 simulator sound? Early this year, I finally found some time to visit the team from Pacific Simulators in Christchurch, New Zealand, who specialise in the building of fully functional B737 cockpits.
