I’m trying to determine if Unity is the best choice to use for building a platform for simulating flight (with an atmosphere like on earth) and spaceflight (much like Orbitersim http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/)
As a professional pilot and hobbyist/freelancer programmer trying to build a reputation for career number two; I would really like to bring all my passions together to focus on simulations programming.
To the best of my knowledge Microsoft Flight Simulator, X-Plane and Orbitersim have built their own engines. I think that for smaller players like X-Plane and Orbitersim; this could be the result of nothing like Unity/Unreal existing on the market when they started.
Can anyone provide some insight as to whether it would be a good idea to use Unity or Unreal as an engine to facilitate the overlap of games and simulators (rendering, hardware, sound, effects …etc). I’m assuming I would have to trash the physics component of either engine though, or at the very least do a major modification.
I would like to do things like:
- Easily import or develop middleware that would allow me to import satellite imagery to generate scenery and terrain (meshes from height map producing accurate replicate of terrain) from LandSat and SRTM
- Implement concepts like blade element simulation
- Either a built-in layer or ability to build in a layer that can for example, facilitate data exchange between a vehicle and a ground command center in an active simulation.
- Use for research/MS/PhD program to study how simulators can be used for rapid prototyping and research in aerospace applications.
Would it be easier to work with Unreal since it is open source?
Disclaimer: This is not my hello world to programming. I have many years of experience developing on a LAMP stack for websites/webapps and now recently xamamarin.ios app/.net backend services for an airline’s training program. I understand that a project of this magnitude will take at best many months to complete, but more realistically a few years with just a handful of people.