The SDK documentation for ESP was updated recently with some bug fixes and formatting updates. One of the major additions in the update is a new tutorial that explains the workings of ESP's saved flight format, or .FLT files. The tutorial is in the Mission Creation Kit and is appropriately named Flight Files.

The tutorial mentions a good point that creating .FLT files is much like creating a simplified mission - you can set up quite a lot of different parameters in the .FLT, including the obvious things like aircraft type, starting location and weather - as well as some details like systems failure settings for traning scenarios.The tutorial walks through each of the settings in the .FLT file and shows some examples.

There is also a code sample that the team recently uploaded to the MSDN Code Gallery that relates to this tutorial. The code sample programmatically amends a flight file to set the starting location, weather and which systems will fail after a specific timeout.  Here is a link to the sample:http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ESPFlightFiles.

The next step up from modifying the flight file is to create your own Missions that have additional features and can have code behind their XML for even more flexibility.

Amongst a variety of conferences including the ESP Developer Conference Tech-Ed 2008 Developer and other industry specific ones over the last month, our team has been showing the ESP platform in many locations.  A lot has been happening and as the developer forum shows, a lot of great questions are being asked. In looking at the questions directly from partners, either on the forum or at conferences, we are creating code samples, videos and how-to's to help address the commons queries.

The Learn page on the Microsoft ESP developer center has a new video named "Building High Detail Scenery in Microsoft ESP". We have an additional one covering importing aerial imagery into ESP that will be uploaded to the site soon.

As for code samples, a new one called DLLSimConnectClient is available on the MSDN code gallery. This shows you how to build a C++ based add-on DLL that runs in-process in the ESP environment. It uses SimConnect to add a menu item, dialog box and enables the user to see you you would go about setting some of the environment variables in ESP through code. It will get onto the Download page of the Developer center shortly. This dll sample will be of particular interest to those developers who have shown interest in using the ESP platform for the 'visuals only' or 'out the window view' since an in-process dll will show better performance than an external (out of process) SimConnect client.

Thanks. Todd Landstad.

We are hosting a developer day in Reston Virginia later this month! If you are interested in finding out more about developing solutions for the Microsoft ESP platform, this will be very interesting.  Here are details as blogged by our Public Sector team (http://blogs.msdn.com/publicsector/archive/2008/04/29/microsoft-esp-developer-conference-may-22-2008-reston-va-you-are-invited.aspx):

Register today to attend this special event!!

Venue

Microsoft Innovation and Technology Center
12012 Sunset Hills Parkway
Reston, VA 20190

Date & Time

May 22, 2008 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM EST

Registration Information Click here

About the Conference

Join us for a day of developer-oriented technical sessions featuring Microsoft® ESP™.  Microsoft® ESP™ is a visual simulation platform that brings immersive games-based technology to training and learning, decision support, and research and development modeling for government and commercial organizations. Come and learn how this all-in-one simulation platform of Microsoft ESP consisting of a simulation engine, development tools and rich content can help you quickly build affordable, extensible, high quality simulation solutions that can tie in with external solutions and integrate with industry standard input/output devices and database-driven content. You will also learn about the Microsoft ESP SDK that consists of four primary systems, some of which contain their own additional SDKs for specific topics:

• Programming System
• Terrain and Scenery System
• Mission System
• Object Modeling System

The sessions will allow you to:

·         Experience the development of richer solutions more quickly and focus on content that's specific to your solution by starting from the rich base world content that comes with ESP.

·         Design using the platform's model of planet Earth, built-in physics engine, numerous aircraft types, scenery and terrain, and a fully-configurable weather system.

·         Achieve "you are there" realism with highly-detailed terrain and seascapes in all seasons, active wildlife, real-world motion, realistic night skies, continuous time of day, accurate vector data and buildings, 5.1 multi-channel surround sound, and much more.

These sessions will target Developers, Architects, technical managers and Web designers, be very much demonstration oriented, and will be delivered by seasoned developers with experience in Government and Public Sector. Seize this opportunity to immerse yourself in this exciting new technology!

Who Should Attend

Developers, Architects, Web Designers and technical managers who wish to get an early look at the next advancement in Software Development. 

The Agenda

I receive a lot of questions regarding the use of the Microsoft ESP client right 'out of the box' after an install. "What can I do with it?" people usually ask.

Since ESP is a platform, installing the ESP client won't give you a desktop shortcut. The expectation is that a customer installs it and then runs a solution within the ESP environment. But, for developers who are evaluating whether to build a solution that uses ESP, this becomes a bit of the old adage 'placing the cart before the horse'. Here are a few suggestions for a developer to start using Microsoft ESP.

Using the Sample Launcher from the SDK:

Installing the Microsoft ESP SDK will provide a large amount of samples to use, one of which is the ESPLauncher (found in the same named directory). This application is ready to run and is a great way to see what a solution built on ESP could look like. C# source code is also provided so you can modify as needed. This launcher enables you to run any of the sample missions included with the client and to create or join a multi-user scenario. I would recommend using the launcher sample as it most closely resembles a basic ESP solution.

Running ESP.EXE:

You can run the simulation manually by launching ESP.EXE from the "Program Files" based installation directory. By default, this opens up ESP in a deployable state - ready for a mission or solution built on it to run, but many of the menu items will be locked down. This prevents a trainee from modifying aspects of ESP's immersive world and keeps the training exercise immersive and consistent. A final solution built on Microsoft ESP would be launched in this fashion.

Opening up the ESP client in Developer Mode:

As mentioned in the SDK documentation, you can also run the ESP client in a mode where the advanced menu items become available. This would not be appropriate for a deployed solution due to this fact - so use it only during development. To do this, run the ESP.EXE with a "-dev" command-line parameter. There are actually a number of command-line parameters available when launching solutions so check the docs for more. Modifying the simulation time/date, choosing specific weather conditions, changing aircraft or altering other settings are examples of what is available in this mode.

A final note - running the ESPLauncher sample with the "-dev" parameter will launch the sample missions with the menu items enabled. Create a shortcut on your desktop to "ESPLauncher.exe -dev" and you will be set to start developing on the ESP platform.

- Todd Landstad, Microsoft ESP Developer Evangelism

We have launched a new developer forum on http://forums.msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/ESP/threads/  to enable the developer community to discuss the Microsoft ESP platform.

This is a spot for great community discussion so we want to encourage development related questions regarding Microsoft ESP - and for existing ESP developers to chime in with answers!

Welcome to the Microsoft ESP product team blog! We’ve started this blog to share our insights about the ESP platform, and to provide technical information, development progress, solution tips and tricks, and other things we hope will interest you.

Who are the contributors to this blog? Individuals on the ESP product team… from Development, Test, Program Management, Art, and Customer Support. We’ll share some background on each of us as we post. By getting everyone involved we strive to give you more diverse perspectives on our technology.

Most importantly, please leave comments and feedback on our posts, and on the other resources we are providing through MSDN, so that we can be sure to address your needs!

We are looking forward to seeing the solutions that you all will build on the ESP platform, and will do our best to keep things interesting!

Thanks.

The Microsoft ESP team