Management Flight Simulators

[Peter Bispham]

Another package to add to this list is ModelMaker, by Cherwell Scientific.
This software contains a powerful set of numerical simulation tools,
including various integration methods, model optimisation and sensitivity
analysis. It would certainly provide the level of functionality that you
require in building your simulator.

The ModelMaker home page is:

http://www.cherwell.com/modelmaker/index.html

Many ModelMaker examples are included on the page:

http://www.cherwell.com/modelmaker/mm-examples.html

Demo software can be downloaded from the page:

http://www.cherwell.com/support/demodown.html

Peter Bispham
--- ---
Dr Peter Bispham Ph.D. C.Phys. | email: peter.bispham@cherwell.com
Technical Consultant | Phone: +44 (0)1865 784812
Cherwell Scientific Publishing | Fax: +44 (0)1865 784801
Oxford OX4 4GA, UK | URL: http://www.cherwell.com
--- ---

[Vaidotas SRUOGIS]

For a fully commercial products I would suggest tools that allow
development of customized stand-alone programs (applications that
can be executed independently from applications used to develop
the product itself). I have experience working with the Powersim
products thus I can give comments are only on the Powersim tools.

You can build a system dynamics model, that is the basis of your
Management Flight Simulator, by using the Powersim Constructor.
Then you have to develop a user interface. Here I would separate
two stages:

1. Prototype development
2. Development of the Final product


Building User Interface Prototypes

When the initial model is ready the same Powersim Constructor program can
be used for building the prototype version of the user interface. Powersim
Constructor is quite flexible for the development of user interfaces but
of course it gives much less flexibility for the development of the user
interface than you can have using programming languages. Anyway it is quite
good tool for building prototypes and sketches of the interface before you
start coding it. The interface building tools within Powersim Constructor
program are easy to use and implement the drag and drop way to create the
user environment and still it can be a challenging task. The most important
thing is that you can build a working prototype where the simulation model
and user-interface work together giving you the full functionality of the
Management Flight Simulator. With the PowerSim Constructor you can develop
multi player environments for computer networks. If user interface developed
at this stage fully satisfies you and you do not want to customize it more,
then you can use Powersim Run-Time.


Building Final Product

At this point you have to decide do you want to build applications that will
be published on your Web site or you want to have software that you install
only on computers you want.

In the first case you can use Powersim Metro Server. The package includes
Server program and Java API library that can be used for the development of
user front ends. This technology is called websims. Web site with the Websim
can be accessed by anyone who has connection to the Internet and Java capable
web browser. It is possible to develop multi player websims as well. This
allows people using the same simulation to be physically located in different
places even in different continents. Developing of such applications involves
quite much Java coding which sometimes might take a lot of time. Good
knowledge
of Java programming is required. This was my choice for one of my projects.

In the second case you can use Powersim Engine in combination with software
development tools such as Delphi, C++, Visual Basic.



Vaidotas Sruogis

vaidotas@ifi.uib.no
vaidotas@org.ktu.lt

[Stephen Downes-Martin]

What software tools do people recommend for building commercial "Manageme=
nt
Flight Simulators" based on systems dynamics principles on windows
machines (NOT Macs). I am aware of the following:

iThink
PowerSim
Dynamo
Vensim

What others should I consider? Any opinions on these?

Thanks,

Stephen=
From: Stephen Downes-Martin <DMALLC@compuserve.com>