Microsoft ESP

I was going to post about Microsoft ESP but after reading Phil's post I'm not sure I can add much value...

I guess I'll give more examples that might help you understand the opportunity.

We have received e-mails periodically from people that wanted to start "location based entertainment" businesses using FS as the base technology. When you go to an amusement park and they have a motion platform with a virtual ride inside, that is a location based entertainment product. So imagine using several cockpit pods networked together in a "store" and charging people to fly together or as a team with other groups of people at other stores. That would be an application for ESP and you could legally charge people for the experience.

We have received e-mails from military pilots that are also FS hobbyists and they wanted to pursue getting their branch of the military to use their aircraft for training. ESP will make that more possible due to the likely adoption of the platform and partners actively working in that space.

Maybe you are really good at building scenery objects and creating animations and effects. Some of the agencies will need scenery that can be animated into a damaged or destroyed visual. Maybe you could work with one of the ESP partners to help create new content.

Lastly, if you are good at building missions and can develop using SimConnect (or partner with someone that does), you could build super realistic training missions for civilian aircraft. It could be simple stuff like Piper or Cessna aircraft, or complicated airliners. Or you could build recreations of accidents as I'm sure that would be a good application for the mission system.

I expect most individual contributors in our community will not pursue ESP as a business opportunity. However some FS development companies will use ESP, and maybe you could partner with one of them as a vendor.

If you haven't seen the official Microsof ESP website here it is.