
Microsoft lets you crash drones and robots in its new real world simulator - mnoeld
http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/15/14622074/microsoft-aerial-informatics-and-robotics-platform
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callumprentice
Sort of related: Drones as a service (DAAS) - let's you fly real drones via
your browser. [http://cape.com](http://cape.com)

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zodPod
Careful. The "Fly Now" button makes it sound like you're going to put your
email in and get to fly. In reality, you're signing up for their mailing list
for when they get to Beta....

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tfinster
[co-founder of Cape here]

We're already in beta! But since our system involves physical drones located
in the real world, we have limited supply of available flights. We currently
load balance the demand from our users by having a waitlist from which we
whitelist folks on a weekly basis, and a queueing system when all of the
drones in our fleet are simultaneously in the air.

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l0b0
Fake "actions" on web sites, used to gauge interest, are disrespectful, and
quite simply a jerk move. Just like those "sign up for our spam" pop-overs.
There are enough things broken on the web without intentionally adding to
them. Please don't be a jerk.

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jameskegel
I agree, this is a dark pattern.

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shitals
I'm a member of this team. Please feel free to ask any questions!

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cr0sh
Can this be used for more than just multirotor drones? IE - what about other
drone aircraft, as well as ground and water-based craft?

I'm currently working thru the Udacity Self-Driving Car Engineer nanodegree;
as a part of the first term one of the projects used a Unity3D-based simulator
to train a CNN to drive a vehicle.

It would be nice to have a more generalized simulator for this kind of work,
to be able to simulate potentially more accurate environments (off road,
especially). I could also see interesting work being allowed for underwater
ROV environments as well...

As it is, I have considered (for an off-road and more general use) re-tasking
TORCS or Trigger Rally (though after just doing some research, it seems like
there are ton of these simulators - so maybe one more isn't necessary).

Still - I'm curious whether other environments and vehicles are being
considered...

EDIT: It looks like Udacity recently open-sourced their simulator (one thing I
have noticed about this course is that sometimes they do things, but don't let
the students know about it - that, or maybe I've just been too focused on my
work to notice, which is a very real possibility!)

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shitals
You are absolutely at the right place. We have gone to extra length to design
our code so that vehicle specifics are abstracted away behind interfaces. Also
things are easily switchable. For example, don't like our physics engine,
bring your own! As mentioned in release notes, we are working on other vehicle
types. However water based crafts are not on our radar. My guess would be that
physics would be more expensive and less accurate in general for water based
vehicles.

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drumttocs8
GitHub repo:
[https://github.com/Microsoft/AirSim](https://github.com/Microsoft/AirSim)

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rietta
Neat but this makes me sad because I remember Flight Simulator and how
Microsoft killed it.

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Alupis
Quite the contrary - it's alive and well! Just under a different company
and/or name.

Flight Simulator X Steam Edition is available on the Stream store.[1] It's the
FSX you remember, but upgraded a bit. It's published by Dovetail Games now,
since Microsoft sold the "consumer grade" version of their Flight Simulator to
them a few years back.

Prepar3d[2] is owned by Lockheed Martin (the defense contractor/aircraft
manufacturer), and is what was called ESP when Microsoft owned it. ESP was
Microsoft's "professional" Flight Simulator, with enhanced mechanics and
military support (missiles, bombs, etc). It was meant to be used in real world
simulators used by the military and FAA certified flight schools. However, ESP
was sold to Lockheed Martin, and you can pickup a copy of the rebranded
Prepar3d which takes FSX to a new level of realism.

I personally fly Prepar3d these days.

[1]
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/314160/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/314160/)

[2] [http://www.prepar3d.com/](http://www.prepar3d.com/)

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chrisper
I believe the Prepar3D license forbids personal / private use as they only
sell commercial licenses. Something like that.

Also there is X-Plane!

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Alupis
> I believe the Prepar3D license forbids personal / private use as they only
> sell commercial licenses.

While technically none of the licenses support "entertainment purposes only"
(a product of Lockheed buying ESP and not the consumer flight simulator) - one
can purchase the Professional license (or Academic license if you're a
student) for "training, instruction, simulation, or learning"[1]... which just
about covers all the bases.

Nobody said you can't be having fun while learning and simulating!

[1] [http://www.prepar3d.com/product-overview/prepar3d-license-
co...](http://www.prepar3d.com/product-overview/prepar3d-license-comparison/)

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stuffedBelly
This reminds me of Gazebo, [http://gazebosim.org/](http://gazebosim.org/),
which I used extensively in college for scenario simulation when working on
robotics projects, especially great when used alongside ROS :).

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kelvin0
I really thought this was an Unreal/Unity plugin at first. Now that I have
read the article, I wonder does anyone know which 3D engine they are using
(Rendering, Physics...)?

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shitals
It is Unreal plugin!
[https://github.com/Microsoft/AirSim/blob/master/docs/build.m...](https://github.com/Microsoft/AirSim/blob/master/docs/build.md)

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jcoffland
The _Fly Now_ button signs you up to a waiting list.

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Polarity
looks like unreal engine and the "modular neighbor pack" asset by dokyo.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5CKj0gBo2c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5CKj0gBo2c)

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thatgerhard
So, jerky gta 5 with an api

