P-12C Pilot

I made the jump to Windows Live Spaces

P-12C — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 09:41:00 GMT

There is a lot of information and random thoughts on this blog, but it's time to move on. I think the new blog is working alright and there's a lot more to do to get it up to the high standards of Hal and Mike, but I'll try.

I don't plan to update this blog any more, so head on over to the new space and check it out.

http://paul-flightsimguy.spaces.live.com/default.aspx

Sharing the Cockpit of your Favorite Aircraft

P-12C — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 19:57:00 GMT

We have had many people lament that they cannot use the shared cockpit feature in FSX multi-player with their favorite add-on aircraft. The problem has been that third parties did not have the information on how to pass custom variables used in their C gauges from peer to peer.

Susan has written a blog post about how to do this and used our Cessna 172 as an example. See her blog post here.

Microsoft ESP

P-12C — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 03:26:00 GMT

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.

We Need an Aircraft Developer

P-12C — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 00:45:00 GMT

We have opened a position for a developer to help us make the best aircraft we can for the next version of Flight Simulator. There are several people in the community that can build great flight models, and if any of them can code and expand our platform as well, we would really like to hear from them. If you are going to apply, feel free to send me an e-mail as well.

Here is a link to the job followed by the job description.

http://members.microsoft.com/careers/search/details.aspx?JobID=8DB14B4F-7F47-41FD-BFBA-10A053E97B55

SOFTWARE DESIGN ENGINEER:
Description:
The Flight Simulator team is seeking an experienced software engineer to work on the next version of one of the most successful franchises in the history of entertainment software. We are looking for a candidate with strong engineering, math, and physics skills who can enhance and add to existing simulation code. The successful candidate will be able to specify, design, and implement the code for simulation models including aircraft and helicopters as well as other systems. Additional areas of responsibility may include: implementation of audio, effect triggers, and low-level AI controllers for the vehicles.

Required experience:
Experience in physical modeling, C/C++ programming, and the ability to work in a highly motivated team environment are required.

Educational experience:
BS (or equivalent) degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or Aeronautical Engineering.

Desirable Experience:
Previous game industry development experience working on physics engine is preferred. Background in aeronautical engineering, real world aviation and feedback control systems would be desirable as well as being trained as a pilot and being familiar with the Flight Simulator SDK.

Becoming a Beta Tester

P-12C — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 20:05:00 GMT

With all the great screenshots of FSX Accleration being generated and shared on various forums, a lot of users are inquiring about getting onto the beta program.

First of all, it's too late for FSX Acceleration. The beta for Acceleration will be shut down soon, so there isn't any point in joining it. If you want to be considered for the Train Sim 2 beta, then you should use the fs_ideas e-mail alias to sell yourself to us.

We won't open a beta for FS11 for a long time so it's too early to apply for that.

When users/developers for any beta program we look for the following:

How the user interacts with the community (how active in forums, how helpful they are with other users, whether or not they can logically evaluate issues without being overly emotional about it, etc)
If they are developers of add-on products
If an existing beta member that is particularly good is willing to recommend the user for the beta

Being a beta tester isn't an easy job. First of all it's purely on a volunteer basis with the only thing you receive being the opportunity to see product before it's released and a final copy of the software (assuming policies don't change). You must be active on the beta forums or filing bugs to stay on the beta long-term. You have to put up with some nasty bugs and will likely have to install and uninstall software rerpeatedly and remove third party add-ons.

Honestly it can be a pretty painful process and for some when you see a bug that might impact you negatively, it can be quite stressful as well (especially if we resolve it as won't fix or postponed).

If you still want to be considered for it, then when we open our next beta tell us why you are qualified to be a beta tester and it will be considered. We have a large group of very qualified beta testers, so you need to be exceptional or offer something particularly interesting to make it in.

Acceleration Screenshots

P-12C — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 23:02:00 GMT

Just thought you might like to see some screenshots from the final bits of Acceleration. The beta team gets to run the final code as part of their participation and we are allowing them to post screenshots from that final version. Check it out!

http://www.flightsimworld.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=128136

Thank You to Acceleration Partners

P-12C — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 19:43:00 GMT

Although this information is quietly and publically included in the credits (under the help menu "about" section) I want to call out the great work from the companies and individuals that created content for Acceleration or contributed to helping us do the same.

Captain Sim created the exterior model for the F/A-18a which looks absolutely amazing. It's a great model and I think you will enjoy seeing it flying around (or even just sitting around for that matter) and I'm looking forward to some amazing screenshots with this aircraft.

Virtuali s.a.s. created the virtual cockpit for the F/A-18a including all of the 3D gauges and functioning glass panels. The radar page was a great surprise as we didn't think we would get that late in the game, but it is very cool. They did an amazing job on this cockpit and all of the functionality in it, and I couldn't be happier with their work. If you have seen the Cloud 9 F4 Phantom, you will be familiar with their work and the F/A-18a is a real standout. Virtuali s.a.s. also created the glass gauges for the EH-101 which turned out nice as well.

Sibwings created the P-51D Mustang for us and I think it turned out great. I know the owners of the Mustangs we depict in Acceleration are very happy with the way it looks in Acceleration.

Things to Come created the amazing scenery for Edwards AFB. When you get your hands on Acceleration be sure to spend some time poking around Edwards as there is a lot of detail in the area. It's very well setup for some custom missions or multi-player flying. They also created three custom missions to fly at Edwards which I think add to the experience very nicely.

Kevin Greene is a member of the greater Flight Simulator community and he developed and contributed to the design of four missions in Acceleration. He added some great ideas and feel to the missions and was a work horse getting them built and tested. I know they weren't easy to build with all the story branches and AI craziness, so I really appreciate all of his hard work and contribution to the product.

Of course our internal team worked very hard to integrate all of this content into Acceleration, fixed many bugs in the end game and did a great job in a short development cycle!

Lastly I want to thank the Mustang owners and other racing pilots that helped us with information about air racing and made a difference in our being able to create a fun, exciting, and pretty realistic racing experience. Same goes for the F-14 and F-18 pilots that helped us out with carrier operations, and helicopter afficianados on the EH-101!

I hope you enjoy what we have all created.

We're Done!

P-12C — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 01:10:00 GMT

Acceleration is now done (the English version and we have 7 more languages to get out the door) and my stress level has dropped to very reasonable levels! This has been a great project with some ups and downs, but mostly just ups. I'm very proud of what we have created and I really believe you're going to enjoy it.

Now I can focus on designing FS11 which I've been working on part-time for awhile.

Reno Day 5

P-12C — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:38:00 GMT

I'm a bit late with this, but Sunday's racing was awesome. It was touch and go that racing would continue for the weekend at all, but thankfully racing continued.

The highlight of the day was the Sunday gold unlimited final and the match-up of Mike Brown in 232 September Fury racing against John Penny in 77 Rare Bear. Mike had the pole position and he had the lead coming down the starting chute with da Bear right behind him. Right away Bob Button in number 5 Voodoo declared an emergency and made a safe landing. After a week of issues generating enough horse power, John put the hammer down and passed Mike pretty quickly and stayed in front the remainder of the race.

Mike was pushing pretty good though as he was averaging around 490 mph on the course and hitting 512 mph in the straights. That's moving right along! I don't remember which lap it was, but Rare Bear barfed out a puff of white smoke followed by a belch of black smoke and my heart sunk thinking that was it for the engine. Turns out a bit of aerodynamic filler ("Bondo") broke off the airframe and was injested by the engine. John felt it happen and adjusted the mixture which explained the black smoke.

On the last lap Mike blew a piston and had an in-flight fire so he had to pull off the course to prepare for an emergency landing. He's an excellent pilot and made an excellent dead stick landing as he had to shut off the engine to put out the fire.

John Penny having finished in first then had a new problem to deal with as the throttle was stuck! The pace plane pilot Steve Hinton flying in the Planes of Fame T-33 formed up on him with some amazing formation flying and John decided to burn off the remaining fuel and deadstick it in. Keep in mind this aircraft lands at 150 mph, will basically fall out of the sky at 140, has no flaps, and must be landined in three point attitude, add on top of this there was a 15-20 knot crosswind. This is some serious pucker factor and I'm sure you can appreciate what he was up against. Amazingly John made what he referred to as the best landing he made all week.

So that was the race with the leaders of the pack, but there was some awesome racing between the Sea Furies and the "giant killer" Czechmate (which is a Yak 11 sporting a 2800 cubic inch engine out of a F4U Corsair). Sherman Smoot flies Czechmate and he flew the hell out of it duking it out with the big Sea Furies. At one point I saw both him and another Sea Fury do some serious uncommanded rolling while flying in the wake of Dreadnought. Matt Jackson flies Dreadnought and he is an excellent pilot that has flown many warbirds and racers. Although Matt crossed the finish line second, the officials indicted he crossed the deadline and was disqualified, so that means Czechmate ended up finishing in second place! A fantastic finish for the little Yak!

It was a week of mixed feelings. Great excitement for the event, fantastic racing, great reception for Acceleration, all tempered by great sadness for the tragic loss of life. Blue skies to the pilots and my heart goes out to the families they have left behind.

Reno Day 4 (Saturday)

P-12C — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 16:43:00 GMT

Just a quick note to say that we are getting a great reception at the Reno Air Races. The multiplayer races being run every hour in the "public" booth are full every time with a crowd watching from the sidelines. I have primarily been working in the VIP area, but I went to the public booth today and it was great to see the users getting into racing so much. Later in the day we organized a "champions" race where the best of the best users got to race against Brandon and I. They had been practicing to try and beat my best time and one of them had done so the previous day (by .5 seconds) so he was very confident he could beat me in a race.

Ryan Leeward (grandson of Jimmy whose P-51 Cloud Dancer we modeled) and his mother and father attended the race with Ryan as one of the race pilots. This race was really close but I worked my way from fourth to first by the end of the race. What a close finish with Brandon finishing in second!

The racers desperately wanted to race again so we oranized another race. This time I was on fire with the best performance to date. I was a full 5 seconds ahead of everyone else on the course and set a new course record. Matt, the user that had beaten my previous best time was pretty upset at himself for not finishing better. The Leewards were very impressed with the performance and it was very cool feeling the comraderie they were sharing with us.

Interestingly the users that were getting most into the racing had never met before this event, but have become friends as a result. Eric has commented several times at how rewarding it is to see users enjoy what we have spent a year creating. It's also very rewarding to see people new to Flight Sim reacting so positively.

The VIP area has been getting more and more busy over the days with many of the race teams stopping by to try out the product. Brandon was working with a retired Navy pilot that nailed his first carrier landing attempt. He was pretty excited about it. We had a helicopter fan come in so I had him try the slingload tutorial and I was amazed at how well he handled the loads.

It was really important to me and I assume for the rest of the team to have a good day yesterday. Friday the races were suspended after a series of fatal crashes which is why I didn't make a Reno Day 3 post. The mood at the races was very somber to say the least. Yesterday helped turn that around.

Today we will run more races, and the Leewards are interested in having a Cloud Dancer team only race so I need to set that up. In the afternoon I get to watch the remaining final heats which is always fun.