Glog (Wing Log)

Some random FS9 freeware planes, part 2

2008-06-24T02:30:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple more interesting freeware offerings that I have recently tried. First, there is this really nice Grumman Ag-Cat, by Marcel du Plessis. This one has a lot to offer--a fun, unusual plane, offering a stunning virtual cockpit and a chance to work on a new skill. As I've said once or twice around here, I haven't had much time lately for simming; but if I did, I might try perfecting my cropdusting (or "top dressing") skills with this plane. On my test flight I did try zipping down into various fields and pulling up right before the trees, but I think it would take a lot of practice to get those tight turnarounds down.

Here's a couple of VC shots. Crisp, clean, convincing textures on the panel, and nice views all around. The plane handles nicely--quick and agile, but not too skittish. I was caught off guard a couple of times by the high power-on stall speed (OK, so I made a few craters), so I think it would pay to spend some time practicing maneuvers a few thousand feet up before heading to the farm.
My only slight gripe about this plane is that there is no pilot visible in the spot view, so it looks a little weird from the outside. It is possible there is a keystroke which will populate the plane (I only skimmed the documentation), if there is I would say this one is just about perfect.

Now for something a little different, the Demoiselle V2.0 created by Marcel & Marco Di Foggi. The real Demoiselle was built by Alberto Santos-Dumont. (Go ahead and look at the Wikipedia link, and you'll see these guys have modeled the hat very accurately!) This is one of the best early aircraft I've seen. I especially like to watch the wheels from the virtual "cockpit", as you can see them stop spinning after takeoff, the rev up on touchdown. It helps you appreciate the courage of those daring young men, when you see they had so little between them and terra firma.
The biggest weakness of this plane is how unconvincing is the human figure (apart from the excellent hat). Of course, this is an inherant weakness of FS graphics and no fault of the developers. But this kind of plane makes the contrast pretty jarring.
It is nice to see there is still a lot of newer stuff out there for FS9. I have not tried these in FSX, so I cannot comment on whether they would work well there.

Some random FS9 freeware planes part 1

2008-06-20T02:12:00.000-07:00

For Father's day I decided to give my father a few new planes. He's an avid simmer, but doesn't have internet access. So I went to one of the popular sites and picked out a few of the most recent additions for FS9. A side benefit of this is that I had an excuse to take these out for a checkride. I am technically still on hiatus, as I really have no time for flightsimming these days. However, in the spirit of Summer I am letting myself have a few hours of fun.

Now, I've been out of the loop for a little while, so I don't know how new these really are-- they may be old news for most. Anyway, here's a couple for this post.

Here is a nice Tomahawk model by Adrian Fernandez Gomez (see http://alcala-sim.com.ar/). If you're a GA fanatic like me, you will like this alternative to the usual Cessnas. I can't get over how tiny the wings look from inside, as if you have a couple of rulers sticking out of the fuselage.

I enjoyed flying this one quite a bit. It looks great on the outside, and I enjoy the visibility from the cockpit. The VC is usable, but not perfect. The textures are pretty coarse, and there are some gaps, as you can see in the image below.

There's another major issue with this model, in that there is something mysterious going on with the landing gear. If you accidentally hit the retract gear button on your joystick, you will hear the sound of retracting landing gear. This is a fixed gear plane, of course. More surprisingly, if you have raised the fixed gear, you will get a belly landing.
I'm not sure if this is by design (simulate gear failure?), or if the sound and config files were simply borrowed from a plane with retractible gear, but it is curious. There's a nice documentation pdf included.

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For a big chunky bipe you can't beat this Anatov AN2, by Vladimir A. Zhyhulskiy.This is a new update to a model which I believe has been around for a while. I have to admit I didn't even know what an AN2 was until I found one among the FlightGear add-ons. I love flying it in FlightGear, so I am glad to find a version for for MSFS.
This is a well-done model of a unique craft, and will probably become one of my favorites (if I ever have time to fly, that is)
The VC is fairly detailed. Zoom in, and you'll see the original Russian instruments (tip strips are in English!). There is good documentation for this one as well. In looking at the documentation this morning I realized there are some nifty exterior animations such as cargo loading, which I have not had a chance to fly. However, those sorts of things are really novelties--the important thing is that this one is nice for hand flying, and fascinating to look at in spot view.
Finally, it has a pretty decent cabin. I like to replay the flight and go back in the cabin and watch from the passenger's view. Not sure how comfortable those seats are, though!

Celebrating 100 posts

2008-06-12T02:21:00.000-07:00

Ok, I admit I am dashing out a post mainly to push this blog past the 100-post mark. I don't have much new to say in this post, except to give quick mention to a couple of nice freeware FSX craft that I recently (i.e. last night) tried out.

First, there is the Waterman Aerobile or ArrowBile (are they the same plane? I can't figure it out) which is available from rarewings.com They also have the Taylor car plane, but that one is not free. The Waterman is a pretty nice visual model, however it is not clear to me how you control the rudders in the real plane. While your normal rudder controls will make the model's rudders turn, there are no visible rudder controls in the model, and there is not an automatic linkage with the steering wheel (as in an Ercoupe). It would have been really neat if they had provided a version in car configuration, but hey, don't look a gift horse...
Next, we have a very nice Pietenpol Air Camper "Pete" by Robert Kerr. This is clearly a labor of love, as Robert is modeling the plane completed by his father in the 80's. Bill Lyons had a nice Pietenpol model for FS2002 or maybe FS2004, but this one is FSX-native and is much more detailed. The detail does have a slight impact on framerates, but the hit is manageable, at least on my system. I wish I could say more about how this one flies, but I only had time to do one circuit. I did a bit of wobbling on the landing, but I think that is accurate given what looks to be a high center of gravity. I believe the Lyon's model was similarly touchy on the ground.

So, on to the second 100 posts!

Dabbling again

2008-06-08T16:51:00.001-07:00

I still don't have time for flightsimming, but I'm feeling the pull again quite strongly. So, I've been dipping my toes in the water here and there. Mostly I've been doing short flights (10 to 15 minutes) in the early morning while I have breakfast; I have time enough to do that now that the heat and the early sunrise make it easier to get out of bed.

Of course, any dedicated flightsimmer knows that to do it right, you need to carve out some fairly large chunks of time. The real satisfaction comes from doing longer flights and/or flying by the book. Just tooling around randomly is usually as unsatisfying as mindless channel surfing.

Being in this unsettled state, I have succumbed a bit to download-itis. Even if you don't have time to fly much, you can still download and install stuff while you are getting other work done. It's a way of doing the hobby without the necessity of sitting at the computer for any length of time!

The scenery in the first three screen shots are from the Snow Dog Tours series for FSX by "MoCat" (head over to The Old Hangar for details). This is a fun package which adds a lot of scenery goodies to dozens of airports, fields, and seaplane bases. This particular package covers Juneau, which readers of this blog know is one of my favorite places to fly. This is not as comprehensive as the Glacier Bay V2 package for FS9, but still very impressive considering it is , as far as I can tell, the work of one man.

Finally, here's a couple of nifty Polish inter-war taildraggers, recently released as freeware. These are native FSX planes, nicely done and fun to fly. I apologize for not giving names of either the planes or the teams responsible--I'm not at home now so I can't look them up right now. If you can't find them in the usual places, add a comment or send me a note and I will look it up when I get a chance.

Holy Foliage, Batman!

2008-02-26T09:47:00.000-08:00

OK, ok, I haven't posted in a while, and the truth is I haven't flown in a long time either. But Sitemeter is telling me I still get a fair number of visitors each week, so I thought I'd pass along this little tidbit.

Did you know there is a company whose main business is creating simulated trees for computer games? I came across this while browsing around, and their stuff looks really neat. Given how far graphics technology and MSFS has come in the last 10 years, I wouldn't be suprised to see something like this in a flight simulator some time in the next 10 years. Check out the web site, and don't miss the videos. There' s a really nice one showing trees bending under the downwash of a helicopter.

FG batch files -- a Dummy to Dummy guide

2008-01-18T06:24:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note here. I had an earlier post on '"saving" favorite flights in FlightGear by creating batch files. However, I didn't understand how to get over a simple batch file issue, so I came up with a kludge. I am embarassed by that now, since the way I am doing it now is so much simpler. I already listed this on the FG forum, after being set straight by another poster on the forum. I offer it here for the benefit anyone else who is running windows and is not fluent in DOS.

1. Create flight of choice in FG wizard
2. Copy the command line text from the wizard into notepad
3. Use backspace or delete to remove all the line returns
4. replace all "Program Files" with "Progra~1"
5. Save with .bat extension, e.g. myflight.bat
6. Now you just double click on file to launch the flight. This will bypass FG wizard and start up fgfs.exe right away.

I also like to put the line "pause" at the end of the batch script, so that it leaves the window open. This way you can see any error messages.

FlightGear 1.0 mini review

2008-01-03T08:58:00.000-08:00

Here's a few quick observations about the new official 1.0 release of FlightGear. If you're new to FlightGear you may wan't to read my review of version 0.9.10 here. This review is written for poor slobs like me who are totally dependant on the FG developer community for executable install packages--a large portion of the FG user base has been enjoying these improvements for some time. You can find a nice summary of the changes since 0.9.10 here.

First off, the visual experience isn't much different than version 0.9.10. There are some changes mentioned in the link above, but frankly I don't notice anything dramatic.
There are new views, for example a flyby view which is very nice. A major usability enhancement is an option in the View menu to select which views are included when you cycle through the views.
There is also a dynamic cockpit view now. This is intended to mimic intentional eye movements, rather than the head latency effect used in Active Camera and FSX. For example, if you step on the right rudder while taxiing, the view shift to the right, because thats where you want to go, presumably. But this becomes a problem if you are trying to stay on the centerline on takeoff, because you want to keep your eyes on the center. I fly with this turned off, but I'm hoping someone will write an alternative head movement component, because I don't like the bolted-to-the-airframe feeling you get without any head movement.
There are some nice additions to the default hangar, including a couple of Beavers (float and wheeled) and a pretty nice Camel. Best of all, tho, is that now all of the additional aircraft availabe on the FG website will work. I had tried some of these addons with version 0.9.10, but a lot of them didn't cooperate with that version.
The FG wizard (fgrun.exe) now has an option for scenarios. This makes it easy to set up situations such as carrier operations with the plane starting out on the deck. Also, one can set up glider towing with an AI cub, and aerial refueling from a tanker flying above KSFO. A couple of these scenarios are featured in the screenshots below.
FG now recognizes both my rudder pedals and my joystick at the same time! Version 0.9.10 didn't recognize my rudder pedals automatically, though it is possible I could have tweaked and/or hacked a solution.
Multiplayer chat is now available.
The tutorials are really neat. When you run one of these, it gives you text instructions at the top of the screen, then the viewpoint automatically shifts to the appropriate area of the cockpit, and the relevant control is circled. This is a great example of how the FG developers are not just copying other simulators, but coming up with new ways it can be used. A screenshot from one is below.
A note to MS FSX bashers: Progress comes at a price! Just as the new features of FSX packs a performance hit, so does upgrading from FG 0.9.10 to 1.0. Well, maybe not as bad. What I am seeing is that flight loadup takes at least twice the time it did in version 0.9.10. However, in flight performance is not nearly as badly affected. Except for my next point.
Alas, I seem to have lost the hardware lottery on this. My rig, which ran 0.9.0 quite well, and even manages FSX adequately, has terrible stuttering problems with FG 1.0. I see the stutters mostly during taxi and takeoff, where sometimes everything stops for more than a second at a time. Once aloft, things are not too bad. Overall, framerates are in the mid twenties and above. The conventionaly wisdom is that ATI cards such as mine do not handle OpenGL as well as Nvidia cards. There may yet be a tweak to reduce these stutterings, but for now they seriously cramp my style.

All in all, a very nice package, and an amazing one considering it's free. Although its a few years behind Microsoft in the visual department, it boasts many features that are state of the art, for example the tutorials, and the ability to have curved runways. If you haven't tried FG yet, now is a good time. Get it here.

On to the screenshots.
Here's a shot approaching the refueling tanker (never did quite connect tho).

A sample shot from a tutorial (how to start the Spitfire, I think)

My first successful carrier landing in 1.0.
OK, I admit it. The shot above was not my first sucessful landing--this one was :-)
However, I did land the Seahawk on the first attempt, honest! And with the baby in my lap at the time!

Being towed by the AI cub. You can also be towed by someone in multiplayer mode. The towing action feels pretty realistic, and you will break the cable if you don't follow well enough. You can't actually see the cable though.

FlightGear 1.0. released!

2007-12-19T19:43:00.000-08:00

OK, I haven't posted in a long while. The truth is, I haven't flightsimmed in weeks now. It's not just the guitar thing--I've been sick as well with a nasty head cold.

However, I do read up on my favorite flightsim sites, and I was delighted to see that FlightGear has finally release version 1.0.0. I downloaded it tonight and it looks really nice. Go try it out! I might get around to a mine-review here, but don't hold your breath. You're better off just trying it for yourself.

Flightsim in my pocket

2007-10-18T16:13:00.000-07:00

OK, so I lied. Here I am posting just days after I said I would be on hiatus. However, this is an unusual occasion as I am away from home (and the guitar) for a week, on a business trip. Of course, one of the benefits of this trip is that I got to fly for the first time in a few years. The experience was glorious, and I am really looking forward to the trip home.

But the main topic of this post running FlightGear from a thumb drive. This is a really neat thing you can do with FlightGear, and I've been meaning to post about for a long time, but somehow never got around to it. The truth is, you can easily get the entire FG base package, about 500MB, on a 1 Gig thumb drive. And then you can run FG off the drive without installing anything on the computer. These drives are really cheap nowadays: I got my 2 GB drive for less than $20. Of course, if you want to add more scenery areas, that will quickly take up a lot more space. Another option, with slightly less cool factor, would be to burn a CD. But then you couldn't fit it in your pocket.

The beauty of this is that you can fly FG on any eligible computer without installing it. This is especially valuable to me, since my employer keeps very tight controls on their computers and won't let the common folk install anything without going through IT. However, with the flightsim on the thumb drive, I can fly on my laptop any time I want to. This has been especially nice this week. Being away from home, I finally have my evenings all to myself, and no guitar to tempt me, so I've taken a bit of those evenings to enjoy some flying time again. The photo above shows FG running on my work laptop, from the thumb drive on the right side of the laptop, attached to my keychain.

My parting shot is a nice evening cloud effect that I never saw before in FG, until this evening's flight. I think it's awfully nice, and a fitting image if this is really my last post (for a while, at least).

Hangar time

2007-10-09T09:16:00.000-07:00

If you've been following this blog recently you may have wondered why I haven't written lately. Actually, you're if you're a regular reader more likely to know why, since the writing has been on the wall pretty much, in my last few posts. The truth is, my renewed interest in guitar playing has sucked up just about all of my meager supply of free time and I have hardly flown at all for weeks now.

I have actually set out a few times recently to have a little flying time, but have ended up hitting Control-C after 5 minutes or so. I'm not sure exactly why I feel so "unhooked" on flightimming. I think the fact that the hobby has a rival has made me much more sensitive to using my time as productively as possible. And flightsimming definitely demands a dedicated chunk of time to do it right. Right now, I find it's hard to justify spending even 30 minutes on a flight, when I have a to-do list as long as my arm for the guitar. Thirty minutes of scales could do me a lot of good.

It's not that the stuff doesn't interest me anymore. I still check in on the forums, and I've been following with great interest the news about FSX SP2 (see here for example). I will download that patch when it becomes available, though I won't be staying up late to do so this time. And of course I still love aviation, and still look skyward just about every time I hear something piston powered going over my house. Just the other day I was lucky enough to catch a good look at this beauty at low altitude right over my house!

So, a little shy of 100 posts, I feel I need to put this blog on indefinite suspension. I can't promise to post on any regular basis. I can't promise I won't post either, so if you've found any of this blog to be diverting, then check back every month or so. I've you've been a regular visitor, please add a comment or drop me a note. My site meter tells me I get a certain amount of traffic every week, but I still wonder whether they are real people or spam-bots. I'm sure I'll get back to flighsimming regularly, I just don't know when. I've enjoyed writing this blog, and I hope some of you have enjoyed reading it.

Google Earth flight simulator

2007-09-10T09:23:00.000-07:00

By now the word is well out there that Google Earth has an Easter Egg flight simulator. It's even mentioned in Wikipedia. I've played with this a bit, and I think its worth having, but only because it is worth having Google Earth. It is fun, but you are not likely to get much actual flying enjoyment from it.

It made perfect sense to implement this feature, as they already had most of the ingredients: the imagery, a method to map the imagery to contours, and a way to manipulate the view so that you can it all from any perspective. All they had to come up with was a way to dynamically move through this world, with a motion that mimicked the behavior of an airplane. The result is fairly primitive flight simulator that feels like an arcade game. It's buggy too-- I can't give any better evaluation of the flight dynamics because when I fly it keeps resetting the throttle. However, there is a smidgen of realism. You can make it can stall, and it is smart enough to register a crash if you attempt to land on water.

There is no cockpit beyond a HUD, and there is no outside view, which is not surprising because that would take a major development effort. I would be very happy if they at least added the usual preset views that you could use with the number pad or hat switch. As it is, you can't see your house unless you are flying right at it. There is a way to pan the view (Alt+ arrow keys, or Ctrl+ arrow keys for slow and fast panning, respecively) but this is not easy to use in flight. As a result, landings are hard to set up.

There are 3D buildings for some major cities, which are not on by default but can be activated using the layers options. I find they really slow down the performance, and as you can see many are unpainted.

So you can have a bit of fun flying over your own house, flying to work, or zooming through the Grand Canyon. All in the daytime, in a single (mixed-up) season, and without weather. Beyond that there's not too much to do. But this is exciting because this is that clearly this is the future of flightsimming. Surely live streaming imagery will be in MSFS eventually. (I know there is a project to do this in FSX now, but someday this will be the way it is out of the box.) Maybe Flight Gear will beat them to it.

Feeding the hobby

2007-09-03T06:38:00.000-07:00

Again, apologies to flightsimmers who come to this blog hoping for lots of flightsim info, because I have another installment in the Generic Hobby Blog. All I can say is that one of the motivations for starting this blog was to write about the experience of having an engrossing hobby, as much as to write about the hobby itself.

I notice, as I get deeper into my return to serious classical guitar playing how many of the same psychological dynamics come into play. And today, I want to discuss what I think of as "feeding the hobby". By this, I mean the sense of obligation to contribute something to the hobby on a regular basis. In flightsimming, this manifests itself as the need to throw more addons, and sometimes hardware, at the sim. For music, this can mean finding more sheet music, buying accessories, CDs, or the ultimate: upgrading the instrument itself.

Yesterday, I went to Staples and bought a new binder to hold my sheet music. I have a number of binders already, but this is to be my main binder that will hold my daily practice music. I didn't skimp and get the cheapest model, but got a deluxe version with D rings, a rubberized spine, a new and improved ring opening and closing mechanism. Then I got tab dividers and some of those post-it flag thingies for marking groups of music. The reason I mention all of this is that I noticed how it felt good, and I realized once again that I was feeding the hobby.

If this description might strike some as sinister, as if the hobby has become some kind of idol, demanding regular sacrifices. However, I think the explanation is more benign. This is a form of compensation: I'm not able to spend as much time on music as I would like, so I buy stuff for it, or find more public domain music online to print out. It is a kind of vicarious enjoyment of the hobby.

Do you feel the need to feed the hobby?

Oh, I haven't posted a screen shot here in a while, so here's a quick one to show you that I still get a little flying in, now and then. This is on final approach into KPVD, with the marvelous Flight Scenery addon scenery. I personally know all of these stores and restaurants, as I've driven my car this way often.

The website-driven life

2007-08-26T11:31:00.000-07:00

If you will indulge me one more time I'd like to discuss a topic which is only tangentally related to flightsimming, and is really more about hobbies/obsessions in general. As I find myself getting deeper and deeper into music again, the more I realize that much of it is driven by things that have been made available on the web. And this is very similar to how the whole flightsim experience started. I am sure that my experience is not unique.

It goes like this. You have your hobby. Maybe it's something new, or maybe something you've been doing for years. One day you go to your favorite search engine to answer some question regarding this hobby, and in the process you find not just the answer, but one or more interesting web sites. Over the following days and weeks you find that there is an incredible amount of wisdom, not to mention free stuff to download, and suddenly you find yourself committed to the hobby like never before.

If you're reading this page most likely you know about some of the better flightsimming sites. So, you know how something you read about in one of the forums can send you racing to the download page. Or, you read a thread about something you'd never really given much thought to, for example scenery design, and to your surprise you feel yourself being drawn into a new area of the hobby. Your to-do list gets longer and longer.

The site that's really gotten me going with music, classical guitar in particular, is called delcamp.net. See the forums here. After spending some time reading these forums, I'm excited about new practice ideas, new music to check out, et cetera. Also, there's lots of sheet music to download and print out for free, the ultimate guitar "add on".

I think this is a curious phenomenon. Contrast this to the way life was only a decade ago. If you had a hobby, chances are your sources were very limited. Information was either very local or very centralized. You may have been dependent upon your local teacher, club, or hobby shop. Or perhaps a certain magazine or catalog defined the universe of what was available to enhance your hobby. Now, we are not limited by geography or institutional authority. An amateur musician or flightsimmer can get helpful advice from another amateur on the other side of the planet, within hours of raising the question.

Gotta go print out some more music...

It's all about time (it always is)

2007-08-16T09:22:00.000-07:00

I think I should clarify what I was saying in the last post. After a rather enjoyable flying session last night, it became clear to me that it wasn't so much that flightsimming is losing its luster, but rather that it is now facing more fierce competition with regards to me free-time choices. If days suddenly got twice as long, I could happily spend hours a day flightsimming. It's still a lot of fun.

However, with life as it is, time spent flightsimming is time NOT spent on music, or reading, or sleeping. And right now music has gone up a few notches in priority. This is a good thing.

Last night being Flying Night, and having pretty much finished my recent music project, which was adaptating a couple of of Mozart piano sonata movements for two guitars, I decided to take another stab at the flightsim. I went to my favorite place (Alaska)with the now seemingly low-maintenance FS9, and had a very nice time. First, I tooled around Atlin a bit in the Cessna 150. Then I switched to the Aero Commander and flew from Atlin to Skagway, following the path shown below. This was a thrilling scenic route; it was especially fun descending through the valley into Skagway. I will surely fly the route again, in different times and seasons, perhaps try the reverse direction. . I got some nice screenshots along the way, but refrained from adding them to this post, since I've had too many similar pictures here already.

Throttling back

2007-08-12T14:47:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, I've done very little flying lately, even though I have had the usual trickle supply of free time. Another hobby has started to demand more time. This is my first love, music. I am a classical guitarist, and have played at varying levels of intensity for more than 25 years. Having kids cut way into practice time, and for quite a while I hardly played at all. Recently, though, I've started playing duets with a couple of different folks and that has re-lit the spark.

Part of the "problem" is that I have found a number of different ways to use the computer for this other hobby. This has opened up whole new avenues. For example, I have been dabbling a bit using an open-source music typesetting program called Lilypond. An example of the work I've been doing is in the screenshot below. This is a movement from a Mozart piano sonata that I am adapting for guitar duet.

Lilypond is a fantastic product, and if any of my readers share my interest in music you may want to check it out. The learning curve is a bit steep, but a great help is available in a plug-in for the open source text editor jEdit (it's called lilypond tools). Then there's Audacity, an open-source multi-track recording software...

But this is a flightsim blog, so I will cut the digression there. The thing of interest here is that I have actually found myself with a block of free time, the simulator up and running, and yet a little voice in my head is saying "wouldn't you rather finish working on that score?". So, control-C, Yes, and I'm off working on the other hobby. Can you believe this actually happened during the flight in which I captured that beautiful image below?

Of course, this is how normal people live. But its a little disturbing for the flightsim fanatic. The magic is gone! Well, yes and no. I'm sure I'll keep simming, and I'm sure I will develop new fascinations with various parts of the simming hobby, but for now it's going to get a bit less time from me. Keep checking back here, because I will try to update at least once a week, and you never know when something will draw me back in full throttle.

Autogen City

2007-08-02T18:20:00.001-07:00

Here's a quick tip: If you want to get a good look at cityscapes, but don't have a system that can handle New York, Seattle, Tokyo, etc, then why not try a second or third tier city? The pictures here are from Worcester, MA. It looks like there are not any custom buildings here, just autogen. I get low but manageable framerates with this autogen, totally flyable compared to Seattle.
I was very pleased and somewhat surprised by the quality of the textures. I've flow a bit in urban areas, but usually the big cities, but this is the first time I've tried a city like this, flying low and slow, taking time to notice the details. For example, the roofs have a nice 3D shape now, and what's more, they are landable!

Having fun again

2007-07-26T02:33:00.000-07:00

Fun has been eluding me lately on my Flying Nights. Flying Night is my weekly dedicated night to fly, occurring each Wednesday when my wife works an evening shift. Lately, these nights have been less than satisfying. I think this is due to too much tweaking and twiddling, combined with the pressure to wring the most out of this all too limited window of time.

So, last night I decided to keep my ambitions modest, and spend the evening in good ol' Glacier Bay (FS9). I decided to do some plane hopping, which can be dangerous in the sense that you don't allow enough time in any one plane for a sense immersion to develop. However, this time it paid off, probably because I was sticking to old favorites.

The first leg of the journey was from Hoonah into Juneau in the freeware Cessna 150. I didn't get any pictures, but it was a nice relaxing and uneventful trip. I had some time to play with the VOR and ADF. These were not necessary since, as usual, I was flying by pilotage, but it made me realize I should use those things more often--you never know when you might get lost or confused if you are just using the chart and looking out the window. The long approach into Juneau Int'l was magical.

In Juneau, I hopped over to the classic Beech 18 by Shupe and co. I really should spend more time in this one--its so gorgeous to watch. I think I'm finally getting the hang of taxiing this one. It's a bit difficult without a steerable tail wheel. The trick is to dance on the toe brakes. Differential throttles would help a lot, but I don't have those.
From Juneau, I flew the Beech to Gustavus. En route the real-world weather started to get more interesting. I had to reduce altitude to stay out of the clouds. I finally figured out the ADF on this one, which helped a lot, since there is a transmitter at the airport. This model has lovely vintage radio controls which take a little time to figure out (unfortunately they are not visible in the screenshot below). I made a nice landing in spite of having not flown this one in quite a while. My approach was a little sloppy though- I underestimated the drag of the lowered gear and had to pour on the power to get back on a good glide slope.
In Gustavus, I switched over to the Long Island Classics Aeronca (sorry, model number escapes me right now). This is the more powerful model, which is rated for light aerobatics. I find it to be a real blast doing loops and rolls in this old ragwing. I also practiced stalls a bit, yet another thing I should be doing more often.

I tried to emulate something I saw on an old video about Duane Cole. He would end his routine by cutting the engine and doing the final part 'dead stick' (this was before Bob Hoover). I cut the engine at 3000 feet, but could only manage one loop and one roll before I ran out of altitude. I did make it to the runway, though!

So go dust off some of your old favorites and take 'em for a spin. Happy flying!

FlightGear multiplayer and moving map

2007-07-13T02:23:00.001-07:00

First, in reference to the doldrums mentioned at the end of my last post, I'd like to say once again that my remedy of flying the pattern really helps me get back into the groove. I can't recommend highly enough the benefits of pattern flying, particularly when your base airport is on the small side or presents some other challenge. There are few things as satisfying as honing a skill over the long term.

One thing I've been doing a fair bit in the last few months, but have not yet blogged about , is multiplayer flying in FlightGear. I know people have been flying multiplayer in MS Flight Simulator for years, and perhaps some day I'll give it a try. However, multiplayer mode is really easy to set up in FlightGear. See this article in the FlightGear Wiki for instructions.

When you fly multiplayer in FlightGear you fly with the entire world of online FlightGear users. An additional really cool feature is the live map that shows who's online, where they are (their plane, that is), and what they're flying. You can see whose flying right now, without signing up or logging in or anything, by checking out the online server. If you click that link you will see KSFO (San Francisco), which is the default FG airport, and anyone who's flying at the moment. You should at least see "mpdummy" who is not some self-effacing individual, but rather a test connection to show that the server is running properly. If you happen to see "marlboro", that's me!

A fun thing I like to do when I have a few spare minutes is to check the server, see if anyone's flying, and then starting up FG and trying to fly formation, or at least buzz the other planes. I hear there is a way to message other pilots, but that requires a newer version of FG than I have (i.e. the kind you have to build yourself).

The server map can also be used to track your flying. It can be configured so that your plane is always centered on the map. you can zoom in and out, and display road names and such, just as with any Google Map application. It's easy to switch back and forth using the Alt-Tab combination. Unlike MSFS which tends to go into a sulk if you try task switching, you can switch in and out of FG very quickly.

Last night I decided to do a comparison between where I was in the FG world and where the server would show me. The results are below. I think that's pretty amazing.

Summer doldrums

2007-07-12T09:40:00.000-07:00

I know I'm a little behind in posting. Last week I got a fair bit of flying in, but was also busy around the house, so I didn't get to any blogging. Next week I'm away on vacation, so I thought I'd pop in with a quick note.
The big news for me is that I purchase Vancouver+ for FS This is really big news for me, because I'm very frugal with addons, this being only the second scenery I ever paid for. It's a pretty nice package, and I really should be gracing this post with lots of nice pictures. However, I haven't made time for much screen grabbing. One word of caution: this package is pretty demanding on the hardware, for example, with my mere one gig of RAM I have lots of trouble with the urban areas. But the country is just beautiful. Here's a link to a shot I took showing a comparison to a real world view, and I think it is quite impressive. I'm also a little proud of the shot, because it takes a bit of work to do something like this, to get the location and perspective just right. It's not perfect, but I think it's pretty darn good.

Last night was Flying Night, but it turned out to be a dissatisfying experience. I think I've got too many new things going on, and even though I tried to stick to one situation for a while, I felt distracted and un-immersed. I think I'll try to squeeze in a half hour or so of pattern flying tonight, if I can, since that usually brings the joy back.

Did I really need this? Yes! (Dash 7 by Milton Shupe)

2007-06-27T02:30:00.000-07:00

You know, I'm really trying to buckle down and focus my flightsimming activities, but along comes another freeware Must Have. I've hardly had time to absorb the great Cessna 150, Glacier Bay v.2, or the new-to-me freeware Maule for FS2004. This is getting to be a problem, I have too much flightsim stuff to do, and not enough time. I guess this is a good problem to have (from a real-world perspective, having any flightsim problem is a good problem, because the prerequisite for having such a problem is a certain amount of free time and material resources.)

Anyway, the real subject of this post is the Dash 7 upgrade from Milton Shupe and his team.
This release came as a complete suprise to me. I flew the first updated version of this plane quite a bit, and really enjoyed it even though I missed having a virtual cockpit. Then, I heard that they were working on an update with a VC, and was watching progress reports on this project with great interest. But about a year ago Milton announced that he was retiring from modelling, and would have to leave this project unfinished.

I won't attempt a review of this plane other than to say it is a fantastic model of a really fun plane. Andrew Herd wrote a very informative review of this plane when it was released for FS2002, and it is still worth reading.

This update includes a very well done VC as well as a fully-appointed cabin. The latter is nice if you want to replay a flight, and go back and sit with the passengers. That's what I did for my last picture here, on final into Skagway.

As if this wasn't enough, Milton says on one of the forums that this is not the final version, and a much-improved version will be available in 6 to 8 weeks!

Tonight is Flying Night, so I plan to devote the better part of it to mastering this plane. I can usually land it where I want, but often with a rollercoaster approach path. I haven't flown turboprops very much at all, so I need to get used to the delay between throttle changes and the effect on the descent rate.

FS9 keeps getting better

2007-06-20T02:48:00.000-07:00

I'm a real Johnny-Come-Lately on this one, but I've finally installed the freeware Maule package for FS9, designed by M.Maliniemi, K.Virtanen, I.Grant, R.Horelli, A.Swindle, S.Grant, T.Foosnes. This package was recognized as one of the best when released, and has remained on many 'must-have' lists. However, I put off downloading it becuase it is a rather large file, and I didn't strictly have a need for it. I took Glacier Bay v.2 as a suitable excuse and finally tried it. (Tip: for a quicker download go to FSnordic.net and search for m7260_v1.zip.)

This package is incredible, all the more so considering it was released in 2003. I've flown the default Maule in FSX a bit, and this freeware model holds up quite well against that one. The textures aren't quite up to FSX levels, but they're really not too far behind. Considering you get 6 variations (I mean different configurations, not just paints), its tempting to install this in FSX. If nothing else, it fits the niche for a smaller amphibian.

By the way, if you find the Maule intriguing, go visit the official manufacturers site. It's got some neat photos and still shots from some of the movies its been featured in.

I anticipate weeks of fun exploring the GB scenery in this plane.The more time I spend in Glacier Bay, the more I am fascinated by it, and the more I appreciate its beauaty. It's kind of scary how much the Glacier Bay scenery designers seemed to anticipate the kind of flying I like to do. For example, last summer, after studying my sectional, I dreamed up a mission to visit the tiny Sisters Island, just East of Hoonah, to service a VOR transmitter located on the island. The results are documented in this post on the flighsim.com screenshot forum. Well, wouldn't you know it, the designers of GB v.2 have actually put a grass airstrip (unleveled) on this island!

So, if you don't already have them, go get this scenery, this plane, a sectional chart (prefereably one on paper) and go lose yourself in Alaska!

Feels like Christmas

2007-06-13T02:36:00.000-07:00

Because there are so many new things to play with. I'm building up a huge to-do list for flightsimming. I'm most excited now about the new Alaska scenery I mentioned in the last post, and I'm going to spend tonight (flying night!) exploring this region. I'm going to try to stay focused, and not hop from one thing to the next. Otherwise, I may get that bleary-eyed Christmas morning overloaded feeling.

To whet my appetited, this morning for my breakfast flight (screenshot is above) I took a quick spin around Atlin, in British Columbia. I flew there last year as part of my Alaska journey, but this a whole new experience because the Glacier Bay version 2 freeware scenery package has done major work with this area.

I'm pretty certain I had GB version 1 installed the last time, and in that version Atlin was untouched (correct me if I'm wrong). I remember the generic airport design, and nothing resembing a town. This time around, I find custom buildings, cars, GA traffic, lots of trees, and birds (!). It's amazing how much it helps to have cars around. We've been conditioned to overlook this, but if you think about it, most FS landscapes look as if aliens abducted all the ground transportation. Anyway, perhaps the best thing about this scenery the local town is there, including a road connecting the town to the airport. That level of detail makes it feel like a real place. I checked Google maps, and everything--town, airport, roads, docks--looks authentically located.

What exactly is Atlin? Its a small town in BC that I'd never heard of, but I flew there last year because it was a nice destination for a shortish flight from Skagway. I'm delighted that the GB team put so much effort into this town and airport, because it is a beautiful location to fly around. You can read about Atlin here.

FS9 Renaissance?

2007-06-09T05:00:00.000-07:00

First, it was the Cessna 150, and now Glacier Bay version 1.
Actually, this scenery package has been out since March, but it came in under my radar, and probably the radars of many others who were wrapped up in tweaking FSX. Of course all the attention paid to FSX SP1 threatens to make this the best kept secret in FS9 freeware. It only came to my attention because of a post on the Flightsim.com screenshot forum.

I spent a lot of time with the first version of this freeware scenery package back in the days before FSX. I have thought about going back there since, but have been too busy trying other things in FSX. FSX default does an OK job with Alaska, certainly much better than FS9, but this package really stands out. There is obviously a lot of careful attention paid not only to the 'major attractions' but also lesser airfields and seaports. And of course that is most of the fun of exploring this kind of scenery--finding the little hideaways.

It's really nice to see that FS9 is not yet forgotten. I have made my peace with FSX but many folks are still struggling to make it work on their hardware. With packages like this available, one can look forward to many months of great flying experiences in FS9.

I'd like to say more about this great package, but its Saturday and I have Things To Do. But you can go get it yourself (on the usual sites) and find them out for yourself.

That nifty 150

2007-06-04T02:36:00.001-07:00

A note to those readers who may have found this blog through the FlightGear review on Flightsim.com: Welcome! I've been writing this for almost a year now. I try to do at least one post a week, so please come back again! Many of these posts are "dashed off tripe", to quote one of my favorite bloggers, but occasionally I'll spend a little more time to develope a theme with more care. Also, I try to put pretty screenshots in as many posts as I can.

Anyway, I'm still having a lot of fun with the Cessna 150 model mentioned in the last post. After more extensive flying, I'm finding I love this bird even more. The look and feel of this plane is absolutely first rate.

One thing I missed when I wrote the last post is that there is a pop-up options tool that lets you do things like open the doors and the oil flap, but more importantly, hide the instructor! You can also chose to hide the wheelpants, which I do becuase for some reason most of the 150's I see around here do not have the pants.

Also, I should say that with all the detail it is a slight frame rate hog. This should only be a concern if you're running an older rig.

I have also found that this works pretty well in FSX, but there are a few things that don't work quite right. For example, in the options tool the checkmarks do not show up (but the options cna be changed). Little stuff like that. A little less trivial is that a couple of times it made my computer reboot! Once it rebooted after I crashed the plane, which in spite of the annoyance made me laugh. It is almost as if they were saying "You crash my plane, I'll crash your computer". I'm not complaining, becuase this it is not advertised to work in FSX, and when I'm not trying to do something unusual it is trouble free. I encourage you to try it in FSX; you may not have the same problem.

Happy landings!

Incredible Freeware Cessna 150

2007-05-30T02:17:00.001-07:00

OK, call me a hypocrite if you like. After my little sermon on resisting the twin evils of tweak-itis and download-itis, I go ahead and recommend a scenery tweak, and now I'm going to recommend a download. But didn't I admit I was preaching to myself?

Also, in my defense, the FlightGear ship traffic tweak was really simple--you could do it in ten minutes or less, then get back to flying. As for today's post, the download I am recommending here is extraordinary.

This Cessna 150 model has created a minor buzz on my favorite screenshot sharing forum, and is easily the best freeware airplane I have yet seen. This is high praise, considering I have downloaded and enjoyed the excellent work by such freeware developers as Milton Shupe, Dave Eckert, and Kevin Lemanski (a.k.a Long Island Classics).

To be honest, I have had trouble enjoying FS9 because the FSX default planes have spoiled me. Going back to the default the FS9 Cessnas is a real let down. I have better addons in FS9, but I always find myself wanting to fly the workhorse Cessnas. With this addon, I can see myself spending a lot more time in FS9 world, especially where I can enjoy FlightScenery's excellent RI scenery package.

You may recall a while back I discussed the problem with contrast between the view inside the cockpit versus the view out the window in this post. I don't know if addressing this problem was a conscious objective of the developers, but I think they've made a great progress in this respect. The gauges are darker than in typical FS models. To me this is more convincing, because if your eyes are adapted to view out the window, the interior will appear relatively dark. Additionally, the window interior window reflections and aged glass effect serve to wash out the external view a bit.
Before I go on, I have to say I've only flown with this model for about an hour, last night. I reserve the right to retract some of this enthusiasm in a later post, if I find any glaring bugs. But I really don't expect to, because the thing looks and feels so well crafted.

As you can tell by these shots, the interior is amazingly well detailed. All of the gauges are built from scratch--no recycled bits here. There are some neat touches in the interior, such as a fully functioning E6B computer that pops up when you click on the one in the passenger seat. Another nice touch is the checklist that comes up with one of the shift-number combinations is a facsimile of an old reference sheet.

The exterior model is very nice, but I must admit I spent so much time inside the cabin that I didn't check the exterior out too much. But you can see from these shots that they've given it a convincing aged look. One minor quibble: in the exterior view you can see the passenger (instructor?) waving a chart around and then putting it away. It's a neat little animation, but after a few repetitions is starts to be distracting.

The sounds are aliased from the default 172. One can't complain about this, given that it is freeware, but I hope some other contributor can come up with a replacement sound set because it almost breaks the spell. However, they did replace the default stall horn with one that has a more warbly sound. Not being a pilot, I can't say for sure this is how it should sound, but it seems more convincing.

In addition to the basic 150, they've included the Aerobat model. I only had a few minutes with it last night, but it looks like it will be a lot of fun.

I'm planning on spending most of tonight (Wednesday night is flying night!)taking this plane for an extending Rhode Island tour.

You can get it here.
http://drk.free.fr/tutoriels/creation/c150_en.php
When you go to that site, note the bit about the password on the left hand side. You'll need to use the one they give you.

FlightGear ship traffic-- A Dummy to Dummy Guide

2007-05-26T06:16:00.000-07:00

Ok, this is probably one of the most useless things you would want to do with FlightGear, but it is kind of fun. A full guide to AI Systems can be found here on the FlightGear Wiki. Here, I will show you exactly what I did to easily add some ships to my local scenery. Using this method you will have boats that travel in slow circles according to their rudder settings, without the need to explicitly define routes.

The first thing to do is to copy the ship_demo.xml file found in your FlightGear\data\AI directory, and rename it. In my case I called it RIship_demo.xml, because I was creating boat traffic for the Naragansett Bay in Rhode Island.

Edit the file in any text editor, such as Wordpad. Below is how I edited the file. (My apologies for giving this with screen shots instead of cut-and-pastable text, but I don't know a simple way to put xml code into this blog without the browser trying to interpret it as code.) My edits are red. Mainly, I just changed the latitude and longitude for the ship. Then I copied it twice, and modified each copy for location and speed. Finally, in the third entry I changed the vessel to the freighter. This required one more modification, which I will explain below. To find the latitude and longitude values, you can go here. Move the map to your desired location, and you will see the lat. and long. in the upper right corner.

But before we set up the freighter, I will show you how to add this traffic file to your preferences. This step is essential or we will not see the ships. Edit the preferences.xml file in your FlightGear\data directory. Search for the text 'scenario' and add a line for your new file, as shown below (use your file name, however). My edits are in red. Also, make sure the boolean value shown in red is set to true.

I noticed there was a freighter in the same directory as the sailboat model. However, it did not have a corresponding xml file. Acting on a guess, I copied the sailboat.xml, edited as shown below, and saved it as freighter.xml. It worked!

Once you've modified and saved these files, load up a flight in the appropriate area, and go look for your boats!

Your flightsimming stuff isn't going anywhere

2007-05-22T10:21:00.000-07:00

Please note: if this sounds at all preachy, please be aware that I am speaking to myself as much as anyone else. Also, at Flightsim.com, Chip Barber's most recent installment"The Corner" deals with some similar themes, albeit in a lighthearted manner. I wrote this before seeing his column.

Remember: Your flightsimming stuff isn't going anywhere!

Many of us are fairly obsessed with flying, and flight simulation in particular. We squeeze in a flying session whenever we get a chance, and when we can't we read the forums, or read flying books, or study sectional charts. I know I am not alone on this, as I read many of the flightsim forums. It's not a bad hobby to be obsessed with. It is relatively inexpensive, safe, and doesn't require you to spend a lot of time away from home (physically, that is). On the positive side, besides learning about airplanes and how to use the program, we are also learning about more general subjects like geography, weather, physics, and maybe even a little history. Not the least benefit is relaxation it provides, or the aesthetic pleasure derived from a well-rendered scene.

Still, it can become a serious preoccupation, and let’s be honest: we’ve probably all shortchanged a few worthy activities due to the time and attention we’ve given to simming. It is worthwhile to examine the time and attention we give to this hobby. How much is too much? In the worst case, we could find ourselves so wrapped up in this that it affects our personal relationships and harms our health due to sedentary behavior and/or lack of sleep.

For me, one sign of an unhealthy obsession is 'download-itis' and 'chronic tweaking disease', subjects I have discussed before. Now these activities are part of the fun of flight simming, and in fact some tweaking is necessary to get the most out of the game. But this kind of behavior can bring us dangerously close to that of the compulsive gambler, who thrives on the rush that each new attempt brings, all the while squandering his capital. Much of the time, after the initial excitement, we find that the result is less than we hoped for, and we walk away unsatisfied. Then the search is on for the next great solution, but this is really just our next fix. In other words, this is the obsession feeding on itself.

But even if our obsession falls far short of the pathological, it is good to remind ourselves that there are other things to do. Regardless of where we think our involvement with simming falls on the hobby/addiction spectrum, we can keep it all in perspective with the simple thought that the flight simulator will be happy to wait for us if we spend time on something else. Can the same be said for the activities that we have neglected?

So why not get out and enjoy the spring weather, tend the garden, go for a walk or a run? Reconnect with a neglected hobby, or read a good book. Play a board game with the kids. We don't have to devote every scrap of free time to checking out the latest and greatest hope for the flight simulator.

Remember: your flightsimming stuff isn't going anywhere!

SP1 second impressions, and more FlightGear

2007-05-21T02:36:00.001-07:00

Having had SP1 for, oh, five days I guess, I'm finding it's not quite as good for me as originally seemed, but still it's pretty good and definitely an improvement over the original experience. But I have not yet tried any config file tweaks, so more improvement may be on the way.

The airport shot is from Logan Airport, with about 33% traffic. I assure you that 20 FPS indication is not typical. Usually I get around around 11 FPS. While not ideal, it is definitely possible to fly at this rate. This is one of the first situations I tried, in order to give the patch a good test, and I was very impressed at how well it handled everything in this very busy scenery.

I typically fly suburban and rural areas, and found that the FPS increase, while appreciable, was not as high as I had hoped. I think the trees, in the quantities I need, might be more demanding than a lot of the urban scenery. Also, the more I fly, the more I notice intermittent blurries. This seems to be the most common complaint on the forums, and my single-core system is running into this more often than I'd like. You can see the blurries in the second shot. I'm also noticing and occasionally being annoyed by autogen popping. Aces' Phil Taylor's blog mentions that they implemented some kind of batch processing for autogen, and acknowledged that scenery popping may occur.

As I mentioned in my last post, the one improvement that has really made me happy is the fluid panning with either the hat switch or mouse, and instant view changes using the number pad preset views. It was the lagging view changes that caused me the most grief before the patch, and after a few hours I have not had any poor performance. For me, this one big improvement makes the other minor issues easy to swallow.

My third FSX shot shows a goof that perhaps might have been there before SP1, but I only just noticed it. The cargo doors on this jet remain open, even when it takes off. I don't get incensed by this kind of thing the way some people do, but rather find it mildly amusing.

I have gone back to FlightGear a few times since SP1, just to see if my earlier enthusiasm for this product was more than a flash in the pan. I'm convinced FG is the genuine article. I continue have lots of fun and look forward to the new version, whenever that gets out. This morning I tried a back-to-back flight around the pattern in FSX and FG. Besides the obvious differences (FG loads in a fraction of the time, FSX looks much prettier) I have to say the flying enjoyment (Flug Vergnugen?) is about equal.

The last shot shows my first attempt at a carrier landing in FG. It was a sucess! However, you'll have to take my word for it. The screenshot here is from a replay, and I discovered that the AI carrier continues along its path during replay, so by the time you reach the original landing spot you've missed the boat.

SP1 first impressions

2007-05-16T19:23:00.000-07:00

I'm not the kind of person that lines up outside a store in order to be among the first to get a new product. I even had the self discipline to use the slower Super Saver Shipping option on my FSX preorder. Nevertheless, Tuesday evening found me hitting the refresh button on my browser again and again, waiting for the SP1 download to appear. The truth is, I just wanted to fire off the download before going to bed. Still, it was a little exciting : first, the announcement that it would soon be available. Then, the download link on FSInsider (alas, it lead to a 404 error). Then the update to the FSInsider front page, with a link (still 404'd). The forums were buzzing with each development. Finally, the link worked! The download was in progress!

But I was good. Even after I realized that the download was going very quickly, and would probably be done in about 20 minutes, I walked away from the computer to go to bed.

The next morning, I scanned the forums an saw that most people were very happy with this patch. This inspired me to do a hasty install and a quick flight before going to work. First impression: looks good.

Last night I had a quite a while to try it out. It is a noticable improvement. I didn't do the calculations, but informally I can say that a I believe I have at least the promised 20% improvement in FPS. What is even better, is that I see a dramatic improvement in panning response. Finally, "real-time panning" is possible. Previously, there was a delay in using the number keys for side views, etc, and using the hat or mouse to pan was painful. Often there was such a lag that I would over-pan, and find myself looking at the tail. Now it is very smooth and natural. It is a little ironic that the feature which most excited me about FlightGear the smooth panning, is what has been most improved in FSX.

I flew around the highly-detailed Logan Airport, with about 33% traffic and airport vehicles, and FPS averaged in the mid teens. I kept waiting for it to get bogged down, but it didn't happen. I did have a few short pauses, but I can live with that as long as it only happens in the busiest areas.

It's not perfect--I've had a few hangs, and there are a few glitches, such as the scary-looking blank message window (see below). This is the loading progress indicator, and it usually is blank for a few seconds before the progress bar appears. Also, the dusk textures have been improved, but look at the night landing shot-- why are the skyscrapers on the left unlit? Looks like a power outage. Also, you may notice this shot shows a case of the blurries. I almost never see them, but they are not yet extinct.

I'm looking forward to re-exploring FSX.

Some more FG shots

2007-05-15T02:41:00.000-07:00

Here's some more FG screenshots, as promised in an earlier post. I collected these in a hurry, having already spent too much time on this blog lately.

If you're a regular visitor to this blog, you may have noticed I'm posting more frequently than normal. There are two reasons for this. First, I'm very excited about FlightGear, and I want to help make it better know in the larger flightsim community. The other reason is that as of last week it became clear that the FSX SP1 is going to be released some time this week (see Phil Taylor's blog.) Therefore, I wanted to get the FlightGear posts out before the collective attention of most of the flightsimming community is focused on trying out SP1. Incidently, I'll be one of the first in line for SP1, and will let you know how it goes for me, as soon as time permits.

However, for the moment we're still considering FG. As I said before, I will keep coming back to FG, and this is true even if SP1 exceeds my wildest expectations. FG is great fun, and the ongoing development will be interesting to keep up with. For a project that expressly does not have its primary focus on visuals, it can look pretty nice at times. If I had a spare hour or two I'm sure I could come up with even better shots than these.

This is not so say that FG always looks this good. There are times when it can look not-so-good (visit a major city, for example, and fly low). Also, take a look at the last shot. Are those Gateway computer boxes? I do hope this was done tongue in cheek.

I do hope I've inspired a few people to try out FG. If you're not running FSX, why not try FG now? If you are running FSX and axiously awaiting SP1, don't forget about FG. Maybe you should add a bookmark for http://www.flightgear.org.

FlightGear saved flights-- A Dummy to Dummy Guide

2007-05-13T19:03:00.000-07:00

This is the first in a possible series of Dummy to Dummy Guides. I use this term not because I think you or I are a dummies, but because for my part I don’t claim any expert backgrond, and for your part I assume no special knowledge of the topic at hand. The solution provided works for me, and I expect it will work for you, thats all I promise. I is quite possible there are smarter ways to solve the problem.

Today, I show you a way to "save" a flight in FlightGear and get a clickable shortcut to your desired flight. Using this method I find I can go from desktop to tarmac in 30-40 seconds.

A note to those still considering whether to install FG: if all this sounds too complicated, don't let it scare you away from FG. You can forget about this stuff and just to use the wizard, which is very easy to use, to set up your flights.

The approach is straightforward:

When launched from the command line, FG uses the preferences.xml file in the FlightGear/data directory to determine setup for the flight. This file contains default settings.
We're going to make a copy of this file, and hand edit it to create our desired starting conditions for a flight.
We can do a switcheroo between our custom preferences and the default, and launch FG from the command line.
We can create a batch file to do this automatically, and give us a double-click way to start our favorite flight.
Repeat as necessary for each alternate scenario.

If you've never written a batch file before, don't worry. A batch file is basically a text file containing commands you could enter at a command prompt. You should be able to just cut and paste the text below into a text file (use simple text editor such as Wordpad, not Word), and then save the file with the .bat extension. When you double-click on it it will run the commands. You will only need to edit this text if your installation is not in the normal place, or you decide to name your custom file something different. Note that this script will make a backup copy of the default preferences before copying your custom one over, and then restore the original afterwards.

If you're not familiar with xml files, they are simply text files written in the xml format. An xml file doesn't do anything, it just presents information in a way that other applications can easily parse, while remaining human readable. You can edit the xml file in any standard text editor, but it will be a lot easier to get around large xml files if you use an xml-specific editor, such as Xmlpad (free! Google it if you want to try), as shown in the screenshot. This image demonstrates how you can navigate through sections on the left panel, and make edits on the right side.

As for the actual edits to the xml file, I will leave that to you to figure out. Most of the tags you will want to edit are self-explanatory. For the airplane, you will need to know the correct name the simulator uses for that plane. For starting airport, you will need to know its ICAO name. For these and some other values, you can check by calling up the wizard, making your selections, then checking the "show command line" option. Many of the options you set in the wizard can be turned on or off by using either "true" or "false" in the property value. Have fun experimenting with options. Just make sure you backup the original version before you start, and work with a file that you have saved a different name, such as my_preferences.xml (this is the name to use if you want to use my batch script as is).

I suggest you work on one custom file for a while until you get all the options the way you want them. Then, you can copy this for other versions for different options (plane, airport, etc). Create a separate batch file for each custom preferences file.

Here's my batch file (cut and paste between the -------'s):
-----------------------------------
SET FG_HOME=c:\Program Files\FlightGear
SET FG_ROOT=c:\Program Files\FlightGear\data
SET FG_SCENERY=C:\Program Files\FlightGear\data\Scenery;C:\Program Files\FlightGear\data\WorldScenery;
cd "c:\Program Files\FlightGear\data"
copy /Y preferences.xml bac_preferences.xml
REM edit the next line of you custom preferences file has a diffferent name
copy /Y my_preferences.xml preferences.xml

"c:\Program Files\FlightGear\bin\win32\fgfs.exe"
copy /Y bac_preferences.xml preferences.xml
pause
-----------------------------------

Drop me a comment if you try this and run into any trouble. Also, if you know of a more clever way to do this let me know.

Finally, a few fun pictures. The first two show the trees I've added to 9B1, using the process described in the previous post. As I've mentioned before, this is true-to-life and keeps you on your toes when landing. FG trees can be flown through without harm, though. Another odd thing is that these trees are one sided and appear transparent from the "back". I ended up copying a bunch of them and specifying a rotation of 180 degrees.

The last shot shows a neat effect that MSFS has not been able to accomplish: the airplane shadow correctly projects on scenery objects. I hope this doesn't go away with the next version of FG.

Whoa! FlightGear scenery design!

2007-05-11T02:47:00.000-07:00

The more time I spend with FlightGear the more I love it. I've spent the last week flying nothing but FlightGear. I got some neat screenshots I hope I get a chance to share soon. I'm sure I will go back to MSFS after the novelty of FG starts to wear off (or FSX SP1 is released, whichever comes sooner), but I know I will continue to fly FG. I'm working on a kludge that will let me sort of save favorite flights (this is not built into FG, suprisingly). When that is done I will be a double-click and about 45 seconds away from my favorite flying situations any time I'm at the computer. If my kludge works, I will share it here.

The above shot (by the way) shows my first attempt at scenery design, adding a few buildings around my local airport. Sure, the buildings are kind of cheesy, but cheesy rhymes with easy. The whole project, from never-having-done-it-before to flying with the new scenery took all of 5 minutes.

What makes it work is that the UFO "plane" in the FlightGear 0.9.10 is actually an object placement tool that allows you to place scenery objects with a mouse click. You can read the whole procedure on the FG Wiki here, but in brief, what you do is fly the UFO to the desired location (the UFO flies like skew mode). Then call up the airplane help ('?' key) and that will tell you the commands you use to place objects. There is a command to output the information to the terminal, and then you paste that gobbledegookto the appropriate scenery file, as explained in the wiki article.

You can only add from the included scenery objects, which is a pretty limited collection. There's probably a way to get more, but that may require getting deep into the developer's world. Anyhow, there's enough generic hangars and buildings so that you can make your airport look less like they've bulldozed the place and are about to rip up the runway and put in a subdivision.

Maybe (probably) you're not very impressed with this scenery. But it does help a little with the suspension of disbelief when the airport has some features vaguely reminiscent of its real-world component. I was lucky to find a quonset hut, because this airport really has one (see photo, a few posts back). I will go back and add a few trees in front of the runway.

Anyhow, the crudeness of the objects has one advantage, and that is I will not be tempted by the desire to tweak it to perfection.

Now that I've gotten a glimpse of how scenery works in FG, I'm going to look into whether I can get rid of that fictitious tower, and adjust the location used for the tower view. If I figure that out I'll share it here.

FlightGear Mini Review

2007-05-03T09:25:00.000-07:00

I'm a great fan of open source software. Some of my favorite of these programs are the Gimp (Photoshop alternative), Inkscape (drawing), Audacity (digital recording and editing). These products are the efforts of many people over a long period of time, and reflect a lot of hard work and pride in what they do. For us mortals, they give us a chance to dabble in things like image editing without having to spend a lot of money on a professional grade software package. Plus, the open source ethos is refreshing and inspiring in its own right.

For a while I have known of an open source flight simulator, but until now I hesitated to give it a try. I finally gave into the itch to click the download link. Now I wish I had not waited so long.

The simulator is called FlightGear, and you can get information about it and links to downloads here. You can tell from these screenshots that no, it will not replace MSFS for most people, but it still looks pretty decent. I should emphasize the fact that this is a work in progress. In fact, it is not even up to version 1.0, the latest being version 0.9.10. If you visit the web site don't be scared away by talk of compiling source code and such. There is an automatic installer for windows that works well, and there is a GUI for launching the simulator, as well as a menu driven interface within the sim. There are also installers for other platforms, but I have not tried them.

Why should you consider FlightGear? One reason is if you like open source software. Another is if you just like to tinker. Perhaps a more compelling reason is performance. Your mileage may vary, but I find that it flies extremely smooth, compared to MSFS. There is absolutely no hesitation when I pan the view around. I have noticed microstutters on a few occasions, but overall I don't give a second thought to frame rates. Still another reason: if you have an older, slower computer in addition to your flightsim computer, why not see how FlightGear will run on it? It won't cost you anything beyond the inconvenience of a large download.

The graphics both inside and outside the plane do not measure up to FS2004 (certainly not FSX), but given to performance gain, it's not a bad trade off. The airplane models vary greatly. I've found a few with pretty decent virtual cockpits, such as the Cub, the 172, and the Beaver, and the Warthog. The scenery also varies in quality. Some rural textures look pretty nice at altitude (the haze effect helps a lot), but some of it looks a bit cheesy. The autogen trees are o.k., but the buildings will make you feel nostalgiac for FS98. In fact, I've been keeping an old installation of FS98 on my hard drive, because I like to occasionally run with really fast framerates. However, its probably time to uninstall FS98, because FlightGear runs just as fast, but looks so much better. (I leapfrogged from FS98 to FS2004, so I can't say how it compares to FS2000 or 2002.)

Another interesting feature is that there are several approaches to flight modelling to choose from. I haven't experimented with this much, but it is intriguing.

So I encourage everyone to give it a try. A word of warning, though: to get the most out of this you'll need at least two propellers: one for your hat, as well as one for your plane. Still, if one is able to accept limitations (such as not being able to assign joystick buttons) you can use it out of the box. If you want to stick that propeller on your cap, then you can customize your joystick or just about anything else in this sim.

Likes
1. Fast, smooth performance (YMMV)
2. Instant change of time of day or weather.
3. True overcast, convincing from above or below
4. True sloped runways.
5. Aircraft self-shadowing.
6. Chase plane spot view, where the chase plane banks with your plane.
7. Quick start up.
8. It's free!

Limitations
(I don’t like being negative about free software, but I offer this for those who are deciding whether to download this software)
1. Poor landing effects (sounds are weak, no visual effects like smoke puffs or splashes)
2. Only one season, as far as I can tell
3. Can’t change airplane without restart
4. Not as easy to save and reload flights
5. Sparse autogen, and sparse AI.

Virtual Earth

2007-04-29T13:09:00.000-07:00

I've discovered an amazing new virtual representation of the world, Virtual Earth, a plugin for Microsoft's local.live.com. I've been using and enjoying local.live.com for a while, but last week when I visited the site it offered to install this plug in . There's a full description on Wikipedia here. All I can say is wow.

They've added detailed buildings to many major cities, and if you are lucky enough to know any of these cities well, you will be amazed at the number of buildings that are modeled. My city is Boston. I spent years there as a student and working, and I was suprised to see it's not just the landmark buildings that are in 3D, but virtually every multi-story building in a very large radius. All of these building models have photographic texture from the actual building (low res, to be sure, but still...). I can't imagine the man-hours necessary for this, or else a program that could automatically create 3D from 2D images.

The images from top to bottom:

A chunk of Boston. No particular landmark buildings, just an example of "regular" buildings accurately captured.
A chunk of BU. I got my Master's degree in the large modern brick building off center, above the green pointer. The stepped building in the background is the Hyatt Regency, accross the river.
St. Paul's Catholic Church, outside of Harvard Square. This is maybe 3 or 4 miles outside of Boston, yet look at the detail in how the building is defined. By the way, the is the church I was married in!
Where I worked for 5 years, in Cambridge. Some 5 or 6 miles from Boston, but nevertheless accurately rendered.
Some non-descript commercial buildings in Cambridge. The one in the foreground is where I bought the computer I am working on now.
and 7. Some of Seattle, just to give you a taste of a different city. Note one of the occasional goofs in picture 7. On the building in the lower right corner, you can see some of the roof texture painted on the side of the building. Since the roof is covered with parked cars, this looks really weird.

Will we ever see the likes of this in Flight Simulator? It seems unlikely they could ever manage this much detail in FS, but who knows? Fifteen years ago, who would have been bold enough to hope for what is in today's FS?

Fighting scenery tweak-itis

2007-04-21T15:06:00.000-07:00

I've been messing around with scenery design a lot in the last few days. I'm still using the Object Placement Tool included in the SDK. It works ok, tho it has its quirks. For example, I have trouble moving an object when I re-open a scenery file. Another quirk is that if you re-scale an object after you re-open it, it apparently keeps it's original crash zone size. I found this out the hard way by crashing into a tree, even though it didn't look like I was anywhere near it.

The images in this post show my progress in making my home town, Marlboro, MA, more like the real thing. The photos are from Microsoft's local.live.com. You can see nothing is precisely placed, but I'm starting to get closer. My challenge now is to resist the urge to keep going back again and again to tweak. It starts to become obsessive after a while, and the worst thing is that it cuts into my all-to-rare flying time.

A couple of comments on my work. I like the airport now, I only wish I could have the road abut the end of the runway as it does in real life. Adding roads to the scenery is magic beyond my ken, and I don't want to invest the time in figuring it out. I did add a fence at the end of the runway. In reality there is a chain link fence with a stop sign on it (hah hah!). Landing a little long can get really expensive. I also added the house beyond the runway as an additional hazard. The static planes and cars really bring the place to life. The airport buildings are only approximate in type and position, as you can see. I also added some nearby landmarks, such as the greenhouses and the enclosed tennis courts. I only wish I could suppress that horrible big autogen building above the Cub's left wing.

The second series of pictures shows Marlboro's historic Main Street. Unfortunately autogen houses and trees clutter it up a bit. Still, it has enough of a semblance of the real place that it makes it a lot fun to fly around the place. I notice now I scaled up the size of the building in the lower left corner a little too much. I think I go and resize it a little. Last tweak, honest!

Because it's cool, that's why!

2007-04-07T12:23:00.000-07:00

An amazing new discovery! FSX SDK (available in the Deluxe version) includes a scenery object placer tool. This fact was brought to my attention in a comment on one of the forums. The comment also pointed out a very helpful guide, available at Avsim (search for making_scenery_with_object_placement_tool.zip). Essentially this is an interactive, WYSIWYG tool that lets you place any existing scenery object wherever you want. If you have FSX deluxe, and you install the SDK, then you have all you need.

You place objects by selecting an object from a list and clicking the Add button. The object will be placed wherever the view crosshairs are at the moment. You can then manipulate the object further: rotate, translate, scale etc. In addition you can assign other properties, for example at which level of scenery complexity is necessary before your object will appear. This last feature is handy because the default autogen airport buildings do not show up unless the complexity setting is set to dense. Finally, you can save and compile the scenery. Full details are in the guide I have mentioned.

What does this mean to me? I can finally indulge in scenery design, something I've long wanted to try, without any addons and without a lot of tricky hand coding. Now I can try to make my local airport look something like its real-world counter part. I'm not going to be a stickler for absolute accuracy; I'll be happy with getting it pretty close. Mainly what I'm looking for is some static aircraft parked in the right place, and some old-looking hangars. Some cars in the parking lot would be neat. Maybe some trees placed too close to the runway, as they are in real life.

The first image shows a quick proof of concept. Nothing is really in the right place, but it gets the idea across. Yes, I know its a lousy screenshot, but that is because I had the scenery sliders set very low to help performance while I used the scenery tool. The second shot shows a test of whether the added objects are crashable (they are!)

But what does this really mean? Why do I want to start down this path when I don't even have enough time to fly? Will this really enhances the experience of "flying" that provide so much relaxation to me? I must be very careful not to let this side project become a time drain. I've done some reading on scenery design, and I know there is so much more to it than this kind of thing (afcads, excludes, flattens, etc. etc.)

This gets back to the dichotomy between "tools" and "toys" that I've discussed here from time to time. Scenery can easily become a toy, that is, just fun stuff to look at. And scenery design could become a sort of puzzle, where the satisfaction comes in getting things to arrange exactly as you wish. But scenery could also become a tool. If I get those trees placed right, then I will be making this small airport more like the real thing, and I may have to sharpen my pilot skills some in order to keep on making decent landings. A few static airplanes will force me to taxi around in a more orthodox way.

However, I think the scenery design I am likely to do tends to be more in the toy category. I really should not spend too much of my very limited spare time on this, when I could be "flying" more. But in spite of this I can't resist giving it a try. When I search my soul about this, the answer comes down to, "Because its cool!"

Visibility tip

2007-04-04T18:22:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick tip to add some realistic atmosphere to your flights, and probably increase simulator performance. This may be ancient headgear to many of my readers (if I have many readers, that is), but for those who have not spent much time creating weather, then try this out.

It's really very simple: just decrease the visibility in the custom weather setup to 30 miles or less. In the screenshot here, I have it down to 20 miles. This will create a hazy atmosphere in the distance, which I find much more realistic. This shot looks like a humid summer day in New England. Whenever I set up custom weather I always reduce the visibility distance.

This will most likely increase your performance too. I know this to be the case in FS2004, and it probably true in FSX, but since I have not tested it systematically I will stop short of stating it as a fact. The reason it should help performance is simply that the sim doesn't have to worry about rendering objects beyond the visibility limit.

So go ahead and play with this slider-- you may be delighted with what you see.

Default choices

2007-03-23T19:10:00.000-07:00

At the risk of sounding like an FSX Cheerleader, or of being hopelessly provincial, I have to admit that I am hardly ever tempted to move beyond the default aircraft included with FSX. Part of the reason is the limited number of addons, free or otherwise at this point. (Actually, I open myself up to another accusation, one which I cannot deny, and that is being a cheapskate; I once considered calling this blog The Frugal Flightsimmer. There are some payware packages that do look pretty tempting, the Airplane Heaven Tiger Moth, for one. If I splurged on some of these packages I might spend a lot less time in the default hangar).

However, I think the main reason I fly the default so much is that they've covered most of the bases that interest me, and they've done a really good job in my opinion. If I want a basic get around plane, one that I'd most likely fly in real life when I win the lottery, I've got the good old 172. If I want something vintage and light, there's the cub. If I want a bush plane, there's the Maule and the Beaver... you get the idea. The only real gap, for my needs, in the default lineup is a good biplane. I have installed Dave Eckert's most excellent Stearman and also the Long Island Classics Christen Eagle II, so I'm all set when I'm in a bipe mood.

I do miss some of the Bill Lyons planes I flew so much in FS9. A few of them are compatible enough to work with FSX. However, and it makes me sad to say so since Bill is one of my flight sim heroes, they are starting to look their age. The clash between the high-res outside view and the less-than-high interior is noticible. Even so, I do fly the Travel Air and the Tripacer from time to time.

Let's hope there are some young freeware designers out there working on some new must-have planes. Some day I may look back nostagically at the time when I just flew defaults.

Silicon dreams

2007-03-14T09:24:00.000-07:00

This morning I was musing on my last post, the one about letting my plane go on autopilot while I was busy with other stuff. It's kind of an odd thing to think about-- the computer working hard to create a virtual experience while no one is watching it. I thought a little further: what if the monitor were turned off? The computer would work just as hard, of course, since it wouldn't know the monitor was off.

All those electrons would be zipping around, the 2.3 GHz CPU going full tilt, the graphics card slaving away, all to create, in some sense, a world of air, light, earth, water, seasons, weather, and the fascinating machines we love so much. Not only all these components, but the interactions between them. Light casts shadows and reflects, changing weather affects the flight dynamics, fuel is consumed. This all exists... where? It's as if it is all a dream, behind the closed eyes of the computer. This kind of thing boggles my mind. It's not like a book sitting on a shelf, unread. It's a dynamic, evolving space.

In a sense we are dreaming when we interact with this game. Just because we can see the simulated world that is being created for us doesn't make it any more real.

Going on autopilot

2007-03-11T14:26:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has ever experienced a new baby in the house knows that a good night's sleep is a rare thing. The knowledge that you are going to be interrupted every 2 or 3 hours tends to discourage staying up late. A lot of things in life go on hold. As you might expect, frivolous, time-consuming things such as flight simming fall victim to this new order. (I can't believe I just used "frivolous" and "flight simming" in the same sentence. A sentence that does not also contain the word "not".)

I almost never fly with autopilot in FS. To me, the whole joy of the thing is hand flying. I agree with what someone once wrote in one of the forums: "I didn't go through all this cost and effort just to let one computer fly another!". However, I've been using the autopilot lately to squeeze in a little "flying" when I don't have the time to do it for real. If I'm doing necessary stuff around the house, sometimes I'll fire up FSX, take off by hand, then fix the heading with autopilot. Then, every so often I'll walk by the computer and see what's going on. I like to see how the terrain changes, and what the weather ends up doing. These two shots are from just such a session.

Sometimes after a while I will disengage the A/P and try for a landing. Usually, these are not by the book; I'll employ drastic measures to lose altitude because I can't spare the time to do it correctly. But making it back to the runway, or a clear patch of ground, in one piece gives me a satisfying experience even though the flight was hands off for 90% of the time.

Little guy's first flight

2007-03-08T09:22:00.000-08:00

I discovered a possible new use (excuse) for flightsimming! The other night I was holding the new baby while sitting at the computer, and I fired up FSX. He started to get fussy as I was loading up a flight featuring Bill Lyon's Travel Air. But as soon as I throttled up the engine, and heard the roar of that great radial engine, he settled right down! Is this a new baby soothing technique? Experienced parents know that the sound of a vacuum cleaner can settle a fussy baby (I even made a cassette recording of vacuum sounds for the twins when they were babies!).

It's too early to draw conclusions based on one event, but I can see the possibilities. Baby fussing hon? Let me go take him flying. On the other hand (literally) its a bit hard to fly with a tot nestled in your left arm. Maybe its time to invest in a Track IR?

Love those trees

2007-02-22T18:42:00.000-08:00

OK, so these posts are getting very infrequent, but as I've said before, life is getting busy. The main reason is the birth of a new baby son, as announced in this thread over at flightsim.com. So, I thank you for your patronage, and don't give up on me, but I can't promise the level of posting I had maintained in the past.

The shots in this post highlight some beautiful tree landscapes as delivered by FSX. I have found that if I pick a fairly rural area I can crank up the autogen and still get good performance (by which I mean frame rates in the mid to upper teens with occasional 20's). It seems the tree autogen is a lot less demanding than buildings. Your mileage may vary, of course. This area is the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, a place I've spent a bit of time in. This density of trees really adds to the immersion factor, especially as you are coming in low and seeing the nearer hills looming up.

So what else is new? When I get a chance to fly next, I hope to spend more time in a fantastic (free) scenery addon, the Bella Coola region in Canada by Holger Sandmann. Look for the file bellafsx.zip at avsim.

Flying and music performance.

2007-01-22T09:20:00.000-08:00

I play classical guitar, mostly at home but have recently began playing prelude music before church services. I realized the other day that there is a similarity between performing music in public, and flying.

The similarity lies in the dynamic-- you have a start, a middle, and a finish. More to the point, once you start, you have to finish. As the old aviation axiom goes, "takeoffs are optional, landings are mandatory". The difference, of course, is that performing is safer, unless one believes it is possible to die of embarassment.

Before starting to play, I have to go through a little preflight checklist. Do I know this piece well enough? Am I warmed up sufficiently? Oh, yeah, have a tuned the guitar to my satisfaction?

Then, the takeoff run. It's important to make a good start, because this is the first impression on your listeners. You don't want to start to slow or too fast because you'll be more or less stuck with that tempo for the remainder. Nerves can make you go fast,which can be disasterous if there are trickier parts ahead.

In cruise, typically things are easier. There may be a few bumpy spots, but things usually chug along without too much sweat. But you can't lose track of where you are--you have to know your exact location. One of the biggest disasters while playing is losing your place. Then you have to rely on your memory (mine's not the greatest), make something up until you find a place to re-enter the sheet, or worse of all, come to a dead stop. An analogy for the last case would be ditching in a field becuase you've run out of fuel and don't know where you are.

As one approaches the landing/ending, one feels some relief but also has the awareness that a mistake here could spell disaster. In the case of flying, this is obvious. For the musician, the danger is that a major foul-up is going to be the last thing the listeners hear, and will be the impression they take away. (The object when playing at church is not to make a good impression, but to facilitate prayer and meditation; a "bad landing" is going to be very disruptive in that sense).

There's a bit of an adrenaline rush when I begin playing, and a sense of relief when it is over. If I've done my proper flight planning before takeoff, I also have time to enjoy the view (sound) in the middle.

(Note: sorry for the sparse postings lately-- busy-ness and a bad head cold are to blame. Hope to have more posts (with pictures!) soon.)
(Note 2: I talked to Dad the other day and he is having a blast with the new computer!)

Dad's computer, part 3

2007-01-10T15:04:00.000-08:00

I delivered Dad's computer last week. I planned on spending some time showing him what's new, which is not much, except everything runs faster. Actually, Golden Wings was new to him, but it works the same way as default FS.

I thought that I would let Dad do all the flying, while I gave tips, with the idea that you remember things better if you do them yourself. However, I soon found myself sitting in the pilot's seat and giving him the tour. Dad is very intelligent, but not too computer savy. At his age his ability to pick up new skills has slowed a little bit. He learns enough to get along, but mostly by remembering a sequence of actions. In other words, many things that become second nature for us younger folks are not second nature for him. The breaking point which made me jump in was when I wanted him to try out F1view, which requires depressing the middle mouse button, which in this case is a scroll wheel. He kept clicking the right button instead, which pauses the sim brings up that darn menu.

I'm sure by this time he's having a blast (and gotten comfortable with the middle mouse button). I mean to check in soon to see if he ran into any snags. Although I insisted he call me if he has any trouble, he's more likely to write a bunch of questions down and ask me next time I visit.

By the way, all of the screenshots are from the new rig. Extra-observant readers may note the low frame rate in the Sabre shot and think I'm exagerating how well the rig performs, but this is an atypical moment, and is a shot of a fast plane at Grimshaw's highly-detailed Logan Airport, with traffic! Mostly this machine gives solid mid to upper twenties.

Dad's computer, part 2

2007-01-09T09:31:00.000-08:00

I ran into a little frustration trying to aquire the computer. I called my local Microcenter store, and it was out of stock. I asked if she knew when it would be in, and she said she didn't know, that they had deliveries every day and they never knew what was coming in. So, I called every day for a week with no luck. Then I called last week, got a different person, and found out that the model was discontinued!

Anyhow, I ended up ordering it online. They no longer had a special on it, and I had to pay shipping, grrrr. However, even with the standard shipping option, I was pleasantly suprised to find it was delivered by Saturday. I spent a good part of the weekend getting it ready.

The computer (a Powerspec 6002) seems to be a good machine given its low price, ~ $350. I threw in another 512MB of RAM (total 1 gig now), put in my old Radeon 9600XT, and recycled a CD/RW drive. My only complaint with the quality (so far, and hopefully forever), is that the ribbon cable for the optical drives was rediculously short. I barely got it to plug into the second drive. When I booted up the computer, it didn't see either drive! After a moment of panic, I reopened the case and determined that the ribbon cable had pulled out of the mobo. Fortunately I found a better ribbon cable in the deceased machine, and was soon back in business.

One other thing I liked is that, as a bare-bones system, it wasn't cluttered up with a lot of try-me software or useless Info Center stuff.

Once I got FS9 installed, I found it ran quite well. With all of the display sliders on highest or next-to-highest settings, I usually get frame rates in the mid to upper 20's with traffic, in all but the most dense areas. In rural areas it can run at 32 FPS (which I have it locked at).

Then it was tweaking time! My plan was to put some addons in, then make a copy for a Golden Wings version, and then put more addons in the separate versions. For the general addons, I put in reduced cloud textures, Freeflow New Enland, improved mesh for the northeast, the RealAir 172, and some Cub repaints. A couple of my favorite freeware planes (Eckert's Stearman, Lyons' Tripacer, etc) were installed so they would be available in both versions. Also, two indispensible utilities, F1view and the Recorder Module.

Next, I copied the whole shebang, renamed the copy to Golden Wings, and added that package and its updates. Then, I installed more planes to both versions. I added some AI airplanes and some traffic I had created for southern New England where we live. Finally, I added the superb Boston Logan airport scenery by George Grimshaw to the modern version.

In case you are not aware, all of the above is freeware.

I am very pleased with the end result. Both versions of the sim run well at fairly high settings. It runs at least as well, if not better, than my own system. In my next post I will report on the delivery and include a few screenshots.

Buying a computer for Dad (part 1)

2006-12-30T06:26:00.000-08:00

My father, who is in his 70's, has become a flightsim fan. He has had a lifelong passion for aviation. He took flying lessons as a teen (soloed in an Ercoupe!) but for various reasons was not able to keep up with it. Still, he loves airplanes-- reads books, magazines, takes rolls of pictures at airshows, etc.

For years he had been the recipient (victim?) of his children's old computers, whenever we upgraded. He attempted to get various flight simulators to run on them with less than satisfactory results. Eventually he saw FS9 running on my brother's laptop, and this became the holy grail. I determined that his latest hand-me-down was completely incapable of running FS9, I came up with a plan about a year ago to put together a system for him to run. It was an old Pentium III rig that I got from work, but at least it had a gig of RAM. I put a new 128MB video card into it, and it ran, albeit with pretty poor frame rates. Dad was thrilled nonetheless.

Well, recently the Pentium III's hard drive handed in its dinner pail, so to speak. No point in trying to patch up this old dinosaur any more, so I came up with a plan to get him a replacement computer. Even the low end systems that are selling nowadays should run FS9 with acceptable results, certainly much better than what he was used to. My own system is pretty modest and I am happy with how it runs FS9 (let's not discuss FSX here!)

However, sometime when I wasn't looking they stopped making PC's with AGP slots! Finding a basic CPU with a processor 2.3 GHz or faster, with half a gig of RAM and lots of hard drive space, for under $400 is easy, but they all take PCI-e graphics cards. I have a reasonably good AGP card that I want to reuse, and this is a vital factor in keeping the cost down. I finally did find one system that will work, sold by Microcenter (this one), but they are currently out of stock so I'll have to wait a bit until I can start to work on it.

I can't wait to do this. Compared to what he's used to, this new system will scream. Once I get the new PC I will load up FS9, then do a Golden Wings version, then add all of my favorite freeware planes and scenery. Toss in some must-have utilities like F1 view and the recorder module. I think I might buy another copy of Flight Scenery's Rhode Island package, since that's where Dad lives.

Travelling places

2006-12-14T02:41:00.000-08:00

I have been reading (well, listening to the book on tape) Paul Theroux's The Old Patagonian Express, and he mentions an interesting part of Colombia that he describes as the Grand Canyon, except green. Therefore, for last night's sessions I thought I take the Maule there and see what the country looks like. I started off in Armenia, a city he mentions after the green Grand Canyon episode.

Since my flying time is so very scarce (time flies when it's flying time!) I did not do any research on the area or plan the flight in any way except to put my plane at the airport in Armenia (that's Armenia, Colombia, not the Eurasian country), go to top-down view, zoom out, and look for something canyon-like. So the flight plan was essentially "Take off and fly east. Oh, and watch out for the large mountains immediately to the east."

Eventually I got to a canyon-like object, but it was not very Grand. I might have been in the wrong part of the Rio Magdalena (or maybe this was the wrong river!) or maybe Microsoft didn't capture this topography quite right. I think there's a freeware mesh upgrade for this region--I may add that soon. Nevertheless, I had a great time flying, and the scenery felt exotic. It's amazing that this program has a continous representation of the entire earth, with some degree of fidelity. And, it looks so good! I don't think these shots do it justice.

I guess what I am trying to express is the wonder about the fact that you can hear about some not-so-well-know part of the world one day, then just walk over to your computer, and in a few minutes be virtually there.

I had a very convincing sensation of flight during this outing. Near the mountains I hit some turbulence (while using the Fair Weather theme!). Looking downwards past my landing gear at the scenery, as in the second shot here, you see the wheel wobbling in relation to the scenery, and your point of view wobbling in relation to both. I really felt that suspended-on-a-string sensation you sometimes get flying in a light plane.

What it's all about

2006-12-08T02:08:00.000-08:00

I came across this remarkable account on Avsim (I'd provide a link rather than this lengthy quote below, except I don't know how to provide a permanent link to their daily articles). This writer, who has much, much more experience than I in both real flying and simming, expresses eloquently how simming can allow our imaginations to soar. Thanks Carl!

By the way, Dave Eckert's Stearman is a must-have freeware for FS9. It also works beautifully in FSX, but requires a manual installation (tip: install to a dummy location, then drag the files to the appropriate spots in your FSX install. You can skip the scenery parts). Thanks Dave!

AVSIM fan Carl Avari-Cooper submits a short piece that I'm sure other readers can relate to, especially those past aviators who can only fly to lofty heights in the virtual world.
"Dear David and Crew (www.daviator.com):

I wanted to express my sincere thanks for a wonderful experience yesterday. As a kid, aviation fascinated me. Other kids drove pedal cars, I had a pedal bipe. Others dreamed about racing, I only considered flight. Later, I read everything I could get my hands on. Morgan and Baxter became two friends I looked forward to seeing each month. Anyway, I finally got a job as a line boy at our local field. Pumping gas, selling sectionals, the occasional quart of Aeroshell and E6Bs filled my work hours. After work, I washed airplanes, waxed airplanes, pushed airplanes- in short did all I could to bum a ride in anything I could talk my way into. I got my ticket and flew every chance I got.

As it often does, life got in the way and my old Champ flew off into the sunset. Raising two children, working and all the other sundries of life pushed airplanes back into the old dark and damp corner of my life. Every now and then, I hear a round engine and strain skyward until I saw the framework of two wings silhouetted against the light. Flight Simulator, has been my sole solace for years now.

All those years ago, every day I walked to the pumps, I would look out of the corner of my eye and see the prettiest airplane in the world. You see, in a corner hanger, very dusty and quiet, sat a white Stearman. She sat there, all alone, for years. I would walk over and eat a sandwich with her, pat her on a wingtip and imagine what I would be like to fly her. I could only think of Baxter saying, “She flies like a grand piano!” Every once in a while I would look around furtively, usually late in the evening, and if no one was watching, I would slip into the cockpit, grab that ball bat and peer through the grime yelling “clear prop”. I never did find out who owned her and I never did get to fly her. She never was quite forgotten though, and even when mooching time in a King Air, Citation or Aero Commander, I would particularly when breaking into severe clear on top, think of the old girl and long to feel her hold me up in the sky.

Yesterday, I came across your download. I was excited when I saw the visuals and decided to have a bit of fun. I turned the lights down low, adjusted the virtual cockpit just so and turned the sound way, way up. Starting at Vandenberg with everything off, I cranked up, watched the smoke bellow out and lost touch with reality. S turning out to runway 36 I did a run up and then was off. Tapping rudder right left right left then right again, I tracked down the runway, let the tail come up all by itself and then with some pressure she was off. I don’t quite know what your FDE is, but all of a sudden I knew what a grand piano felt like at 90 KIAS. With the radial bellowing, wires singing and a smile plastered all over my face, I turned crosswind and then downwind, coming back on the power to about 1800. I don’t know where a real Stearman smiles, but mine (ok, yours) climbs at full throttle, about 2100 and 85 KIAS, cruises at 1850 and 105 KIAS and descends at 1500 and 85 KIAS- all day long! Never in Flight Simulator, and I have flown this software since Apple IIc days, have I ever been so completely captivated by a PC Simulator (I’m just beginning to know Real Flight and PMDG).

Downwind, I broke out at a 45 and pointed her nose towards the Tampa skyline. She climbs and descends like an old New York elevator and cruises majestically, oblivious to any hurried thought. Watching the world slip by so utterly solidly, yet so unbelievable lightly was a transporting experience. Never has any light aircraft been modeled in FS so quintessentially and so perfectly. I could feel her huge and kite like, yet solid and reassuring, all around me; and with the speakers turned up enough- I could feel her when she grunted and growled as well.

All too soon it was time to announce position on Peter O’Knight’s Unicom, and making a left base to runway 21 I came back to 1500. She slowed to about 80 and I left her a bit high. Turning final with the wind whispering to me softly my eyes were moist and streaming. I came back on the power and nudged her nose a bit over, slipping to lose altitude and keep the asphalt in sight. The fence flashed under me and I held her off until she told me I’d better be done with this flying business, or she would be! With a chirp the mains settled and then I did my tap dance holding her straight. Once we were at a walk, I turned off and taxied to the FBO ramp, making the same familiar turns I did so often when ferrying planes over all those years ago.

With a burst of throttle, I swung her around and parked. Switching off was painful! So was the deafening silence after- amazing! After 20 years of wondering, I know what the old girl feels like- thank-you!

Finding things to do

2006-11-30T02:37:00.000-08:00

I think I'm finally getting back into the groove. After tweaking, hardware upgrades, and more tweaking, and exploring the new bits, I'm getting back into just flying. Last night (Wednesday if Flying Night!) I chose to do a progressive cross country flight. For my route I decided to visit the state capitols of New England. I never spend much time planning these things--when I'm retired with nothing better to do I might get around to that.

I started in Hartford, CT in the venerable DC3. Set the time to dawn, and since I had trouble accessing real-world weather, I went for my favorite fall-back for interesting cloudscapes, Cold Fronts. The combination of time, weather, and FSX's drab seasonal textures gave the flight a somber peacefullness.

I got buffeted a great deal en route to Providence, but otherwise enjoyed the flight and made a decent landing (one slight bounce) which was satisfying because I haven't flown this plane much recently.

In Providence (actually, the city is Warwick, which I must mention because that is the city I grew up in!) I switched to the King Air. I've hardly touched this bird in either FS9 or FSX, but I found it took me into Boston in style.

After touching down in Boston, I hopped into the Baron, to head for Augusta, ME. After a while I determined that Augusta was not on my New York chart, but much farther away than I was counting on (see Planning, Lack of, above). After consulting the clock and realizing I only had 1 more hour to fly, I decided to bring the Baron down in Beverly, MA and try a mission.

That #@*!$ Amazon mission! I don't know how you are supposed to taxi the Goose in tight quarters. My first attempt a couple of weeks ago ended when I crashed into the dock on the second stop. I got further this time, all the way to the Temple Of Doom, but when the copilot said "Taxi over to that big rock" I must have taxied to the wrong big rock, because nothing happend when I got there. So in attempting to taxi to the next big rock, I had the accident you see here!

Finally, I was curious to check out active volcanoes. After a query on the Flightsim forum I got the following tip, courtesy of "Tomavis" . "Try this.Set the time and date.Dusk.Aug 6,1983.Go to map view.Set N19*25.06 W155*13.50 Alt 4500' HDG 239"

Ok, now what?

2006-11-20T02:16:00.000-08:00

Now that the dust is starting to settle from the FSX transition, I find myself at a loss about what do do when I have a spare half hour or so. I like the new planes and like the new views a lot, but find myself hard pressed to think up something new to try. Of course there are endless possibilities, but its hard to choose the Next Thing to Try.

I realize with FS9 my choices were usually dictated by the latest freeware addon that I chanced upon. I have no addons for FSX (apart from the recorder module) so that dynamic is not in play yet.

A large part of my "problem" is lack of time. When I do have a few moments I feel pressure to make the most of it. Maybe I just need to relax and just fly the pattern more, or fly rural areas where I can crank up the autogen and still have smooth flying.

Real flying, in FSX

2006-11-16T02:30:00.000-08:00

Last night was the official weekly Flying Night, and I had a very good time flying the Cub over some islands off the coast of Maine. I discovered a trick for great framerates-- fly around small islands where there's nothing but water and trees. I love the dense forests-- my system can handle tress well when that's all there is. I had re-loaded my low settings config file, and started again to bump up selected sliders. The performance I was getting here was really nice, and I felt unrestrained the joy of flight again! I did not worry about the sim's performance, nor was I concious of being scenically deprived. However, I must say that when I flew to the mainland things got a little less smooth.

Just look at all those trees!

I set up my own weather with moderate turbulence and wind gusts, and that Cub kept shaking the whole time (even on the ground!). It was quite immersive, especially seeing the wing struts move in relation to the window frame (due to the pilot's point of view shifting). I really felt like I was inside the airplane, not looking at a two-dimensional representation. I found an ideosyncracy with the display however-- I got microstutters with all of the shaking, which I suspect may be related to the head latency feature. I switched the framerates from unlimited to 24, and that got rid of the stutters (normally, unlimited works much better for me).

I also figured out how to handle the Cub on the ground-- keep the stick back as long as possible to increase the effectiveness of the tail wheel. No ground loops last night!

I tried cranking the GA traffic up to 100%, since I wasn't flying into any large airports. I was quite delighted to see all this (last shot) at KIWI, which is a pretty modest airport as far as I know. A minute later someone came in for a landing.
I don't know this for sure, but I think they've increased the GA traffic in FSX, and I've seen parking spaces at airports that didn't have any in FS9.

WIBFL

2006-11-10T02:31:00.000-08:00

WIBFL = What I've been flying lately. Actually, I haven't been flying too much. Life has been busy, and when I do have time to play, it's been mostly tweaking. I just did a serious hardware upgrade, going from a 128 MB Radeon 9600XT to a 512 MB Radeon X1600. This necessitated upgrading my power supply too, which is a fairly basic procedure but a little intimidating the first time you try it.
The new card hasn't made much of a difference in terms of framerates. From what I read on the forums I knew not to expect any noticiable improvement, but I did harbor a hope that maybe my configuration was an exception.
What did improve is what I call texture retention. I was always able to display the highest resolution textures, but they would frequently disappear into blurry land when the going got tough. Now they stay sharp--I have yet to see cockpit textures blur, and when the scenery blurs it is only momentarily.

So here's what I've been flying. The first shot shows my local neighborhood-- looks great with the 1 meter ground resolution. There is an actual golf course pretty close to this spot, though I think it is only a lucky guess on Microsoft's part. Next is another local scenery shot with my first glimpse of traffic (I've got that slider pretty low).

The third shot is from an actual flight (believe it or not). Last night I did some cross country flying, and this is me flying over Manchester, NH on the way from Sterling MA to Laconia NH. This was a "progressive flight", something I like to do from time to time. This means fly to an airport in one airplane, then at the airport hop into another airplane for the next leg.

Finally, I've started to dabble in the Missions. I would do a lot more than dabble, but I usually don't have the time to devote to doing complete missions. What little I've seen is quite impressive. Fascinating weather on the way to the oil platform, and the detail of th platform itself is amazing. I crash landed on the pad just as the well-know surprise was starting.

Odds and ends

2006-11-01T03:25:00.000-08:00

Just a quick post to keep my at-least-once-a-week commitment. Still fooling around with FSX settings. I'm finding some success with fairly medium settings, and flying in rural areas. The first shot shows me coming in for a landing at Laconia, where I had my real-life flight this summer. FSX looks prettier in the summer-- it's almost unfortunate that it was released in the fall, when much of the world is painted with that tan latent grass color. For me I get workable framerates in this area, good scenery, and only occasional blurries. Considering the aircraft is much improved, this makes it well worth the switch from FS9. I'd love to crank the textures up a little more, but that causes major blurrie issues.
The second picture is a test of whether you can land on bridges. As you can see, no. The ultralight passed right through the bridge deck. However, it didn't register as a crash either. Did it cause a crash in FS9? I think it did, but I don't remember.

Grand fun

2006-10-27T03:23:00.000-07:00

I have literally a whole new world to explore with FSX, so I've been hitting the obvious spots-- the Pyramids at Giza (nicely done!), and last night, the Grand Canyon. It looks really good. To tell you the truth, its been a long time since I was in the G.C. in FS9, so I can't say for sure how much it has been improved. But I was delighted by the sights. Interestly, my nemesis Sudden Onset Blurries did not trouble me during this session. I'm guessing that this was because the textures are fairly limited in this area. It seems textures are what bogs my system down the most-- it handles the complex terrain mesh fairly well.

I started out in the Cub. It was pretty neat to come over the rim of the canyon, cut the throttle, and descend into the maze. The Cub is as good as ever. My only quibble is that the window reflections show the yellow paint scheme, so when you're flying a different paint it looks odd.

Low and slow is great, but eventually I wanted to see more of the canyon more quickly, so I switched the the Extra. A rather abrupt change from slow and stable to fast and twitchy, but I sorted it out eventually. I don't remember if this was the case in FS9, but the FSX extra has a glass bottom! Good for canyon viewing.

Couldn't resist a little inverted flight on my way back to the airfield. I never really enjoyed the Extra in FS9, but this version holds a lot of promise. I actually brought the Extra back in one piece.

It's here! First impressions

2006-10-25T03:10:00.000-07:00

I finally got it! Last night I installed FSX and spent about 3 hours poking around in this new world. I did so with some trepidation because of all of the problems I have heard about on the forums. I ended the evening with a pretty positive feeling.

Now, the first image here is not very impressive. This is with "default" settings. FSX looks at your computer specs and determines a default tailored to your own configuration. I guess it doesn't have a lot of confidence in my system! Anyway, this setting had framerates locked at 15. It hit that target easily, but really, who could stand to look at this barren world and fuzzy airplane?

Fortunately, after nudging the sliders up bit by bit I came up with what you see in the second shot. This looks pretty nice, but there's a performance hit. Frame rates are typically in the low teens (I'm running with framerate set to unlimited for now). The biggest problem is sudden-onset blurries. The textures look a bit drab, but I am using the current date and time so this is pretty accurate.

Here's a suprisingly nice city scene, shot from the Cub flying over Providence. A very sucessful marriage of autogen and ground textures.

The next couple of shots show the heartache of blurries. Feast your eyes on the gorgeous VC of the Grumman Goose! This was shot during actual flight, with flyable frame rates. A few minutes later, the system aparently felt a little overwhelmed, and everything went blurry, as you can see in the second VC shot.

Cars. I love those little cars! They do give quite a performance hit, tho. In my limited experience they tend to increase the blurries quite a bit. Still, they are fun to watch, and I was suprised to see they actually use ramps at major highway intersections. So you get to see them curving around clover-leaf intersections. My last shot shows another delightful suprise: when I changed the weather theme to rainy, the cars put their headlights on!

So, I'm feeling like there's a lot of potential here for some great simming. There's also a lot more work to do in tweaking the settings to find the sweet spot. Stay tuned for more.

Impatience

2006-10-19T03:11:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to feel pretty silly about how impatient I am to get FSX. I have it on order from Amazon, but they've delayed shipment until the 22nd, due to supply problems. Yesterday I made a flurry of phone calls to local stores to see if I they had any copies (all sold out). Fortunately, family commitments prevent me from considering traveling more than 10 miles out of my way, otherwise I might find myself on a wild goose chase.

I have a lot on my plate right now, so why can't I just sit back and wait? What difference does another week make? If I need to get an FS fix, there's still lots of fun stuff to do with FS9 (including the Golden Wings incarnation).

I think the main reason I am so impatient is that I want to know how well it will run on my sytem. I've heard a lot of horror stories, and also a lot of more positive "I've found the sweet spot" kinds of stories, and I want to know where I'm going to find myself. Based on the demos, I am encouraged, but whether my experience will be similar on the full version remains to be seen.

I have a dream of flying the pattern at my local airport in an improved C172 virtual cockpit, heading for the highway and seeing road traffic, and seeing nice ground textures all around. If I can do this with double-digit framerates I'll be more or less content.

I've also been going back and forth on planning hardware upgrades. I learned that I could get a 512 MB graphics card for around $150, which I expect will make a big difference in texture handling (not so many blurries). Then I found that the power supply in my PC could not handle this beefier graphics card. Ga! After some more research, I've concluded that I can upgrade the psu for another $50. But this expense must wait for next month.

The shot above is Dave Eckert's FS9 Stearman imported into FSX. I was attempting to capture the atmosphere in this shot. I think FSX has made great advances in lighting and mood. Framerates in this session were in the low teens, which is just acceptable, and I could feel the computer straining. But I can live with this for now.

More helo fun

2006-10-12T19:42:00.000-07:00

Thursday night is my main flying night. I spent this session completely with helicopters, trying to gain some proficiency so that I can explore scenery in FSX when I get it. I'm getting better. I can land the Beta without crashing more often than not, but I still feel woozy afterwards. This post is a mishmash of shots from the evening's adventures.

The first shot is from the FSX demo, and shows something I was thrilled to see: Lake Muffins! This is what I call small tree covered islands (in this case I guess they are Cove Muffins). They never looked good in FS9, becuase you always had a few (or no) trees on these small islands, whereas in reality they usually look like a Chia Pet (warning: sound if you click the link).

The rest of the shots are from FS9. The first shows what can happen if you are not paying attention to ground traffic while practicing hovering! I rotated 180 degrees to see this bearing down on me! The second shows off the wonderful (and free!) Logan Airport by a guy named Grimshaw (sorry, his first name eludes me at the moment).

I figured for honesty's sake I should include one of my less sucessful landings, just in case you were getting the impression that I am a 'copter pro. I was giving the default Jet Ranger a whirl (ha!) and this was my first landing attempt. Don't think I'll be flying this much-- the Beta is so much more fun. If I want to go fast I'll use fixed wings, thank you very much :-)!

But just to show you that I can land the Jet Ranger, here's a landing I did to let a VIP go to Fenway Park. Managed to not snag any light poles. The last shot is a flyover of the park. Hmmm, no game after all. Man, FS9 can be a lot of fun, but I'll be glad to say goodbye to those default lo-res ground textures!

Beta testing

2006-10-11T02:42:00.000-07:00

Robinson Beta II, that is :-) I'm giving this chopper a second try. I've never had much luck-- I can usually get up in the air and sort of go where I want, but end up crash landing. Last night, I gave it another shot (in FSX, no less) and found I was able to have some sucess. I have made a number of sucessful (tho not graceful) landings. I think a bit more and I'll get the hang of it.

I figure it's worth investing some time getting proficient at flying the thing. When I get FSX, it will be useful for exploring some of the fun scenery bits. Its pretty cool to just hit the rudder pedals and rotate around in place, rather than waiting for your cub or ultralight to swing through a 180 turn.

The shot above is actually from FS9, featuring the gorgeous KPVD scenery from FlightScenery. Lots of neat stuff to check out.

If you were looking carefully you may have noticed in this post about FSX, that the shots were taken from the cockpit of the Beta II. It looks like this aircraft has not been updated for FSX, BTW.

My parting shot, something completely different, shows Milton Shupes lovely Aero Commander 520, flying in FSX. It imports fine, and gets good framerates. Just the thing for island hopping. I think the prop spinners are not as shiny, but that's ok (may have something to do with the mysterious env.bmp)

Episode IV: A New Hope

2006-10-09T02:44:00.000-07:00

After much tweaking of Demo2, flying out of and around Princess Juliana airport, I decided to try a different location. Wow, what a difference! The first two shots here show me flying out of TNCE. (Sorry, my knowledge of Carribean geography is very poor, and I can't remember which island this is). Here you can see a nice amount of autogen, gorgeous ground textures, and quite acceptable frame rates! Click on one of the first two images, and you can see the framerate counter in the upper left. This is on my middle-of-the-road machine (2.2 GHz, 1 meg ram, 128MB Radeon 9600XT AGP card).

Look how nicely the autogen trees line up with the boundaries of the trees. I'm very curious to find out if this is strictly generic autogen or if it has been cleaned up by hand as part of the highly detailed region that it is adjacent to.

This is why I am so impatient to get my hands on the final product. I can't wait to find out if my favorite places to fly will give comparable performance and visuals. If I can tool around New England and have frame rates averaging around 20 (or better) with this kind of autogen, I'll be very happy indeed. If things get choppy and blurry if I fly into Logan International, well, I can live with that.

Just for kicks, I tried the sam location in FS9, with Bill Lyons Challenger ultralight. This final shot shows that. It actually doesn't look as bad as I thought it would, but there is no question that FSX is a great leap forward.

Some hope for FSX

2006-10-03T18:42:00.000-07:00

The bad news (for me, that is) is that the Demo version 2 is supposedly what you will see in the final product. The good news is that I have been able to get somewhat tolerable performance by making some compromises. The biggest one is to turn the water effects from 2x to 1x. I lose the cool reflections, but the water still looks much nicer than in FS9.

You can see in the attached shots that the scenery looks pretty good, and if you look closely at the upper left corners you can see frame rates in the teens. In fact, the scenery looks far better than the default FS9 scenery. The only real disappointment is that the first demo version suggested I could get better results.

Another encouraging thing is that 15 fps in FSX feels a lot smoother than 15 fps in FS9.

The bottom line is that after experimenting for an hour I feel more confident that I will find a decent compromise that will make me happy. And of course folks will find great tweaks in the weeks and months after release. And, one of these years I'll be able to swing a computer upgrade!

Waiting on Amazon

2006-10-03T09:25:00.000-07:00

Not doing much flying these days, as REAL LIFE is very busy. I did try out the new version of the Demo (they put a version out on Sept. 29-- go visit the forums if you haven't heard). This time the "hardware lottery", as I call it, is working against me. I was getting pretty satisfying performance with Demo1, but not as good with Demo2. Most folks on the forum are saying things are much better with Demo2, so I'm a little envious. Still, maybe I'm just a driver upgrade away from FSX nirvana. But for now I am living in some trepidation that the final version is not going to be as great (performance wise) as Demo1 lead me to believe. We shall see what we shall see.

Also, Amazon is messing with me! They originally said the release date was Oct. 17. Then, they sent me an email saying it will ship sooner than expected, and they were showing an Oct. 6 date! But last friday I get another email saying it will be delayed to pretty much the original date. This would be agonizing, except that REAL LIFE has been full enough to keep this all in perspective.

Real water is really shiny!

2006-09-25T06:30:00.000-07:00

Still too busy to do much flying or blogging, but I just wanted to jot down a quick thought. I was running alongside a pond this morning, looking accross the water, and I realized that real water is really shiny! OK, so what? Why am I bringing this up? Well, a lot of people have claimed that the water effects in FSX are too bright and shiny. I have felt that way myself on a few occasions. But the real thing is very bright. Squint your eyes and you can see that in many situations the water is as bright as the sky.

So why are we not so convinced by the FS version, and think it is too bright? I can think of two possible reasons. The first is that we have gotten so used to darker water in FS that the new, brighter version looks too fake. Actually in any visual representation we tend to think of water as a darker blue. Ask a child to draw a sea picture, and he will likely make the sky "sky blue" and the sea something darker.

The second possibility is the old issue with the limited contrast available on the typical computer monitor. Specifically, there is not enough of a range of contrast in the darker end of the contrast curve. I think we might find shiny simulated water too distracting because of the limited depth in the dark terrain detail. I hope my explanation makes sense.

I am looking forward to getting FSX and getting accustomed to the new water paradigm.

Too busy to fly

2006-09-19T11:00:00.000-07:00

With work and family and marathon training, I've had practically no time for flying. Site visit statistics suggest I have a few regular readers, so I feel compelled to have an entry at least once a week.

I've been reading all the forums, trying to get more juicy details about FSX. Things have quited down quite a bit now that the demo has been out for a while, and the Beta NDA has been lifted. Still, lots of good info is coming out. It seems the changes "under the hood" are pretty significant, and we will see the fruits of those changes over the next few years. See this thread for example, on Avsim.

Like a tonic

2006-09-07T04:27:00.000-07:00

Ok, I know I've written about the joys of flying the pattern before. But I am going to write about it again, because it continues to amaze me. With all the buzz about FSX, it's reassuring to be able to get so much satisfaction doing something basic in FS9.

I have had precious little time for flightsimming now, so what I've been doing when I've had a few spare moments is to get up and fly the pattern at my local airport. You'd think you would get bored of this after a while, but I never do. Since I usually use real world weather (when it is VFR weather, of course) the experience is never exactly the same. That one variation alone is enough to keeps it fresh.

Whenever I make a good landing, I watch the replay from the "tower" (no tower at this airport). I always have a feeling of "this is really cool" when I see myself coming over the trees. After a year and a half of really serious simming, I am stil impressed by the technology which makes this possible. OK, call me easy to please.

For my money, this is the best thing to do when you only have a half hour for simming. Trying out a new download or a location you've never been before can be a lot of fun, but it rarely compares with the contentment I feel after making a few good landings down a the local airport.

Do you have a favorite pattern to fly? If not, I suggest you seek one out. It's good if it has some personal interest--such as being close to your real-life home, or where you grew up, or a favorite vacation spot. It also helps if there is a bit of challenge. The runway should be not much longer than the minimum required for your favorite type of plane, and if there are obstructions nearby, all the better.

Get out there and fly!

My take on Real vs Sim

2006-09-05T09:30:00.000-07:00

OK, now that I have extensive experience in real-world flying I can make some comparisons. Wait a minute-- I only have the half-hour intro flight. But first impressions are very important, and my intro flight was nothing but first impressions, so I can offer this fresh perspective.

I've spent a lot of time wondering how close or far I was from the real thing, when flying the sim. Here are some thoughts.

View: the panel (in the 172) sits much higher than a car dashboard, but you can still see the runway very clearly. I've never understood why I always have to "raise my seat" in the sim to get a similar view--why does the default view not have the runway visible? I know what I am supposed to see now. Anyway, I understand why it is so difficult to present all this on a computer monitor that is typically too small, and not tall enough. The ideal monitor for flightsimming would be square, I think.

Ambiance: I have heard people comment how small these planes are. Fortunately I got to fly in the 172, not the smaller 152. Perhaps because I was prepared for small, I thought the 172 felt pretty roomy, all in all. It is more snug than a small car (for example, my Ford Focus feels much larger) but I did not feel cramped. As for the noise, the engine was loud, but it was possible to hold a conversation without the headphones. The cockpit felt spartan but rugged. The airspeed indicator looked less real than the one in the simulator. I mean, the face looked like a piece of carboard! But I trust it did the job.

G effects: After I brought up the subject of turn coordination, my instructor gave a little demonstration of slip and skid, and I finally got the famous "seat of the pants" feeling of which I have read much. But, I was suprised how slight this feeling was. Still, I can imagine that it is enough of a sensation that you could coordinate turns based on it (along with the all-important look out the window). Much more noticible was the feel when a large throttle change was made. I had not previously appreciated this. Though, I must say, this is modeled well in FSX, at least from the demo.

Ease of flying: It seems much easier in the real thing, mostly because of the view. Much easier to know where you are in relation to the airport. I think with all the visibility and other feedback it would be a breeze to do a VFR flight in good weather.

Landing: I often wondered if something is left out of landings in the sim. When I make a good one, there is no real bump. But I was amazed at how smooth it felt in the real thing. No doubt this had something to do with my instructor's skill, but still, there was no bump at all. Those landing gear are very well designed. The wheel noise (also the flaps)is much louder in the sim, but I accept this is a reasonable accomodation.

(I could probably say more if I had time. I have to add on a personal note that I won't have a lot of time for this blog in the next couple of months. I am training for my first marathon (see my other blog) and the training is getting more busy. I will not have much time for the FS blog or even (alas!) FS'ing.)

Don't wanna be a wanna be (real world flight, part 2)

2006-08-30T09:17:00.000-07:00

As the hour of my intro flight lesson approached, I was conscious of a growing fear. Not of flying, of course, but of coming off as a pilot "wanna be", or a simulator dweeb, or whatever. I was afraid my instructor would look at me through his Ray-Bans and say "Look here, computer boy, everything you think you know about flying from that "game" is wrong. Today you're going how it really is." Well, maybe not exactly that--most pilots are very decent and polite folks.

My worry was more about how I could demonstrate that I've learned quite a bit from the simulator, without sounding like a clueless wanna be. I realize that there are many ways in which the real thing differs, but there are conceptual things I have learned from simming that give me a leg up. For instance, I have a good understanding of how power controls climb and descent, and attitude controls speed. I understand how to use the rudders for turn coordination. Does the real aircraft respond to inputs the same way as the sim? Of course not. But I've got the basic ideas in my head.

As it turned out, my instructor was a pleasant young woman named Stacy, not the aloof and intimidating Ray-Ban Man of my fears. She asked me how I got interested in aviation, so I said I have been flight simming for a while. She said "Yeah, that's a great program" but let it drop. I got the impression that she didn't think much of it but was just being polite. I squelched the impulse to rise to FS's defense. I stood by patiently while she explained how the controls work, stuff that was very familiar to me. I mentioned that I probably had hundreds of simulated hours in a 172, but she didn't respond to this. Oh well. But I was ok being the humble student, and spend most of my time just drinking in the sounds and sights and feel of the actual plane.

Once aloft, Stacy must have caught me looking at the panel because she tapped the windshield and said something to the effect of "We mostly fly by looking out here". I knew that. I had heard the criticism before that folks who go from the simulator to the real thing have a tendency to keep their eyes bolted to the panel. But I let it go. However, she was impressed that I used the rudders properly when making a turn!

So, that's how it went. I probably should have been more vocal about how much I have learned from simming-- maybe Stacey would have spent less time explaining the basics, or let me do more. But I did get to try a lot of cool things, and as I said before, the whole experience was a blast.

In the next post, I will focus on how the real thing compares to my sim experience.

For real! (what I did on my summer vacation)

2006-08-29T05:16:00.000-07:00

Last week, during the family summer vacation, I took an actual introductory lesson, in a Cessna 172. I hadn't really planned to do this in advance. Well, to be honest I did research the local airport before we left for the vacation. I have toyed with the idea of doing this for some time, but have resisted. As I said to my wife, it feels a little like kissing another women. By which I mean, why start something you know you can't take the next steps? (Given current financial commitments, e.g. feeding the kids (!), pursuing the PPL is out of the question. Especially since that accomplishment is simply a license (ha!) to spend even more money). However, this was vacation, normal rules of life are suspended, and I used this as an excuse to give it a go.

I have a lot to say about this experience, which I hope to spread out over a few blog entries. My overall reaction? It was a blast, and I would recommend this to any serious sim pilot who has not had any real world experience. Most places offer this kind of thing for about $60, which is money well spent in my opinion. This was not my first-ever flight in a light aircraft--I had a couple of rides as a kid, when I was too young to appreciate it. About 7 years ago, a friend took me up in a Tripacer, which was really nice, but again I was not knowledgable enough then to get as much out of it as I would now. I would give my eye teeth now for a chance like that!

Anyway, it was a lot of fun and very informing. The strongest impression is that real flying is easier than sim flying, since you are getting feedback from all over, and not just through that little monitor.

Stay tuned. More on this tomorrow, I hope...

Exactly overwhelmed

2006-08-16T02:40:00.000-07:00

Well, maybe overwhelmed is too strong-- more like very pleased. I just feel like I want to respond to folks who are saying they are "not exactly overwhelmed" by the FSX demo. Just take a look at these trees-- if you don't see a vast improvement over FS9 trees, you're not looking very carefully.

I'm still suprised by the level of animosity of some folks on the forums towards this release. I think part of this is what I think of as the "hardware lottery". By this I mean that there's an almost random chance whether or not you will get satisfactory performance with your configuration. I lucked out, it seems. My system is pretty middling, as I described in a previous post, but I get frame rates in the 20's most of the time with many of the sliders in the middle, or higher. Some folks with better specs than mine are struggling. Still, those poor folks should take heart that others are getting good results, and trust that with the final release, and maybe a driver update, they'll be just as happy.

I think another reason for the "I'm not impressed" attitude is that perhaps people feel a little powerless against the FS monopoly. We all long to see our favorite game improved, but we are completely dependent on one company to do it (I'm talking major structural improvements-- we always have payware designers to improve the parts). We have high hopes, which in this dynamic become demands, and we don't want to let them off too easily. It reminds of how some folks feel like they have to complain about cafeteria food, even in the cases when its not too bad. If your stuck with it, that lowers the appeal by a few points.

This final shot in this post is the result of importing a FS9 add-on, Bill Lyon's Travel Air, into FSX. It's a fun shot, and I've gotten compliments on it, so I thought I'd share it.

Curious reactions to the FSX demo release

2006-08-13T15:59:00.000-07:00

If you are an avid flightsimmer (and who else would be reading this?), then you already know about the demo release of FSX (the next generation of Microsoft Flight Simulator). If you haven't heard, you can get it here. I will not review it here, except to say that I am quite impressed. I meant to blog about it sooner, but frankly I have been spending too much time playing with the demo.

What really suprises me is some of the reactions I have been reading in the forums. Some people are quite hostile. The criticism seems to fall along two lines. The first says "Is this the best they could do? This doesn't look any better than the current FS, with all the latest add-ons." The second criticism is that it is way too demanding on their computer hardware.

It is the first criticism that I find most interesting. I think many people feel the need to strike a posture of being hard to impress. Perhaps it is because they have invested a lot of money and/or time to get their FS9 world to look really good. Perhaps they just feel the need to act cool, using the ultimate cool put down, "been there, done that".

My own reaction has been that the more time I spend in this new virtual environment, the more I am impressed. There are a lot of things that deserve a closer look. The virtual cockpits are obviously much better than in FS9. But spend some time really looking around, and you'll see how nice they really are. The textures, and the way the contours interact with the ambient light, are awefully well done.

Look at the way the clouds are reflected in the sea, in my second image. Before I snapped the shot, I first noticed that the weather had turned threatening by seeing the sea change color (a "sea change"?). Only then did I look up at the sky. A new level of immersion.

I don't know whether these nay-sayers have spent the time to get to know this demo. My guess is that many have not. Why are they so quick to sneer?

Part of the negative reaction may just be human nature. I have found in other areas of art, where something is issued serially, I often feel a little bit of disappointment with the latest offering the first time I experience it. It somehow falls short of my expectations. But with more exposure it grows on me, until ultimately it ranks with the best. The creative artist fails to follow through with all of what I had hoped to see. What you appreciate over time is that the artist had their own vision that was persued, and that vision was equally worthwhile.

Finally, on the issue of performance. Everyone's mileage will vary, of course, but I have been pleasantly suprised how well it runs on my middle-of-the-road setup. I have a 2.2 GHz AMD Athalon 3200+ processor with 1.0 GB of RAM, and a 128MB ATI RADEON 9600 AGP card. Basically, that's a $400 computer with $50 of added ram, and ~$90 for the added card. And look at the framerates in the last image! Admittedly, for that shot I had most of the sliders turned down. But still, between that number and the magic 24 FPS number (many people believe anything above 24 FPS is not noticable) there's a lot of room for moving sliders. With a bit of expermentation I'm sure I'll find a good compromise. And in a few years when it is time to upgrade the family computer, I'll be in great shape.

A sense of depth

2006-08-05T04:51:00.000-07:00

The other night I flew to a small grass airstrip in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire. I decided to leave Alaska for a bit to fly in my own region of the world. I watched the landing in replay (as is usual), and was simply amazed at the sense of depth that the simulator provides. This still shot give a little bit of it, but it really needs be experienced in full motion, where you can see the bits of scenery passing by at rates relative the the distance from the viewer. This greatly enhances the immersion-- the sense that you are really in the landscape, and not merely watching a pretty painting. One of these days I'll figure out how to capture videos, and post links here.

Here are the components that I used in this shot (all are FREE!).
1. Golden Wings. This is a comprehensive texture replacement package. Most users will create an entirely new FS installation, then upgrade it to these textures, so that they will have in essence two FS installs-- standard, and Golden Wings version. This is why the ground textures look so rich and green.
2. Terrain mesh by FSGenesis. They sell a lot of good stuff, but also have free mesh data for some regions. The one I am using is available from major flightsim sites, and is called fsgapbos.zip. This is probably the most important component, because it is the small rolling hills that best create the sense of depth for low and slow flying.
3. A good location. Here you have to be creative and fine a place with interesting topography. The White Mountains of New Hampshire are great, but there are so many others, perhaps near where you live.
4. I also use the Freeflow New England by the Freeflow Scenery group, though this is not evident in the above shot. This makes the shorelines of lakes, major rivers, and ocean much, much more detailed. Highly recommened. This is available from major sites as the file freeflow_new_england_v1.0.zip.

Get out there and enjoy the scenery!

This and that

2006-07-30T19:26:00.000-07:00

Haven't had much time for flying this weekend. I spent a little time tonight in the Hurricane IId, mentioned in a previous post. I have to make a correction to that post: the sinking-into-the-ground problem I mentioned is not a fault of this most excellent model, but rather that I had duplicate scenery layers that caused interference.

This airplane is a real knuckle whitener. Check out this landing sequence-- I'm not sure exactly what went wrong, but I am lucky to have kept the plane in one piece. As I mentioned before, it is very wobbly on the ground. It needs the long legs to give the big prop clearance from the ground. I guess they could not space the gear any further apart, because that would put too much bending moment where the wings join the fuselage, in other words you'd be more likely to snap the wings off on a hard landing. Bringing this craft to rest after landing is like balancing a wheelbarrow full of bricks across bumpy ground.

This thing goes fast, too! I found I lost the airport a few times when I was flying the pattern, because I underestimated how far I went on each leg. Another factor which makes it easy to lose the airport is that I am flying out of a historically-rendered Hawkinge RAF base, which blends pretty well into the general Golden Wings textures of the surrounding areas. This is of course much more realistic than the default MSFS scenery in which airports stick out from the rest of the scenery like sore thumbs. By the way, I keep mentioning Golden Wings. In case you are unfamiliar with it, you can learn all about it here. It is a must-have if you love the old stuff.

After getting tossed around in the Hurricane I wanted something more gentle. Here is the Sopwith Camel, as modeled by Dave Eckert. In this bird, you will definitely not lose sight of the airfield when flying a small patter. This is a beautiful model, and really fun to fly.

Completely unrelated, except that it involves a simulated world, requires a computer, and is another time sink: Google SketchUp. You can get this for free from Google (there's a pro package if you pay the price). This is my rendition of my humble abode. This program is really easy to learn. I was up and running in no time. I put this scene together a little bit at a time, in between other household chores. Makes me wish I had time to learn scenery or airplane design for Flight Simulator.

Oops, I did it again!

2006-07-26T18:17:00.000-07:00

I succumbed to "download-itis" again, that is.

The first set of images comes from an recent and extraordinary freeware offering, the Hawker Hurricane IID by Touch the Sky Simulations. As you can see from the images, the virtual cockpit is extremely detailed, and most of it can be worked with the mouse. The sound set makes the engine roar like its meteorological namesake.

I've been looking for a really good warbird, and have contemplated buying one, but I think this model will fill the need. It's a real challenge to land this thing, so it will be a satisfying accomplishment when I feel really comfortable. Getting it on the ground in one piece is only the beginning-- those high, closely-spaced gear make it pretty wobbly on the ground, so it takes a bit of skill to keep it from scraping a wingtip, or worse. In the second screenshot you can see the stall warning in the lower right just as I am touching down. I guess I did that one ok!

There is one issue I discovered with this model last night, as you can see here. This is not a crash, but an inexplicable sinking into the ground. I'm sure there will be a fix for this soon.

And now for something completely different-- the Pebble Shores Municipal Airport by Kobbe Farwick. I normally resist airport upgrades, since I am concerned about performance hits. However, this is in an out of the way location in Oregon, so I figured there was little risk. This scenery is strictly for fun. There are lots of neat details scattered around the airport as well as the surrounding area. It is more or less realistic, with a few fantasy items thrown in, such as the rainbow and the killer whales that bob out of the water.

I'm flying the ultralight so that I can go slow enough to check out the fine details.

This fly-through barn is stock Microsoft scenery, as anyone who has tried the "kiosk" barnstorming flight knows. Not so hard in the ultralight! This scenery is a nice break from more challenging exercises, such as landing the Hurricane.
OK, that's it. No more downloads for a while. I promise. :-)

P.S. I've installed a site meter on this site, so I can see that people are reading it (don't worry, it doesn't give me any information about who is reading, just the stats). If you have any comments or suggestions, please leave a comment below. You don't have to log in-- there is an anonymous option.

A good flight

2006-07-22T05:52:00.000-07:00

Sometimes everything comes together nicely, and you have a really good flight. The series of images in this post come from such a flight. This is a continuation of a flight that I described in this post.
This leg of my journey departed from Atlin airport (CYSQ) in British Columbia. In the firs shot you can see my departure--Atlin is visible in the far distance. There were some lingering thunderstorms to the east and north, so I heard an occasional rumble of thunder, but I did not run into any ugly weather in the direction I was going. I found this thunder really enhanced the immersion-- there was weather all around me, but some of it was just there on its own accord, and was not the center of attention. What I am trying to say is that when you choose a stormy weather theme for a flight, it is there for your benefit, so to speak. However, these storms were just there, and they didn't care whether or not they would affect my flight.

My destination was Juneau International, but I took the scenic route down Atlin Lake, then over the Llewellyn and Tulsequah Glaciers. It was very peaceful flying over the glaciers. I felt like I was at the top of the world. This is one of the most satisfying flights I have had in a long time. I couldn't plan a very long flight--I needed to turn in early because I had important things to do the next day. This flight took a little more than an hour, but it had so much to offer-- beautiful scenery, interesting weather, pilotage using my sectional. All in all, a good time.

Eventually I reached the Taku Inlet, and decreased my altitude to about 2000 feet to enjoy the scenery. The iage on the left shows me rounding Point Bishop, preparing to head up Gastineau Channel towards Juneau. This still image cannot capture fully capture the experience. You get a very convincing illusion of space when you see the scenery in motion, with the tree covered peaks moving rapidly below.

The last two images show me flying up Gastineau Channel (flying perhaps too closely to the slopes!) and finally safely down at Juneau. In my opinion, this is flight simming at its best.

The hazards of cleaning your windshield

2006-07-20T11:48:00.000-07:00

It's the time of year when my morning commute has me driving into the sun most mornings. At some point I notice how dirty my windshield is, so I will clean it. But the problem is that when it gets cleaner, you start to notice the small streaks and smears from the cleaning job. So you wash it again. Still, there are some smudges and streaks. The closer you get to perfection, the more each minor imperfection irritates. You find it hard to focus on traffic because of that fingerprint in the lower left corner.

I got a catalog for high-end audio components the other day (not sure how I got on that mailing list). It's fun to look at the lengths to which folks will go in the quest of sonic perfection. Is a $2500 CD player that much better than my $100 model? But some, maybe most of this stuff is downright ridiculous. For example, look at this, which is a set of wooden blocks to keep your audio cables off the floor. A set of six for only $62. Hmmm, I had no idea that the sound quality of my stereo was being compromised because my cables are touching the floor. Sometimes I wonder if these folks (I almost typed foolks, Freudian slip!) ever hear Music, or if they spend all their listening time wondering if there highs are as clear and crisp, and their lows as thrillingly room-filling as they can possibly be.

So what does this have to do with flight simming? If your an avid flightsimmer, you've probably already guessed where this is going. The more you tweak, with hardware and software, and the more realistic you can make the game, it is all too tempting to get caught up in the quest for perfection. If you improve the sky, the ground looks too simple. If you improve the ground textures, the autogen buildings can look cartoon-y. Then there's planes, AI traffice, etc...

Besides the appearence, you can find yourself obsessing about performance. Are my FPS as high as they can be? Have I eliminated stutters and texture loading delays as much as I possibly can? Would the video driver that came out yesterday be better than the one I installed last week?

All if this is fine if you enjoy the tweaking process (and I do, to an extent). But you shouln't let it distract you from what brought you to the hobby in the first place-- the love of airplanes, the thrill of flight, and the rewards of improving your knowledge and skills. So stop tweaking and go practice those cross wind landings!

More fun with charts

2006-07-18T02:13:00.000-07:00

One can have great fun flying the sim with a real, paper sectional charts. I love having the chart folded on my knee and then looking out of the virtual window to figure out exactly where I am. I ordered a few Alaska sectionals (got 'em cheap on Ebay) and have been studying them for hours. With a good mesh, and preferably with add-on, improved shoreline definitions, you can end up seeing a remarkably accurate representation of the world. (BTW, I'm using a freeware enhancement to this area, by Holger Sandmann. He has a very nice payware package for a larger region, but I've just been to frugal to buy that. Yet :-))

At the top of this post there's a bit from the Juneau sectional, just north of PAJN (Juneau Int'l Airport). In the first aerial you can see "Tee Harbor" that is listed on the chart. Note the highway going past this harbor. Any highway visible on a chart will also be visible in the simulator, more or less accurately. Not only that, but major power lines and railroads are represented.

The second aerial shot is a look up another bay, just north of Dotson's Landing, looking towards Eagle Glacier. On the chart, this is the area where there are a bunch of black squares and the word "bldgs".

The next chart excerpt shows Berners Bay, and the aerial shot following shows the same area. The geography is really interesting, and the flight simulator version is pretty good, but does not capture the full complexity. The many twists of the small rivers leading into the bay are simplified somewhat. Still, it is beautiful scenery and exciting to fly over at low altitude.

If you have not yet tried real sectional charts, I highly encourage you to buy a few and try it out. I find it endlessly fascinating to study them by themselves, and it is fun comparing them against the simulator.

In the final pair of images, I have a chart excerpt and aerial shot over Haines airport, further north from the previous images. Note the yellow region in the chart. This indicates a heavily populated area. You can see the the simulator adds more buildings in this area.

An orderly world

2006-07-17T05:03:00.000-07:00

I think a lot about why I can get so absorbed in flight simming--I'm a firm believer in the tenet that the unexamined life is not worth living. I think part of it has to do with being fascinated by airplanes and flying, part of it has to do with the satisfaction of improving on skills, and part of it is just the gee-whiz thrill of how neat everthing looks sometimes. But I believe a major reason is that it allows us to enter into an orderly world over which we have complete control. Call it escapism if you must.

Now, I live a pretty good life, so I can't complain that much. The very fact that I have the resources and leisure time to do this hobby says a lot, especially if you measure your life against how the majority of the people in the world live. But a lot of things happen that are out of my control. Take yesterday afternoon, when it was raining. In the kitchen, that is. I turns out one of the twins had left the water running in the bathroom sink upstairs, and the sink overflow drain was not doing the job. There was an inch of water in the bathroom, and who knows how much water working its way down to the first floor. An hour of cleanup ensued, followed by the worry that there would be a stain in the ceiling. Some things cannot be predicted or controlled.

Other hobbies can offer a controlled world. Sports offer conflict and struggle, but in a limited, usually safe context. Another example: I have a small vegetable garden, and can plant whatever I choose in whatever arrangement I desire. This is a nice refuge from some of the stresses of life. However, I cannot control the weather, and there are certain garden pests that can mock my best efforts.

By contrast, flight simming lets you control everything. Nothing captures this fact more than the ability to control the Weather! In this world you are free to set the time and season to your liking, regardless of the clock or calender. If you like Golden Wings, you can even retreat to an earlier time. The virtual pilot faces no barriers of financial resourse, health, age, or whether a particular aircraft still exists. The virtual airplane is never undergoing maintenance. Your favorite airplane, time, and place is always ready for you.

To me this explains simming is such a relaxing thing to do at the end of a busy day. This also explains the constant interest in enhancing this world through add-ons.

Still, there is a downside to this orderly world. The garden, for all of its disappointments and occasional heartbreaks, sometimes will produce far more than I anticipated, and far more than I feel I deserve, based on the effort I put in. This is an example of grace, and can only be recieved when one has risked something real in the real world. The simulated world we spend so much time in is a wonderful retreat, but it does not grow like a garden, or a relationship, or a community. So let us be on guard about spending too much time in the simulated skies.

What do you think? Leave a comment if you like.

On the charts

2006-07-14T02:47:00.000-07:00

I finally obtained some sectional charts for areas of Alaska over which I like to fly. The image above is a small part of the Juneau sectional. I spent a nice time last night flying from Juneau Int'l into more remote regions. It was pretty cool to see features on the chart, then look out the (virtual) window and seem them passing under me. My first stop was at Skagway. This is a neat approach, with mountains rising up on either side. This would make for an interesting challenge in something large, but easy in the Scout I was flying. From Skagway I planned to go to Atlin (CYSQ), in British Columbia. This required passing over some significant mountains, over 7000 feet. You can see my approximate route in the chart above.
I didn't read the contours very carefully, and I thought it wouldn't be too difficult going through this pass. Turned out it required a very steep ascent, and there were some white-knuckle moments. This would have been an incredibly stupid thing to do in real life. I would have been much better off if I had spent time gaining altitude before heading East into the mountains.

Once I cleared the highest peaks, it was lovely flying. As I was getting closer to Atlin, though, I saw thunderstorms ahead. Very interesting whether, especially since I had chose a prefab whether theme (freeware addon) of some sort of cirrus cloud setup, which did not mention the T-storms! It was great, though, to have some unexpected wx to keep me on my toes. I did have to alter may path a little to avoid the storms, but otherwise they did not endanger me. Sorry, I did not snap any good pictures of this part of the flight.

I had to fight a pretty strong crosswind at Atlin. This picture does not do full justice to the challenge. My touchdown point was pretty much where I wanted it to be, in spite of the crosswind, and I kicked the rudder to straighten out (mostly) before touchdown. I know that in the real world the most dangerous things about a crosswind landing are the possibility of laterally overstressing the landing gear, and of having the upwind wing lift up, possibly flipping you over, and, for taildraggers, ground looping. None of these things happened to me, but I wonder how well they are modeled in the sim, and whether I would have been as satisfied with the landing had it been the real thing.

Download-itis

2006-07-12T02:42:00.000-07:00

Today's topic is one most flightsimmers can relate to: dowload-itis. OK, the term is not to be interpreted literally, i.e. inflamation of the download (you need antivirus software for that). I'm talking about the habit of downloading every cool-looking addon that you come across, until you have so many things that you never have time to use them well. Fortunately for my bank account, I manage to resist nearly all payware addons, and concentrate on the vast ocean of freeware stuff.

What you see in these images are two recent downloads, a Cessna L-19 "Bird Dog" (credits in the readme: "Visual Model V2.0 by Massimo Taccoli. Textures By Massimo Taccoli with support from Chris Coarse. Flight Dynamics by D.G. Seeley. New gauges by Dennis Seeley"). It it parked at CYTH, Thompson, in Manitoba (by By Adam Bentley and David Madge.) The airplane is fun to fly (a tail-dragger Cessna!), and the scenery is quite detailed, realistic, and framerate-friendly.

Chances are I'll never visit the scenery ever again, because there's just too much else on my to-do list. I may fly the 'Dog a bit, since it is good for low-and-slow flying, my favorite kind.

What a situation-- too much of a good thing! There is a downside, however. Besides taking up hard drive space, and potentially slowing up performance, I find too many downloads can have a draining effect on the psyche. The most satisifaction I get out of flighsimming comes from mastery of something, and that only comes from spending time on one thing for a while. Which reminds me, I'm supposed to be mastering the DC-3 right now, aren't I? Ooops.

Juneau, I really like this place.

2006-07-07T02:35:00.000-07:00

Last night's flying session was a blast. I flew from Ketchikan to Juneau, tracking VOR's. I was challenged at one point by a VOR failure. Don't know if it was a FS bug, or simulated failure, or if there was some mistake on my part, but I couldn't get a directional reading. Fortunately the DME still operated, so I kept my heading and intercepted the next VOR when I got close to the first one. It added some satisfaction to the flight, having to work around a problem.

I also cut the fuel pretty close. OK, I admit it, I didn't really properly calculate how much fuel I should need, and plan accordingly. So in mid flight I started to get a little concerned. But it turns out I had enough to finish the journey (but not much in reserve, as you can see in the second screenshot if you look closely at the fuel gauge). As usually, I started my descent too late, and had to use full flaps to burn off a lot of altitude. Not too bright, especially considering the fuel concerns. I guess I have a lot to learn!

Anyway, the scenery was beautiful, as mentioned in yesterday's post. Once I got to Juneau, I decided to play a bit so I jumped into the Bellanca Scout, with tundra tires, and landed on a glacier! Interestingly, I could not come to a full stop. I don't know if the glacier is set up to mimic slippery ice, or whether the grade was too steep for the brakes to overcome. So, I throttled up and returned to Juneau Int'l.

I [heart] Alaska!

2006-07-06T12:56:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note here. I have fallen in love with Alaska. I have spent a fair amount of time around Anchorage over the past year, but I have discovered whole new worlds in the Alaskan "panhandle". I found these in the best possible way (for a flightsimmer), i.e. by flying there.
I thought it might be interesting to fly from Seattle to Anchorage (over many evenings) so that's what I've been doing on my dedicated flying nights. What I didn't expect is that the further up I got the more amazing the scenery gets. Every time I stop somewhere I think "I should make this my new favorite place to fly". But then I get to the next place...
So, I thought Ketchikan was the place to be, but now I am all excited about Glacier Bay. Actually, I cheated a little here by downloading and previewing the G. B. scenery before actually flying there (my Aero Commander is still in Ketchikan). I got a nice freeware scenery improvement by Holger Sandmann. He has made an amazing payware enhancement for this region, which I have not broken down and bought yet, but this freeware stuff is pretty good by itself. The above picture does not show any of the nifty glaciers or shorelines, but captures a little of the natural beauty. I may stay here a while.

Oh, you want to see a glacier? Here's one:

Connie

2006-06-28T15:36:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons we flightsim is the sheer pleasure of watching airplanes fly. To fully appreciate the form and beauty of the machines one needs to view them dynamically- to see how they move, and to move around them to see them from multiple points of view. A good flight simulator model gives us an appreciation that you cannot get from either a static model or a still photograph. I believe it is second only to witnessing the aircraft flying in person.

One of the most memorable airplane designs is the Lockheed Constellation (the "Connie"). I won't attempt to describe the history of this airplane, you can find that here and other places. The shape is unmistakable, with the lovely porpoise-shaped fuselage and triple tail. So much more character than today's straight-tube airliner designs. This airplane produces am array of visual impressions. It is futuristic, in a nostalgic way, embodying the age in which it which is was created. It is powerful and graceful. At times it reminds me of a fish, and at other times a bird (goose or swan).

This plane looks awkward on the ground, with the seemingly too long nose wheel assembly. It is this trait that reminds me of the large birds--graceful fliers, but ungainly on their feet.

Once it it in the air it is beautiful to watch. One wants to view it from every angle to see the different profiles it presents.

We are very fortunate to live in an age in which we have a great tool at our disposal for enjoying the aesthetic and technical achievments of the great aircraft designers.

The model shown here is a collabrative effort. The original airplane model is by the prolific freeware designer Mike Stone. An additional person created the lovely paint scheme, and yet another person added a nice instrument panel. (I apologize for not having the other individual's names handy)

Compare and Contrast

2006-06-27T09:09:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about how realistic the view from the simulator is or is not. You can find youself really immersed in the experience, and marvel how true to life it looks. But then you can shift your objectivity, look again, and see that it is still kind of cartoony in many ways. I think one of the biggest obstacles to a truly realistic view is the matter of contrast. Computer displays are incapable of the necessary range of contrast. It would be neat if the computer could compensate, for example if it knew you were looking at the instruments on the panel, the scenery would be washed out. If you're looking at the scenery, the panel would become dark. In other words, it would show things the way your eye would see them.

In the image above, I manipulated a screenshot using the GIMP image editing software. I separated the inside and outside views. Then I blurred the outside view a bit, and drastically lowered the brightness of the inside view. The first time I did the outside blur I was amazed at how much it improved the realism. I'd like to try more of this type of editing, but I'd rather spend more of my discretionary time with the yoke or stick, instead of the mouse!

In the clouds

2006-06-23T02:57:00.000-07:00

Last night I decided to do a longish cross-country flight in the Aero Commander. I flew from Seatle to Port McNeil in British Columbia. I turned out to be an interesting flight due to the weather (I had loaded real-world weather at some point). I was in the clouds for the most part, and really got to enjoy the Flight Simulator weather engine. The shots here show just a glimpse of the many cloudscapes that I got to see. Every once in a while I would break out of the clouds and get a look at the landscape below. I know nothing of the Pacific Northwest, so I couldn't tell where I was at any point.

Overall, my flying was so-so. I printed out the navigation log and flew more than half the flight on course. I was tryind to do the entire flight "inside the plane", that is, not using the map or spot views. However, something must have been missing from the printout because eventually I found myself lost. I was tracking an NDB which I thought would take me all the way to my destination, but found myself passing it with many miles to go. Somehow the next NDB or VOR was missing from my printout. I broke down and pulled out the GPS, and used that to get to where I was going.

I consoled myself that this was not really cheating, because I was flying without a chart, and no real-world pilot in his right mind would try such a thing.

Despite this navigational failure, the flight was satisfying. I think this was because I had never had a chance to enjoy such an immersion in weather. I did miss seeing more of the ground, so my next leg will have to have more visibility. Anyway, I found another interesting part of the world to explore, if I ever get board of my other favorite places (New England, Alaska, Florida). BC looks like a really neat place to fly around. I wish I had a real (paper) chart for the area (also could use a mesh better than the default).

New toy, I mean, tool

2006-06-22T05:31:00.000-07:00

There's a fantastic new update to one of my favorite freeware airplanes, the Aero Commander by Milton Shupe and his team. I love to fly this plane. A great cruising airplane, but also good for short takeoffs and landings for bush flying fun. I've played with it a bit, but now its time to get serious. I'm contemplating a series of cross-country trips in this bird, doing some actual instrument flying (as opposed to "point south until you see the other airport" kind of flying I usually do). Tonight (Thursday! Flying Night!) I plan on taking off at KSEA (that's the good old default airport, in Seattle) and heading to British Columbia. My ultimate goal is Alaska, but that's going to take a while.

I guess the DC3 going to have to sit in the hangar for now.

It's a wonderful world

2006-06-14T02:38:00.000-07:00

Just look at this:

This is from my short flight this morning. I was using real-world weather, and actual date and time. I think the clouds here look pretty good, and are a reasonable representation of the actual weather. (There was a moon out this morning, and I saw it in the sim). The airport is Quonset State (KOQU), as portrayed by payware add-on scenery from Flight Scenery. I was flying the default Cessna 172, with improved flight dynamics and add-on repaint, both downloaded for free. The Stearman biplane is another free add-on. The fact that it is sitting there is due to another add-on that allowed me to place custom traffic where I wanted it.

Microsoft is working towards releasing the next version of flight simulator. There's been a lot of talk on the forums like "I hope they improve X, I hope they get Y right this time, I hope we'll finally see Z". I can understand. I have my own wish list (more trees! higher contrast in the clouds!). However, if you think about what we have already, it is pretty astounding. If Microsoft had folded the franchise after the 2004 release, I would still look forward to years, maybe decades, of enjoyment in the world as portrayed in this shot. Let's count our blessings!

My non-flying To Do list

2006-06-13T05:16:00.000-07:00

A few posts back I gave a To Do list. This consisted of flying tasks-- flights I'd like to take, aircraft I'd like to master, etc. It occured to me that I also have quite a long list of things I want to try that do not directly involve flying. Here's the list off the top of my head (I'm sure I'll forget a few). These have been tugging on my mind, but I am resisting them. I don't have time enough to fly as much as I'd like to, so I really shouldn't let myself get dragged into these things. But still...
So here's the list.

* Scenery design. I've really been itching to make my hometown airport in the sim look like the real thing. I want to do this for both the modern and the Golden Wings versions of the simulator (there's not much difference between the two). This one has the potential of being a huge time sink.

* Repaints. Some simmers are obsessed with paint schemes, either in aquiring or actually creating them. I think I'd like to play around a bit, just for fun. Maybe something silly, just for the kick of seeing my own design flying around in the sim.

* Weather. OK, this one sort of concerns actual flying. I'd like to play around with the weather editor and see what I can do with it.

* Screenshot editing. I love to take and share screenshots. I've done some modest editing work in the Gimp and with Irfanview, but I've only scratched the surface.

* And, of course, reading classic aviation books.

Getting the hang of the DC-3

2006-06-09T06:56:00.000-07:00

I think I'm getting a handle on landing this beast. The key --and I know I read this before yet it didn't fully sink in-- is to manage speed with the trim and sink rate with the throttle.

I must be doing this more intuitively on the light planes, because my landing are very good for the most part. Actually, let me modify that a bit. My typical landing in the Cessnas are usally pretty steep (approaching a short runway with nearby obstacles) so I am at idle power and pulling back on the yoke to steepen the descent. Still, the "stick-and-rudder" principles are the same as on larger planes.

Anyhow, with the DC-3 you do not land with idle power, and you don't have the same "lift to spare" sensation. So the technique (I can now speak like an expert :-) ) is to keep the approach speed steady and twiddle with the throttle to keep on the glide slope. Resist the temptation to change the glide slope with the elevators.

For practice I saved a flight on the base leg so I could drill the landing over and over without having to fly around the pattern each time. I resisted doing this for a while, because it felt like cheating. Which is pretty silly, when you think about it. I guess this is evidence of the little fantasy most of us cherish, the one that says "Hey, I could do this in real life! See, I do everything like a real pilot would." But I have to make concessions, because time flies more than I do.

Its always something new

2006-06-08T05:44:00.000-07:00

OK, just when I made up my mind to hunker down and really learn how to fly the DC-3, I got distracted by the St. Exupery flight. Then I got diverted into exploring the geography of the Pyrenees. With the new mesh, this is very exiting terrain to fly over. I have flown the Dehaviland Comet, a Mustang, and a TravelAir. I found a nice airstrip in the foothills , and I set up and saved a flight with the Ford Trimotor, in soggy weather. So far I have flown a couple of circuits, but I am ultimately planning on flying it this weather to some location on the western side of the range. This would be pure dead reckoning and pilotage, as that airplane doesn't even have an ADF.

But this scattered focus can lead to flightsim ennui. So, I think tonight's session (Thursday! the night of my weekly long session) will be concerned primarily with the DC-3 again. I need to keep working the pattern. I'm pretty sure my problems the other night before was due to too high an approach speed. I'm going to work on getting close to 70 knots at touchdown. Once I get good at the pattern, I will start working on navigation. Then, I can do a few short cross-country trips.

More on Saint Exupery

2006-06-04T13:39:00.000-07:00

I managed to finish the flight from Toulouse to Zargosza, Spain. In the image above, you can see me in flight over the Pyrenees. This was the first part of the trip, before the computer crashed. The view was nice, tho the default terrain mesh was a little, well, non-intimidating. Smooth lumpy hills. I wished to see more rocky crags. I have since downloaded and applied a 32 meter mesh, which is much more interesting to fly above, or into.

When I created a new flight starting where the previous one had left off I decided to add a little excitement in the way of the "Building Storms" weather theme. You can see some lightning in this shot. This resulted in some turbulence, and one lightning strike awfully close to the plane, but otherwise a non-eventful trip.

So this excercise by itself didn't fill me with awe and admiration for the men who did it for real. (I guess it would be a little more challenging if I could simulate the experience of being in an open cockpit at 12,000 feet.) I may try to do this again with much less visibility, or without consulting the flight simulator map (which shows the exact position of your aircraft)

Following Saint-Exupery's route

2006-06-02T07:14:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a bit of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, namely his Wind, Sand and Stars. Those who know this author solely for The Little Prince may not realize that he wrote a fair bit about flying. He's not a pilot's writer exactly, because he doesn't give a lot of specifics about the airplanes (such as make and model) when he writes about them. But inspiring writing nonetheless.

He writes a bit about how he flew a route from Toulouse to Dakar, Morocco. This got me thinking about trying something like that in the simulator. The whole route would take too long for my available time. So I planned instead to fly from Toulouse over the Pyrenees to Spain. I don't know what airplanes he flew this route with. I did see one photo showing him with a medium sized two-seater biplane. A quick search on Avsim turned up what I thought was a reasonable stand-in, a Fokker CVE biplane created by Jens Kristensen, a prolific freeware aircraft designer who specializes in early aviation.

I flew in the Golden Wings version of FS, and started out at dawn with the "Cold Fronts" weather theme. The flight went fairly well. The weather challenged me with a quarter headwind, but otherwise was not any trouble (I sort of hoped for more of a challenge). I gradually ascended to the necessary altitude (about 12000 feet) to clear the mountains. They didn't look too scary with the default terrain mesh. Still, it was nice to cross over and ease into the descent into Spain.

Then I ran into a problem Saint-Exupery never had to deal with. The computer completely froze (after more than an hour of flying). Pretty frustrating. So I gave up, rebooted, and tooled around local scenery in the Piper Cub.

It occured to me later that I have a pretty good idea of where I was when the (computer) crash occured, so it should be pretty easy to set up a flight that will resume at that point. Hopefully in the next post I can give you the result of that effort, and maybe a picture or two.

Tools and toys

2006-05-31T09:23:00.000-07:00

I think there are two ways to use thing in Flight Simulator, that is as a tool or as a toy. A toy is something to play with, while a tool is something for which you want to develop a skill. (In real life a tool also usually accomplishes something useful). In FS, often the same thing can be either. For example, you download a new add on airplane. First you treat it as a toy, looking at all the neat features, or taking it up for a quick flight just to watch it flying (if you love planes this can be very satisfying all by itself). But after a while the thrill starts to drain away. At this point you can either go off and find another download, or you can start to use the addon more as a tool. In the case of a plane this would mean learning to fly it well. So you can take off and land on a long runway? How about trying on the shortest length for which it is rated? How about flying by the book-- trying to nail the prescribed speeds for climb out, cruise, approach, etc?

Learning the tools does take more time and forethought. I mentioned my early morning flights a few posts ago. These are mainly toy flights, checking out a new plane or new scenery. Lately they have felt rather flat, so I think I will try to focus on skill building during these short sessions.

A dose of humility

2006-05-26T09:24:00.000-07:00

I spent most of last night flying the pattern in the DC-3. This is teaching me humility. I've gotten very good at flying light GA craft, but this is a whole new challenge. The beast has a much greater range of power, and the response is a lot slower. I need to readjust my own control feedback loop. My glide slope looks like a sine wave, and I have a hard time keeping the runway centered. I think I've bounced just about every landing.

I have to confess I actually had a crash landing. I started to baloon so I pushed the yoke forward. This is a terrible thing to do, but I thought I was just a few feet off the ground and could get away with it. Wrong wrong wrong. It's much more critical to follow procedure with this bird. The next landing after that was my best of the evening.

I can tell it will be very satisfying when I can nail a good landing every time. Right now I'm pretty much in the same position with this plane that I was with the good old Cessna 172, only a little more than a year ago. I'ts nice to think how much my skill has improved in that time, and I can believe I'll see the same progress with the heavier planes.

Oh, another great reason to learn the DC-3, that I forgot to mention. I'll be able to fly the same plane in Golden Wings!

I think I'm hooked on the DC-3

2006-05-25T14:40:00.000-07:00

OK, I think I've found my next big flightsimming project. I want to master the DC-3. Not only is it such a beautiful plane to watch, but it will a challenge to become proficient. I will feel pretty satisfied when I can make dependable good landings. Finally, most of the skills will be in hand flying, which is what I love the most.

A lot of folks like to learn how to fly the big jets, and learn all the sophisticated navigation and autopilotage. They can have it--I want my hands on the yoke and throttle. I do want to learn a little basic ADF navigation, so I can start exploring the world of poor weather and night flying. (I do night flying now, but its the kind where you take off at airport A, go South until you see the bright lights of airport B.)

The DC-3 will also be good for those short hops. For me, flying is all about takeoffs and landings. If you get the landings closer to the takeoffs, you can do more flights!

So tonight I will do some pattern flying, followed by a short cross-country flight (maybe Providence to Provincetown).

Life in 2006, and 1940

2006-05-24T08:26:00.000-07:00

In yesterday's post I mentioned that one of the things on my to-do list was to learn to fly the DC-3 a bit better. Well, this being 2006, to think is to Google. Actually, in this case to think is to search the major flightsimming web sites. Within minutes, I found myself with a new paint scheme (vintage TWA) and a "fix" to make taxiing the plane easier. Did a little pattern flying. It took 3 attempts to make a landing (two go-arounds due to the approach being too high).

A little more searching turned up this really neat site: the DC-3 Airways Virtual Airline. This is an example of one of the things I love about this hobby-- you find groups of guys (almost always guys, one of th things I don't like about the hobby) who join together out of a shared passion, and do all kinds of neat work. Then they make it all publicly available on the web. This particular group is dedicated to flying the DC-3 the old fashioned way, using only those navigational aids that were available back in the day. Lots of educational info and resources. Looks like I'll be visiting this site often.

My FS to-do list

2006-05-23T09:34:00.000-07:00

Another indicator of how vast this is virtual world is the length of my to-do list. There are so many things I am looking forward to trying, once I find the time. Here's a short list off the top of my head:

1. Learn to fly the DC-3 better. I've winged it a bit, but I want to learn it proper. I like the default planm, but people rave about the MAAM version.
2. Work more on instrument navigation.
3. Spend some more time in Golden Wings land
4. Explore different parts of the country, and world.
5. Spend more time with the Custom Classics series from Bill Lyons. I've downloaded nearly all the planes, but have not tried many of the custom flights.
6. Learn a few genuine acrobatic maneuvers (beyond loops and rolls).
7. Learn how to better edit screenshots.

I'll stop there, but I could go on and on.

Early to rise

2006-05-22T09:21:00.000-07:00

I'm a busy family guy, and free time is pretty scarce. I do my flightsimming when I can squeeze it in. Lately I've been getting up early to do a short flight or two before work. This shows how addicted I have become to this hobby, that it actually gets me out of bed early. Actually, that's not quite true. It gets me out of bed on time (no more hitting the snooze 10 times). Since I do these flights while eating breakfast, its not really taking much extra time from my day.

I really enjoy these early morning flights. Often I will set the time of day to the actual clock time, and real-world weather (except when that would preclude VFR flying). The other day I looked out the back door and saw the moon, so I set the real time and date and flew along with the moon in the sky (yes, it does accurately simulate the lunar cycle). Last week I was flying a short flight in the Stearman from Richmond (RI) airport to Quonset Point. Very nice with the sun coming up over Narragansett Bay, with the Jamestown and Newport bridges in the background!

By the way, if anyone is reading these please leave me a comment (you don't have to log in-- you can use the anonymous option). Thanks!

What I'm flying lately

2006-05-20T10:30:00.000-07:00

Thursday night is my official flying night. My wife works a shift on this night. I have a rehearsal until 9:00, but after that its 2 and a half hours of guilt-free flying.
I've been flying a lot in Rhode Island, thanks to a great scenery package from Flight Scenery. I have never paid for scenery before, but I broke down and got this one because I grew up in RI, and because it is so well done. I heartily recommend it.
I've also been flying Kirk Olsson's Sabre (pictured above), a fantastic model (and free) however I'm not that adept at flying this sort of plane. But its so nice to look at, and fun to try something different for a change. So I began my Thursday night flight this one from Logan airport to T.F. Green in Warwick, RI.
Then I got serious and switched to the Piper Warrior, a model from Just Flight. Another of my rare purchases, this is part of their Flight Club product, which includes 4 common general aviation planes as well as a detailed airport.
I spent the rest of the night tooling around the airports in RI, working on my realistic skills. (By realistic skills I mean skills that I might actually use if I pursued pilot training).

Then again, its fun to mess around sometimes. In the shot below, I am trying to fly an ultralight airplane out of one of Microsoft's goofs. The airport is sunk into a massive sinkhole. This is caused by a mismatch between the global terrain data and the particular airport's elevation data. To be fair to Microsoft, they give you practically every airport in the world, so if a few of them are messed up a little, its not a big deal.

By the way, I did suceed in getting out of the hole, then going back in for a safe landing. You can see more pictures from this flight here,
(at some point these pictures will be removed from that host).

Flying the pattern

2006-05-19T07:10:00.000-07:00

Flight Simulator lets you do all sorts of exotic things-- fly unusual or historic airplanes, visit foreign lands, try dangerous things. But the funny thing is that one of the activities that gives me the most satisfaction is pattern flying (pattern flying means flying in a rectangular route around the airport, and is used for landing and touch-and-goes). I do this all the time and it never gets boring. Its not exactly the same all the time, because I will frequently change the airplane, the traffic, or the weather. But even when I fly my "regular" flight (same plane, same conditions) its still a lot of fun.

I think this bears tribute to how well the product has captured the real experience. (I speak as one who has not piloted a plane in real life). What I mean is that it has created a space to develop one's skills, and that space is large enough to contain most of the things that concern the real world pilot. For example, all of the instruments the real pilot needs to keep an eye on are there in front of you, and more or less faitfully reproduced. One also needs to take into acount the current weather conditions. If you like, you can fly with other traffic, and use the radio to communicate with the tower or with other pilots on that frequency. This level of complexity means that one can spend hour after hour perfecting one's technique.

Perhaps part of the allure for me is that the airport I do most of my virtual flying from the one closest to my actual home. It is a small airstrip with a 1600 foot runway, and tall trees on one end. This makes every sucessful landing a small accomplishment.

Why a Glog?

2006-05-17T09:55:00.000-07:00

My motivation for writing this is that I have found myself completely absorbed by this hobby, in fact, head over heels in love with it. This all began about a year ago when I bought the Microsoft Flight simulator 2004 ( I had dabbled with FS 98, but never got full drawn into it). I want to explore this fascination, and try to communicate the experience of it to others.

In some sense this will be an apologia. To the unitiated, this is just a game. It seems a little silly to spend so much time and thought (and sometimes money) watching little planes fly on the computer screen. But to those who have become hooked it is much more. It will always remain, on one level, a game. But more accurately it is a portal into the world of flight. Most of us have been interested in flying for years, and flight simulators allows us to be actively engaged with flight, at least in the imagination.

Another feature of this blog will be to celebrate what we have before us. A marvel of technogies (hardware and software) that can represent the physics of flight and display the airplanes and the environment in which they fly (terrain, weather, seasons, time of day) with almost photographic accuracy. Add to that a dedicated community of folks who work on creating additional aircraft and sceneries, and often give them back to the community free of charge.

There will be some reporting-- what I flying lately, reviews of new products (most freeware, as I am a tightwad), etcetera.

Finally, I may also write about the object of all this, which is actual aviation. This will certainly be from a spectators standpoint, since real flying lessons are out of the question for me, budgetwise.

2006-05-17T07:45:00.000-07:00

This is a test post