Next time you feel like ragging on FSX.....

[Guest United]

>We still have the same junk engine, but with a whole lotta>hacks bolted on :-hang Thank you. That's the best description yet. Randy Jura, KPDX

[bkeske 0]

>You know what I was doing 10 years ago? I was on Mike>Marando's Flight Sim Uploads pretty often. I was amazed to>have ftp/internet period. The whole FS world was just>beginning to open up.Remember Mikes site well, and yea, that was the site to get add-ons.>I was designing scenery, the Alfred Grech style (old tile>scenery) using the ORIGINAL bglcomp and bgltools and bglgen>programs by Hiroo Umeno. Where are all of those guys?>>Adam Szofran had his FSASM compiler too. (He's now on ACES>doing the terrain system). It had PCL which we still don't>have today.>>Justin Tyme was just getting started and asking 1000>questions. I can't even remember what message board it was>back then. Maybe usenet or something. Or maybe that was>AVSIM when it first started, I can't remember.I was beta testing for a great scenery designer at the time, Bill Austin, who did Richmond, Norfolk, and Roanoke, among a couple others. Bill and I became great friends at the time, and he actually pushed me into scenery design myself. For a short period of time, we thought about doing a complete Virginia package, and Bill consulted with Justin Tyme in regards to what he exact plans were for Virginia (as he had just put out a Virginia State package with no/or just a couple of airports). We did not quite understand that he was only really interested in what became his 'mesh business' and did not pursue it.That is when I started working with a couple other 'Ohio guys' and help start and create the Ohio scenery package at the time. Oddly enough, both Bill and I went through divorces at about that time and I didn't follow through finishing Ohio with the others (only finishing Mansfield, Lost Nation, Akron-Canton, and Zanesville), and both Bill and I fell out of the simming world for a good stretch. I have not spoken to Bill since about 1999. Great guy, and I sure hope he is doing well.The only real programs for scenery at the time was Airport with SCASM and FSASM.Some of the boards I frequented were the old Compuserve forum, and occasionally the AOL Forum at the time, as that is where Bill hung out. Right around that time FlightSim became a 'the' place to be, but then AVSIM came along and really took over much of the FS community as 'the place to be'.>The first time I designed a 3D textured mountain (this is>before terrain mesh/dems) I almost fell out of my chair! It>was so realistic!>It's amazing what we thought was realistic at that time :)memories :D

[Guest JeanLuc_]

you have no idea the hurdles we face to adapt to FSX. This is why at least on my end, at Reality XP, I've designed Gauge XTreme, a gauge development framework which offers not only an abstraction layer of FS SDK (in order to be FS9 and FSX compatible more easily - and maybe FS11 compatible with less issues and sweat), but also offers more features that the SDK is ever capable of, like 32 bits graphics, alpha blending, dynamic color with transparency mouse cursors etc... Well, you can already sample all these features with the FLT/N for FSX (back compat with FS9 too).It takes time indeed, and some products take longer. At least, one of the most anticipated one, the GNS, will come in the 430 flavour with the upcoming DreamFleet Dakota, while in the meantime we are working on a more profound face-lift (well fact, and bones too) of the product for the standalone release.Hope this helps!