Various People have expressed an opinion that I have not been clear as to the nature of my post regarding Freeware Authors. Firstly may I say that the post that started this which involved Mike Stones Meridian was purely a catalyst I used to express an opinion that I have felt for some time and wasnt directed at Mike.In my opinion there is a protectionist attitude which has grown up around freeware and that attitude has resulted in an intolerance to any comments made about freeware which can be classified as anything but complimentary.A number of people have written saying that they have made polite comments which they intended to be constructive feedback regarding various aircraft that have been released and that they have been attacked for having made those comments.Bob yes my comments have been general for the simple fact that I have been involved with many freeware projects in the past so I have a pretty good idea of what motivates free ware developers and what goes on behind the scenes. It wouldnt have been fair to be specific.We always used to welcome constructive comments in the forums regarding projects I was involved in, infact the forums were a place to find problems, to solve problems and even a place to discover new ideas we could try.That appears to be a thing of the past as it appears that innocent and constructive posts are no longer acceptable and are met with a defense which is out of proportion.I am against negative or abusive comments as well as comments which demand rectification of a perceived fault as if by right from freeware authors but I also feel that we are loosing a major part of what a forum is about by being too guardian Angel like.That is the only point I was trying to make and I aplogise to Mike or anyone else who thought that my comments were specific to them as this isnt and wasnt the case.This is obviously a much more volatile subject than I imagined so I would rather leave it at that and apologise for bringing it up in the first place ;-)Peter

perhaps I agree with not bringing it up. I've been releasing freeware for years and I don't have any interest in discussing issues regarding comments.I flame anyone who becomes demanding of freeware people, like ...how come nobodys designed such and so airport. My flame is "get off yer lazy *# and do it your self".That's not protectionist of freeware people, that's a reminder that when people offer you a gift its absurdly rude to respond with, waaaaa, why didn't you give me a different gift, when ur too lazy to take the time to contribute. Its also a wake up, I wonder if people think that designers have graduated from a special school that they couldn't afford to go to.....lol. If anyone thinks that, its not the case! We are just people who wanted to see something different in flightsim and decided to learn how rather than ask someone else to do it for us.As far as critism, I for one think all this talk is a waste of time. I'd rather be designing.Bob B

How's the gmax coming along!Once I get past that initial hump I'll be fine!Currently stuck with the interface and mapping the textures.Oh yeah, and resizing my box! They just love to hide those sub sub sub menus!!

funny, I'm about in the same place. I've succeeded with all the tutorials, and I think the idea of cutting a new edge and the boolean operations is as cool as can be.My problem right now is in big picture perspective.The tutorials have lead me to convert to editable poly and editable mesh, but its unclear to me exactly how the stack of modifyers works and when to choose one over another, and when its safe to ignore error messages and when its not, and can I EVER delete a modifyer, and should I collapse a stack and when.....LOL The texturing is also equally as confusing, I'm good with tutorials, but when launching off to my own work, I get stuck somewhere real quick that I don't know how to get out of. Like planar mapping...the other night I decided to give up on Finn N's tutorial and trying the Kiwi version again....I'm doing the planar mapping like it says but this time, no named selections are visible. And when I get to an editable planar map, sometimes the handles are all red and I can't move them independantly, sometimes only one is red, but then I can't see only the plane I want to texture, I see ALL The planes, so here I am grabbing handles that apply to some other plane! LOLOLOLMore time is required! I wish someone would do a 30000 foot flyover, like making a model means you construct a stack of modifyers...and here's the list and when you'd use each one...and when your done, this is what you do with the stack...stuff like that.B

Anyone who can make more then a box in GMAX has my utmost respect!! LOL!Don

I know what you mean - I am slowly getting there with the modifiers - although when to "collapse the stack" still has me scratching my head. At the moment I am trying to work out how to successfully mirror animation (it seems to work fine as long as you do not want to export it to FS - since MAKEMDL does not like it !!).Even after I have done the tutorials it all seems very complicated to get something looking good.....

Ok, maybe I won't try GMAX! :-) I've been fighting with the tutorials from MS, but am using 1.1 and it appears that some of the menu items have been moved or given different icons? Am I missing something. Need to do some more reading in the A/C designer forums.Woohoo! Not!!!Freeware will prevail! Jim

Jim,For some reference material try going to :www.freeflightdesign.comSince they have some projects you can download and have a look at. As a suggestion the best way of learning it (that I have found) is to try and do some designing in GMAX itself - although I did 90% of the Aircraft tutorial first !! You can always get help in the design forum OR on the Discreet website.....Stick with it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The tutorials are OK, but they only cover the most basic stuff. Most of what I do regularly in GMAX insn't in the tutorials. I went out and bought a good book on 3DS MAX. GMAX is so similar that 98% of the material still applies. This was very helpful. But most of my GMAX skills were aquired through simple trial and error. What I did was just make a "fun" airplane. It ended up with about 12 flaps on the wings, 10 landing gear and both jet and prop engines. Nothing pretty about it but it let me try out different things.Mike Stone

Peter,I appreciate your explanation but just want to mention that this attitude pervasive here seems to extend now to constructive criticism of payware as well. I think we all recognize a troll when we see one "Subject: Why Fly!2 is way better than FS2K2" yet this used to be a good forum to discuss things with an openmind. If we think we can't learn something from critical feedback, where is this hobby going? I personally appreciate learning the errors of my ways (and there are many!). It seems like this forum waxes and wanes through some sort of sociological lifecycle. Periodically, it flares up and we lose some good people. Well, I'm not leaving that easily!David

I gave GMAX a good 2-3 weeks and in that time got something imported and pushed-out to FS, but didn't get confident that I'd be able to 'design' in it.So I'm back in good old FSDS and hoping that version 2 is a possibility and will offer the FS2002 'toys' in an app I can get my head around.Ta,Chris.

Perhaps you should d/l it! No one will get on your case for the flight model...