How did you learn to fly?

[mauriceb]

So, instead of real flying I ploughed deeper and deeper into flight simulation, a form of sublimation, obviously.

Strange how someone's misfortune sometimes ends up benefiting countless others. I wonder how the flight simulation world might have evolved otherwise. It is always inspiring when people are able to rise above their misfortune and turn it into a positive outcome.

Thanks for doing just that.

Maurice

[Peter Dowson]

... how on earth did you find out those parameters (if you wish to disclose that)? Trial and error or was it done in cooperation with MS?

A process called "hacking", in the original sense, not the malicious sense sometimes used today. Reverse engineering is another way of saying it. I used proper tools -- the Soft-Ice debugger, which can get under Windows as well as inside anything, and the IDA Disassembler. Hours and hours of traipsing through FS code.

It was quite fun, back in the early days. I did it in FS4 and FS5, under DOS -- very easy then, as much of the code was hand-coded assembler so not convoluted like any compiler output. And a lot of the original code structure existed right through the early windows developments, FSW95, FS98.

By the time FS2000 was developed, I'd actually made a few helpful contacts in the FS team - Tim Gregson being the most helpful. In fact Tim came over and stayed here for a few days at the time of one of the FS shows. He added loads and loads of additional FS controls into FS2000 at my request, most of which still exist to this day. Real good chap.

But cooperation from MS was closed off by FS2002 (management changes, different policies enforced), and things began to get more difficult as more and more parts of FS were re-written in C++ with horrible class structures, black boxes, virtual functions etc etc, making the code more and more convoluted. I hate OOP! (I'm a bottom-up programmer, always have been since being an engineering test programmer). I only managed to get anywhere because some parts, at least, were still similar in structure, giving clues and hooks into the rest.

Then FS2004, my worst nightmare. so many things were so completely different. I nearly gave up several times. And it was taking all my waking time -- allowing for not much sleep either. It was then also that my income from my business declined abruptly, and I realised that I'd have to do something else, give up FSUIPC, or look at raising money from it. You know the result -- I tried a voluntary scheme which failed miserably, so went "payware" for the first time.

I did make a few new contacts in the FS team for FS2004, but they weren't allowed to give any direct information, just hints and clues -- until a political argument blew up with someone saying I was getting a commercial advantage (as if they couldn't make friends too?!) and everything got closed off. No team contact at all.

Then, when FSX was being developed (new management again), wow! I got an invite from Microsoft to go over to Redmond and discuss with them the designs for FSX add-on interfacing capabilities. I provided detailed requirements for SimConnect, and enjoyed, along with other developers, a really good technical relationship with the developers. Things were really looking up -- until the bean counters took over, foreshortened development times, and ... well, you see the result. SimConnect is good but is missing a lot of vital parts which would certainly have been forthcoming by the original schedule, and the weather machine went out still with serious bugs in it which will now never be fixed.

And here we are!

Best Regards

Pete

[mauriceb]

When I was nine years old, many, many, many moons ago, I borrowed a book from the US library in Casablanca, Morocco (Stick & Rudder). I spoke French at that time & hardly understood English but I read that book from cover to cover many times over. This was the beginning of my 'downfall' & the he rest is history .

Maurice

ps. This book by Wolfgang Langewiesch is a classic and still very relevant today

[Peter Dowson]

I borrowed a book from the US library in Casablanca, Morocco (Stick & Rudder).... ps. This book by Wolfgang Langewiesch is a classic and still very relevant today

Yes, that must have been one of the first flying books I read too. My copy is First Edition, but a late printing, 1972 in fact. It was first published in 1944, but I was only 1 then, not quite up to reading yet! <G>

Pete

[mauriceb]

but I was only 1 then, not quite up to reading yet! <G>

Pete

And all this time I thought you were a child prodigy

Maurice

[No Longer Active]

And all this time I thought you were a child prodigy

Peter Dowson is child prodigy...he's just a 21 year old that spends all his time on sims and writes the odd multi award winning program every now and again that sells by the thousand! lol!

Hang on...does flattery get you anywhere these days? Pete have you got any free FSUIPC upgrade vouchers for FS9 TO FSX lying around that you dont need lol?

[Peter Dowson]

Hang on...does flattery get you anywhere these days? Pete have you got any free FSUIPC upgrade vouchers for FS9 TO FSX lying around that you dont need lol?

LOL! Sorry, it's SimMarket you have to chat up. They have the exclusive. In return for the good deal they make.

Pete

[No Longer Active]

LOL! Will do!

If you don't ask, you don't get!

Then again... I am pretty good at blagging freebies, so I will try my charm!

All the best!

[Goldmember]

It's hard to believe that they have never developed a 'driver' themselves or at least cooperate with you. Almost all hardware depends on it. But maybe their focus is on the mass that uses FS with a mouse and keyboard. In the end, it's a package of EUR 49,- so even if there were 1000 cockpit builders... what is EUR 49.000 for them?

[Peter Dowson]

It's hard to believe that they have never developed a 'driver' themselves or at least cooperate with you.

They did. As I described. SimConnect was their more modern approach to the same problem. It was intended to have regular updates to gradually expand its coverage to do much more than I could ever do in FSUIPC. But the budget and timescale was severely curtailed, and everyone moved on to FSXI and ESP, and then Aces was chopped, and .. wel that's where we are.

Pete