Spotlight On Mike Stone

By Phil Colvin (13 September 2005)

Mike, a lifelong aviation buff, grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, where he lives with his wife Janet and two sons, Randy and Kevin. He works for the Integrated Defense Systems division of Boeing as a programmer analyst - wow, sounds like somebody James Bond might come to for help! He's been flightsimming since he got the very first version of FS for his Apple computer, "more years ago than I care to think about". Speaking of his early efforts, Mike says "I decided to try my hand at aircraft designing when I came across a copy of Aircraft Designer for FS2000, an independant shareware program which competed briefly with FSDS. My first design was a Boeing 717, and it was laughably crude by today's standards, but it was a start. When Gmax came on the scene with FS2002, I immediately switched to it, and have used it ever since". And as they say, the rest is history!

       

For starters, here's the biggest compliment to the man's work I can think of: I just Typed Mike's name into the search feature at FlightSim.Com on the day I started this review and got 1,557 files! As of this writing, 75 of those are the aircraft he's developed. That means that the other 1482 files are textures, panels, etc. to supplement his work. That's an average of almost twenty textures etc. for each one of his creations! And I'm frankly too lazy to add up all the times his stuff's been downloaded, but I took a look at just two of my own favorites by Mike (the Grumman Goose and the Learjet 35), and they came to almost 9000 downloads. And that's not even counting all the thousands more downloads there've been for the many added textures for these planes.

So what makes Mike's aircraft so popular? Well for starters, they look right and they fly right. If I had to sum up Mike's appeal in one word it would be the following: competence. Virtually every one of his aircraft is dead-bang on target as far as the shape and proportions of the visual model goes. I'm sure a lot of flightsimmers have a pretty good eye, and some downloads don't do much more than approximate the correct shape and looks of an airframe. But Mike gets it right! Perhaps that's one reason why so very many repaints of his planes are available.

       

And as I mentioned, they fly right too. Some downloads, I've noticed, one may wish to keep because they look so good, but they fly so very badly that in order to save them you've got to give them a whole new .air file. This is a gigantic pain in the neck! But as far as I know, none of Mike's planes suffer from fatal flaws like overspeed at half throttle, never being able to decelerate, totally inappropriate roll rate, needing absurd amounts of trim, jumping up and down on the runway, etc., etc. They fly well and appropriately.

Another reason, I'm sure, is the aircraft he chooses. Not an awful lot of us wouldn't like to have a Beech Starship or a Cessna Skymaster in our hangars - or an Avro Arrow or a Learjet 35 or a Boeing Clipper, etc. Chances are if you've been visiting this site a long time, you've already got some of his stuff. If not, take a look at what he's been up to lately - I'll bet you see something you like!

Still another reason is good frame rates. Mike's planes have just enough polygons to look good and they have nice reflective textures, but they don't tax your system they way some planes with virtual cockpits and world-beating curves can. As a self-proclaimed "casual simmer" Mike doesn't feel the need for "ultra realism" - he "simply likes to fly for sheer enjoyment". Well, from the download numbers, a lot of us obviously agree.

       

And now, reluctantly, I'm going to get on my soapbox. I noticed early-on the disclaimer that Mike puts in each of his aircraft's readme files, and I must admit that in my ignorance I was a little put off by it. But then I've never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Sadly, however, a lot of people are. Mike has taken "a good deal of flak about from the hard core simming community" only because, to put it bluntly, his planes aren't as full featured, detailed and technically perfect as expensive payware. So much so that he's actually found it necessary to deflect accusations of arrogance and resistance to criticism when he didn't modify his work. Mike Stone makes good visual models with good basic .air files, and he's even nice enough to include base textures for his planes. And many, many nice repaints are available, as are many instrument panels you can use if you find his too plain or too basic. He likes his own planes, which is really all he cares about, and he's generous enough to share them freely with us, which is really all we should care about. Nobody's twisting our arms to like or to use anything.

And I've learned these last couple of years that Mike isn't the only freeware developer who's experienced such problems. I've been embarrased for all of us by some things I've seen in some forums and on some developer's sites. If you've paid a lot of money for a download and then feel that it doesn't justify the expense or live up to its marketing, that's one thing. But if it's freeware and you don't like it then for crying out loud just delete it and go elsewhere. Don't bother the developer. He doesn't have a bunch of paying advertisers and he's given freely of his talent and his hard work. And if on the other hand you do like it, why not send him a thank you email - or even a donation?

       

Don't get me wrong, folks. Thankfully, I'm confident that the vast majority of us have our heads on straight and the download stats would certainly seem to bear that out. So if the shoe doesn't fit, good for you and welcome to the freeware party. As I've said so many times, there's so much great stuff for us to enjoy for free it staggers the mind. And an awful lot of it is due to Mike Stone. Thanks, Mike!

Phil Colvin
gimpyfoot1@yahoo.com

Just how many planes is Mike Stone responsible for as of right now? Click here to find out...