MicroWINGS 2000 Conference / Seattle
Part 2/1
By FlightSim.Com Staff
MEMORABLE MOMENTS
FS2000 Project Planner, Bruce Williams, discusses FS2000 and the new Combat FS II. He showed off the very nice interface for the new combat editor - something that may become part of the next civilian FS.
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The always entertaining Austin Meyer of X-Plane, shows us his latest version, 5.30. Blowing snow is being shown outside a new A340-300 aircraft panel. This was just a small part of the many live demos given by Austin.
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Steve Halpern demonstrates some amazing new sky effects using the newly released FSClouds 2000. Out of all the demonstrations given at the show, this one got me most excited. We got an actual demonstration that worked, without pauses or glitches!
|
Chris Arrington of the DreamFleet 2000 team, reads comfortably in first class, on the way to MicroWINGS...
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The crew upfront, takes their jobs very seriously. The MicroWINGS Cockpit features vibrating floors, realistic control interfaces, and magnified views with Fresnel lens technology. Oh, and red overhead night lights too :)
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...wait a second! That's not real! It's the cabin section of the MicroWINGS Cockpit! And that's FS scenery wooshing past the windows. Mrs. Mackay will be thrilled when Bob tugs his new 737 interior home!
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THE TRI PARTY
Brendan Goss (corporate jet pilot) and Richard Harvey (lead Programmer) of TRI, happily posing for pictures near the new FLY!2K boxes.
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A great gift to us all - each and every box of FLY!2K in the resturant was going home with a MicroWINGS attendee! Thanks again TRI for the best freebee we've ever had!
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A great time had by all at the TRI party. Excellent food and drink, and an atmosphere of fun and sim talk! Mostly FLY! sim talk :)
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THE MICROSOFT PARTY
Here I am enjoying time with the team that makes it all happen for us. Key FS2000 development team (from L to R) are Steve Wilson (Head of QA), Brent Conklin (Software Testing Engineer), and Hal Bryan (Aircraft Test Lead). A really nice group to be with and enjoy the party.
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A great place for a party, as Microsoft rents out the entire Museum of Flight!
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What a great site. Retired Kennedy Administration Air Force One standing over the museum, and the Microsoft Party inside.
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Every day at lunchtime, many of us had chances to win great door prizes. I was proud so many went home with copies of Flight Unlimited III. Those of you who haven't heard about it, ought to try to get one as soon as possible, as Looking Glass Studios is now out of business, and I doubt any more will be coming from Electronic Arts.
The name "door prize" had me hoping next MicroWINGS, maybe they will give away real airplane doors! :)
CONFERENCE WRAP UP
My overall impression is that this year's conference was filled with more commercial demonstrations reminding me of advertisements, than actual "gee wiz, new flightsim add-ons" of years past. There were some moments when myself and some other attendees noticed each other dozing off. At past MicroWINGS, there were times when you'd hear about new products not yet announced, and this anticipation contributed to much of the total experience. This year, there were no new announcements and less hands-on displays, real cockpits and hardware to try out. However, more optional tours were available as well as better slot times for using the real Flight Safety full motion sims. The FLY! party was great. The best food and atmosphere for chatting simming I've ever seen. Microsoft's party at Boeing Field's Museum of Flight was a great setting for any aviation fan and sim buff. Outside on that splendid evening, Bruce Williams and other flight instructors gave people scenic flights around the area in brand new 172s. For those not flying, a stroll outside offered viewing of departing corporate aircraft and heavy cargo jets from Boeing field. It was a "complete experience" and one no one will forget about soon!
Other products that were demonstrated were Jeppesen's SimCharts program, Flight Pro IFR Trainer, Mexico Scenery by FlyMex, ProFlight 2000 by AETI, Go Flight Hardware, SimCraft Full Motion Platforms, and Game Commander, voice recognition software for flightsims. We even had a guy that talked about how we should all find ourselves in real airplane cockpits to learn procedures real pilots do, and if we can find the money, we should all buy old retired airliners and live inside them, creating virtual homes and communities of 727s etc. We all snickered a bit at this guy, his presentation was so serious, we laughed. I can't blame a guy for wanting to live in an airplane, as he said "your airplane home will be so beautiful, you'll never want to leave it". This man actually has placed a real 727 "on a stick" that will free rotate with the wind. I can see these sprouting up in gated communities all over the US! I think.
The humor of Alfred Poor came out in his closing commentary. Alfred has the tradition of closing out the MicroWINGS Conferences with a great "ode to simming". His humor and insight make for a refreshing ending to four days of simming heaven that we're fortunate to have been a part of. It is always sad on the last day of MicroWINGS. All good things must come to an end I guess. The only good thing about the last day, is looking forward to the flight home, and some more flightsimming!
DEV DAY & EXTRAS
Bruce Williams speaks at Microsoft Developers Day. We're comfortably sitting in one of the conference rooms in the actual building where FS2000 is made.
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I stayed the extra Monday to attend the Microsoft Dev Day at the actual Microsoft Campus where FS2000 is made. I was really hoping for a peep behind closed doors and FS being made and or a glimpse of Bill Gates in the cafeteria, but that wasn't in the plan I guess. However, it was an enlightening day in a nice conference room where were heard many key team members talking about how FS is made, how the SDK works (we all got copies in print and on CD), and how we all can build panels, scenery and edit aircraft.cfg files to tailor what we want. I learned an important item here about default FS flight models, many of you may not know.
Default flight models do not contain weight of passengers and baggage. As startling as this sounds, it's true. Why this is not documented somewhere I don't know. So for all of you flying the default 777, 737 or other aircraft, or designing models based on them, you must add in a passenger load into the basic empty weight in your aircraft.cfg file! That explains why I always thought the default aircraft felt too light, in fact, they were! No pilots or even crew had ever been onboard! So, for instance, pick the number of people you want onboard, like 200. Take that number and multiply it by 170 to get the weight of all passengers. If you want baggage too, throw in about 100 lbs per person. Add that in. Now, just add the total to your basic empty weight. Then add your fuel. Now, most airplanes will fly slightly more realistic. Performance will be more representative of what a loaded airplane flies like! At the very least, don't forget to add yourself in!
John and Martha King of King Schools go at each other with a comical banter filled with lots of pilot humor as they entertain the crowd courtesy of their friend, Bruce Williams.
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It was nice to put faces behind the Microsoft team. We all know Bruce Williams. In person he's a soft spoken and very intelligent man. Everyone who flew with him said he was a great flight instructor. Hal Bryan was head of aircraft testing and beta programs, and was very lively and optimistic about the FS line and it's future levels of quality and performance issues. Again, I must say, they do know about the chugs and clunks FS has in rendering scenery, and are working to do something about it. Brent Conklin showed off how to make scenery from the resources on the net, that the SDK covers. He made it look real simple, fast and certainly impressive when flown around in FS. Several others spoke in quick presentations on most aspects of the SDK. There were a few minutes at the end of each presentation where we could ask questions. This opened the door for some pretty good ones at that, but the amount of time for this Q&A was far too little. I found the chance to "ask away" at the team that brings us such joy and pain, was very important. I would have been happy with the Q&A session lasting all day! I think others felt the same way. Maybe next time, we can have a Q&A day! :)
During a nice boxed lunch, the Microsoft team had John and Martha King provide some comedic entertainment to us all. John and Martha King have built an empire on their pilot training programs from Private to ATP. We heard some stories about how they learned to fly their Citation Jet together and laughed at some of their marriage and pilot jokes. All in all, it was a very nice break to an educational day's events.
After the day ended around 3pm, we were bussed over to the official Microsoft Museum and store. The museum was boring and the store was conveniently located to tempt people to spend money on stuff I didn't want to purchase. At this point most of us had supported MS enough (the Dev Day was $100) and I just wanted to get back to the hotel.
The Dev Day was a success I believe, however more question and answer time would have made the $100 a lot more appealing. You were let into the business of the making and support of FS, but not enough to break down that slightly "dodgy" Microsoft atmosphere one gets when getting there. But it was a big step in the right direction in making us all see the Microsoft team is more willing than ever before to be a part of us, and work with our desires and needs for the future!
A glorious moment as Bob Klemm and I prepare for our 2 hours ahead, commanding the mighty Boeing 777-200 Level D simulator at FSI, Seattle. This rig costs just over 50 million dollars, and we're not looking forward to flying it, as you can see :)
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FLYING THE 777-200
A thrill of a lifetime is being able to fly the real Boeing 777-200 Level D simulator at Flight Safety. With both Robert Klemm and Todd Legon signed up as well, I was able to either ride jumpseat, fly copilot or be captain for over a total of 4 hours and 3 sessions. I must personally thank Dr. Gene Fish (ex 747 pilot) for the great sessions he let me and Bob have. Us ol' timer simmers knew what we wanted and he let us have at it. No help was given and I wanted to hand-fly the big heavy all myself. No autopilot allowed! I had a great time doing VFR patterns at SEA, BFI and BOS. I was able to experience 77 kt wind shears, heavy turbulence, engine compressor stalls and more. Gene told me I handled it as good as any of their pilots did! Wow! I found it easy to fly as she was a solid, stable airplane. Performance at light weight was very similar to good 777s I have flown in FS2000. At light weights, the 777 needed to be flown downwind at only 150 kts. I had to use speedbrakes all the way in to final, as she didn't want to come down. On final at minimum weight I was able to slow to 118 kts. Note, not the 90 kts you can do in the default 777. The default 777 flight model is wrong in this regard. I am working on a new flight model myself to fix this and will make it available on FlightSim.Com soon. Back to the real thing. I landed at BFI on 31R (the short 3000 footer) with a touchdown speed of 115, full autobrakes, no reversers and came to a stop in 2000 feet. Takeoff with brakes locked, max thrust, flaps 15 resulted in a monster acceleration, a Vr of only 105 to 110, and a rapid climbout! Total takeoff run was only 1400 feet! Yahhhooo! I'll tell you, big jetliners can fly out of very small places if need be. Passenger comfort not withstanding! The sounds of the 777 are different from Flightsim. You always here a nice fan and air-conditioning sound flowing around you when powered up. However, at idle, you can not hear the engines. Only on power up above about 60% do you hear the engines wind up. And it's not what you'd expect. It's a very quiet "eeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrr" sound, like an electric motor. Once airborne it's quiet with only the rush of air being noticeable, but due to the 6" thick glass in front of you, even at full speed, the wooshing is very quiet.
I'd highly recommend any simmer spending the $500 per hour on a full motion jet sim. Do this with two others, and maximize your time in the cockpit. Sitting jumpseat is just as fun as flying it, because you're not concentrating on the flying as much. This gives you time to enjoy your surroundings, and play with switches and knobs in the cockpit. Just watch out... you can get queazy - the motion is very very real! Flight Safety is very generous when it came to giving us our hour blocks. If it took time to set up the sim, or something wasn't working right, we all got extra stick time. In most cases each of us got an extra 30 minutes under our belts due to temporary glitches or the instructor being very generous to us all! Thank you FlightSafety for making our evenings so valuable to us! When we left the building, a real 777 roared overhead, and we all knew that yes, we can fly the real thing!
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FS2000 Project Planner, Bruce Williams, discusses FS2000 and the new Combat FS II. He showed off the very nice interface for the new combat editor - something that may become part of the next civilian FS.
The always entertaining Austin Meyer of X-Plane, shows us his latest version, 5.30. Blowing snow is being shown outside a new A340-300 aircraft panel. This was just a small part of the many live demos given by Austin.
Steve Halpern demonstrates some amazing new sky effects using the newly released FSClouds 2000. Out of all the demonstrations given at the show, this one got me most excited. We got an actual demonstration that worked, without pauses or glitches!
Chris Arrington of the DreamFleet 2000 team, reads comfortably in first class, on the way to MicroWINGS...
The crew upfront, takes their jobs very seriously. The MicroWINGS Cockpit features vibrating floors, realistic control interfaces, and magnified views with Fresnel lens technology. Oh, and red overhead night lights too :)
...wait a second! That's not real! It's the cabin section of the MicroWINGS Cockpit! And that's FS scenery wooshing past the windows. Mrs. Mackay will be thrilled when Bob tugs his new 737 interior home!
Brendan Goss (corporate jet pilot) and Richard Harvey (lead Programmer) of TRI, happily posing for pictures near the new FLY!2K boxes.
A great gift to us all - each and every box of FLY!2K in the resturant was going home with a MicroWINGS attendee! Thanks again TRI for the best freebee we've ever had!
A great time had by all at the TRI party. Excellent food and drink, and an atmosphere of fun and sim talk! Mostly FLY! sim talk :)
Here I am enjoying time with the team that makes it all happen for us. Key FS2000 development team (from L to R) are Steve Wilson (Head of QA), Brent Conklin (Software Testing Engineer), and Hal Bryan (Aircraft Test Lead). A really nice group to be with and enjoy the party.
A great place for a party, as Microsoft rents out the entire Museum of Flight!
What a great site. Retired Kennedy Administration Air Force One standing over the museum, and the Microsoft Party inside.
Bruce Williams speaks at Microsoft Developers Day. We're comfortably sitting in one of the conference rooms in the actual building where FS2000 is made.
John and Martha King of King Schools go at each other with a comical banter filled with lots of pilot humor as they entertain the crowd courtesy of their friend, Bruce Williams.
A glorious moment as Bob Klemm and I prepare for our 2 hours ahead, commanding the mighty Boeing 777-200 Level D simulator at FSI, Seattle. This rig costs just over 50 million dollars, and we're not looking forward to flying it, as you can see :)