Dai Griffiths

FS5 was a major disappointment; I loved the graphics and hated the bugs so it spent most of its time gathering dust. When FSFW95 came out I created the first known "terrain mesh" scenery in 1996 as part of the Mourne Mountains simply so I could get good photo-realistic coastlines... only I didn't know it was out-of-the-ordinary in any way whatsoever! For a while it looked as if scenery design would be the "thing to do".

However, I rapidly became disappointed with the default panels and joined that band of people that hacked FSFW95 to find out exactly how it worked. Just as I'd identified the section of the gauge file that controlled the needle arc, FS98 was released and then the SDK came along. I taught myself just enough C to find out how many bugs were in the SDK.

I was still disappointed by the lack of realism in systems procedures for FS98 and this led initially to the Electrical Panel gauge series, an attempt to plug that gap with simple plug-in gauges that "talked" to other gauges in the series and allowed other panel designers to add engines and engine systems as required without having to know anything about programming gauges. Eventually, with a lot of help from Short Brothers, I decided to try and prove to myself that it was possible to design full aircraft systems for FS and so the SD3-60 procedural trainer was born; the first time that every major system and sub-system in an aircraft had ever been programmed for FS. It also contained the very first set of non-default randomly-generated failures and all of the emergency and standby systems to deal with them in-flight. Finally, it was also the first panel where every single gauge on it made the noise it was supposed to make in real life. Switches clicked, fans rustled and alarms screamed; I'm very proud of that panel! The only thing I haven't done in FS yet is to create an aircraft - I tried but I turned out to be lousy at it.

The long-running gauge creation tutorial series for FS98 and FS2000 followed as a result of the many questions about gauge programming on the Panel Design Forum. Most of the information in them came from contributors there; I simply gathered it together and wrote it down.

Unfortunately I seem to spend more time programming FS and pushing the system to (and beyond!) its limits than I do flying it these days!

I'm a life-long biker and own five Moto Guzzis; one of which has now done 250,000 miles. When not programming FS I can usually be found either building another bike or out on the road riding.

PS. Yes, the picture has been doctored. Look closely and you'll see that all engine gauges are indicating zero so I ain't flying anywhere...

Dai Griffiths
DragonFlightDesign@compuserve.com