Things that make you go hmmm.....

I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday season.
Hannukah Harry was good to me this year! I got some
more performance parts for the mustang, and I also got
FSDS V3! All I can say is WOW! Will take a little
bit to get used to but well worth it. The model I am
building was almost completed and when trying to
compile using Makemdl, I was recieving numerous
errors. So this model will be my last using FSDS
V2.24, although I am using V3 for the boolean tool and
other various applications that go with it. This has
been one of my favorite projects so far. I can't even
begin to tell you the feeling I get every time I load
up this bird in FS. This has got to be the BEST
aircraft I have created so far. This is just to show
the detail in the VC as of 3 days ago.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/flwpheonix/ss14.jpg
Now on for the next project in the pipeline. I was
asked by a gentleman named Alexander Lutz to help in
the creation of a NH-90 helicopter. Then he told me
that it was to be for donationware.
Hmmmm.....Donating to what or who, was the first
question that popped into my mind. Then he told me
the charity was being hosted by a German Airforce
unit, and that 99% of the money made would go to this
charity. The other 1% would go to distribution of the
NH-90. To me this sounds like a wonderful idea, and I
quickly joined up. So here I go with another project.
YAH!!!
There was quick news on all the forums I go to that
show a 300 word blurb on 'FSX.' Hmmm....better
graphics, AI animals, etc.? Release date as Feb 06?
Hmm...Something doesn't sit well with me. One would
think that the ACES team would blog on something like
that, saying that they had actually submitted
something to PC GAMER magazine. Nadda, Nothing...Not a
peep. People need to stop speculating and spreading
rumors! POINT! I am certain that when MS decides to
announce something EVERYONE will know about it.

Sorry, I have been busy...OOPS!

Just wanted to let who ever reads my blogs that I am back...Been busy here. As some people who know me, know that the beginning of October I was off to the races with my mustang, and was going to compete for first place. I had a friend of mine that was coming from the north and we were going to link up on the autobahn and head off to the races together. First, his mustang broke down and we started limping it to the race to see if we could fix it the next morning, as it was already 11:00 p.m. So we got about 5 miles from the race when my mustang started bucking and jerking, losing power quickly. So all and all we limped two broken mustangs to the races. Turned out that both of us couldn't fix our cars, so we ended up limping them back from where we came from. Fortunately another friend of mine was getting a stronger motor for his horse and offered to sell me his.

And that was just the beginning...

This past weekend I managed to get the motor pulled and took the heads off it after running a compression test. (Which I had no compression whatsoever in one of the cylinders) One of the valves was stuck in the open position and allowed hot exhaust into the head. The piston was fried too! L So my car is sitting in the garage with no fenders, no bumper, no motor, and no transmission. Just waiting for the newer motor to show up.

Well on to bigger and better things!

I am sure some you rotorheads have seen that Jordan Moore over at Hovercontrol.com had released his B412. I must say that this thing will give you a run for the money! Oh, and ya better keep an eye on the fuel gauge or you maybe running into a problem I did where there was no airport in sight and had 1% fuel left. This thing sucks down gas faster than about 15 of my mustangs put together at WOT! WOW!

Also something that caught my eye is a slight announcement about FSDS V3! With full support of everything GMAX can do! YES!!!!!

As far as my designing goes, this weekend I started piecing the parts together one so that I can map the textures better. I had noticed that the textures weren't looking right, and that I had multiplied the same parts 3 or 4 times and never realized it. So in order to clean up the model a little, I rebuilt it from scratch, with better texture maps. This also gave me a chance to better my skills at photoshop which is one of my "problem areas." Still trying to learn XML, but I figure that'll come next.

Things I just don't understand...COME ON!!!

Looking thru some of the posts around the flight sim community, and found some things I just don't understand.  If a aircraft developer creates a aircraft for his own enjoyment, like me or Owen Hewitt for example (Owen if you read this, you are a great person.  You and JM have been an inspiration to me to continue to make my designs better!) But, why in the world do people who have not contributed anything besides adding to the number of people downloading an aircraft feel they have to belittle  or put down a designer just because they did not add something or move something just few millimeters up or out or whatnot! Come on! Some people just don't understand, I guess, what it takes to create the model, or flight dynamics or textures.  They don't fully realize how many sacrifices were made for the authors enjoyment.  It just shocks me that people could say, 'it's nice, but the flight dynamics suck!'  Well in my own opinion if ya don't like it you have two choices. A.)don't fly it and delete it. B.) Get Aired and learn what it takes to make a better flight dynamic.  But what gets me the most are the people that have never been in the real aircraft saying, 'it doesn't fly like the real thing!'  HOW WOULD YOU KNOW!!?? Or the people that say 'shouldn't that be placed here instead?'  I don't know about the rest of the design community does, but I know on each aircraft that I have created and released, I have had over 200mb of reference material from external to internal. Some of the aircraft I have even been in and remember where or what the stuff was.  It just seems to me that there are more and more people in the community that are talking out of their third point of contact than we the developers can keep up with. COME ON! It just seems to me that some people are loosing focus on what or why we do this. Yes, I understand that if you pay for something you want to get your money's worth. But another question pops into my head...What is the monetary worth of a 3d model or package?  Well lets see...If I were doing this as a full time job, at least in the states, I think minimum wage is what, $7.25 an hour?  Been outta the states for 5 years now so I don"t have a clue any more.  But we will use that as a base. OK, so if I work on the model for full time which is 40 hrs a week, not including overtime, that equals out to $290.00. So after 1 month the total is $1160.00. Lets say that I work on the model for 3 months (unrealistic but whoever said people cared about how long you worked on it!) So after 3 momths the total price just to come even with the package is $3480.00!  That's just to come even!  And yet we still have people that want to complain about the hard work we put into it. COME ON! 

 

OK, enough ranting on that subject....on to the next....

Selling of freeware aircraft on Ebay!  Been paying attention to this topic everytime it pops up on Simviation.com because it is personal, considering that some of my designs have ended up on these cd's.  Why do people think that they have the right to download something burn it to CD and turn around and sell it to other people for the cost of the CD and shipping....I know for a fact that shipping to different places costs different amounts of money, so why is there a set amount?  I also know that a single blank CD is not $20.  So there is some profit being gained from this..I also know for a fact that these people did not get permission from the designers to do this stuff.  I also know for a fact that in readme's (which are supposed to be read) it states that these are FREEware!  So why is it being sold! COME ON!  Common sense tells us that freeware should be...I dunno....FREE!?  People should wake up and realize that these people are making a profit for what could be downloaded at any major FS website for FREE!

 

 

But as my Grandfather put it, 'Opinions are like A$$holes....Everyone has them and they all stink.' 

Thoughts for the day

You ever get so worked up in a project that you start seeing it in your sleep?  Happened to me last night.  I came home from work, fired up my computer, started checking emails when the phone rang saying that an emergency arose and that I had to come back to work...No problem, just annoyed my girlfriend who was just finishing making chicken for dinner.  So I leave, and about an hour later return.  I eat my chicken. She had made a red wine crème sauce for it too...OH MAN! Was it good. Anyway, opened up FSDS and started working on the new project. I can't tell you what it is right now...Maybe at a later date. But as I was working on it, I kept getting interrupted.  Life happens,you know? So in order to relieve some stress from the day I fired up Battlefield 2.  Nothing like taking frustrations out playing war games! LOL! So I played that for a little bit, and while I was playing it I realized that the waz that I have been going about this project as far as texturing goes is all wrong, so I quickly shut down BF2 and open FSDS back up. I remove all the textures on the project, expanded the view and sat there and looked at it, sipping my coffee and looking at a real world picture.  Something just didn't seem right....Looked harder and and found it.  I started flipping thru all the pictures I had and couldn't find a pic that I needed....I fixed some other areas, shut down the computer and went to bed, only cause I have to be up every morning at 5:30 a.m. to make it to work on time.  As I lay in bed, in and out of sleep I dreamed I turned my computer on and fired up FSDS again...I had turned off solid modeling and was adjusting the model point for point. I had textured it and had competed the VC with a high detail (low poly) model.  As I was beginning to export it, I awoke to a blode girl trying to push me out of the bed...(Yes it's a everyday fight with me...Especially during the winter, when I stick one foot out from under the warm covers only to find that its FREEZING outside of the covers) But ever since I started this 3d modeling, I look at things different...I don't look at cars as cars,  I look at them as a series of manipulated tubes and squares.  Planes are no longer just planes, they are a series of networked cylinders.  It's amazing what happens.  I just wish one day Gmax or another 3d modeling program clicks as well as FSDS has.  I don't know how many hours I have sat in front of Gmax, going 'HUH!?!?'  'How did that person do that!?'  It just makes no sense....The same goes with XML gauges...Been looking at those too...Read every tutorial, but I am one of those people that is a hands on learner.  I gotta have someone by my side or talk me thru something in order for me to get it...I did that with FSDS....Don't know how long I was on Teamspeak talking with someone on how to make the basic fuselage.  Maybe one day I will get lucky, and it will all click.  But until then I am stuck with FSDS V2.24.

You know something?

Just thought about my critics of my designs...No they are not people who download them and fly them in FS...Its my girlfriend who everyday will stand over my shoulder and go...'Honey, that doesn't look right...Turn the model a little....now let me see the reference picture....ok now the model....hmmmm.....No, see here this piece on this thingy doesn't match the picture...SEEE!!!!'  Just thought that I would throw this in here.

On another bit of news, the new motor for the Mustang should be in Bamberg hopefully next week.  It is a modified 1996 motor with more hp as mine and less miles...about 40,000 less miles! Mine has currently got 86,000 miles on the clock.  About 5,000 of them are Autobahn miles at about 130 mph plus. :D  Gotta love the autobahn.!

Hey everyone,
Everyone else has started a web blog, so I figured what the hell, might as well start one too.
Ok, enough with that. Will start with some things about myself. I am a BIG enthusiast in avation. I have been learning about flight since god knows when. I remember the old FS where is was just a panel on RGB graphics and took up two 5-1/4 floppy drives... Then my parental units got a new 286, and I got the new fs, that had the sky blue cessna...I was always in the aircraft creator making a high performance F-20...God I loved that bird. :D Anyway, I got the BAO Aircraft and Adventure Factory, and the first plane was actually a helicopter! It was a Coast Guard CH-53 after a MicroMachine Ch-53 I had in CG colors. Was a nice detailed model for what it was. It had no rotor, and was just basically the fuselage, but it was beautiful in my mind. I since have had every FS available to the current Flight Simulator 2004. That's when it started become more and more of a thing for me. As soon as Abacus' FSDS became available I bought it. I wanted to give something back to the FS community. So I started first with a Bell 214ST...Again helos, only because there is something about rotary flight that intrigues me. I made my way over to Hovercontrol.com and started reading the boards. I found that there were a lot of beautiful helos out there. Well the 214St ended up looking like a fat yellow bird that had been hit with Cannon ball sized hailstones that were going about the speed of sound when they hit. I kid you not. There are some preview shots over at the Hovercontrol.com archives. So I scratched that project and started searching for a new one. Then a man over in the forums asked if anyone would consider making a S-62, or CG equivalent the HH-52. I agreed and got even farther in that project. I still had a lot to learn about this whole design thing though. It was just not looking right. So I put that one on the back burner. I had been flying Jordan Moore's UH-60 blackhawk and HH-60J jayhawk a while, but I thought they needed more variety and just a general overhaul to make them the best. While I was working on that one, I also started to develope a OH-58D Kiowa Warrior that as far as I know is the only realistic looking one that has been released for FS2004. It was released as a Holiday present to the Hovercontrol Community. I loved it too cause no one knew that it was even in developement except for a few great people. Once that was released, I completed 27 different models of the hawk, with a outstanding gentleman name Robert Walls. He was making custom gauges made from the -10 (the operators manual) of the UH-60L. He emailed me one day saying life was changing for him and he started persuing his own aviation career. So I released a beta version of my updated HH-60J and it was recieved fairly well with the community. Still to this date, no one has filled the shoes of Rob. So the next project came...This one was not a model, but effects to go with the helos that I fly. If you ever notice that the in pictures and movies, the rotorwash of helos is always filled debris so I figured 'why not FS' I mean come on...As real as it gets? So I did. Now when ever you fly over grass you get the classic browning out. When you fly over water you get that misting going on. I love it...Also I noticed that when over grass, the effect was creating a tornado effect. The next time you look at a pic of helo hovering over ground it comes straight down and gets sucked back up. So thats what I did. :D Since then I have released some more helos, and effects like lights that actually relfect off the aircraft! Nav lights, strobes and beacons. Oh My!
Ok, enough of FS.
I joined the Army a year after high school, and have been deployed to several locations. I got out of the army five years later and now currenltly work for the U.S. Government as a civilian, living in Germany. My other past time is drag racing my 1997 Mustang Convertible at a airfield in northwest Germany called Bitburg (who also make great beer) ;)