FLIGHT GEAR
Proposal I:
A NEW IDEA
It is the era of proprietary flight simulators. One day, a 16 year old US schoolboy named David Murr had an idea which would change the world of flight simulation forever. He proposed on the rec.aviation.simulators newsgroup an idea for a new flight simulator called FLIGHT GEAR, suggesting a number of people to help in the task, one of whom went on to become the project director and maintainer. David's revolutionary words were:
From: dam...@freenet.vcu.edu
Subject: A PROPOSAL FOR A NEW FLIGHT SIMULATOR - home built!@
Date: 1996/04/09
Message-ID: <4ke0q3$ltb@freenet.vcu.edu>
X-Deja-AN: 146717374
distribution: world
organization: Central Virginia's Free-Net
newsgroups: rec.aviation.simulators
FLIGHT GEAR
- a proposal for a new flight simulator -
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by David Murr (dm...@pen.k12.va.us)
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I. An introduction to the project
An idea entered my head on Monday, April 8, 1996. "'Why wait
around for some large company to make what WE want? Why not do it
ourselves'". Think about it -- there's certainly not a lack creativty,
ingenuity, or desire among our tight-knit group of about 1 000.
What have we been posting to newsgroups for months, even
years? Wish lists. We forward them to webmasters at Microsoft, Sierra,
SubLogic, whomever, only to have the e-mails dumped in the "recycling
bin".
Let's examine what we have out there -- what has been
done already with what huge corporations like Microsoft have given
us.
1) We have dissected the file structure of nearly EVERYTHING to some
extent with MS Flight Simulator 5.x.
2) Maurizio Gavoli (please excuse my spelling) and someone else whose
name escapes me at the moment have created two excellent aircraft
for MSFS5 - without the need of any add-on programs!
3) Chuck Dome, who "reverse-engineered" the .AIRcraft files and came
up with AIRMOD, an excellent utility used to modify flight and
color characteristics of default (and the two Simula FlightWare planes)
aircraft for FS5. Thanks, Chuck for a utility that certainly tided
us over until the release of Flight Shop.
4) Curt Olson's Real-Wx, which allows the user to download real, current
weather for a multitude of US and Canadian cities and automatically
import that data directly into FS5!
5) The creators of FSASM, SCASM, BGLCOMP, BGLGEN, Airport, and countless
other scenery creation utilities that have undone the .bgl files
and made the format publicly available, besides giving us excellent
tools to make our own, even photo-realitic, scenery!
... and countless other, excellent contributions by generous simmers!
(Sorry guys, I don't have the space or time to list you all, but you
know who you are!)
What does this have to do with Flight Gear, you ask? Well, I'm
sitting here, wondering, "With all this creativeness, WHY wouldn't be
possible to make our own simulator?". It only makes sense - it's the
next logical progression. Isn't it?
So, now that you know where I'm coming from, let's get to
some of the specifics of the program.
II. Overview of main features and specs
Here is a condensed list of things we DEFINATELY need in this program:
* Interactive, "smart" ATC that SPEAKS when there is a sound card present
* ATP-level or better graphics
* Acceptable frame rate on a 486SX/25
* Possible minimum setup: 2/386DX/20 with 4 megs of RAM, 512K VRAM,
12MB of harddrive space?, etc.
* Compatible with MSFS5 default (maybe FSFS?) aircraft files and textures
* Compatible with MSFS5 scenery files
* Compatible with MSFS5 panel files
* Additional, proprietory format for a/c, scenery, and panels to be
implemented in v2.0.
NOTE: is there any copyright violations in making our sim
compatible with MSFS5? Code violations. Rings a bell
with SubLogic - or was this just over flight dynamics
code?
* Accurate, flyable flight models
* Accurate, but non-processor intensive graphics (good frame rate)
* Simple on-board radar system with GPS "moving map" display
* Default planes include Cessna SkyLane RG, Beechcraft Bonanza, a
hot air balloon, Boeing 777, maybe a float plane?
* Written in C and assembly for controlled, robust, fast code for
optimum performance
* RUNS UNDER DOS 5.0 OR ABOVE! NO CD's AND **NO** WINDOWS 95! YAY!
* FREE! Flight Gear MUST be FREEWARE and easily accessible via the
Internet, AOL, Prodigy, CompuServe, Wow!, etc.
* Tech support by e-mail.
Anything you'd like to add? Please let me know -- my e-mail address is:
dm...@pen.k12.va.us. Oh, BTW, supplemental info will be available at:
http://users.aol.com/fsnews/flightgear/.
III. So, who's gonna put this thing together?
Good question. Here is a list of people I *HOPE* to get on our team.
Keep in mind that I haven't contacted any of them yet, so...
* Maurizio Gavioli and Chuck Dome - implementation of aircraft
* Curt Olson - STN and wx development, C aide
* ? - Panel Conversion
* Enno Borgsteede and the SCASM/FSASM development teams - scenery
* Mark Stotzer - project consultant/supervisor
* Mike Vidal - flight modeling
... and others. These people seem to be experts in the particular field
I have placed them in, so...
IV. Got any kind of release date yet?
Yeah, right. Next question! <g>
V. Miscellaneous
Got any input for this project? THEN PLEASE e-mail me at
dm...@pen.k12.va.us! Sorry to take up all this bandwidth, but
I felt this was something that most would be interested in.
Regards,
David Murr
Editor - FSNews
http://users.aol.com/fsnews/
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/ __/ __/ |/ /__ _ _____ | Editor - FSNews
/ _/_\ \/ -_) |/|/ (_-< | http://user.aol.com/fsnews/
/_/ /___/_/|_/\__/|__,__/___) | The leader in flight-sim news!
From this point on, the project quickly developed. Here is probably one of the first news articles on the new Flight Gear project:
- Flight Gear - noch (k)ein neuer Flugsimulator
Flight Gear - still (k)ein new flight simulator (a very rough English translation)
And from that article, possibly the very first FlightGear screenshot:
And the Windows 95 icon:
These are just a few important historic events/documents of general interest that I have stumbled across while in the process of documenting the history of the FlightGear assets.
Regards,
Edward