Some days...

... I really wonder. Below are this week's comments on "Courchevel - An FSX Movie". If the youtube community has taught me one thing ( other than that the once beautiful English language has officially deteriorated into little more than grunting via keyboard ) it's that no matter how plainly obvious the answer to a question might be, it'll be asked anyway, and frequently...

even if the answer is written...

directly in front of your face...

...multiple times.

Sigh. ;)

Fight's on!

So what to do when you're kinda brain fried working on the next vid, and your favourite aircraft maker shows up in your multiplayer session because he's kinda brain fried on gauge coding and wants a break?

Dogfight of course!

David Brice, the head honcho at Iris, popped into my session with his new Pilatus PC-9 beta (which I was just about to try out myself at the time, thanks David) and so why not see what the lighter and sexier version of the Texan can do? ;)

David got the upper hand early on with a smart reversal when I lost sight of him (yeah, even with my track-ir no less, ugh) but I managed to chase him down in the end after quite a protracted low level lufbery (stalemate turning fight). David's a good sport, and that was just way too much fun. :) Incidentally I owe all of my dogfighting skills to the twelve years spent with the often frustratingly unkillable Pebble on my six. Anyway, I had FSrecorder running the whole time and here's how it played out... enjoy!


By the way the PC-9 is just awesome. Pop over to the Iris Simulations forum and check out the incredible cockpit night lighting especially.

Joining my multiplayer sessions...

So since I've had several requests lately from people here and on youtube about joining my multiplayer sessions, I'm going to run passworded ones from now on and give you the password here. I'll post it permanently on the sidebar to the right as well. Please read this entire post before joining though.

My sessions will still be called "Rafale21 VFR" since that's what the regulars are used to, and the password will be: lotus (lower case). The sessions are always in the free-flight lobby when I'm online, well, when gamespy is working anyway.

I'd love to leave my sessions wide open as I enjoy meeting new people, but ever since Acceleration came out it's just been a disaster every time I do. For some reason the only thing most kids know how to do in FSX is jump in an F-18 and spend an hour buzzing my head. It really gets old. ;) Going with passworded sessions will circumvent the 'friends only' issue as I know it can be difficult to locate my name in the lobby if trying to private message me. Anyway you will need SP2 or Acceleration to join my sessions, and *please please please* have a microphone, I really don't enjoy typing while flying, and often just don't have enough free brain cells for it haha.

For those who haven't flown with me before, I have no rules in my sessions other than politeness to others, in both verbal comms and in flying style, which means flying into others or being a pest won't be tolerated. I'm an anarchist in the strictest sense of the term which means I absolutely hate rules, but those are two I have to keep for everyone's enjoyment. ;) Also, note that if you bring an airliner in you should be prepared to be poked, prodded, and generally made fun of for doing so. ;) You'll mostly find us flying fighters, warbirds, general aviation, or helicopters. I used to be quite into running ATC, and I may yet again one day for kicks, but formation flying is most often what you'll find us doing.

Honestly our non-filming sessions aren't uber-exciting since most of my friends and I play FSX simply to unwind, relax, cruise around and see some pretty sights, but we do have some great and often highly philosophical discussions along the way. Either that or we just blab about meaningless crap, depending on how many bottles of Stella are involved. :)

As a final note, all of our flying group's members are adults, so if you're under 18 our sessions are really not for you. Our discussions enroute can end up on mature topics and that's a freedom I will be maintaining in my sessions. That means that with few exceptions anyone under 18 years old will likely be asked to leave. Sorry, but that's the way it is.

Anyway, if you'd like to fly along with my friends and I (and you're over 18 haha) then please feel free to pop in and say hi if you see my session up. Please also let me know your Youtube name if you've left any comments on my films, so I can put two and two together. I don't expect the password to change unless the aforementioned screaming 10 year olds in F-18s start showing up. :)

Cheers, and hope to see you in the skies!

-lotus

A peek behind the curtain...

Nope, not another preview, but a blog post about a little road trip I took on Friday, back down to Seattle, to visit the wizards themselves, ACES Studios. Paul Lange, the lead designer on FSX, invited me over for a tour of their shop and to meet the FSX team, and I have to say I was highly impressed. I'd had the pleasure of meeting Hal and Mike Singer at the Avsim conference but it was great to meet Paul and Phil Taylor and many of the other team members and see the shop itself. And before you ask, yes I got a look at some FS11 stuff, and no I'm not saying a bloody word about it, sorry. ;)

What I can tell you is that they're a seriously cool bunch and I was really impressed with everyone I met. Their passion for flying is simply indisputable. Unlike any other game developer I've worked at or even visited, these guys and girls really do care about what they make. I've been in the business long enough to know the difference.

I'm not sure what struck me more, seeing the truly *insane* amount of aircraft paraphernalia and models on every wall and desk (and floor) or the single unopened Flight Simulator 1.0 box I saw in a glass case. That was quite a moment, had to sort of stop and stare at it for a minute. Thanks Bruce Artwick, we all owe you one. :)

We spent a lot of time talking about FSX and the future of flight simulator and I was really surprised at how many things we agreed on, right down to recent addon aircraft we like. Despite the limits imposed by current hardware and systems their vision of where the software could go is pretty cool and far reaching, and while I can't talk about the bits they're working on for the next version I can say that there's going to be some pretty serious wow factor in it if things go according to plan. Even at this very early stage in its development I was impressed with what I saw. Secondarily I had a little bit of a "cult hero's" welcome there from several people which *really* threw me off. I have a few fans at Aces it seems and I found that quite humbling haha.

Their place itself is quite nice actually. Externally it's your typical business park type layout, though at least they have real trees all around it (are you listening San Jose?) but inside it's anything but dull. Bright, spacious, airy and colourful, lots of windows, plenty of toys around and a very complete hot cafeteria (good calzones!). They have quite the art collection of screenshots on their walls as well, many of them by Mango and Cell, two of the best FSX still photographers out there. I also had a look at some of the art in Train Sim 2.0 and found myself remembering a time when I was very young, a rare moment long ago when trains were actually cooler to me than aircraft. :)

Yeah, ok, that didn't last, but I can see that project being a fun alternative for their art team for awhile especially. I can tell you from personal experience that you can burn out on game art pretty fast if you keep doing the same damn thing version after version, year after year. Franchise games are particularly hard on artists and programmers, so for anyone who thinks they should forget this train stuff and get back to FS, think of it instead as a working vacation for them, good for their well being and by extension for the well being of Flight Simulator.

So my thanks to Paul and the Aces team for a great and highly informative afternoon. It was pretty awesome to meet the people who make a product I've been addicted to for over 20 years. ;)

I didn't even get stuck at the border for three hours on the way home as I usually do. Maybe Canada Customs finally located their brains.

Lotus out.