DOCSLIB.ORG

November 1999

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
November 1999 NOVEMBER 1999 GAME DEVELOPER MAGAZINE ON THE FRONT LINE OF GAME INNOVATION GAME PLAN DEVELOPER 600 Harrison Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 t: 415.905.2200 f: 415.905.2228 w: www.gdmag.com Can Subsidized Hardware Publisher Cynthia A. Blair cblair@mfi.com EDITORIAL Save PC Gaming? Editorial Director Alex Dunne [email protected] Managing Editor ith one of the largest inch monitor and a color printer for Kimberley Van Hooser [email protected] console launches ever about $90 more than a Dreamcast. Departments Editor just behind us and at While I’m glad that more PCs are Jennifer Olsen [email protected] least two more loom- working their way into homes — it cer- Art Director W Laura Pool lpool@mfi.com ing on the horizon over the next 18 tainly will grow the base of casual Editor-At-Large months, many people are speculating gamers — there are a couple of aspects Chris Hecker [email protected] about the features of these next sys- to these incentives that don’t bode well Contributing Editors tems. Upon seeing the impressive fea- for the PC game industry. First, these Jeff Lander [email protected] Paul Steed [email protected] ture sets of the new consoles, some rebate programs are seeding households Omid Rahmat [email protected] have raised questions as to the long- with machines barely equipped to play Advisory Board term viability of the PC as a gaming today’s games. The latest graphics and Hal Barwood LucasArts platform. It’s tough to look at a console audio hardware won’t be found in a Noah Falstein The Inspiracy Brian Hook Verant Interactive 4 spec sheet, read that it has broadband $289 computer, and without these capa- Susan Lee-Merrow Lucas Learning Internet access, amazing graphics and bilities, the systems offer little in terms Mark Miller Harmonix Dan Teven Teven Consulting audio capabilities, a keyboard, DVD of a cutting-edge gaming experience. Rob Wyatt DreamWorks Interactive support, support for electronic software Second, long-term service agreements distribution and backwards compatibil- with online services like Compuserve ADVERTISING SALES ity, and not see that the PC faces stiff could hamper the growth of broadband Western Regional Sales Manager Jennifer Orvik e: jorvik@mfi.com t: 415.905.2156 competition. The traditional strengths access to the Internet, and enabling Eastern Regional Sales Manager/Recruitment of the PC are being co-opted by con- broadband access is essential for grow- Ayrien Houchin e: ahouchin@mfi.com t: 415.905.2788 soles. I for one don’t believe PC gaming ing the online gaming market. International Sales Representative will go away, but the platform must It would be interesting to see a major Breakout Marketing e: [email protected] t: +49 431 801703 f:+49 431 801797 confront these challenges head-on. game publisher like Electronic Arts step ADVERTISING PRODUCTION To grow the PC market, prices must up and subsidize a line of high-end Senior Vice President/Production Andrew A. Mickus continue to drop. Fortunately they are, game PCs, targeting veteran PC owners Advertising Production Coordinator Dave Perrotti and it’s one reason I’m bullish on the and hard-core gamers. In return for the Reprints Stella Valdez t: 916.983.6971 PC’s future. One big reason for recent rebate at purchase, these consumers MILLER FREEMAN GAME GROUP MARKETING drops in PC prices is the direct result of might agree to buy a certain number of Marketing Director Gabe Zichermann marketing campaigns by ISPs like games from EA over a span of years (the MarCom Manager Susan McDonald Compuserve and AOL. Compuserve, for Columbia House music club model), or Junior MarCom Project Manager Beena Jacob example, is subsidizing the cost of sign a multi-year subscription to a per- CIRCULATION Compaq, HP and eMachine entry-level sistent game world like ULTIMA ONLINE. Vice President/Circulation Jerry M. Okabe systems to the tune of a $400 rebate at The latter option is especially intrigu- Assistant Circulation Director Sara DeCarlo purchase. In return, these consumers ing, since the risk to publishers of these Circulation Manager Stephanie Blake (many of them first-time PC purchasers) games is high — developing and main- Assistant Circulation Manager Craig Diamantine agree to subscribe to Compuserve for taining a persistent world is expensive, Circulation Assistant Kausha Jackson-Crain three years at $21.95 per month. These they are more difficult to manage, and Newsstand Analyst Joyce Gorsuch ISPs are gambling that it’s better to more rides on their success than with INTERNATIONAL LICENSING INFORMATION underwrite the cost of these new traditional games. A publisher could Robert J. Abramson and Associates Inc. machines today and recoup that invest- ensure that when the game was built, t: 914.723.4700 f: 914.723.4722 ment through extended online service some percentage of players would be e: [email protected] agreements. The ISP gets reimbursed for locked into the game. A guaranteed rev- its up-front investment from these enue stream over a period of years looks CEO/Miller Freeman Global Tony Tillin multi-year service agreements, it gets good on the books, and in the hit-or- Chairman/Miller Freeman Inc. Marshall W. Freeman “content” in the form of new chat par- miss world of game publishing, that’s President & CEO Donald A. Pazour ticipants, more eyeballs for which it can important to Wall Street. CFO/COO Ed Pinedo Executive Vice Presidents Darrell Denny, Galen A. sell advertising space on its service, and Of course, there’s nothing stopping Poss, Regina Starr Ridley other assorted benefits. If it persuades any of the console manufacturers from Sr. Vice Presidents Annie Feldman, Howard I. Hauben, these indentured servants — I mean, launching a similar rebate program to Wini D. Ragus, John Pearson, Andrew A. Mickus Sr. Vice President/Development Solutions Group KoAnn customers — to stay with Compuserve entice their customers. It may simply Vikören after the agreement is terminated, so be a matter of who strikes first. ■ Group President/Division SF1 Regina Ridley much the better for the ISP. The bottom line is that as I write this, you can buy a brand new 400MHz eMachine with 15- GAME DEVELOPER NOVEMBER 1999 www.gdmag.com New Products: Metacreations intro- duces Carrara, NxN rolls out Alien- brain, and Criterion unveils its next generation of Renderware. p. 7 Industry Watch: Dell snubs ATI, Microsoft shows off its new console, Sony divulges more PSX2 secrets, and Aureal busts out with boards. p. 8 Product Review: Jeff Lander sings the praises of multi-resolution meshes as he reports on Digimation’s MultiRes Toolkit News from the World of Game Development and Plug-in for 3D Studio Max. p. 10 characteristic of certain wildly popular Alienbrain’s server systems require New Products high-end packages. Windows NT 4.0 or later, and clients Carrara will sell for $499 and run on require Windows 95/98/2000/NT 4.0. by Jennifer Olsen Windows 95/98/2000/NT 4.0 and Pricing was not yet finalized at press Macintosh platforms. time, but the servers are expected to ■ Metacreations Corp. cost in the neighborhood of $4,900, A New Chip off the Old Block Carpinteria, Calif. with client systems priced at around (805) 566-6200 $1,900. NxN also offers flexible volume METACREATIONS has unveiled Carrara, http://www.metacreations.com pricing packages. its newest entry into the fray of “bar- ■ NxN Software AG 7 gain” 3D modeling and animation Munich, Germany packages. The name is appropriate X-File Management and More +49 (89) 27-32-24-0 enough: Italy’s Carrara marble has http://www.alienbrain.com been prized for its unsurpassed quality NXN SOFTWARE has announced Alien- since ancient times, back when a huge brain, the successor to its groundbreak- slab of marble was the original model- ing asset management tool tailored Gearing Up for the Next Generation ing environment for 3D artists. specifically for game developers, Carrara is actually the marriage of MediaStation. Remember back in high CRITERION SOFTWARE has revealed the Metacreations’ Ray Dream Studio and school when you wrote your first game? third generation of its multi-platform Infini-D products. So what separates it Maybe you had a few dozen files and 3D development toolkit, Renderware. from the rest of increasingly crowded kept track of them on the back of your By now we’ve all gotten an idea of pack of 3D modeling and animation physics homework. Whatever system what the near future of 3D gaming programs? It has much the same laun- you had, it wouldn’t work on today’s holds both for PCs and consoles. As dry list of features and effects as many development projects which now com- demands on developers increase, plat- of its competitors, including multiple prise thousands of files and mountains forms diversify and pressure builds to renderers, Direct3D and OpenGL sup- of media to manage. decrease development lead time, more port, importing and exporting of most The folks at NxN feel your pain, and developers may be considering outside industry-standard 2D and 3D file for- Alienbrain is their antidote to the resources for help. mats, scads of shaders and presets, and mind-boggling complexity of manag- Renderware is based on a streamlined an SDK for customization. However, ing a game development project. The plug-in architecture that allows develop- one feature that sets it apart is its clean, client/server system includes four mod- ers to mix and match functionality by attractive user interface, which lacks ules to track file management, version overloading the pipeline with their own the screen-clogging blizzard of buttons control, process automation and pro- tools (physics or collision detection, for ject tracking across differ- example,) when they so desire.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • AI in First-Person Shooter Games FPS AI Architecture Animation Layer
    AI in First-Person Shooter Games Based in part on material developed by John McCloskey Jeffrey Miller Amish Prasad & Lars Linden FPS AI Architecture • Animation • Movement • Combat • Behavior Animation Layer • Controls the player’s body • Must resolve conflicts between animations • Dynamic blending • Actions often need to be specialized • Parameterize existing animations • Taking control of specific body parts • Handling inverse kinematics 1 AI Components: Animation • NPC models built by artists • Use tools such as “3D Studio Max” or “Maya” • Models are are constructed from bones • Bones are connected by articulated joints. • The movement of the joints is constrained by their interconnectivity. • See George Bush ragdoll physics demo. • The skeletal system is covered by a mesh of textured polygons (“skeletal animation”.) Half-Life was one of the first games to demonstrate this. AI Components: Animation • Example: AI Components: Animation • Animation sequences are generated by defining how joints should articulate through time • Walking sequence: 2 AI Components: Animation Animation sequences for a model are either: • Hand generated by a computer animator • Recorded from real human (or animal) movements and applied to a skeletal system (“motion capture”) AI Components: Animation • Motion Capture: Tom Molet (EGCAS ’96) 3 AI Components: Animation Animation sequences tend to be: • Motion primitives: • Run, Walk, Jump, Side-step, Climb • Transitions • Start_Walk, Run_To_Jump, Jump_Land AI Components: Animation Some animation sequences only
    [Show full text]
  • Adoption of Sparse 3D Textures for Voxel Cone Tracing in Real Time Global Illumination
    Adoption of Sparse 3D Textures for Voxel Cone Tracing in Real Time Global Illumination Igor Aherne, Richard Davison, Gary Ushaw and Graham Morgan School of Computing, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K. [email protected] Keywords: Global Illumination, Voxels, Real-time Rendering, Lighting. Abstract: The enhancement of 3D scenes using indirect illumination brings increased realism. As indirect illumination is computationally expensive, significant research effort has been made in lowering resource requirements while maintaining fidelity. State-of-the-art approaches, such as voxel cone tracing, exploit the parallel nature of the GPU to achieve real-time solutions. However, such approaches require bespoke GPU code which is not tightly aligned to the graphics pipeline in hardware. This results in a reduced ability to leverage the latest dedicated GPU hardware graphics techniques. In this paper we present a solution that utilises GPU supported sparse 3D texture maps. In doing so we provide an engineered solution that is more integrated with the latest GPU hardware than existing approaches to indirect illumination. We demonstrate that our approach not only provides a more optimal solution, but will benefit from the planned future enhancements of sparse 3D texture support expected in GPU development. 1 INTRODUCTION bounces with minimal reliance on the specifics of the original 3D mesh in the calculations (thus achieving The realism of a rendered scene is greatly enhanced desirable frame-rates almost independent of the com- by indirect illumination - i.e. the reflection of light plexity of the scene). The approach entails represent- from one surface in the scene to another.
    [Show full text]
  • Parallel Space-Time Kernel Density Estimation
    Parallel Space-Time Kernel Density Estimation Erik Saule†, Dinesh Panchananam†, Alexander Hohl‡, Wenwu Tang‡, Eric Delmelle‡ † Dept. of Computer Science, ‡Dept. of Geography and Earth Sciences UNC Charlotte Charlotte, NC, USA Email: {esaule,dpanchan,ahohl,wtang4,eric.delmelle}@uncc.edu Abstract—The exponential growth of available data has these can be constructed, data scientists need to interactively increased the need for interactive exploratory analysis. Dataset visualize and explore the data to understand its structure. can no longer be understood through manual crawling and In this paper, we present the space-time kernel density simple statistics. In Geographical Information Systems (GIS), the dataset is often composed of events localized in space and estimation application which essentially builds a 3D density time; and visualizing such a dataset involves building a map map of events located in space and time. This problem is of where the events occurred. computationally expensive using existing algorithms. That We focus in this paper on events that are localized among is why we developed better sequential algorithms for this three dimensions (latitude, longitude, and time), and on com- problem that reduced the complexity by orders of magnitude. puting the first step of the visualization pipeline, space-time kernel density estimation (STKDE), which is most computa- And to bring the runtime in the realm of near real-time, we tionally expensive. Starting from a gold standard implementa- designed parallel strategies for shared memory machines. tion, we show how algorithm design and engineering, parallel Section II presents the STKDE application along with a decomposition, and scheduling can be applied to bring near reference implementation that uses a voxel-based algorithm real-time computing to space-time kernel density estimation.
    [Show full text]
  • Ank Register Volume Lxvix, No
    ANK REGISTER VOLUME LXVIX, NO. 11. RED BANK, N. J., THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5,1946. SECTION ONE—PAGES 1 TO ll Gold Wrist Watch Eisner Company To Preach His JCP & L Treasurer Present Race Prizes Gift To Rector River Plaza Roads At tbe close of last Sunday morn- Has Jobs Open j Final Sermons Ing's service at St. John's, chapel. At M.B.C. Dance Little Sliver, Rev. Robert H. An- For 160 Veterans At St. George's Resurfaced Gtatii derson received a gold wrist watch in appreciation of his tbree years of service at tbe chapel. New Program For Rev. H. Fairfield Butt, Janet Boynton Is Awarded The gift was presented by Dan- Edwin H. Brasch Pays $1,400 iel S. Weigand on behalf of the ves- G. I.'s Now In III, Will Say Farewell Good Sportsmanship Trophy try and congregation and carried To McDowell Firm For Work with it their very best wishes. A Full Operation To Rumson Sunday large bouquet of gladioli was sent Highlighting the presentation ol As the result of an Investigation jor portion of the county's roft&i to Mrs. Anderson by members of Slgmund Eisner company planta prizes won In the Monmouth Boat Rev. H. Falrfleld Butt, Jd, 'rec- by The Register, Edwin H. Brasch work, had completed a the altar guild. in Red Bank, Freehold, Keansburg club season's sailboat races, which tor of St. George's-by-the-Rlver, will of Nutswamp road, Middletown made job at River Plaza. Mr,; Highlands Asks The rector has assumed his new and South Amlboy have immediate took place Monday night at a danc hold his final service in Rumson township, Monmouth county rood Parkes knew nothing about duties at Trinity Episcopal church, openings for 160 World war 2 vet- given tbe eklppera and crews a next Sunday, September 8.
    [Show full text]
  • PC-Based Aviation Training Devices for Pilot Training in Visual Flight Rules Procedures; Development, Validation and Effectiveness
    Copyright is owned by the Author of the thesis. Permission is given for a copy to be downloaded by an individual for the purpose of research and private study only. The thesis may not be reproduced elsewhere without the permission of the Author. PC-Based Aviation Training Devices for Pilot Training in Visual Flight Rules Procedures; Development, Validation and Effectiveness A thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Aviation at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand Savern Reweti 2014 Abstract Flying is a difficult and complex activity that requires a significant level of attention from the pilot as well as a lengthy training period to gain sufficient competency. For issues of both cost and safety, flight simulation has been an integral part of flight training from its earliest beginnings. There have been a number of technological developments and improvements in both the level of fidelity and the training effectiveness of flight simulators. As a result, flight simulators in use today are the result of this technological, psychological, and engineering evolution. Indeed, simulator cockpits can now accurately replicate all of the functions of flight controls and instrumentation found in real aircraft. Furthermore, the development of high- resolution display systems utilising computer-generated imagery (CGI), means that flight simulators can now display very realistic terrain and environmental effects. The high cost of modern full motion flight simulators (FFSs) has meant that their use has generally been restricted to commercial airlines, military forces, and government agencies. More recently, rapid advances and decreasing costs in PC-based computer technology has enabled flight-training organisations to conduct more training with less expensive fixed-base flight training devices (FTDs).
    [Show full text]
  • U.S. National Aerobatic Championships
    November 2012 2012 U.S. National Aerobatic Championships OFFICIAL MAGAZINE of the INTERNATIONAL AEROBATIC CLUB OFFICIAL MAGAZINE of the INTERNATIONAL AEROBATIC CLUB OFFICIAL MAGAZINE of the INTERNATIONAL AEROBATIC CLUB Vol. 41 No. 11 November 2012 A PUBLICATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL AEROBATIC CLUB CONTENTSOFFICIAL MAGAZINE of the INTERNATIONAL AEROBATIC CLUB At the 2012 U.S. National Aerobatic Championships, 95 competitors descended upon the North Texas Regional Airport in hopes of pursuing the title of national champion and for some, the distinguished honor of qualifying for the U.S. Unlimited Aerobatic Team. –Aaron McCartan FEATURES 4 2012 U.S. National Aerobatic Championships by Aaron McCartan 26 The Best of the Best by Norm DeWitt COLUMNS 03 / President’s Page DEPARTMENTS 02 / Letter From the Editor 28 / Tech Tips THE COVER 29 / News/Contest Calendar This photo was taken at the 30 / Tech Tips 2012 U.S. National Aerobatic Championships competition as 31 / FlyMart & Classifieds a pilot readies to dance in the sky. Photo by Laurie Zaleski. OFFICIAL MAGAZINE of the INTERNATIONAL AEROBATIC CLUB REGGIE PAULK COMMENTARY / EDITOR’S LOG OFFICIAL MAGAZINE of the INTERNATIONAL AEROBATIC CLUB PUBLISHER: Doug Sowder IAC MANAGER: Trish Deimer-Steineke EDITOR: Reggie Paulk OFFICIAL MAGAZINE of the INTERNATIONAL AEROBATIC CLUB VICE PRESIDENT OF PUBLICATIONS: J. Mac McClellan Leading by example SENIOR ART DIRECTOR: Olivia P. Trabbold A source for inspiration CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS: Jim Batterman Aaron McCartan Sam Burgess Reggie Paulk Norm DeWittOFFICIAL MAGAZINE of the INTERNATIONAL AEROBATIC CLUB WHILE AT NATIONALS THIS YEAR, the last thing on his mind would IAC CORRESPONDENCE I was privileged to visit with pilots at be helping a competitor in a lower International Aerobatic Club, P.O.
    [Show full text]
  • 2K Games and Irrational Games Announce Bioshock(R) Infinite
    2K Games and Irrational Games Announce BioShock(R) Infinite August 12, 2010 2:01 PM ET Creators of original BioShock(R) look to the sky in the next chapter of the award-winning franchise NEW YORK, Aug 12, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- 2K Games announced today that BioShock(R) Infinite, a first-person shooter, is currently in development at Irrational Games, the studio behind the original BioShock(R) which has sold over 4 million units worldwide. Set in 1912, BioShock Infinite introduces an entirely new narrative experience that lifts players out of the familiar confines of Rapture and rockets them to Columbia, an immense city in the sky. BioShock Infinite is currently planned for release during calendar 2012. Originally conceived as a floating symbol of American ideals at a time when the United States was emerging as a world power, Columbia is dispatched to distant shores with great fanfare by a captivated public. What begins as a brand new endeavor of hope turns drastically wrong as the city soon disappears into the clouds to whereabouts unknown. The player assumes the role of former Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt, sent to the lost city to rescue Elizabeth, a young woman imprisoned there since childhood. He develops a relationship with Elizabeth, augmenting his abilities with hers so the pair may escape from a city that is literally falling from the sky. DeWitt must learn to fight foes in high-speed Sky-Line battles, engage in combat both indoors and amongst the clouds, and harness the power of dozens of new weapons and abilities. "We are excited to expand the world of BioShock, which is one of the industry's most critically acclaimed and beloved franchises," said Christoph Hartmann, president of 2K.
    [Show full text]
  • Resume / Cover Letter / Sample Code Updated May 2009
    http://www.enigmasoftware.ca/henry/Resume2009.html Resume / Cover Letter / Sample Code Updated May 2009 Henry Smith [email protected] home: (780) 642-2822 Available September 2009 cell: (780) 884-7044 15 people have recommended Henry Currently in: Edmonton, AB Canada Objective Senior programmer position at a world-class game development studio Interested in GUI programming/design, rapid prototyping, scripting languages, and engine architecture Skills Eight years of game industry experience, plus many more as a hobbyist Expert C++/C programmer Development experience on PC, Mac, Console, Handheld, and Flash platforms Published indie/shareware developer Languages Expert in C++/C, ActionScript 2 Familiar with Ruby, Python, Lua, JavaScript, UnrealScript, XML Exposure to various teaching languages (Scheme, ML, Haskell, Eiffel, Prolog) Tech Familiar with Scaleform GFx, Flash, Unity, STL, Boost, Perforce Exposure to Unreal Engine, NetImmerse/Gamebryo, iPhone, OpenGL Experience BioWare Senior GUI programmer on Dragon Age: Origins Senior Programmer Architected and maintained a GUI framework in C++ and Flash/ActionScript used for all game UI Edmonton, AB Canada Mentored a junior programmer 2004—present Spearheaded a “Study Lunch” group for sharing technical knowledge and expertise Member of the (internal) Technology Architecture Group Worked with many aspects of the game engine including: graphics, input, game-rules, scripting, tools Irrational Games Designed and built several major game systems for a PS2 3rd-person action title, using C++,
    [Show full text]
  • Multi-User Game Development
    California State University, San Bernardino CSUSB ScholarWorks Theses Digitization Project John M. Pfau Library 2007 Multi-user game development Cheng-Yu Hung Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project Part of the Software Engineering Commons Recommended Citation Hung, Cheng-Yu, "Multi-user game development" (2007). Theses Digitization Project. 3122. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/3122 This Project is brought to you for free and open access by the John M. Pfau Library at CSUSB ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses Digitization Project by an authorized administrator of CSUSB ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ' MULTI ;,..USER iGAME DEVELOPMENT '.,A,.'rr:OJ~c-;t.··. PJ:es·~nted ·t•o '.the·· Fa.8lllty· of. Calif0rr1i~ :Siat~:, lJniiV~r~s'ity; .•, '!' San. Bernardinti . - ' .Th P~rt±al Fu1fillrnent: 6f the ~~q11l~~fuents' for the ;pe'gree ···•.:,·.',,_ .. ·... ··., Master. o.f.·_s:tience•· . ' . ¢ornput~r •· ~6i~n¢e by ,•, ' ' .- /ch~ng~Yu Hung' ' ' Jutie .2001. MULTI-USER GAME DEVELOPMENT A Project Presented to the Faculty of California State University, San Bernardino by Cheng-Yu Hung June 2007 Approved by: {/4~2 Dr. David Turner, Chair, Computer Science ate ABSTRACT In the Current game market; the 3D multi-user game is the most popular game. To develop a successful .3D multi-llger game, we need 2D artists, 3D artists and programme.rs to work together and use tools to author the game artd a: game engine to perform \ the game. Most of this.project; is about the 3D model developmept using too.ls such as Blender, and integration of the 3D models with a .level editor arid game engine.
    [Show full text]
  • Jsbsim Quarterly Newsletter Summer 2006
    The quarterly newsletter for JSBSim, an open source flight dynamics model in C++ VOLUME 3, ISSUE 2 SUMMER 2006 Building an Aerobatics Aircraft for JSBSim : The Su-26 Enrique Laso Leon What's the point? aesthetic judgment! Pure unlimited aerobatic aircraft have seldom been Modeling the Beast modeled in any mainstream simulator. Many will argue that the Extra 300 introduced in Microsoft® Aerobatic aircraft have plenty of features that make Flight simulator-98 is a clear proof of the contrary, them easy to model (which is good since this is my yet the FS flight model was (and still is) too limited first add-on aircraft for FlightGear): to provide a decent sensation of flying. The most recent aerobatics planes correctly modeled are the • Straight wing with little taper ratio (this allows SF260 and Spitfire MkXIV from Real Air® but those are not dedicated “stunt airplanes”. See Page 12: The last serious attempt to model this category of aircraft was the first Flight Unlimited simulator back in 1996! It was nicely packaged with a fine tutorial (remember, this was at a time when games came with a manual) and allowed one to fly machines ranging from an aerobatic sailplane to the Su- 31 unlimited aerobatic aircraft. Many reasons can be found for the lack of interest in this cate- gory. The most obvious is that aerobatic aircraft are limited to Inside this issue: Visual Flight Rules since in- struments are heavy and sensi- tive to the kind of flying in- Aerobatics Aircraft: Su-26 1 volved. What's worse, they have a very short range using the lifting line theory for 3D wing deri- because a routine of 10 minutes of high-g maneu- Scripting Multiple Runs in 3 vations (Prandtl) vers will bring the pilot to his (or her) knees, and • Symmetric Airfoils JSBSim the less fuel, the better for maneuverability.
    [Show full text]
  • Hints on Flying the Pilatus B4
    Hints on Flying the Pilatus B4 This is an English summary of Jochen Reuter's paper, published on the SAGA-website www.sagach.ch I could not resist adding a few hints of my own, where I saw it appropriate. But overall, it is still Jochen's text. And I was too lazy to convert any units of measurement from metric to English. If you prefer to go by knots and pounds etc. you will have to juggle the units yourself. General Remarks Any pilot, who is new to the B4 will notice that it is a "noisy" glider. The "blonk-blonk" of the skin panels can upset a novice, but after a few flights you get used to it and before long you'll ignore it. Jochen's B4 came from the UK and a previous owner had apparently tried to turn it into a high-performance machine. All the skin joints and rivet heads had been covered and smoothed. But if you intend to do aerobatics, this is not a good idea at all. Apart from the additional weight and lots of useless work, the putty becomes brittle with time and when the structure is flexing, will crack and eventually peel off. Talking about C of G: Jochen is very tall and weighs around 100 kg. So he flies at the load limit and also the forward CG limit. Earlier, he used to fly with the small tail ballast weight (2.3 kg), mainly to facilitate spinning, but now he recommends even for heavy pilots not to. In his opinion, the B4 handles better with a forward CG.
    [Show full text]
  • Re-Purposing Commercial Entertainment Software for Military Use
    Calhoun: The NPS Institutional Archive Theses and Dissertations Thesis Collection 2000-09 Re-purposing commercial entertainment software for military use DeBrine, Jeffrey D. Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School http://hdl.handle.net/10945/26726 HOOL NAV CA 9394o- .01 NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL Monterey, California THESIS RE-PURPOSING COMMERCIAL ENTERTAINMENT SOFTWARE FOR MILITARY USE By Jeffrey D. DeBrine Donald E. Morrow September 2000 Thesis Advisor: Michael Capps Co-Advisor: Michael Zyda Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited REPORT DOCUMENTATION PAGE Form Approved OMB No. 0704-0188 Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instruction, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, 1215 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 1204, Arlington, VA 22202-4302, and to the Office of Management and Budget, Paperwork Reduction Project (0704-0188) Washington DC 20503. 1 . AGENCY USE ONLY (Leave blank) 2. REPORT DATE REPORT TYPE AND DATES COVERED September 2000 Master's Thesis 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE 5. FUNDING NUMBERS Re-Purposing Commercial Entertainment Software for Military Use 6. AUTHOR(S) MIPROEMANPGS00 DeBrine, Jeffrey D. and Morrow, Donald E. 8. PERFORMING 7. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES) ORGANIZATION REPORT Naval Postgraduate School NUMBER Monterey, CA 93943-5000 9. SPONSORING / MONITORING AGENCY NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES) 10. SPONSORING/ Office of Economic & Manpower Analysis MONITORING AGENCY REPORT 607 Cullum Rd, Floor IB, Rm B109, West Point, NY 10996-1798 NUMBER 11.
    [Show full text]