Sorry for not writing more lately. While I’ve been ignoring this blog, I’ve been hip-deep in work on several other projects. For bush fliers, the work continues on the Tongass Fjords X package, release date TBD. I’ll try to post some screenies soon — you’ll like what you see. Also, Emma Field X is back in the works, albeit at an early stage. And for RealAir’s upcoming FSX Spitfire, there will be an updated version of my RAF West Malling airfield.

As if that wasn’t enough, I’ve also been  spending a great deal of time on my latest novel, working title: Last Thurday. As I work through the process of noveling, ideas occur to me for short essays. I’ve begun collecting them on my new writing blog Words for Writers.

Please accept my apologies for not being a more attentive FS blogger. I’ll get back on track soon, I promise. And I’ll have lots of pics to post, too! Say tuned.

After mulling over our options for a while now, Jon Patch and I have decided to cancel our plans to create Vancouver Int’l Airport for FSX. The reasons are many, but primarily for me it came down to priorities. I’m working on Emma Field X and Tongass Fjords at the moment. Both are small fields with a lot of character, which is the sort of project I enjoy most. I’m looking forward to putting my full efforts behind those projects for now. Jon is also hip-deep in some new modeling for the upcoming Misty Fjords X, so you’ll be getting a lot of new goodies from both of us soon enough!

Whew, I just got back into Portland after 5 jam-packed days of ’simming madness, and boy are my arms tired…

It’s true—what an amazing week of meeting my favorite fellow FS designers, developers, and publishers. Being able to rap with the Aces staff was a huge benefit of the DevCon. I think I learned more from a ten-minue discussion with Adrian Woods about modeling than I have from over a year of pondering the SDK. Due to NDA restrictions, I can’t discuss what we talked about, but you can be sure that the benefit will bubble through to my upcoming projects.

Among the famous FS faces that I got to meet up close and personal, several stand out. Finally, at long last, I got to shake hands with Francois Dumas, the venerable Fritz himself. And this after only a few years of working alongside him to build products! Arno Gerretsen was another of my favorite devs who showed up. We had a great time taking in the DevCon, and later Avsim’s FanCon, together. Misho Katulic (of Terrabuilder fame) was on hand, showing his latest effort which transforms the FS world into the lunar surface. Folks, this product has to be seen to be believed. Misho has clearly put heart and soul into its development, and it shows. And he’s a great guy as well!

Allen Kriesmann and Jeff (better known on the forums as “quantumleap”) from Scenery Solutions, makers of the Ultimate Terrain series, flew in, as did John Venema (”koorby”) from Orbx. Together with Nigel Grant and my pals Holger Sandmann and Justin (FSGenesis) Tyme, we all took to the town on Friday night, inundating the Rock Bottom brewery with no doubt more FS scenery designers than they’d seen in one spot in a long time. It’s great to get to meet all these guys in person after knowing them for so long in the virtual world.

I’ve got some ideas for a set of FSX materials tutorials to post on the FSDeveloper Wiki soon, based on the talk I gave earlier today at the Avsim FanCon on that topic. More on that as it develops. In the meantime, here are a few pics to give you the feel for what was there. Pardon the couple of extremely “artistic” shots. I forgot my regular camera the night we all went to the Red Hook brewery, and my silly cell phone camera had to pinch-hit. It’s not very agreeable to low lighting.

I’m packing up my stuff today, and heading north to Seattle for the Microsoft Aces “DevCon” that starts tomorrow morning. It promises to be a fascinating few days, capped by the Avsim “FanCon” over the weekend. I have the pleasure of closing out the festivities, workshop-wise, with my Sunday mid-day talk on the new Gmax material properties for FSX. Too bad I’m only partway done with the PowerPoint! I guess I’ll have to be the kid doing his homework on the schoolbus this time.

One of the highlights of my talk will be demonstrating some of the new material properties in FSX, using the restaurant from the upcoming Emma Field X as an example. It’ll be the first time this particular model has been shown, and I’m hoping for a good reaction. If you haven’t seen it already, check out Holger’s screenshots of the upcoming Emma X terrain. Outstanding, as usual.

And speaking of all that, I’ve also added a mailing list function to my blog. Look to the right for the Email Newsletter Signup link. If you want to stay in the loop on what I’m working on and receive notifications of upcoming product releases, be sure to sign up.

Okay, I’ll have a lot more to post once the Dev/Fan events are in full swing. Stay tuned… pics on the way!

It’s all over the news sites, but I want to make sure everyone gets the news… the Eaglesoft Piper Twin Commanche is available for purchase. I’ve watched this plane being developed, and I can honestly say you won’t find a nicer twin anywhere. My buddy Owen Hewitt was the principal modeler, and his expert touch definitely shows in this wonderful little bird. The initial release is for FS9, which ought to please anyone who hasn’t made the switch to FSX yet. They’ll be following up with an FSX-specific version later. Check the Eaglesoft website for more details.

If you’re fence-sitting (or just like great screenshots), check out Nick Churchill’s galleries of Twin Commanche pics on his site.

My friend Manfred Herz, a big cheese over at the German-language bush-pilots.net has posted a review of Dillingham. Danke Schön, Manfred! I’m glad to know that German and Austrian pilots are having a good time getting their feet wet in the islands. It’s coming up on that time of year when a cold Margarita and some warm sand between your toes starts sounding mighty tempting…

The talking heads in Redmond have spoken. Well, Phil Taylor, anyway, who’s one of the more vocal of the MS Aces developers. Before any discussion of what he said, I think we owe Phil a big thank-you for keeping us abreast of Microsoft’s thinking re: FSX and beyond. It’s a breath of fresh air to have regular updates from the team, and I for one very much appreciate it.

Now, on to the show. In Phil’s blog post, he gives us the skinny on what to really expect now that they’ve more or less completed both FSX SP2 (the long-awaited DX10 update), and their Acceleration expansion pack. The news is a mixed bag, but let’s start with the fun bits.

Acceleration sounds like a terrific addon, and one that will surely delight current FS fans, and perhaps garner a few newcomers as well. Three new aircraft (an F18 “Hornet”, an EH101 heavy helicopter, and a tricked-out P51 air racer), some killer new features like slingloads for the choppers, aircraft carrier launch and recovery, and even multiplayer air racing, all converge for what sounds like a lot of fun. Toss in 30 new missions, and you’ve got your next few weekends blocked out for you. Has MS ever done a full-on expansion like this in the history of the franchise? Not that I can recall, but then again I’ve only been at this game since 1999.

Okay, now for the more frustrating news. The implementation of DirectX 10 in FSX is now officially referred to by the Aces as a “preview”. Phil outlines what that means, but in essence it comes down to problems achieving what they wanted to do with DX10 in the FSX scope. Forget the so-called “magic screenshots” that were bandied about before. Phil sounds especially frustrated about those, as they set some expectations that proved too difficult to meet for this version of the sim. What we actually have is a hint of things to come, rather than a full-blown set of new features. They focused on the areas of VC self-shadowing, improvements to water, and atmospheric effects, like HDR bloom (giving much better frame rates than the original bloom). From what I’ve seen, it looks amazing, and portends well for FS11.

Aye, but here’s the rub. All that advancement has a price, and in this case it’s the loss of backward-compatibility. From what Phil says, anything not authored specifically for FSX, be it scenery or aircraft, won’t display properly (or at all in some cases) in the DX10 preview. It’s a heads-up for add-on designers: get with the SDK program, or your work will be irrelevant in the near future. All of that is fine, of course, except that in FSX several key features we scenery designers depend on were removed. Seasonal textures for objects, conditional code so that models react to sim weather variables (think windsocks), hard winter photo texture that no longer show snow when the flakes begin to fall… these are biggies, and without them scenery takes a big step backward. Oh yes, and going forward, there’ll be no more FS8-style ground polys, the kind that have been used by scenery designers for years now to create custom runways, taxiways, etc. that look so much better than the defaults. All we can do is cross our fingers and hope they find new ways to implement these features that work in the next sim. And we can make a lot of noise about it in the process.

The message I’d like to get out to my scenery customers is this: if you have DX10 hardware and run Vista, by all means try the preview when you get it. Enjoy what it has to offer, and imagine what coolness awaits you in the next sim. Then turn it off and go back to DX9 for now, so you can enjoy the work I’ll be creating in the next couple of years. I hate to force a choice like that, but I’m just passing along the options I’ve been left with.

Nothing pleases me more than when two of my favorite pastimes come together. I’ve been writing for several years now, and have managed to turn out one novel manuscript and start on another. In addition to my fiction, I’ve written a few FS aircraft reviews for my good friend Nick Churchill’s website, ScreenshotArtist. Nick and I were chatting recently, and I mentioned that I was growing restless with the standard pro/con review format, and wanted to try something a little different. The result is the Flight Stories series, reviews with a fictional slant.

The series began with Joyride, a tale of a reluctant plane thief and his gung-ho sidekick who liberate a restored B17 from her moorings for a jaunt over the Oregon coast. This weekend, Nick and I posted another entry. Blind Date is a story of lust gone wrong in the sky above the Idaho/Canada border. The star of the show is Eaglesoft’s lovely Columbia 400, showcased against the backdrop of a libidinous encounter that proves the old adage be careful what you wish for. As usual, Nick provides the stunning illustrations. If you haven’t gotten hooked on FS fiction yet, now is an excellent time. Check it out!

Looks like another tourist has dropped in on my little island oasis. Finnish blogger Jarn has traded in his parka for La Vida Aloha with a recent post highlighting the vistas around Dillingham. He lets the pictures do most of the talking… a man after my own heart. Mahalo nui loa, Jarn!