The End

Written by Thomas Saturday, 27 August 2011 00:00

History

Back in 1991, I ran a small advertising and desktop publishing business. In my spare time I was a dedicated flightsimmer, absorbed by Microsoft Flight Simulator 4 which ran beautifully on the Apple Mac IIfx that took up a large part of my desk. I had begun to create some simple sceneries and panels, but gauge programming and aircraft modelling was still way out of my league as I was primarily a graphic designer, not a programmer. For years, I was completely happy just customizing the existing panel graphics and editing the config scripts.

Around the turn of the millenium I stumbled upon a few FS2000/2002 models of one of my favorite aircraft of all time, the Saab 35 Draken (which had recently been retired from the Swedish air force but was still in use in Finland and Austria). As there was no accompanying instrument panel, you had to use either the stock Lear panel or one of the few jet fighter panels available at the time. After some frustrating attempts to piece together something better out of photos of Draken cockpits and gauges from other FS aircraft, I finally decided it was time to learn gauge programming and create my own Draken instrument panel. As they say, the rest is history.

For almost a decade now I have been adding models, textures, sounds, effects, and ever more complex and accurate simulations of the aircraft's systems and gauges. From 2002 up to the present date I have been in constant collaboration with former Draken pilots and ground crew, aircraft and avionics engineers, and supporters within or associated with the air forces of Sweden, Austria, Denmark and Finland. More than 10,000 people have downloaded the different versions of Draken, and several air museums and event companies make use of my simulation, some of them using real Draken hardware. This website has seen over a million page hits and has hundreds of registered members. This is far, far more than I ever could have envisioned ten years ago.

Future

I now feel that the Draken project has reached its logical end. After the Microsoft Flight Simulator franchise was discontinued I have gradually lost interest in flightsimming in general, and add-on development in particular, and I no longer have the time or energy to keep a full-scale web community running. And so I have decided to close shop.

The final version of Draken for FSX (4.0 RTW), the manuals for the FS9 and FSX versions, and repaint kits for both versions can be found in the Downloads section. All downloads are available without registration and free, although you are welcome to donate whatever you think my work is worth via the PayPal module on the top right on this page. Select a currency and enter any amount, then click Donate. You will be transfered to a secure website where you can use your PayPal account or any major credit card for payment. Or, you can just download and use anything here for free.

This website will still be available for some time, but the forum is offline indefinitely and new user registrations are no longer possible. There will be no no more updates, no bugfixes, no active support. To those who recently registered on the website to get access to all these things, my apologies.

My sincere thanks to all of you who have followed me through the years. This was really, really good while it lasted. I will miss you all.

Happy flying!    /Tom