Lighten up...

Written by Thomas Thursday, 06 May 2010 22:44

...everyone, as I am not giving up. The only reason there is not much activity here at the moment is that I am bogged down with work. There will definitely be an FSX version out some time this year, although a few months later than planned. Most of the stuff that was lost in the disk crash can be recreated (with some effort), and the bulk of the FSX project is actually backed up.

The main problem right now is that I am out of a disk and a computer, since my development laptop was on a contract with my employer and that contract has expired. So I am currently in the market for a good (as in really good, gaming sort of) laptop. In the meantime I have to work on my desktop PC which is sort of low/medium end and lacks a good graphics card. I also have to install and configure all the applications that I use for development, which is at least 2-3 days of work. So, next weekend will be dedicated to getting the dev environment up and running on the desktop.

The ISP and web hosting fees were both due this month, 125€ in all. My warmest thanks to those of you who have contributed via PayPal. :)

This is really cool btw: Spy Plane Journey

Disaster update

Written by Thomas Thursday, 15 April 2010 20:58

These are the results after searching all my backup media:

• Latest full backup of source files: 12 Jan 2010
• Latest compiled version (installer): 24 Jan 2010

Checking back, I realised that I actually haven't done any serious work on the 35 since the beginning of February. This means that there is good hope of bringing the project back to life again. I make no promises, but it is at least not half as bad as I thought.

The primary task now is to install a new hard drive, reinstall the OS and all the runtime software, then setting up the complete development environment (the FSXA SDK, GMax, Visual Studio, etc.) for the umpteenth time. This will take some time, and I am a little strapped for cash at the moment which means that the new drive will have to wait for a few weeks. But at least we have a plan. :)

/Tom

Disaster

Written by Thomas Monday, 05 April 2010 22:10

After replacing the internal drive in my laptop and switching to Windows 7 a few months ago, backups have been non-automatic and consequently less frequent. This was a temporary lapse in my diligent backup routines and of course an open invitation to old Murphy. Yesterday, while preparing an external drive for backing up all my work files, I got a BSOD - and then the internal drive hickuped and died. No amount of trickery helped, the drive was dead as a doornail and still is.

This means that the last three months of work on the FSX version is lost - or at least the source files are. The compiled model, textures, gauges, sounds etc. have been backed up recently, but many functions and all interior/exterior animations are hard coded in the model and can not be edited or improved in any way without the source files. The 3D model itself is of course also frozen at the current state of development, including the virtual cockpit which is not 100% complete.

The sum of it is that in all probability no further development will be done on the FSX model, since I will never find the time to recreate the model and/or all the other lost source files. Unless I am miraculously able to rescue the data on the drive, there is no option but to release the unfinished FSX version as-is and kill the project.

I cannot actually describe how disappointed and sorry I am about this.

/Tom

Cloudy

Written by Thomas Saturday, 20 March 2010 00:24

Trying to focus on finalizing the FSX version but ending up watching reruns of Lost and doing quizzes on Facebook. This is not a good sign.

I have this nagging feeling that the FSX release-to-be is suffering from what is known as "feature creep". That is, instead of finishing a perfectly functional product you begin to add features that would be really cool, hence moving the release date indefinitely (since there are so many cool features that could be added).This is a well known phenomenon within the software development community, but I never thought it would apply to me (you never do, right?). 

Maybe the radar isn't that important, since it has no practical implementation anyway considering that it is really a targeting device, and there is no targeting function (yet). So maybe a rough simulation of the radar will do - as long as the flight characteristics and main instrumentation are realistic. And maybe the VC lighting subtleties are not a big issue, as most people will fly the aircraft in daylight - and Draken was not really a night fighter anyway. And the start-up smoke effect, and the reflections in the canopy glass, and the amount of transparency in the gunsight...? Hmmm.

If I just focus on the core functionality I could have a beta version out within the next week, and the first RC (Release Candidate) before the end of next month.

Time to grow up.