wanttaja@ssc-vax.UUCP (Ronald J Wanttaja) (01/21/85)
<I tried to mail this, but couldn't get it through...> Ah, but there are two advantages IFR (Flight Simulator) has over FSII: 1. Speed. IFR updates aircraft attitude three times faster than FSII... because, I admit, it doesn't have to draw the outside view. FSII updates the screen once a second. If the aircraft is rolling quickly, the screen "jerks" to the new attitude. In other words, you don't see a roll, you just see a change in the horizon's position. On IFR, push the stick to the side and the artifical horizon ROLLs; updating aircraft attitude two or three times a second. 2. Controllability. Contrary to what you might believe after trying FSII, flying an airplane is easy. Sublogic did an exceptional job simulating the aircraft, but fell down when it came to actually controlling it. They were left with the standard digital stick to control what is an analog function- the method they chose, coupled with the slow speed of the program, makes it impossible to fly in a manner similar to an aircraft. IFR was designed to HANDLE like an aircraft,, as a primary design goal. Put a pilot at the controls of FSII, and he/she will likely wobble all over the sky, quite likely crashing a few times until he/she discovers the differences between FSII and real flying. Hand a pilot the joystick for IFR, and no major problems will ensue. Because of the digital stick, IFR can't be perfect, either, but it takes very little getting used to. At a computer show once, an instrument rated pilot flew IFR on an ILS approach to a landing with minimal comment from me, without ever having operated the program before... he just sat down and flew it. I wrote IFR to try to simulate all the problems facing a pilot- fuel conservation, navigation (IFR pilot must compare data from his instruments to a hard copy map), instrument scan, etc. IFR compresses all these problems, so you can encounter them over 20-30 minutes or so, instead of 2 to 3 hours. I am not a programmer... I am a pilot, who was happening to learn how to program and decided to try writing a flight simulator (which explains the emphasis on proper aircraft response). As for the comments about mediocre graphics, guilty as charged. I wrote the VIC version first, then bought a 64 and rushed like hell to convert the program in order to get the C-64 version on the market before Christmas 1983. Made it, too. The only thing in my defense is that the instruments are easy to read, on both a monitor AND a TV. I have since written IFRII, which adds two terrain sets, a ground trace feature, and thunderstorms imbedded in the clouds. I don't wish to take anything away from Sublogic, however. FSII is an excellent program, and well deserves its #1 position in the market. IFR was the first realistic simulator out for CBM machines (beat FSII to the market by 6 months) and it is the natural order of things that it be superceded; good things must come to an end. And, don't forget Hagar the Horrible's motto: "I got mine." As a wrapup, FSII is the better program. But IFR is the better SIMULATOR! (and it's $20 cheaper...) Ron Wanttaja (ssc-vax!wanttaja) Author of "IFR (Flight Simulator)"
doug@terak.UUCP (Doug Pardee) (01/25/85)
> Sublogic did an exceptional job simulating the > aircraft, but fell down when it came to actually controlling it. They > were left with the standard digital stick to control what is an analog > function- the method they chose, coupled with the slow speed of the > program, makes it impossible to fly in a manner similar to an aircraft. I haven't tried FSII on the C-64, but I did get a chance to try it on the Apple II-C, which has an analog joystick. The controllability was still bunk. The problem was that the joystick was read immediately after the new visual scene was presented, BEFORE you had time to react to the current attitude! You had to "lead" by about a second on the controls, and I never did get the hang of it. BTW, a few years ago I worked on a *real* flight simulator for a contractor to USAF. That system updated the out-of-cockpit view 30 times per second, with a 1/10 second lag between control input and visual output (obviously 3 levels of pipelining were being used). Even that small lag was unacceptable for simulating fighter-class aircraft, so the control inputs were extrapolated 1/10 second into the future. -- Doug Pardee -- Terak Corp. -- !{hao,ihnp4,decvax}!noao!terak!doug