Just Flight & Just Trains blogs

I didn’t always wear a developer hat, and I can even remember a time when I did not live entirely on of Pizza and Cola. As an avid “simmer” I’d watch the horizon bank across my abacus, and muse grumpily how a new releases of our favourite sim’ was just a great way for developers to sell us the “same product “all over again…

…and I was wrong!

Each new release of the “MS Flightsim” is a bittersweet experience.. Lots of Wows and Ooohs” but lots of “Hmph”s  and “Oh”s too as we tally the number of our favourite add-ons… which no longer do.

We expect developers to get back to their desks and write patches to make these products work in our new purchase, and it is a task that can prove easy, complex or downright impossible. Did I say “Patch”?   It’s a great word, but just look across your keyboard – found the “AutoPatch” button? No?  … and neither did I!

A new sim’ doesn’t just raise compatibility questions. No. For the new functionality and ‘eye-candy’ can suddenly make our existing goodies look a little tired. You know what it’s like - that feeling of stepping into your Ferrari only to see the latest model drive past and make it look so dated amidst the Traffic. I can sense you nodding your heads … looking pensively from the window of your study, across to the gleaming Maranello steel glinting between the open stable doors of your personal Automotive Scuderi.

Ah! And by that crowbar plot I move back on topic – “Traffic”. Now as you know, we were swift to ensure we brought FSX support to Traffic, but can now offer a product truly born and bred for FSX… as native to FSX in fact, as Mint Cake to Kendal.

Now let us pause a moment… to reflect on what “Traffic” is. I like to think of it like Walt Disney’s Fantasia… but with fewer broomsticks, and no mouse.  It is always to be enhanced - always to grow, and yes I know that didn’t happen in Walt’s case and Fantasia only got a single sequel – but that was not Walt’s original intention.  So Traffic evolves with the new simulators, and also also the amazing power of the latest PCs.

Now the back room boffins at Justflight asked themselves how to best exploit this and what to call our new FSX Traffic? I think you will all marvel at our solution to the second half of that question,   “Traffic X” –catchy don’cha think … and I do.

“Traffic X” is what you get when you ask a boffin for a name. Ask a Postman what to call an office where you handle post, and he’ll suggest ‘Post Office’. Ask a man in a Paul Smith Suit, and between Caffè Lattès  he’ll come up with Consignia. Me? Well I’m with the postman all the way on this one and what is more … I know, so are you!

So what would you expect in the new version?

My own role has been developing the aircraft for Traffic X. I have a gauge on my wall just like one of those flood rulers on the riverbank. ( No, I don’t know the proper word for it  – and I cannot knot a sheepshank either)  It goes from “We are expected to do what??”  to “Yee-ha” and is calibrated in pizza boxes… it’s now in sight of the max and that means Done!
 
In “days of yore” we decided to add a feature to allow simmers to pick and choose AI aircraft and make them flyable. A ‘Traffic’ solution plus loads of ‘free’ flyable aircraft – we got great feedback and huge success but we also listened to those who, found they enjoyed flying these new aircraft  so much asked  us, could we not make them more detailed?

Now that is not a trivial request- and is a sure way to get us ‘tech-heads’ gibbering and rocking in the corners. Clutching their slide rules to their breast you would get a lot of shaking heads and mutters of “ Lots of high detail and Lots of aircraft?” You’ll be counting frame rates on a calendar!”

(I can hear a lot of supportive simmers exclaiming they can already do that in FSX without adding anything extra! If you’ve not downloaded the  MS service pack for FSX– it really does help performance quite a lot.)

Of course the whole idea of AI aircraft is to populate the flight sim world, but to populate it with high polygon models while still handling a clogged up fogbound Denver International would require the processing power of an amazing super-cooled wonder – and no sadly we are not talking Walt again, for his legendary cryogenic holding pattern between here and the hereafter, is apparently just an urban myth.

So with FSX we set our goal to find a carefully tuned balance between all these aspects and of course take into account that not everyone is running FSX on the latest supadupa device with the equivalent of ten Pentiums just to run the blue lights.

For my own part I’ve been building new aircraft… many of which are as detailed as we would all once have felt appropriate to a full product single aircraft. As with all computer graphics, while power has increased the ‘trick’ remains in putting the detail where it is of best value in ‘suspending disbelief’ - the holy grail of simulation. 

Adding such detail is not just about modelling – it also adds extensively to the research before modelling can even be started.  As an example of that, a 3view drawing of an aircraft is fine for most purposes but once those shut lines and flap markings start to move – you have to know how they move and what lies behind them, and some undercarriage motions are very strange indeed!

An exciting part of Traffic X for me is not part of my own work but the whizzes in interfacing. I confess that when I bought the first Traffic product, I installed it but never used half its features as I’m not much of a manual reader!  Traffic X has not just added lots of features and aircraft …but transformed the usability and so to come full circle to my original point; Traffic X is truly a NEW product.