iscover
After Hours — Flight Unlimited
0 comment
A Pentium Computer Torun Flight Unlimited
How do you approach a flight simulation that makes the top five on the sales list before a single copy has arrived in the country? With considerable enthusiasm of course, so it was with some eagerness that I opened the Flight Unlimited package. “Well, at least they got the packaging right,” I thought. The CD-ROM, flight manual, key card and installation instructions are presented in a very attractive 3D display box. After showing it to a number of friends at an Aviation Club lunch, I installed it on my 486DX66 computer. The programme was fussy about working with the commonly used memory manager QEMM 7.5, but after swapping the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS for the Microsoft DOS versions, the programme started to load and install itself. I was given a choice of an alternative VESA video driver, with the warning that this programme would ‘hang’ on some computers. It stopped my Hercules Graphite video card and the computer dead, so I had to select the standard VGA drivers that came with the video card. This fiddling always gives me the irrits, but is quite a common requirement for the more advanced games that push the computer to the limits. Software development tends to run ahead of hardware and when the machine is filled to the gunwales with bits and bytes, some special action often has to be taken to get a game to run. Most computers have several ‘TSR’s’ (Terminate & Stay Resident) programmes to run the mouse, CD-ROM, networks, fax cards etc, and these TSRs often clash with the requirements of a powerful simulation. However, persistence pays off, and I was eventually rewarded with the sound of a large aircraft engine spluttering into life, and a brilliant SVGA image of a Pitts Special. Before reading the instructions, I like to launch into some flying, and Flight Unlimited encourages this approach. After a couple of mouse clicks, there I was over the hills of Springfield, Vermont, USA. The graphics of the ground are simply amazing, looking like a photograph. After reading the instructions, I discovered that the way the graphics were compiled was to take colour photographic stereo pairs and to render each pixel byte with a colour and a height. The programme subsequently computes a very convincing perspective view of the terrain. An interesting and very realistic approach. After trying in vain to fly straight and level, I paused the programme and calibrated the joystick. However, at this time it became apparent that my computer was failing in the pixel pushing stakes. Frame rate was about two per second, making the controls very jerky. I tried other screen resolutions and switched off all the pretty options, which improved matters somewhat, but still left the controls unsatisfactory for the precision flight needed for competent aerobatics. The brilliant graphics were now very ‘blocky’. Worse still, when I tried to land, the ground would jump up and down, making my usual precision approach (!) and touchdown impossible. I scratched my head, tried a few other options, but to no avail. I suspected that with a different video card and using the supplied VESA driver, things could be much better. A call to the ever helpful PC Aviator confirmed that the programme does run satisfactorily on their 486DX66 and “really flies on our new Pentium computer”. This latter comment got me thinking — perhaps it is time my venerable 15 month old 486DX66 is replaced with a faster computer. My, doesn’t technology move fast! Buying a Pentium computer For once, my timing was impeccable. Intel, the Goliath of Silicon, is locked in a battle with the silicon emulator Davids Cyrix and AMD, who are now supplying 486 chips at a fraction of the Intel price. Result? Intel has dropped the price of the Pentium to wean customers onto a chip for which they have a monopoly. Many people ring me through Australian Aviation to ask for advice on computers, so I thought it might be helpful to those of you who are contemplating entering the world of silicon simulation to describe what I bought and what it cost. I chose a 100 MHz Pentium as it provides a good balance between price and performance. The computer motherboard uses the new PCI bus, and the operating system has ‘green’ power saving settings and a ‘plug and play’ BIOS that will let you insert compatible cards without the need to set jumpers on the board. I also selected the Intel Triton chipset, as these chips are reputed to be matched to Windows processes and speeds things up by about a third. To meet the needs of Windows 95, 16 Megs of RAM were installed on the motherboard. For graphics intensive flight simulators, a fast video card is needed, and I selected a Diamond Stealth 64 PCI, with 2 Megs of VRAM so that the video memory can be read and written simultaneously. A 1.2 Gigabyte EIDE hard disk (that’s right folks, 1,200,000,000 bytes of free space, and I can remember when 20 Mb was a BIG drive). A quad speed CD-ROM, Soundblaster compatible card with speakers, a mouse and a 3.5 inch floppy completed the system. The price was just a shade over $4000. Many people are a bit wary of the ‘Pentium Bug’. In reality, it is irrelevant to most computer users unless you are designing the West Gate Bridge or a plutonium bomb. However, Intel has now replaced all the faulty Pentiums with new ones. If you want to know if your Pentium is pure, load the Excel spreadsheet and try the following test: Cell A1 = 4,195,835. Cell A2 = 3,145,727. Cell A8 = A1 — (A2/A1)*A2.
Oniguide:.mual Your Deskiay
If cell A8 = 0 when you complete the formula, your Pentium is OK, if it equals 256, ask for a replacement. And how does this Pentium PC perform? In comparison with the 486DX66 it flies! I have yet to perform an objective performance test, but the difference for flight simulation is quite startling, as we shall see. I tried it first on the brilliant new shoot-em-up ‘Terminal Velocity’ and the difference in precision control of the space fighter has to be experienced to be believed. Smooooothly move the pipper onto the target, track and fire repeatedly until BOOM and the target blows into a screenful of cartwheeling fragments — what fun! Pentium pixel pushing for unlimited flight Without expecting the programme to run, I fired up Flight Unlimited, using my standard QEMM setup. To my amazement and delight, the sound of a 300hp (225kW) piston engine coming to life was followed by the intro graphics and very soon thereafter, some sloppy aerobatics over Springfield, Vermont. Now the aircraft was quite controllable, in fact a delight to fly. You can zoom and roll and flick all over the sky. The ‘flick’ part is quite interesting. The Flight Unlimited folks claim to model each aerobatic surface, and so spins, flick rolls etc are quite ‘do-able’. I have rudders connected to the stick, and tried a number of spins entered from a stall, crossing the controls to produce a spin as you would in real life. Sometimes the aircraft would enter a true spin and sometimes a spiral dive, so the computational approach seems to work. Putting in a boot full of rudder at the top of a loop or in a tight turn, plus some more back stick to stall one wing sure makes the world whirl round fast. The range of options is what you expect from a complex, well executed game, and you can craft the simulation to your needs. I liked the way it interacted with the CH Flightstick Pro, as I could use the top hat on the stick to pan around the sky and the cockpit at will. This can be a bit disconcerting, as in the Sukhoi you find that there are clear panels in the bottom of the cockpit! Looking sideways is a great help to get vertical in a stall turn or a tail slide. If you are a tyro pilot, then you will enjoy the pilot training course, which is very well done and leads you through the basic manoeuvres for flight. There are also contests with hoops placed in the sky for you to fly through. These are a good test of your flight and orientation skills. While the ground graphics are brilliant, this computational method does have its limitations. I was flying along in a straight line, only to see an identical airfield ahead of me, and I was sure I had not turned away from the departure airfield. The cunning plot by the software engineers is to limit the need to measure and display large expanses of ground by digitising a small area and repeating it in each direction like a patchwork quilt. Now why can’t nature be like this — it would greatly simplify cross country navigation! For a speciality aerobatics simulation, repeating the ground this way is not an issue. However, it does cause some unusual effects as the edges of the patchwork map are skewed in height to match up — the ground bulges and ripples at times. Don’t expect to use this simulation as a basic trainer. As the ground is approached, the pixels are spread out and like some other simulations that use this technique in place of drawing polygons of geometric shapes like runways and buildings, the effect is smeary and vague close to the ground. You can make quite good landings, and one tip is to switch to the tailchase view (F12) on very short finals and use the aircraft’s shadow to make a precise touchdown and landing. For the average user, I had equivocal feelings about this simulation. On one hand, there are ground breaking graphics techniques that are really Oh! Wow! stuff. The detailed and accurate simulation of the aerodynamics of the airframes and the realistic sounds mean that once airborne, you can experiment with the dynamics of flight in ways that are simply beyond most other flight simulators. On the other hand, the reality of the approach and landing phase leaves much to be desired. If you are interested in flight dynamics and aerobatics, this is the simulation for you, but be sure that you have at least a 486DX66 with a high performance graphics card, optimised for DOS programmes. A Pentium pixel pusher is a definite advantage. To end on a lighter note, the simulation of the FBO flight shack is excellent, indicating that the authors spent quite a lot of time on real airfields looking at real aircraft. The only thing I couldn’t find was the fridge full of beer to encourage tall stories about short flights at the end of the day. My thanks to the PC Aviator crew for the review copy and for their technical advice — these guys really know their stuff. My congratulation to the ‘Flight Unlimited’ software team for a fresh and innovative approach to simulation.
This content is available exclusively to Australian Aviation members.
A monthly membership is only $5.99 or save with our annual plans.
- Australian Aviation quarterly print & digital magazines
- Access to In Focus reports every month on our website
- Unlimited access to all Australian Aviation digital content
- Access to the Australian Aviation app
- Australian Aviation quarterly print & digital magazines
- Access to In Focus reports every month on our website
- Access to our Behind the Lens photo galleries and other exclusive content
- Daily news updates via our email bulletin
- Unlimited access to all Australian Aviation digital content
- Access to the Australian Aviation app
- Australian Aviation quarterly print & digital magazines
- Access to In Focus reports every month on our website
- Access to our Behind the Lens photo galleries and other exclusive content
- Daily news updates via our email bulletin
Want to see more stories from trusted news sources?
Make Australian Aviation a preferred news source on Google.
Click here to add Australian Aviation as a preferred news source.
