Fresh from the announcement at NBAA, the Citation X prototype retrofitted with elliptical winglets from Winglet Technology LLC made its maiden flight on Tuesday, September 25th. For more information, check out this press release. (Image courtesy Cessna).
Bill Womack is a Jack of many trades. In addition to authoring some spectacular scenery designs, Bill is an accomplished writer. Did you know that he is currently authoring a novel? Bill has been writing reviews for SimFlight for some time now. Recently he decided to "color outside the lines" a bit when he started writing his reviews in a short story format beginning with Joy Ride, a story centered around the Shockwave Productions B-17. Blind Date is his latest short story review of the Eaglesoft FSX Columbia 400. Screenshot artist Nick Churchill‘s imagery brings the action of the story to life … Continue reading Blind Date – a short story by Bill Womack
We’re getting very close to beta on this project. Years of hard work are finally going to be realized when this bird sees the light of day…hopefully within a month! I am really liking how this panel is looking at night. Click on the picture to see the full panel in all of its glory. Roy came by the other day to check out what we had of his virtual plane, and he said that the panel looks perfect, day or night. Now if we can just get rid of some lingering bugs, we’ll be in ship-shape.
There is a new ACES team member in the blogosphere, and he’s gotten off to a great start! Please welcome Mike Porter a.k.a. Portergraphics to the scene. Mike is a former FASA Interactive team member (you know, the guys responsible for games such as MechCommander and ShadowRun) and joined ACES two months ago as a Lead Vehicle Artist. Mike has 13 years of game development under his belt and brings much to the table. In fact, he is using his blog as a "tip of the day" resource for anyone interested in game development. You will quickly find out that he … Continue reading New ACES blogger!
Emma Field will live again in FSX! My good friend and scenery designer extraordinaire Bill Womack is teaming up with another accomplished scenery designer Holger Sandmann. Be sure to keep an eye on Bill’s blog for development updates as they reconstruct ol’ Emma from the ground up.
It seems that Cessna has been making a lot of news lately. I hear through the grapevine that Cessna will have an announcement regarding the Citation X this week at NBAA. They have already made news with the introduction of a G1000-equipped Caravan. And I just learned that Cessna has signed a letter of intent to purchase now bankrupt Columbia Aircraft Manufacturing. The acquisition of CAM by Cessna is not set in stone, though. Bidding procedures are being drawn up to allow other interested parties to submit offers in an auction to be held sometime in November. I find it quite interesting … Continue reading Big news out of Cessna
The 2007 SimFlight Award nominees have been announced and voting has begun. I was happy to see that the Eaglesoft Cessna Citation CJ1 for FSX was in the General Aviation category, though we are up against some really great packages. I like the "open" voting by FS enthusiasts – the way these awards should really be done. There is no better voice than the consumer! Be sure to get your vote in by September 30th. May the best enhancements win!
I revised and added something new to the Twin Comanche VC screenshots in my photo album today. Pictured are a 95% complete panel (all that remains is an SL 30 radio being built), a close-up of some of the avionics, and a capture taken at night! These are all still very much work-in-progress, but were worth sharing here. Night lighting is still being sorted from a switch standpoint. I’ve got faith in my colleague Bill Leaming to help figure it all out. Oh, and Bobby should be sending revised exterior master bitmaps soon – I cannot wait to see what he has done first hand!
I was deeply saddened by the news I stumbled upon this evening about the tragic helicopter accident that claimed the life of Colin McRae and 3 others on-board, including his 5-yr-old son. I have been a fan of the Codemasters’ series of rally games named after Colin since the very first version that I had to buy as an import from the UK in 1998. I have owned every version since as I have always enjoyed the virtual rally experience of driving. I was surprised that Codemasters dropped Colin’s name from the product with the latest version of their rally software … Continue reading Colin McRae 1968-2007 RIP
Adrian Woods published his 4th installment of the "performance art" series of blog entries today. This time Adrian discusses the pitfall they (MS) have fallen into by using untextured objects with different colors. My experiences with using untextured parts within an FSX model leaves you with parts that do not appear at all. Every part on an aircraft must have some texture assigned to it, or it will not appear. I figured this had something to do with the new shaders. Adrian then touches on how using too many bones or skinned animations can be a huge performance hit if not careful. I … Continue reading 4th Edition of Performance Art published
