Now for a Real Post

I find myself with a few spare moments in between dinner pre-prep and serving while my daughter runs down her batteries a bit more. She got a corn dog, peas and strawberries for dinner. For Jackie and I it's grilled salmon with pine nut and lemon relish served over fresh baby spinach and parmesan risotto on the side--a bit of a difference! Anyway, in a few minutes Anna will start her bath/book/bed routine and I'll finish up the salmon. Until then I have time to reflect on the busy past few weeks.

The folks on AvSim are getting antsy because we haven't had much to say about FSX, officially or not. That's due mostly to fact that we've all been very busy try to reach Feature Complete--which we have, pretty much. Plus some of us, like Jason, Paul and I have been prepping for the upcoming E3 show in Los Angeles. Paul managed a few posts but even he's been pressed. As he mentioned in his blog the three of us spent almost three full days at Microsoft Studios shooting in-game footage for the E3 trailer video. MSS is an amazing facility. I've been there on multiple occasions throughout my tenure at Microsoft to film various promotional materials. They have some really skilled people there as well as an amazing amount of video recording, editing, manipulation and distribution equipment.

Jason was joking that our time there was very much like a real movie shoot. All the "locations" had to be scouted in advance. Camera angles had to be considered and each "shot" staged and blocked before shooting. And, of course, each one took several takes to get right. Maybe the timing wasn't right or we missed the view of the explosion or a visual anomoly (this is still alpha code, remember) appeared on screen. To his credit Jason did most of the flying and camera work as well as all the "second unit" directing. Paul and I pitched in on occasion but mostly we were there for morale support. So far the rough cuts looks great. The folks at Filmateria--the production company--are doing a great job. I can't wait for you all to see it. I figure we'll post it to the web after show.

Beyond that I've been very busy actually writing code to help out our development team. I picked up some UI tasks and bug fixes that overwise wouldn't have been done. This also lets the devs focus on really hard problems. UI is (mostly) pretty straightforward. I shared some of my work on the Flight Planner with the folks at SimFlight. This week I focused on general cleanup of niggling UI problems, though I did manage to sneak in some new and hopefully worthwhile features for our Facilities dialog. The one in FS2004 simply shows text information for an airport, navaid, etc. I added a map view and weather report as well as the ability to print the information. This should make flight planning a bit easier. Oh, I also added fuel burn by weight to the navlog output to make the jet jockeys happy and changed the formatting to be .CSS-based. If you don't like the way the new one looks you'll be able to change it. All very fun for me, despite the long hours.

Of course, I really not supposed to be doing any of this. I should be devoting those long hours to getting up to speed with my new project. But until we hire my replacement I'll be wearing two hats. I have been in a few planning meetings, though, and realized how little I know about the subject. Working on Flight Simulator was easy in the sense that I was already a pilot and have loved aviation my whole life. I can't say the same for the new venture. That's not bad--just different--and after almost 5 years on FS a change was definitely what the doctor ordered.

So there's a real post. No guarantees you'll see another one soon, but you never know.