Historisk tilbakeblikk

[Hans Christian Lindgren]

Har denne boka hjemme, godt brukt, men les forordet av Bruce Artwick.

Sånn var det for 20 år siden. Husker det godt ja.

For de som lurer er linken som følger:

http://www.flightsimbooks.com/runwayusa/

 

 

Runway USA

 

A pilot's guide to destination cities in Flight Simulator

by Charles Gulick

 

Foreword

 

It's 1987, and it's hard to believe that Flight Simulator has been airborne for five years already. I remember as though it were yesterday getting a phone call in the summer of 1981 [color:#FF0000]from a small 100-employee company in Bellevue, Washington, called Microsoft.[/color] They wondered if I would consider converting my primitive Apple II Flight Simulator 1 to an obscure new machine that nobody had heard of called the “IBM Personal Computer.” They thought it would make a good demo for the machine's color graphics card. Well, the rest is history. Five years, twenty-four versions, and nine scenery disks later, the project continues.

 

Instead of getting stale over the years, however, the whole Flight Simulator project keeps getting more interesting. Features based on improved computer capabilities and user feedback are constantly being added, and whole new versions for new machines are being written. Add-ons such as scenery disks and explorer flight guides like Charles Gulick's excellent series (from the early 40 Great Flight Simulator Adventures up to Flight Simulator Co-Pilot and his most ambitious guide yet, Runway USA) continually add to the depth of Flight Simulator and what you can do with it.

 

I look on the first three years of Flight Simulator's development as years of building toward my original idea of what version 1.00 should have been. Three years is a long time, but my original ideas were quite ambitious. Most of the features on version 2.13 of Microsoft Flight Simulator (including scenery disk overlays, hidden surface removal, and a good shading system) were items intended for release in 1982 but not well-developed yet. Many of the systems in the latest version are total rewrites of original systems. A few curves were thrown my way over the early years. The PCjr, Hercules Graphics Adapter, PC AT with its 80286 processor, EGA card, RGB monitor, and, last but not least, all the “clones” had to be compensated for. I was luckier than many programmers, however, because most graphics cards and clone manufacturers used Flight Simulator to verify the compatibility of their machines, thus saving me the trouble of having to make it work on their hardware.

 

The years from then to the present were conversion years. Coverage spread from the IBM and Apple II to the Commodore 64/128, Atari 800/130XE, NEC 9801E Texas Instrument PC, and Tandy 1000/2000. A few new features were added along the way, but these were basically conversions of my original version 1.00 ideas to new machines.