Back on XP

I've been running VISTA for the past few weeks, but now I have switched back to XP.

VISTA was simply too slow and unreliable (e.g. the file system). Every program was running way slower than on XP. But the main reason is the lack of a propper anti-virus software which is compatible with VISTA.

I was using the LiveOneCare trial. However, when the trial period ran out, I didn't feel like to buy the full subscription, because the security features didn't really convince me. For example, all MS software was recognized as trustworthy software by the firewall- this is not exactly true for security features such as WGA. Actions such as "firewall approval" required adminstrator permission ("fading screen"), which is nearly stalling the system for fullscreen-applications hitting the firewall.

Another aspact is the fact, that I didn't manage it to find a desktop-mail-client which is capable of synchronizing with Lycos (no problem on XP with OE).

Finally, the VISTA UI is not an improvement at all. I'm quite open minded towards "colorful UI", but VISTA is simply too much.

So ... I'm back on XP with good old free "Antivir", working mail client and acceptable UI.

Blog Makeover

There are some major changes going on in my life planning right now, and I thought it's a good idea to take this occasion to do a little makeover of this blog.

Changes include:

• sidebar re-structured: more cateogries, newsfeed now clearly recognizable, links updated
• added "Best Of" categories for "Photos", "FS Development" and "Song Reviews" - this should help to find the remarkable posts between all the trash-posts (Please note: my early posts from 2005 still sound a little bit non-adulty, because they were influeced by school days; anyway, I'd like to keep them, because they are a great reminiscene of this part of my life)
• AdSense added to take advantage of all those people which use the "Next Blog" button

I will shorty post some news regarding my life planning. It's just a matter of some organizational issues to be done.

Yet Another **NG Flightsim

Well, it's true that FSNG is basically dead. OTOH, I have worked in the term break on another flightsim, which was built from ground-up.

I have promised myself not to announce yet another flightsim project without having something to download.
Unfortunetly, the term break was busier than I thought, and now that it's coming to an end with the winter-term just about to begin, I have to face, that I didn't manage it to come close to a milestone that would justify a file release.

But because there won't be much time left in the winter term for programming stuff, I've decided to show you some screenshots, to document that this sim is really there, so here we go... http://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=169340.

Now some background information.

The source code is fully GPL'd, so you could download the current branch using subversion if you want. Anyway, I doubt it will be of any use for you, because there are no scenery files included, and I have never tried to run a flight without a scenery installed, I guess the sim would probably crash. There is a SRTM-converter-pipeline included, but I doubt anyone except me is able to use this command line utility.

Features implemented yet:

• Terrain mesh and overlay, runtime-loading in a thread, no scenery stuff/autogen/water/whaterver yet; just shape and noisy color.
• Module pipeline for vehicles.
• The NPSNET Flight Model implementation from FSNG, altough still some bugs in it (vibrations).
• Incorporated the JSBSim flightmodel into the module pipeline, altough JSBSim doesn't fit into the module pipeline very pretty, and JSBSim itself is not very pretty IMHO. So I probably drop this feature again.
• SRTM-to-scenery-converter-pipeline.
• Joystick input.
• Realtime sky according to Preetham and Hoffman.
• Fully self-contained .NET/MDX GUI library to have forms in fullscreen mode. Works independently from any rendering API, so an OpenGL renderer could be written as well.
• Property system similar to the PropertyGrid built on top of the GUI-API.
• Shades of a math- and algorithm library (the point is, that all algorithms and datastructures go into a separate libarary, so they can be used in other projects as well).
• Language customization.
• ...

The project is not far from the state of FSNG presented on my website. Note that CSNG has been built from ground-up again - there is no FSNG stuff in it. I have made some things better that I have learned from FSNG. For example, I have used MDX 1.0 again, and not MDX 2.0 beta ... what a lucky decision looking at the state of MDX 2.0 now.

The "C" in CSNG stands for combat. Not that I'm much into the combat thing, but there are some advantages: Combat simulators have limited maps ... this simplifies the whole data organization and data reloading stuff ... now I use tiles and I cannot fly near the poles ... :) .

OK, my good old FSNG website will stay where it is, because it's some kind of "monument" and it looks quite good. Maybe I'll replace it, when I have a downloadable version of CSNG in place. But that won't be too soon from now.

XNA Game Studio Express Beta Impressions

I had a short look at the XNA Game Studio Express Beta a few days ago, so I thought it might be a good idea to state some of my impressions.

Let's start with the good aspects...

• The framework seems to be designed very well and careful. It seems to fit the .NET guidelines very well.
• This entire "game loop thing" is moved to a higher level. The programmer now has to derive his game-class from the Framework.Game class and implement some methods related to the game loop, e.g. "Draw". So all this stuff takes away the pain from the programmer trying to create a perfect game loop, which is not always fun, in particular in the .NET CLR ("Application.DoEvents").
• Device management has been simplified and moved to a higher level. Some traditional terms such as "lost device scenarios" have been revised and there is less witchcraft involved during device creation. This practically means, that large parts of the device creation work have been automated; "lost device" is now "ensure device"; switch to fullscreen is now as simple as calling "GraphicsComponent.ToggleFullscreen()". I think this was way overdue.
• Maybe this sounds radiculous, but XNA would be a perfect candidate for a multi-platform game environment. Why? Well, the XNA namespace contains really everything - not only graphics, sound and input, but it also has it's own IO-classes for data storage (!).

So let's come to be points I don't like...

• XNA is yet focussed on C# in VS Express environment. This means, that I cannot use other .NET languages, altough this shouldn't really be an issue by definition in the .NET CLR. I also cannot use use my non-Express VS - I have to use the Express edition.
• XNA has it's own project type (application and library). I cannot be sure, wether I can use other .NET class libraries in an XNA application or not. This could become a big issue. I could - however - compile my libraries into XNA format, but only *if* XNA supported C++/CLI as 2nd .NET language.
• XInput could be the biggest mistake. Yes, it allows me to access mouse and keyboard under Windows, and the XBox360 gamepad under both - XBox and Windows - environments. But what about all the other controlers under windows? One cannot expect that everyone buys an XBox360 pad for his Windows PC, but keyboard- and mouse-devices are not sufficient input methods for some game types. So PLEASE make XInput as general as good old DirectInput.
• I don't get this component stuff (GraphicsComponent etc.) ... VS Express displays these components as icons in the forms designer. This doesn't make sense. If they want me to "draw" my games, then they should at least enable the UML class designer in VS Express.

Well, XNA does some things very well. XNA will be a serious option for some game projects. It is not an option for a flight simulator project, simply because of XInput being the only input-API. It could be a serious candidate for a racing simulator (for example).

Wether to use XNA or not is a tough decision. In case you use XNA, you are pretty much bound to XNA and MS, and there is no way back and you are pretty much not flexible. In case you decide to go with XNA anyway, you have a rich game creation toolkit that will make your life easier. I think it's the best game programming API to date, and I don't see any other API reaching a comparable level, because all these APIs are designed with backward compatibility in mind. XNA is a fresh new API without a legacy burden.

In case you really want to go with XNA, you'll feel like Alice in XNA wonderland.

DAFIF to be removed from public access Oct. 1, 2006

DAFIF will be removed from public access on October 1, 2006. It would be a good idea to create a backup copy of the database if there are any intentions to use the navigation database in the future.

Atlas Of The Universe

I came across this website, http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/. It features the ability to zoom from solar system scale "up" to the borders of the visible universe. There is a wealth of maps for each different scale.

There are also some interesting questions answerd that exceed the scope of discovery channel, without requiring a degree in astro-physics; e.g. that there is no such thing such as the center of the universe, and that the size of the visible universe is not necesarily the size of the whole universe.