Andreas Jung

Back on XP

2007-04-08T11:28:00.000+02:00

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

2007-03-21T12:43:00.000+01:00

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

2006-09-25T10:39:00.000+02:00

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

2006-09-15T11:28:00.000+02:00

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

2006-08-14T10:32:00.000+02:00

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

2006-08-14T10:14:00.000+02:00

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.

Now with curved winglets...

2006-07-06T23:56:00.000+02:00

Check out this beauty...
http://www.airliners.net/open.file/1070915/M/

Now this is fancy.

IDontGetIt.NET/CLI

2006-07-02T23:50:00.000+02:00

Just had a strange problem programming in C++/CLI. I didn't really understand why it was nearly impossible to find a solution. Am I the only one to try this?

So, I want to implement the generic ICollection for my own (generic) collection:

generic<typename T> ref class ItemCollection : ICollection<T>

Let's have a look at the generic ICollection interface:

generic<typename T> public interface ICollection : IEnumerable<T>, IEnumerable

So as we see, we have to deal with one old-fashion enumerable- and one generic enumerable interface. This first defines the method "IEnumerator^ GetEnumerator()", while the generic one defines the "IEnumerator<T>^ GetEnumerator()".

We all know, that we cannot overload functions that solely differ by return-type. However, as the generic ICollection inherits from both IEnumerables, both GetEnumerators are in fact present in the generic ICollection.

Don't ask me why this can exist at all. The problem comes up when I try to implement the ICollection. I have to implement both versions of the GetEnumerator, but when I do this, I have two functions differing only by return type. BANG.

How to deal with this? Not really any ideas, lots of C++ compiler errors such as the one with the two functions only differing by return types, or methods not matching certain signaturs etc.

I had a look at the C# way, because the C# refactor does the implementation on it's own:

public IEnumerator<T> GetEnumerator()
System.Collections.IEnumerator System.Collections.IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()

Well OK, this looks reasonable by explictly having the "targeted" interface in the method name. But still no idea how this looks in C++/CLI, only silly compiler errors. I looked up the signature in the MSDN reference of some collection classes, but this didn't work out as well.

So, after numerous trial-and-errors attempts, this came out:

public:
virtual IEnumerator<T>^ GetEnumerator();

private:
virtual Collections::IEnumerator^ _GetEnumerator () sealed = Collections::IEnumerable::GetEnumerator
{
return GetEnumerator();
}

No need to mention that I'm seriously unhappy with this. This is everything, but definitly not elegant. I couldn't think of it being that hard to implement ICollection.

OK, it's late, no more time to think about this problem.

Series

2006-05-28T10:39:00.000+02:00

Check these outstanding photos over at Airliners.net: http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?&countrysearch=Albania&daterange=2006&keywords=chris%20lofting

Obviously, a photographer called Chris Lofting did some tour around Albania to take some breathtaking photos of the local Air Force. Especially those Chinese out-of-service F-6 aircrafts in the underground-tunnel are worth a click.

ILA 2006

2006-05-20T14:01:00.000+02:00

Got up yesterday at 0430 for a 400km drive across Germany heading Berlin - it's ILA time.

Surprsingly, there was a static display of a USAF B-1 this year. Although this aircraft is already some decades old, it was one of the highlights, because the airframe is simply beautiful. The photo does not give a good sense for the size of this beast.

The main reason to visit this year's ILA is the A380 of course. What a beauty. More on the A380 later.

Red Bull had a huge airpark. Between all those well known Red Bull aircrafts such as the B-25, I found this Cobra helicopter in Red Bull livery quite remarkable.

The C-17 is a regular ILA visitor for years. It's always thrilling to stand in front of this giant, imagining it flying. This thing does 20000 feet-per-minute descends with reverse-thrust, according to the legend.

Also lots of russion aviation technology this year. Besides the regular heavy metal, there was also some ground effect "plane". Nice little toy.

Some classic airframes, such as Messerschmidt 108 and 262 (the first jet plane), Spitfire and Corsair. The maneuvers of the ME-262 were simple,but the jet sound was just amazing.

Next was some German metal (I'll leave the Kruppstahl-jokes up to the reader). The Eurocopter Tiger did some loopings and stuff, what is quite spectecular for a helicopter. You simply have to believe, that I did not rotate the image.
The joint presentation of German Air Force and German Army was the radiculous part of the day. First, some special forces roped down the helicopter (just took minutes) to get Mr. Ward Ambassador out of the German embassy in country XYZ.
Then, the first C-160 Transall did a flyby, and the second one did a "Sarajevo" combat approach, which was definitly not 12° steep according to the photo. I guess they didn't want to take a risk, because the wind was quite strong this day.
While the ambassador was getting inside the C-160 on the runway, the helicopters did some woozy maneuvers to confuse the enemy.
Then, the C-160 took off in formation with the helicopters, while 80's synthesizer music played in the background. No comment ... oh, too late.

This was followed by the so called Airbus Parade, consisting of A318, A340 and A380. All three did some circling and a low-speed flyby.
Most shocking was the lowspeed flyby of the A380 - this giant nearly stood still in the air with an amazing angle of attack.
And it's true - the A380 is really silent.

Meanwhile, the Sentry took of. Note the elevator asymmetrie - did some visitor mess around with the roll trim in the cockpit?

Junkers Ju-52 taking off - strange light: absolutely dark in the background, but sunny in the foreground.

The Mig-29 was the highlight of the day, of course. This one's lining up and powers the engines up and goes back to idle three times - too arrogant, but so lovely ;), the crowd went mad, everyone was excited. The maneuvers were as breathtaking as usual - unbelieveable, how they incorporate the spins into their flightpath.

The last show for me was the formation flying of the Patrouille Suisse. Altough I found it becoming boring after the fifth formation flyby. Nevertheless great skills.

Rumble In The Jungle

2006-05-01T10:15:00.000+02:00

Sort of busy these days. Only very few hours left this week for private activities. Most days were like getting up/university/coming back home in the evening/doing exercises in the evening/bed.

Well, that's just justification, and most likely NOT interesting. The only other activity I did this week is to create...

This New Song

(Progressive Tech Tribal House)

Have a look or not. :)

P.S.1: I'd really love to work on FS related stuff, but it's simply so few hours per week that there is no real progress.

P.S.2: I think I have found a good sky model for FS use. But I think I'll attempt implementing it prior dropping announcements, reviews or FS-Developer entries. Anyway, it might be good idea (depending on the context of good) to re-check FS-Developer periodically. There are really some sporadic updates every now and then (more frequent than blog-entries here).

Good one

2006-04-22T00:54:00.000+02:00

muHAHAHAHA!!!111

Someone grabbed the domain http://www.fsng.com/. That's sooooo cute. Imagine: someone paid money for this. And now he is waiting for me to go begging for it. Lol.

uhh yeah ... happiness each and everywhere...

2006-04-18T20:28:00.000+02:00

Science and research brought us some great innovations:

automotive technology
world piece
and now it's time for this

Sorry, but some people really need to check out a meat grinder from inside IMO. Dudes...

Worth a Posting

2006-04-17T16:15:00.000+02:00

Well, a not-so-important posting is still better than a no-posting, so here we go.

If I leave the easter stuff out-of-scope, I'm pretty busy at the moment. I have an additional 5 hours per week at university besides my default 40 hours per week plus 10 hours of driving. International readers: that's lots of time in Germany - people here go on strike for weeks, because they have to work an additional one or two hours more on their less-than 40 hours week.

What I want to say: I had some spare time left this weekend, and this is what I did:

DAFIF is a public domain navigation database by the US military, and this is the respective enroute chart of the gulf region including Iraq, Iran and parts of Afghanistan, Turkey and ex-Soviet Union.

I did a poster print on 3x3 pages. This took quite some time. The chart is a huge PDF which is composed from vector data. Rasterizing all this data takes roughly 30 seconds. Printing this stuff on 9 pages took me roughly 5 hours. I guess the printer driver rasterized the whole document for each data chunk which is sent to the printer. So there were something like 5 minutes between each printed row.

Why? I love to explore the world using all kinds of free datasets - Landsat, SRTM, VMAP, etc.. There are so many beautiful features on the world that the average dumb citizen is not aware of:
-Richat structure - 50km circular feature in western sahara, visible from space.
-Europe: large infrared spots are good indicators for military training areas as well as open pit mines.
-Iraq - south-east border: a square feature as large as a little state.
-Northern siberia, polar sea coast: looks more alien than any other place in the solar system.

Back to the Iraq enroute map.
I find it very remarkable, that ex-Soviet Union is more reddish than Iran. I think allied (or friendly) states should have a different color. Interesting...

Please tell me that this is a fake!

2006-04-06T00:31:00.000+02:00

http://www.ezprezzo.com/videoclips/plane_landing.html

!!! www.FS-Developer.info !!!

2006-03-31T23:04:00.000+02:00

YES!!! My little top-secret project of the last week is now unveiled.

www.FS-Developer.info

FS-Developer.info is my attempt to create a database, which is solely dedicated to flight simulator development.

Other than knowledge collections such as www.vterrain.org, FS-Developer concentrates on these topics, which are important for flight simulation only.

The database is still built up, so there should be more entries following over the next few days. The best part is: everyone can submit entries!

I don't want to go too much into detail. Just a have look yourself.

Would really love to hear some feedback. Use the comment function of this blog or the methods available on the website.

Would also appreciate some outside support :).

Volume Fog

2006-03-24T00:00:00.000+01:00

It's already known among a limited group people, that I like to compare real life aviation photos with flight simulator photos in order to find the important visual clues that make up the difference between sim/reality.

Now I came across a nice reference scene for volume/altitude fog: http://www.airliners.net/open.file/1021518/M/

I have already some experience with this effect from an unmanaged demo in 2004. I will not link it here, because I found out that it doesn't run on my GF6 (worked well with GF4/5). In this demo, I added an altitude-factor besides the distance factor to the calculation of fog density.

The other option would be to use real fog volumes, by calculating the fog depth through front/backface-substraction.

Another New Song

2006-03-23T23:15:00.000+01:00

Well ... let me recite myself:

Well, there needs to be an industrial counterpart for my latest acid production,
so this is supposed to be an industrial/acid crossover.
My plan was to create something with processed drums, so this song is really dirrty as there are lots of Scream4s in it.
Of course you are free to tell me, that the production is dirrty - but it's my intention.
Same for the arrangement: Of course the song is boring for the first few bars - but that's industrial - it's about slamming drums.
However, I can promise that you'll be recompensed for listening on - bar 65 (2:18) features BIIIGGGG ENERGY and the breakdown is really beautiful IMO.
I felt like falling in trance when listening several times to this song during the
production.
Musically it's nothing great - only one chord - it's an industrial thing - it's the stylistic devices that makes up the atmosphere.
So hopefully you can enjoy.
Copyright notice: Image/Sample are from NASA. NASA generally does not claim a copyright on it's multimedia content.OTOH, this does not mean, that I am the copyright holder, that's why I don't upload it at Soundclick, but on my own webspace instead.

Interested?

Check out the MP3 download: http://www.aj-productions.de/music/OrangeSoil.mp3
And the reviews: http://www.reasonstation.net/songs/songinfo.php?song=46093

New Song

2006-03-20T19:44:00.000+01:00

Yep, that's right. New Acid House production.

Listen here: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/songInfo.cfm?bandID=459773&songID=3663271
Reviews here: http://www.reasonstation.net/songs/songinfo.php?song=46012
Cover art here: http://www.aj-productions.de/music/AcidProgressiveExcessive.jpg

Enjoy if you like acid!

Semi Show-Off then...

2006-03-14T20:32:00.000+01:00

Well ... sorry for the lack of the updates.

I'm right in the middle of my term break. Unfortunately, the tests are written INSIDE the term break at my university, so I am busy learning stuff.
Two tests have been successful, but the most difficult one is still ahead, so I should be learning all day theoretically.

Of course this is just theory, so I have some time for programming left.
Nevertheless, time is very limited, and my original flight simulator FSNG is basically dead, because it didn't really survive the port from Visual C++ Express Beta 2 to the final version, as well as the port to MDX 2.0.

Recently, another idea struck my mind. One of my early dreams was to create a Space Shuttle simulator, i.e. a modern version of this, this, or this game. To be exact, I am talking about the last one, i.e. an approach simulator.

Landing the space shuttle is very challenging from the pilots point of view - 3 minutes full of action. I guess the difficulty level can be compared to a Sarajevo- or Kai Tak IGS approach (having attempted neither of them ;) ), although I guess the NASA people wouldn't attempt to de-orbit the orbiter with known windsheers in the area.
There is a nice video out there that shows the approach from inside the Shuttle Training Aircraft - I hope I can find it somewhere later this evening. UPDATE - Here it is: http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/countdown/sts112/sta-vid.htm.

Well ... programming a shuttle landing simulator has some advantages over a multi-purpose simulator such as MSFS:

no need for a global scenery - Kennedy Space Center is sufficient
no background-reloading - because only the landing site is simulated
just a flat plane, no global coordinates - not really a hill at KSC/Florida, the runway is the origin
so no complicated collision detection required
easy internet distribution, because no need to ship a global scenery
etc.

And: I have 50% of the code sitting around on my harddrive already, dubbed FSNG. So a large portion of the project consists of simply refactoring stuff.

There are already some parts working. I have "inserted" the old analytical sky model by Preetham et al., and I have improved the terrain/sky transition, by chosing the sky-color as fog-color in the shader of the terrain. Have a look:

I really like the diffuse transition from sky to terrain - no clear line. I can imagine diving from the orbit into the soup of the earth atmosphere.
By accident, the time of day is evening in this image, so it looks a little bit like Huygens arriving at Titan IMO ;).

Here is a view of runway 33 at KSC. The vehicle assembly building as well as launchpad 39a/b can be seen right of the runway. Of course there is no 3D model yet.

The fog is a little thick down there, but it's just a matter of tweaking some constants in the shader.

Now you will probably ask yourself: where does this guy have the satellite imagery from?
Well, there is a great website out there: http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/clickmap/. It's a collection of astronaut photography from various missions. Like most NASA stuff, NASA does not claim a copyright on the photos, so they can be freely used according to my understanding of the law.

Of course, these images are not perfect - they are not 100% top down, images have different color balances, some portions might be covered by clouds, and the the point-of-view is different for each photo. These problems are not un-solveable though:

This image shows the March CTP of MS Expression (Acrylic) - a great software IMO. I have inserted something like 8 images (each around 3000 pixels wide), where each image resides in one layer. Then I sorted them by quality. In case there is a cloud somewhere, I use a soft eraser to remove the cloud - so instead of a cloud, the previous layer shines through and replaces the cloud. One has to match all images, and this is REALLY difficult, because all images have been taken from different angles.
I also had to match the color-balance and -contrast - also very difficult. Not to mention all the life-effects for 8 of these huge images, making editing very slow. But in the end, I succeeded I think. With smooth transitons and water masked (not 100% done yet), it looks really good. Exporting this beast of Expression document to 4096x4096 only took 30 minutes ;).

Until now, I really enjoy this project (working with code that already proved functional, using Expression/Acrylic, coding shaders). Hopefully, this one has a better future than FSNG.

Really hope to show more stuff soon.

Industrial...

2006-02-18T20:55:00.000+01:00

Stumbled by accident over the website of CountZero.
You can download impressive calendars with industrial photography from there.
Very nice!

Tastes best with Industrial Music.

Quick'n'Dirty MDX Feb06 Review

2006-02-09T09:56:00.000+01:00

It's a little bit like christmas, when you wake up, and see a new release of DirectX in your feedreader.

The best way to check the changes, is to fire an existing project through the compiler with the new assemblies installed.

This was quite flawless - the compiler did not complain except DirectInput::InputList is now removed. So in case you need to enumerate DirectInput::Devices or it's object instances, you have to use System::Collections::ObjectModel::ReadOnlyCollection. I didn't understand it anyway, why MDX brought it's own list classes with it before (with such a powerful framework in the background).
Well, the current state is what counts, and these ObjectModel classes look like a very clean list implementation for a class library, because they have been designed exactly for this scenario.
In fact, I wasn't even aware of these classes before, and I will consider to use them extensively in the future, when designing libraries (DirectlyInput anyone?).

Next, the issue with DirectInput::Device::GetBufferedData() is now solved, as this call appears again in the class definition. I haven't used it yet though.

Direct3D compiled without complains, i.e. it looks like there are no big changes.
The project also executed without problems, so it looks like runtime behavior didn't change as well.

Nevertheless, I will continue to design my DirectlyInput wrapper, because other than DirectInput, this class library will provide a high-level way to communicate with DirectInput.

New song Again and Again and AiAiAi.......!

2006-02-06T00:34:00.000+01:00

Yes, another song again. This time it is house, to be exact: Sunny summer sound with caribbean style rhythm.

There is even cover art this time:

Listen at Soundclick: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/songInfo.cfm?bandID=459773&songID=3453697
Reviews at ReasonStation: http://www.reasonstation.net/songs/songinfo.php?song=45071

Have fun!

Two New Songs

2006-01-30T16:04:00.000+01:00

YES!

Two new songs of mine at soundclick.

One from the dark side:
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/songInfo.cfm?bandID=441088&songID=3418396

And one for the dance site:
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/songInfo.cfm?bandID=459773&songID=3418306

ENJOY!

NOT to __hack DirectInput

2006-01-27T23:44:00.000+01:00

Little updated concerning my previous post.

I decided to go with /clr:oldSyntax and the old C++ with managed extensions syntax, known for it's double __underscores.

This way, it really works to create a decent wrapper of DirectInput without PInvoke.

Besides back-acclimatization to the old __syntax, this little project is steadily progressing.

I am asking myself how to distribute the project. I think I will choose SourceForge, because of it's simplified project hosting abilities and audience. So I will have to make it open source, what might not really be too bad for me.

So, which license to choose? I have in mind, that the compiled assembly should be shared freely, as long as I remain the copyright holder. In case somebody modifies the source code, he has to distribute the modified source code. Not sure, I think it was the LGPL matching my needs!? Any suggestions?

to hack DirectInput OR NOT to hack DirectInput

2006-01-25T23:58:00.000+01:00

Target: Find a possibility to have a fully assignable joystick in a .NET² flight simulator, i.e. you can pick any available joystick-axis for any lever in the game.

Pass No1: Managed DirectInput V2.0 lacks buffered device data retrieval, so there is no way to extract abitrary axes from the device state. It is simply not possible except hard-coded device state look-ups.

Pass No2: It is obvious, that mixing managed DirectInput V1.0 with the other managed DirectX V2.0 components is a bad idea.

=> Write my own managed version of DirectInput. CODENAME DirectlyInput ;).

Pass No3: Include the native DInput.h. C++/CLI should be capable of handling native C/C++ code. However, due to the new syntax, C++/CLI cannot handle some constructs like "typedef interface ..." which is definied in some sub-headers that are related to COM. Unfortunately, the DirectInput header relies on the COM definitions in order to expose the DirectInput interfaces to COM. To make it short: I am unable to include DInput.h without tons of compiler errors. However, I think I can use the switch "/clr:oldSyntax" - with this switch, DInput.h seems to compile flawless. But I am not sure, if I am willing to go back to the __syntax. Maybe I give this a try later.

Pass No4: Go with PInvoke/COM. Well, it was unexpectedly difficult to find helpful information. After hours of searching, I found out about useful stuff such as ComImportAttribute, GuidAttribute, and InterfaceTypeAttribute, and that I could utilize GUIDs from the DInput.h header. After even more hours of painful trying and looking at freakin' error codes from the deepest deepness of kernel32, I even managed it to create an instance of the DirectInput8 class and cast it to the DirectInput8 interface using reflection. However, I never managed it to call any methods of this interface. After even more hours of trying and testing some modifications, I gave up.

Pass No5: What I personally don't understand - DirectX is said to be based on COM. A look at the header files seems to confirm this. But why can't I simply insert any DX-DLL as COM-Component in the VS-References page?

Pass No6: #import DInput8.dll should work perfectly, but for some reason, it produces the same kind of errors like including DInput.h

Pass No7: The 7th approach seemed to be promising at first, but it didn't work out. Maybe you find it amusing:
So, how to get access to a COM-API, that is not really exposed as a COM-DLL? Well, I talk about DirectInput, and DirectInput has not been updated since DirectX8. DirectX8 *HAS* a type-libarary for the ancient VB6, when there was no such thing such as MDX.
This type-library looked like the rescue for me. I could convert this type-library using "tlbimp.exe" to a *real* .NET-assembly. Then, I could disassemble this .NET-assembly back to IL-code using "ildasm.exe". This actually worked; I had a buch of class definitions in my .NET-wonderland. This IL-code file was something like 16k lines long. I removed something like 3/4 non-DirectInput stuff from this file, and after re-inserting the assembly-info, DxGUID, POINT, and RECT - which have been accidentally deleted ;) - this file - with DirectInput only definitions - truly compiled back to a .NET-assembly using "ilasm.exe". This .NET-assembly could seriously be added as reference in the VS-References without any problem, and this assembly only contained DirectInput definitions - I could see that in the class browser. Honestly, that made me proud ;).
Well, in the end, .NET could not really use these classes without throwing exceptions - I guess it was still nothing more than ancient VB6 class definitions. So this approach didn't work out as well.

A.R.G.H.H.!.!.!.

Lighbox

2006-01-23T19:24:00.000+01:00

This posting is no big deal ;).

I created a so called lightbox at a photo-community called Photocase. A lightbox is a collection of photos related to some topic.

I created a lightbox called City 17. In case you don't knew it: City 17 is the place, where the successful game Half Life 2 takes place. It has a unique atmosphere - maybe you should check out some imagesearch, if you don't know what I am talking about.

Well, my lightbox tries to resemble some of the elements of this atmosphere. From the description:

I tried to resemble the mood from the Half Life 2 world - City 17. This includes industrial influences, a somehow strange city, warm/sunset-like light, a river, railways, highways, etc.. Hope you like it.

Just in case you are interested: http://www.photocase.com/collection.asp?l=48303

As I said - no big deal ;)

Building Cliffs

2006-01-10T23:22:00.000+01:00

Fortunately, I have worked hard to get a little bit ahead of the University's stream of weekly tasks, so I still had some spare hours left for the FSNG substitute.

The problem in my previous post was the terrain-slope, which was not interpolated, thus resulting in blocky terrain overlay layer coverage. Now you probably want to say: hey, a little interpolation is not hard.
IT IS ... it is - at least if you want to do it efficiently.

Imagine you have an arbitrary floating point location, and you want to know the terrain's slope at that location. It can't be that hard: take the 4 neighbors's slope-values of the heightmap's grid-cell-rectangle-vertices where the location lies in, and do a bilinear interpolation.
So how do you get the slope value at such a neighbor-slope at a grid-cell-rectangle-vertex (<-- nice word, isn't it?). Well, take the 4 neighbor vertices of this vertex and do a little algebra.
Can you follow? For each of the 4 neighbors, look up the 4 neighbors and do algebra ... for each of the 4096*4096 texels of the terrain overlay texture!!! Look ups are said to be fast, but when reaching a certain number of look ups, it is obviously not.

I ended up creating a little terrain-slope cache, so I could reduce the amount of look ups by a factor 4. The amount of slope look ups is now bound to the heightmap resolution, and not the terrain overlay texture resolution, which is of course an improvement.

However, I admit that this factor 4 is not very much noticable when doing an 4096*4096 compile. (but I did not try yet the release-build).

Another problem that botherd me was the definition of slope in 2.5 dimensional space. I mean, we all know slope in 1.5 dimensional space when drawings graphs or deriving algebra. But honestly, I have no idea how to do it in 2.5 dimensional space, i.e. with the terrain.
I solved this provisionally by calculating the slope for each x/y-axis, and then let be slope=max(slope.x, slope.y) - it works more or less this way. I don't have the CPU cycles for more complicated stuff anyway.

Ok, more to come soon ... hopefully.

THEY ARE EVERYWHERE

2006-01-08T00:10:00.000+01:00

...screens of upcoming sims.

So, I finally wanted to drop some further progress of my upcoming FSNG subsitute.

Here are the screens:

What I have basically done is to make the terrain overlay texture editable. As the first editable feature, I introduced a layer system.

Layers are basically textures, which are rendered on the terrain overlay, when some clauses are fulfilled. The available clauses at the moment are terrain-elevation and terrain-slope. In the above example, I applied following layers and clauses:

Elevation 0-1: Water
Elevation 1-25: Beach
Elevation 25-Inf: Grass
Slope 15-Inf: Canyon

I have not yet implemented slope interpolation, that is why the transition to the canyon-texture looks a bit blocky.

All in all, this system is great to give a map a basic look with just a few mouse clicks.

More to come soon.

Programming: FSNG Substitute

2006-01-05T00:15:00.000+01:00

I had some free days during the XMas::Holidays (yeah yeah, lazy students), so I spent a few days on the top secret FSNG substitute.

Well OK, to make it short, some early pics:

What you see is basically the ingame editor. The only thing that currently works is heightmap loading and cell subdivision, some basic stuff such as config-files, as well as fancy mouse movement (a little bit like UnrealEd).
At first, I was quite disappointed when looking at the framerates, however when switching to wireframe, I saw that 1024*1024 looks like much more in polys than in pixels. With this resolution, I could even leave the texture away and use vertex colors only.

Some technical notes: like in FSNG, I use MDX2.0 and C++/CLI with .NET² again, as this is my environment of choice (and I love it ;) ).

More to come soon, hopefully (university/time!). I will use this blog for screenshot-updates and not my homepage, as I am not 100% sure, if I really want to *replace* FSNG. I will update the website, when my decision is final.

2005: Music

2005-12-31T21:32:00.000+01:00

By the end of this year, I have moved my music productions to Soundclick, so my songs are stored at a more central place.

My regular music productions can be found here: Phunkmonster Andrew at Soundclick.
Currently "A Little morningTrip Music", "Chemical Train", "Trip To Neverland", and "Phreakin' Rollback" can be found there.

My industrial music productions can be found here: Industrial Phunkmonster Andrew at Soundclick.
Currently "Induction On Ambient", "The Ocean Strikes Back", and "Bloody Loose Throat" can be found there.

Last but not least, I have compiled a little mixing set/mashup of some of my unreleased or unfinished songs, bits'n'pieces, and loops: Come To My House Megaset - 2005 In The Mix.

Besides that, the only other track available from my webspace is the collabo-track Designer and PMA - Agony Chains, because I am not the only copyright holder.

All other/older songs are not available any more, so one can keep track of all my music more easily. If you feel like you can't live without a specific song that is currently not available, you can still request it via email. EMail address is in the Imprint-section of my homepage.

2005: Programming, FSNG, and it's eventual substitute

2005-12-31T19:42:00.000+01:00

Jan 2005: I have finished up a Delphi-Raytracer as a school project. Not *that* remarkable, but the first raytracer was somehow special anyway. The funny thing about it is the fact, that I don't have the source code of this project, altough I have created large parts of the project - the last lines were written at school - and there they remained, forever.

1st Quarter 2005: Besides my preparations for the Abitur Certificate exams, I created an ASCII realtime raytracer (DEMO) in .NET² using C++/CLI (BETA at that time). I finished maybe 90% of it, more on it later.

At that point, I came to the conclusion, that .NET² with C++/CLI is the future, with a strong accent on C++/CLI, and not C# (not only because of this article).
Sure, native C++ with STL is powerful, but if you have seen the .NET² framework together with the strong CLI language extensions, you don't want to go back. Even java is piss compared to that.
Besides that, I simply love the code design guidlines: no hungarian notations, no shortcuts, no f****** camelCase. It looks exorbitant clean compared to the native's C++ code mess (I could give examples, but I'm too lazy ;) ).

2nd/3rd Quarter 2005: Having achieved the Abitur Certificate at school, I had half a year of spare time until the beginning of my studies of computer science. I decided, that this is the chance of my live to create something. So I started to realize my biggest dream - my own flight simulator (FSNG). The development process is pretty well documented on my website, so I won't drop further words here.

4th Quarter 2005: My studies of computer science at the University of Paderborn began as planned. As I expected, my spare timeframe was heavily decreased, so I had no real time left for FSNG.
However: I have a module about fundamentals of programming and I have a laptop. The laptop can't handle regular 3D graphics, because it has a S3 in it. But it can handle realtime ASCII raytracers, because the only thing I need for that is a CPU.
So I used this fairly boring module to finish the ASCII realtime raytracer to be released at TMDC8.
Unfortunately, I had to find out in the meantime, that .NET entries were not allowed at TMDC8.
I came up with the idea to continue to develop the ASCII realtime raytracer into a fully interactive Wolfenstein clone in realtime ASCII. This is my current project, and it will be continued over the winter term. Some (already outdated) screens:

By now, I feel like I create the best code I have ever created, thanks to .NET²: I perform propper exception handling, comment my code with XMLDOC, really think object oriented (even banned the singleton again), etc. etc..

XMas 2005: Now I had a little more spare time. I thought if there is any chance for FSNG left. I decided to partially restart the project, using some of the working subsystem to create a helicopter simulator. Main benefits: I will use small fictional islands as scenery and not the real world, I can concentrate on the graphics engine and less on simulation of the sim world, and rework some old FSNG components and partially extract some subsystems into external libraries for re-use.
I am still in the research phase and will eventually post an announcment when my decision becomes final, that I will convert FSNG into an helicopter simulator.

Décembre ... quoi? ... Décembre SIR!

2005-12-08T23:08:00.000+01:00

Hmm ... we have december, but we don't have a December MDX release yet.

I admit, I don't have too much of a reason to ask

No time anyway for my FSNG
I was the one to praise to trade time against stability

However, I'm still a little bit eager to see how it's all developing.

Bad Luck

2005-12-08T22:59:00.000+01:00

Man ... I travel 2 * 1 hour to university each day by car. And now on the back-leg, the exhaust pipe of my car broke down. 30 minutes of this engine-sound nearly made my ears deaf.

DAMN!!!

That's pretty nasty, because I'm pretty much depending on my car.

Now I can spend some time at the car repair shop instead of visiting some modeling/math lectures, what is not really a best-case scenario.

Click ... Sound ... Monster ... Phunk ... Nagga???

2005-11-28T08:34:00.000+01:00

I opened up a band-page at Soundclick. This one's called Industrial Phunkmonster Andrew, and it will contain my industrial songs. I will eventually open up another band for my "regular" productions. I will gradually move my songs from my webspace to Soundclick. I started with a song called "The Ocean Strikes Back", which is currently my best song IMO.

New Links

2005-11-28T08:29:00.000+01:00

Added links to White Clouds and The ZBuffer to the list of links on the right.

Birthday

2005-11-28T08:19:00.000+01:00

Yo Yo Kidz, it's my birthday.
Well, it's not *that* important, just for the logs ;).

The most remarkable present is a pair of monitor-speakers, which hopefully will help me to achieve a better mastering for my music productions.

Ok, now back to everydays life. I have a 50 minute car-ride to university ahead, and I just noticed that it began to snow again, which will most likely increase this time by some factor. Hopefully, this factor is not an integer ;).

FSNG uses ZBuffer and vice-versa ;)

2005-11-19T23:00:00.000+01:00

FSNG has recently been covered at The ZBuffer.
This makes me really proud a little bit, as I found out about it in my everyday's newsfeed-reader.

So, it's an enormous motivation for me to continue to work on the project. I admit, that I did not really actively develop FSNG in the last few weeks, mainly for two reasons:

Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition is currently incompatible with the latest MDX (Managed DirectX). I have to wait until December, when the new MDX will be released.
My studies take a lot of time.

But I am really optimistic, that I can achive some progress on the project in the term break (early 2006).

I stated, that a demo of FSNG is unlikely to be released. However, presently I could imagine very well to release some kind of BETA when the project is a little more stable/finished. This is, because I discovered, that regions of the earth, which are not covered with elevation data, are automatically displayed as water. So I could ship a small portion of the world, and the rest would be water. So maybe there will be some surprises for you a few weeks ahead.

Rosenrot

2005-10-30T10:45:00.000+01:00

After "Herzeleid", "Sehnsucht", "Live aus Berlin", "Mutter" and "Reise Reise", Rammstein yesterday released their newest album "Rosenrot".

I considered myself a die-hard Rammstein-fan, mainly due to the first two albums, which featured a sophisticated mix of Electronica and Neue Deutsche Härte in an industrial fashion.

However, from "Mutter" to the present, the Electronica-elements became more and more uncommon, and the overall industrial-feel disappeared.

Rosenrot marks the endpoint of this development. Electronica-elements entirely disappeared. Rosenrot is a monotonous collection of Neue Deutsche Härte tracks. All tracks sound like the same - there are just these muddy guitars and no more tech-loops, processed drums or freakin' Electronica-stuff.

A big focus is on the lyrical part this time. Many songs tell long stories, even longer than in the previous albums IMO. However, this is too much story me. You cannot say that the frontman - Till Lindemann - has a beatiful voice when it comes to poetry. I liked him better with furious texts, as it was the case with the first two albums. Some of the addressed topics are really outdated IMO - though some people may argue, that they are timeless.

The real big problem with this album was the fact, that there was no motivation to listen to it a second time. I even didn't have an opinion when it came to the question of my favorite track of the album. There is not really a remarkable track.

If I had to pick some tracks, I'd say that "Hilf Mir" features the best composition, "Spring" has the most thrilling theme, and "Stirb Nicht Vor Mir/Don't Die Before I Do" is special, as it is a duet.

In the end, the best part of the album is the cover/booklet-photography. This is really excellent. The rest is really not remarkable.

Rosenrot will force me to re-declare myself as "1st Generation Rammstein Fan". This new stuff, in particular Rosenrot is nothing I could identify myself with - though it is probably interesting from the poetry-standpoint.

Questions...

2005-09-21T21:46:00.000+02:00

I just asked myself, why this post got five comments. Then I noticed, that the post contained the three most important words of the 21st century: "Paris Hilton", "Fu*k", and "XML" ... what a climax.

So if I am right, this post should get five comments as well, right?

OK, never mind ;).

Programming: Style?

2005-09-21T15:08:00.000+02:00

Ok fellas, here a promising entry for worst function-call of the day competition:

Drawing::Font^ font = gcnew Drawing::Font(
finalElem->Attributes["name"]->Value,
Convert::ToSingle(
finalElem->Attributes["size"]->Value ),
( ( Convert::ToBoolean(
finalElem->Attributes["bold"]->Value ) ) ? Drawing::FontStyle::Bold :
Drawing::FontStyle::Regular )
( ( Convert::ToBoolean(
finalElem->Attributes["italic"]->Value ) ) ?
Drawing::FontStyle::Italic :
Drawing::FontStyle::Regular ) );

However, I admit:

Blogger collapsed the tabs.
Blogger eats the vertical line, which combines enum-values.
Even if I catched any of the 1000 possible exceptions on my own, the result would still be the same if something goes wrong.

Music: Let's go to the museum!

2005-09-07T22:56:00.000+02:00

Propellerheads released their deprecated Rebirth-Software for free as part of their brand-new Rebirth Museum.

I remember the good old days playing around with the virtual Synth. I never found it worth to pay the full price for that kind of "game" - but now it's really reasonably priced.

And remember...

Everybody needs a 303.
-Fatboy Slim
The true spirit of Acid House.
-Fatboy Slim (Big Beach Boutique 2 DVD Comment)

Mad thinking due to too much programming

2005-09-07T22:53:00.000+02:00

It's not that bad when you hear voices. When you see voices, then it's really all over.
-me.

Music: The Ocean Strikes Back

2005-09-04T11:33:00.000+02:00

Mum: You got eerie music...
Me: Thank you!

So, just in case:
The Ocean Strikes Back (Genre: Industrial) [Logo]

FSNG: Sprites...

2005-09-04T10:28:00.000+02:00

I am about to implement the graphical user interface (GUI) into my flight-simulator-project.
So it is pretty self evident, that I need to draw sprites a.k.a. rotated 2D-quads on the screen.

Of course, it is no wonder that I attempt to use the Microsoft::DirectX::Direct3D::Sprite class for this job.

Now after two days of toying around, I didn't find out any "system" concerning the use of the input variables (such as src/dest-rectangle, center-of-rotation, position). It never behaved in a predictable way, and the documentation is very soberly.

So after not reaching my target after two days of trying, I came to the conclusion to do this sprite-job on my own. So the Microsoft::DirectX::Direct3D::Sprite didn't really fullfil it's job, what is pretty poor (and two days of lost working-time).

Science: What we all knew...

2005-08-30T23:45:00.000+02:00

A scientific paper tells us, that 50% of all scientific papers are wrong.

DOH!!!

Read more at New Scientist.

FSNG: Burn out? Burn baby!!!

2005-08-09T23:06:00.000+02:00

Ping to all of ya' outta there. Itz been quite some time when looking at the date of the latest update of this pHunk'd up blog place.

Well, I am very busy in the moment. As you probably know, I'm working on a project called FSNG - a flight simulator.

Now after finishing school, I currently own the status of an umemployed, so I have loads of spacetime to work on the project (this typo was intentionally).

And I do ... very hard. I stand up in the morning, start to work on my baby (FSNG), eat some food on short/rare occasions, and continue to work 'till round about 1 a.m. in the night. Can't remember to have remarkable hobbies - only very rare bedroom DJing 1-2 times a week and maybe formula one; but don't have no doubt that I am hanging over my sketchboard, figuring out my problems, while the cars are racing around the racetrack.

No idea what this guy is talking about? OK, I did a new website, check out http://www.aj-productions.de - you'll find all the details about FSNG there. By the way: it uses very interesting XML-technologies without any content management system eating up my webspace/bandwith. I didn't write a line in this blog about the semi-painful development process, because I simply didn't have time besides FSNG. So please don't bother about this website - it's there now; enjoy it or shut up. Thank you [in Paris Hilton style pronunciation].

Ladies and gentlemen - we are approaching the climax of this post as we get closer to the true message of this post. You are allowed to scream now when done fastening your seatbelt.

So, I've spent half of last week download roughly 15-16GB of SRTM3 elevation. Did I mention connection-burn-out? By the way: If you do not know what SRTM3 is, check out my website or google.

So, 15-16GB is pretty large, but still acceptable when thinking of DVD-distribution. The real problem is: this 15-16GB are *compressed*. Uncompressed, they make up maybe 30GB of data. Ouch, that's not acceptable.

Problems arise, because FSNG has to load the data during runtime in a background-loader-thread, while realtime-graphics are executed and an aerodynamic needs to be kept numerical stable.
So it is *not* designed to do uncompression in a background thread. So I have to store the elevation data in uncompressed form. Did I mention ouch?

So currently I am brainfucking my mind [spirituality] in order to find some acceptable solution; so I can at least half the data amount to 15GB or so (that's my target).

My recent options I figured out are:

Half the alignment from 2-byte-short to 1-byte. This way, the accurancy decreases to 256 elevation steps, which need to cover roughly 9000 meters of elevation-range. You can figure out the pretty bad inaccuracy: 9000/256 = ... [tired ... start the damn calculator on your own ^^]
A modifcation of the 1-byte option: distribute the lower range (1-128) to lower terrain (e.g -500 -> 1500) and the upper range (129-256) to higher terrain (e.g. 1501 -> 8?00). This way one has the small details for the low lands, and the large elevation-steps for the mountains, where they occur in fact
A better concept for the 1-byte-modification option: use an exponential or potential function, where the byte is only a parameter. This way, a wide range of elevation is covered with suitable accuracy.
-Start first block: Pick the first elevation-point; pick a byte between the full elevation range of 0-9000 and call it orientation-offset. Now take the accurate value of the first elevation-point and store the difference between it and "orientation-offset" in "fine-offset" for this point. Take the next point and store the same offset between the initial orientation-offset the this point's accurate elevation fine-offset for this point. etc...

if fine-offset for point Pn becomes larger +/-127
-Start second block: Set orientation-offset according to Pn and the fine-offset for all subsequent points. etc...

This way, wide parts of the terrain are reduced to 1-byte-alignment without precision-loss.
Try to find a (de)compression algorithm which works fast and in-place if possible.
Store the DEM's as compressed image and simply use some built-in .NET image-loader-class. If this works fast, this could be a serious (and - for me - productive option).

In the meantime, I have (and will continue to) built a sky-system, which renders atmospherical scattering according to some paper. Looks already good by now, altough it still needs work (day/night transition!). Watch out for screenshots on my website in the next few days.

Spaceflight: STS-114

2005-07-28T08:58:00.000+02:00

I personally find it still remarkable, that we don't have no HD-TV from the Space Shuttle yet:
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/123557main_fd01_stillcap2.jpg

Music: New Song

2005-07-23T12:04:00.000+02:00

I just wanted to keep you updated on my new songs. Enjoy:
Trip to Neverland (Genre: Trip Hop/Breaks)

The other music of mine, which is available so far:
This Is Not My Full Intention (Genre: Native Techno)
Bloody Loose Throat (Genre: Industrial) [Logo]
This Is Your DJ (Genre: House)
Norseman Flight (Genre: Ambient/House)
Terre de Funk (Genre: House)
To The Moon (Genre: Breaks)
Elevator (Genre: House)
Lost Triband (Genre: Hard House) [Logo]
Motherstone (Genre: Industrial)
Phunk Sensation (Genre: House)
Phunk Sensation (Sans Sax edition: without saxophone) (Genre: House)
Uplifting Hardstyle (Genre: House)
Soulful Sax (Genre: House)
Raw LipperlanDnB (Genre: DnB)
Spirit Of DopeBeat (Genre: Breaks/Big Beat)

My songs are also available on ReasonStation!

Top Secret Project: DI....

2005-07-22T00:28:00.000+02:00

I am currently about to re-code the input-layer of my top-secret flight simulator project.

I must say that DirectInput (managed) is maybe the worst designed interface that is used in serious programming. And what is even more worse - there is no alternative.

I mean ... "hey ... why use Enumerations, if we can use ugly GUIDs instead". And why does my slider-axis not work, though most other axes are working. And why is my application crashing, when I use a button, which has an ID over 6? And why is there no managed documentation? And why is there this shitty offset-mechanism, to identify arbitrary axes?

It's a hell of uglyness with an ugly documentation. And just to make it clear - other DX-APIs such as Direct3D are fine.

Top Secret Project: Millionaire? Anyone?

2005-07-17T00:43:00.000+02:00

For those of you, who joined this blog because they asked themselves why I should become a millionaire, I have prepared a little screenshot-teaser of my current project - a next-generation flight-simulator:

I am currently about to deal with the reloading of SRTM30 DEM-data. This is done on the fly, while the simulator is running. Texturing is temporary.
Aerodynamics is already running and Joystick-Input is fully assignable (though DirectInput is a pretty ugly piece of API). An in-game-profiler is more or less running as well.

Now I am finalizing the coordinate-model, which features latitude-independent terrain-resolution and is going to allow crossing the poles (which is not possible in every major flight-simulator yet available).

This flight-simulator is aimed to be very friendly towards the addon-development-community.

More to come. Stay tuned, and thanks for visit.

WWW: Perfect Style

2005-07-14T10:49:00.000+02:00

Just found a blog which features a really perfect style sheet. Just check it out and don't forget to scroll till bottom. You'll know what I mean.

Photo: Uhh-La/lA

2005-06-30T23:40:00.000+02:00

Yo,
I've just decided to stop my image of the day series, because if I continue this way, my webspace will dry up. I will eventually post more images at some photo community. Stay tuned.

Photo: Zero-Eight-Fivteen

2005-06-29T23:06:00.000+02:00

My new series: Image of the day. Today...

Zero-Eight-Fivteen:

Ain't no stunning motifs today to stumble over, so this sunset is kinda fall-back-solution for today's IOTD.

Photo: Small Bird

2005-06-28T23:40:00.000+02:00

My new series: Image of the day. Today...

Small Bird:

No big deal today. I was running around in the familie's garden to take some sunset shot, but there were simply no motifs at all. About to give up, I found this fly flying around. I didn't plan to make some good photo, I simply did it. OK, the fly is not the main thing, but the composition of the chairs is nice, I think.

Concerning the headline: No, I do not take drugs.

Photo: Summertime

2005-06-27T20:22:00.000+02:00

My new series: Image of the day. Today...

Summertime:

Pretty sunny day today, so here we got some impressions from within the familie's garden; some unknown flower object (UFO) and some Cessna 152 or 172 traffic from the nearby airfield.

Photo: Gate

2005-06-26T23:18:00.000+02:00

My new series: Image of the day. Today...

Gate:

"Airport Festival" yesterday at Padborn-Lippstadt Airport. This shot features the gate of the airport after boarding for the flip. There was a 1,5+1 hour delay, but they gave us free stamps to buy something, which was pretty OK. The flight was so beatiful; they flew as low and slow as possible when passing over interesting spots (2000-3000ft, 220knts and slower).
Cabin announciation by pilot flying (FO): "A few minutes ago, we explained what flaps are good for. Now this is the speedbreak..." - and while talking, he extended the speedbreaks with full wing-lights. Amazing.
The takeoff-run was pretty fast because of the low take-off weight (fuel for 45min and no luggage). They seemed to be pretty eager to present a good show, and they were successful.

The only bad thing was, that you couldn't take good shots at night due to the delay. But hey ... the sunset was beautiful as well.

It's a strange feeling to hang around at the airport half of the day and after the flight, you are back at the airport and you think: "A few minutes ago, I was over Hannover (city some 100 kilometeres north of the airport)". This shouldn't be something special in the 21st century, but it is (still).

Photo: Trails

2005-06-25T23:11:00.000+02:00

My new series: Image of the day. Today...

Trails:

"Airport Festival" today at Padborn-Lippstadt Airport. This shot features a BAe-146 "Avro Jet" prior touchdown with amazing trails due to humidity. There was a flip later that day.

Photo: Ship

2005-06-24T23:13:00.000+02:00

My new series: Image of the day. Today...

Ship:

No fancy motifs to stumble over today, so I had to pick another photo from my archive. This one has been taken on the 16th of June and it shows one of the sails of the families' catamaran, which was built up for testing-purpose in the garden on this day.

Photo: FlowerPower V3.0

2005-06-23T23:57:00.000+02:00

My new series: Image of the day. Today...

FlowerPower V3.0:

Been pretty busy today, didn't have time to take yet another amazing shot.
So here is some unknown flower object (UFO) from my photo archive. This one has been shot on the 27th of May. Enjoy.

Photo: Evening

2005-06-22T21:02:00.000+02:00

My new series: Image of the day. Today...

Evening:

Nice sunset during the soccer-match Argentinia vs. Germany. As always, it looks less impressive on photo than in reality.

Photo: Phantom

2005-06-21T16:43:00.000+02:00

My new series: Image of the day. Today...

Phantom:

Some military aviation action in the skies going on today. Well, I rushed to the window and that's the final result. I really though she'd be smaller, but my lovely tele-zoom-lens did it's very best.
At first she looked a little bit like a Harrier, but when looking at the shape of the wings/elevons and at the color of the exhaust, this is clearly a F4 Phantom. This makes perfect sense, because the German Luftwaffe still has some Phantoms.

Photo: FlowerPower V2.0

2005-06-20T23:39:00.000+02:00

My new series: Image of the day. Today...

FlowerPower V2.0:

The int'resting thing about this unknown flow'r object (UFO) is that this yellow thing on top was still in the evening's sun, while the rest was already shadowed (or, as we raytracer-guys say: it's in the occlusion-volume of the primary photon spawn location).

Formula 1: Nagga Royale

2005-06-20T17:54:00.000+02:00

Oh yes ... yesterday ... Formula 1 ... I remember.

Well, what can I say:
-the bridgestone-teams did the right thing from their point of view
-the michelin-teams did the right thing from their point of view
-FIA did the right thing from their point of view

Everyone acted "according to the book", no one really tried to make something from it. Now the only one who is pissed is the viewer. But isn't it the viewer the Formula 1 exists for?

So, where's the problem? I though about that. I personally thing that the main problem are the rules which state that there is only one tire per race allowed.
Tires are wear parts and it's simply wrong to declare wear parts as long-lasting. So it's no wonder that something had to happen as a result of this rule.
If you treated tires like wear parts - and thus allow to change them - there'd be no problem.
BTW, it's not the first time that these rules enforce stupid behavior - look at Raikkonen at the Nürburg ring or MSC's double tire blow in Barcelone.

That's what it's all about as you see.

Photo: Triangles

2005-06-19T20:23:00.000+02:00

My new series: Image of the day. Today...

Triangles:

Again a beautiful day. This photo features a shot heading north. Triangles are the main feature in the composition of this picture. How many triangles do you count?

Photo: Mr. Man

2005-06-18T21:40:00.000+02:00

My new series: Image of the day. Today...

Mr. Man:

Was a beatiful day today, at least from the weather's point of view. The sunset of course was as beatiful as the rest of day. This photo features a tele-shot towards south-west directions of my house. You can see the "Hermann"-statue which means translated as much as "Mr. Man". Pretty useless if you ask me. The bricks on the neighbors roof look like a perfect example for phong shading ;).

Photo: FlowerPower

2005-06-17T20:36:00.000+02:00

My new series: Image of the day. Today...

FlowerPower:

Me was busy today and I had no time to take some phunky photo, so I decided to take some photo from my phunky archive.
So, this photo has been taken on the 10th of June 2005 and it shows some unknown flower object (UFO) in my garden. Don't ask about details since my knowledge of flowers reflects the inverse proportion of my knownledge about information technology.

Photo: Compression

2005-06-16T19:36:00.000+02:00

My new series: Image of the day. Today...

Compression:

A "screenshot" of the working-rack of my latest song. You see my "layered compression mastering technique". The program is Reason 3.0 by the way.

Photo: UFO

2005-06-15T00:00:00.000+02:00

My new series: Image of the day. Today...

UFO:

Alright, it's right after midnight again, so it's time to upload following picture. For some reason I don't get rid of this one-day offset and "post-at-midnight-game".
So ... "Yesterday" a hot-air balloon came by my portion of the world. Not too close but still observable. The wind came in an unusual fashion from northern directions, so the balloon didn't come very close.
Nevertheless, you can see a wide-angle version and an "in-picture" tele-version of the balloon. Enjoy.

Music: House Charts 2005-06

2005-06-14T17:39:00.000+02:00

Alright, Phunkmonster's house charts for 2005-06 are up:

House Charts for 2005-06

(1) Luxor & Montana - I Feel Good
(2) Sandy W - Bitch EP
(3) Raw Shape - My Heart
(4) Bobby Blanco - Black Sugar
(5) Playmaker - Get Down

For entire coolishness, visit the origin!

Photo: Phat Bird

2005-06-14T00:09:00.000+02:00

My new series: Image of the day. Today...

Phat Bird:

It's just after midnight right now, maybe a little bit early to upload a new image of the day. Nevertheless, I had to upload this one.
"Yesterday" I heared a very loud engine rushing by my room. "This must be a large truck". I looked out of the window, but there was no truck. When I just wanted to stare again at my monitor, I noticed that a second engine noise was closing in. And suddenly there was a C-160 Transall in a turn, covering half of my field of view out of the window.
I took my camera instantly and rushed to the other side of the house to get it on photo. She was close to dive under the trees/horizon, but I caught her in the last possible second with ten times tele-zoom.
This propably sounds less spectacular than it is ;).

Fun: Definition of...

2005-06-13T17:41:00.000+02:00

Mum: Is this transparent?
Me:

Transparency is only as transparent as the definition of transparency is inexact.

Photo: Top Secret

2005-06-13T10:30:00.000+02:00

My new series: Image of the day. Today...

Top Secret:

Just wanted to tease a little bit with this "screen-shot" of my current top-secret project. I have to admit that it looks more ready than it is actually. What you see is almost everything that currently works. Nevertheless, there is lot's of more stuff in the pipeline.

Music: Earworm

2005-06-13T00:30:00.000+02:00

Didn't like Sandy W much after "Always On My Mind", since this track was boring.

So I avoided to check out "Bitch Ep" by Sandy W. What a mistake. It features very catchy vocals, I can't get it out of my head. Check out the samples at your favorite online record dealer or for example this site.

Well, I just ordered the record and I can't wait for it to arrive.

Edit:
If I evaluate my DJ-style, I have to admit that the hard-house/progressive part grows rapidly besides the phunky side of my musical spectrum. Intr'esting. Watch out for my June charts, coming up soon (when the latest load of records arrives ;) ).

Aviation: Red Bull Air Race

2005-06-12T17:13:00.000+02:00

I'm an aviation fan, but this air race is crap.

This extreme flying is against all tendencies in aviation to achive safety.

Just so close to the ground, there is no time to correct mistakes or bail out; and there will be the day when something will happen.

This won't look good on TV: "Splash ... game over; next one...". Not to mention the spectators on ground, which are in danger.

Useless stuff...

Photo: Clouds

2005-06-12T17:10:00.000+02:00

My new series: Image of the day. Today...

Clouds:

Pretty pissy grey day today. Quite boring. At least there is a formula one race tonight. The photo should express this.

Photo: Digital Musician

2005-06-11T13:26:00.000+02:00

My new series: Image of the day. Today...

Digital Musician:

This is a nine time tele-zoom shot, which is keeping things close together.
You see a major part of the equipment of a digital musician, i.e. someone who is producing music using computers, e.g. me: a midi-keyboard, intermediate headphones, poor surround speakers, computer devices.

Photo: Genious At Work

2005-06-10T14:48:00.000+02:00

My new series: Image of the day. Today...

Genious At Work:

In the lower left quadrant, you can see a sketch of my "Adaptive World Segment"-system for DEM-terrain of my top secret project.
In the upper left quadrant, there are some notes and a pretty useless attempt to convert Euler Integration to Euler Deriviation.
in the lower right quadrant, you can see some shades of fuel a.k.a. coffee.
The composition is genious. It wasn't really intention, but most major lines are running towards the center of the image.

Music: Two New Songs

2005-06-09T12:36:00.000+02:00

I just wanted to keep you updated on my new songs. Enjoy:
Bloody Loose Throat (Genre: Industrial) [Logo]
This Is Your DJ (Genre: House)

Here is all the other music which I have produced so far:
Norseman Flight (Genre: Ambient/House)
Terre de Funk (Genre: House)To The Moon (Genre: Breaks)
Elevator (Genre: House)Lost Triband (Genre: Hard House) [Logo]
Motherstone (Genre: Industrial)Phunk Sensation (Genre: House)
Phunk Sensation (Sans Sax edition: without saxophone) (Genre: House)
Uplifting Hardstyle (Genre: House)
Soulful Sax (Genre: House)
Raw LipperlanDnB (Genre: DnB)
Spirit Of DopeBeat (Genre: Breaks/Big Beat)

My songs are also available on ReasonStation!

Top Secret Project: Aerodynamics Up'n'Running

2005-06-07T00:07:00.000+02:00

I've finally managed it to implement the aerodynamic model into my top secret project after round abount 2.5 weeks of implementing and searching errors.

In the end the major problems were a mixture of a wrong value for the drag at zero angle of attack (0.03 instead of 0.3) which resulted in squared-10-times increase of velocity and two wrong math operations ("*" instead of "/") in the formula for the aerodynamic body moment of the rotational Y-axis.

Now the model is numerically stable and it feels like airplane. I really hope that there are no more hidden errors in there. But I'm quite optimistic: it didn't feel as good yet as it feels now.

*HAPPY* I was really close to giving up, because I simply didn't seem to find any errors. That's really hard for a task that takes you 2-3 weeks. But now everything is hopefully fine.

Aviation: ME at PAD

2005-06-02T12:49:00.000+02:00

Alright, on wednesday I got up at 2:15 am for an early-morning spotting at Paderborn-Lippstadt Airport (PAD/EDLP).

Here are the photos.

This was mainly a test-run for my new camera (see below). As you can imagine, it's quite diffucult to take good shots at night, especially without tripod. But after some trying, you develop techniques to deal with it. In the end, after some post-processing, some photos became fine.

All in all, it was very hard to get up so early at night, but it was a great trip, a great sunrise, and a great trip in the car through the morning's ground-fog at sunrise without much traffic, because it was prior rush-hour.

Formula 1: Tires

2005-05-31T00:44:00.000+02:00

Nürburg-Ring-Race is over and I am tired to state that the situation is not as worse as it seems for Ferrari.

So let me discuss the rules concerning tires: Since 2005, every car has to use only one set of tires for entire race distance. Changing a tire is only allowed in case of a damaged tire. Preventive tire-changes are not (really) allowed.

THIS IS BU*LSHIT

Why did they introduce this rule? In order to make the cars slower because of the degraded grip-level, in order to increase safety. Ha-ha!
Look at Raikkonen - looks very safe making a 360° turn at 300km/h. Look at MSC - double tire blow. Look at all these drivers suffering crashes because of heavily degraded grip.

This rule is a contradiction to all these rules which aim to increase safetey. Additionally, it allows fewer strategies because there are no more tire-changes to take into the equation, thus the races becoming more boring.

Stupid stuff.

Politics: Vive le Idiotisme

2005-05-31T00:33:00.000+02:00

France has decided via plebescite to reject the new european constitution. Well, if they like to remain in the past...

I have a great idea: There will be a new europe. Those who want to join are free to join, but those who are against this new europe have to stay outside, i.e. if they are in the EU and they are against the new constitution, they get booted out.

Fine and fair. Maybe they change their mind then. Else they'd get what they deserve.

Please note that I am - although german - NOT a Nazi but an anxious citezen.

Meteo: Alohhaaaaa

2005-05-26T14:26:00.000+02:00

For the first time this year, I am wearing HAWAII shirts and shorts. Pretty hot today ;).

Top Secret Project: Numbers...

2005-05-26T14:22:00.000+02:00

I'm about to implement an intermediate aerodynamic flight-model (NPSNET) into my top secret project (HINT!). I was stuck because I simply couldn't explain how to calculate angular motion. Additionally, there were a number of unused coefficients.

When I was about to give up/do it on my own, I noticed that the page-order was "5, 6, 7, 10, 11". This propably explains a lot of my problems.

Music: Pipe the line

2005-05-24T22:28:00.000+02:00

I have some new releases in the pipeline. It's about funky-acid-house (strange, right)/progressive-disco-house (strange as well, right)/massive-trip-hop-breaks (encore strange, right).

As you see, it's all about trying out new things.

I just have to make them sound good; I hope they are not too unconvential for the masses.

I should think about opening up an account at some legal MP3-community - my own webspace may struggle with these masses of music.

More to come, stay tuned! :D

Homepage: Aftermath

2005-05-24T22:19:00.000+02:00

A few posts ago, I argued about setting up a CMS for my homepage.

So, I am mostly done now rebuilding the content my website. I am not 100% satisfied with the style-sheet but it's OK - CSS editing is pretty ugly IMO (select edit - edit something - save - go to website - check - see that everything is entirely messed up - goto 1).

I used some of the content-sketches from the original website. These sketches do not contain those fixes which have been done in the preceding CMS, so maybe there are some errors - but it shouldn't be too bad. I will re-read these texts when schedul center clears me to do so ;). If you do not understand the preceding sentence, then you are not involved in aviation.

Astrally View

2005-05-24T21:59:00.000+02:00

Yes ... I am the proud owner of a new digital camera: Kyocera M-410 R. The baby has 4 mega pixel what is less than 5 mega pixel but still more than sufficient. The key feature: 10x optical zoom. I really hope to take some stunning pictures of some stunning aircrafts ASAP.

First impression: Smaller than I thought, really handy. The lens looks pretty sexy. The eye-view-finder is perfect. Optics is excellent. Zoom is amazing (I sat around 5 meter away from some kind of fly-drape and you could see the actual structure of the stiches with full 10x tele-zoom). Pretty hungry cocerning battery comsumption: The batt-warning came pretty fast. But after another off/on cycle, the batt-warning didn't come again for some hours, so maybe it was just false alarm.

All in all, I am very happy with the camera. I found a very inexpensive offer at ebay for 260 Euros - normally you would expect at least 300 Euros for this camera. Initial price was over 500 Euros when this camera was launched first half 2004.

Formula 1: Aftermath

2005-05-24T21:53:00.000+02:00

Well, everything entirely sucks but it's not too bad at the same time.

It sucks cuz
MSC classified quite bad in Monaco and the driver's championship rating looks pretty sad for a MSC-fan.

It's not too bad cuz
Well, qualifying was bad from MSC's point of view because he put all his efforts into the race itself and not into a single lap of the qualifying. You could really see that the Ferrari had the speed to get into top three of the classement. It was simply bad luck that the actual result was worse. Anway, the potential is there ... so there is still something to belive in.

And the final very good aspect: It's just a few days 'til the next race, so there is another chance for things to become fine.

Formula 1: Yeah yeah...

2005-05-20T00:30:00.000+02:00

Some of yours might have heared of me being a Ferrai/MSC fan - at least in the context of Formula 1.

So, is it a bad news, that it's F1-time again this weekend?

Not really. All these reporters are arguing, that Ferrari is only in the mid of the classement. But that's only because they didn't drive in the last minutes of the first two training sessions and/or they were blocked in their fast laps. Ferrari is noticable near the top of the classement when having a closer look.

Let's hope that these vibrations of MSC are not too bad.

Anyway ... even if there is still a chance to win the championship for MSC IMO, Ferrari will definitely not win the constructors championship, because Barrichello is really the opposite of convincing.

Blog: Sorry for Delay ...lay ...lay ...lay sorry

2005-05-20T00:06:00.000+02:00

Alright folks, I've been busy the last week reworking my homepage.

The reason to do so: my original homepage used a custom-built content management system (CMS) which worked quite well. The problem was, that when moving content through the (quite large) database, the up/down procedures generated for some kind of deadlock for some unknown reason, which resulted in content which was "stuck" in the database.

Strange enough, so I decided to switch to one of these freely available CMSs. So I tried out several CMSs several times - because it's a rare occasion, that everything instantly works fine.

So I started with Exponent CMS. It was quite well and satisfied my demands, but after some working with it, I noticed that it sometimes took around 2 minutes to reload the pages. I looked at the official forum and other people had this problem as well and there seemd to be no fix.

Next was Xoops Cms. At first I thought that this one was fine. But it was not. Xoops's content structure is not recursive enough and too abstract to managed in a comfortable way. Additionally, I was not able to find specific add-ins in order to satisfy my demands. So I really felt, that Xoops was not the way to go.

About to give up hope, I found Mambo. Mambo's speed and content-structure are very well. So I decided to give it a try. Well, after a day or so, you are quite comfortable with the menus. The only thing: (maybe) due to the safe-mode of my shared server environment, Mambo is not able to upload and install any additional components, so I am unable to extend the functionality of Mambo. But I can work around it ... I least I hope so. I have no other choice anyway.

At the moment, I am going to rebuild the content of the website.

Did I mention that I installed all these CMSs half a dozen times? Did I mention, that the only way to erase the entire webspace is by hand, i.e. going through it by hand and and erasing every's directory content ... half a dozen times? Did I mention that CMSs generate lot's of directories? Did I mention that I had to rename 175 image-files by hand in order to bring them in a format, which makes them listed correctly by the FTP-FS? Did I mention why I had no time to update this blog? Yes ... lot's of work ...

Blog: Phunkmonster Pheed

2005-05-12T20:05:00.000+02:00

Just stepped into the RSS Newsreader age to organize all these news.
And I tell you what ... this Blog has Atom-feed as well:
http://phunkmonster.blogspot.com/atom.xml

What I found quite phunny: I took the first news-feed-reader from google and the installer complained there was no dotNet installed. Well, I have Beta 2 what is not the same as 1.1.XYZ, but a decent installer should be able to deal with it.

The second one worked.

School: "Abitur Certificate" Orals

2005-05-11T16:54:00.000+02:00

I had my "Abitur certificate" orals today in information technolgy. I finished straight A. That's really phunky.

TV: Deutsche Börse AG

2005-05-10T12:40:00.000+02:00

"Deutsche Börse AG" a.k.a. "German Stock Exchange PLC" is somehow like incest.

TV: Formula 1

2005-05-08T20:18:00.000+02:00

NO COMMENT!

!!!

Top Secret Project #1: Lukla Fun Package

2005-05-07T11:56:00.000+02:00

I've just finished my first "Top Secret Project":

Lukla Fun Package

Extracts from the Readme:

Lukla (VNLK) is situation in Nepal, 9100 ft above sea level. It can be considered a dangerous
airport. It is listed in the famous Dangerous Airport Database:
http://dangerousairports.com/dad/info.php?icao=VNLK .

If you ask what the most special airport is in MS Flight Simulator, many Flightsimmers will answer
Lukla.

In real life, Lukla airport is visited by smaller airplanes. It is often the starting point for
trekkers and Everest tourists. It is a challange to land there, even for small airplanes.

In Flight Simulator, you can use Lukla to test your skills. The most challanging test is to land
a 737 there. This should not be possible due to runway length, altitude and runway conditions.
But if you try hard, it is possible in simulator.

This package is dedicted to the FICTIVE attempt to land a mid-class jet such as the 737 at Lukla.

This Package contains:
-Handmade charts of FICTIVE RNAV procedures to depart from and land at Lukla airport.
-Custom-built scenery which contains the FICTIVE RNAV waypoints.
-Custom-built scenery of a wood-ramp which enlarges the runway. This is necessary to be able to take-off with a 737.
-Flight plan of a Lukla Roundtrip (Departure and Approach).
-Situation files for every key point in the flight plan for each Learjet/B734.
-Recorded flights of some key-procedures for the FS-Video-Player.
-Instructions to enable the PMDG 737 NG FMC to fly the RNAV procedures.

TV: Formula 1

2005-05-06T09:50:00.000+02:00

Yes ... life's good. It's Formula 1 time again.

Let's hope that this race will become as tasty as the last one.

Music: Rolling on the Floor Laughin'

2005-05-06T01:04:00.000+02:00

I'm currently listening to Rockin'Klash by Noise Factory.

I was looking at the product page (see link) because of nostalgic reasons.

When I looked at the "Customers who bought this title also bought titles by these artists"-table, I noticed that this reflects entirely the records I bought at this record shop. So I'm probably the only person, who bought this track at this record store.

Quite phunky...

This Place: Unphunkiness

2005-05-06T00:49:00.000+02:00

I just encountered the same thing two times. When creating a blog-entry and you switch from HTML edit to preview and back, and your entry is quite long, it eats some of the last lines what is quite unphunky as they are not recoverable and there is no warning.

Classic-House-Review: D-Duke - Jador

2005-05-06T00:08:00.000+02:00

Label: Cassagrande [CSG1184]
Mixes: Classical Funky Mix, Classical Funky Mix Edit, Accapella, Originial Extended Mix, On the Moon Remix
Useable or Best Mix(es): Classical Funky Mix (of course I am da'Phunkmonster, so what else to expect)

Refers to: Classical Funky Mix

Style: House (Funky Italo Pumping Pr0n-vocals ;) )

Mix-In: Short beat only ... cute/funky bassline sets in ... vocals join in ... then guitars ... very stylish all in all. No break after intro - the song directly joins the main-theme. The beat-only passage could be longer ... the samples are presented in too short intervals - this makes it difficult to mix in this track softly. But it's excellent as a set opener - really. First beat is ugly to scratch, just in case you are planning to open a set with this track and first beat scratched ;).

Drive: Pr0n-Italo-Vocal: "Everytime and everywhere I can see the vibe ... it grows inside of me ... so let me show you the way ... the way of pleasure ... and my pleasure is the music ... [main theme sets in] ... the music ... the music ... the music ... the music ..." ... oh yeah ... this sample "the music" is so sweet, so houseish, so clubish, so ultra phunky. It's really this kind of stuff which makes up good/horny/stylish house tunes along with a heavily pumpin phunky bassline. You see ... it really touches a phunkmonster's soul.
Very little negativ aspect: The "classical" disco-strings feel a little bit set-on-top. This is maybe because the "Classical Funky Mix" is some genre-miles away from the original mix, which is quite progressive/italo/electro.

Beat: Nothing special, but at least it is not making things worse.

Quality: Sounds good, vinyl quality is good as well. As said, the disco-strings sound a little bit set-on-top and the bassline is a bit obvious (though good).

Break-Down: The entire song is under 5 minutes, so there is no real room for any large builds. The main break features the lovely "the music"-sample ... bassline sets in ... then main theme.

Mix-Out: Main theme ... then beat only along with bassline ... some samples from the main theme here and there. Painless to mix out. Honestly, I am not a friend of bassline in the outro, but that's a matter of personal taste ... you can deal with it.

Comment/Opinion: This song is a re-release, so there must be a good reason to buy this song one year after original release.
And yes ... I adore this song ... it features these words of highest value such as phunky or clubish. It really has a great drive and atmosphere.
Keep the funk alive ... and next time leave the disco-strings away.

Andreas Jung

Back on XP

Blog Makeover

Yet Another **NG Flightsim

XNA Game Studio Express Beta Impressions

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

Atlas Of The Universe

Now with curved winglets...

IDontGetIt.NET/CLI

Series

ILA 2006

Rumble In The Jungle

Good one

uhh yeah ... happiness each and everywhere...

Worth a Posting

Please tell me that this is a fake!

!!! www.FS-Developer.info !!!

Volume Fog

Another New Song

New Song

Semi Show-Off then...

Industrial...

Quick'n'Dirty MDX Feb06 Review

New song Again and Again and AiAiAi.......!

Two New Songs

__NOT __to __hack DirectInput

to hack DirectInput OR NOT to hack DirectInput

Lighbox

Building Cliffs

THEY ARE EVERYWHERE

Programming: FSNG Substitute

2005: Music

2005: Programming, FSNG, and it's eventual substitute

Décembre ... quoi? ... Décembre SIR!

Bad Luck

Click ... Sound ... Monster ... Phunk ... Nagga???

New Links

Birthday

FSNG uses ZBuffer and vice-versa ;)

Rosenrot

Questions...

Programming: Style?

Music: Let's go to the museum!

Mad thinking due to too much programming

Music: The Ocean Strikes Back

FSNG: Sprites...

Science: What we all knew...

FSNG: Burn out? Burn baby!!!

Spaceflight: STS-114

Music: New Song

Top Secret Project: DI....

Top Secret Project: Millionaire? Anyone?

WWW: Perfect Style

Photo: Uhh-La/lA

Photo: Zero-Eight-Fivteen

Photo: Small Bird

Photo: Summertime

Photo: Gate

Photo: Trails

Photo: Ship

Photo: FlowerPower V3.0

Photo: Evening

Photo: Phantom

Photo: FlowerPower V2.0

Formula 1: Nagga Royale

Photo: Triangles

Photo: Mr. Man

Photo: FlowerPower

Photo: Compression

Photo: UFO

Music: House Charts 2005-06

Photo: Phat Bird

Fun: Definition of...

Photo: Top Secret

Music: Earworm

Aviation: Red Bull Air Race

Photo: Clouds

Photo: Digital Musician

Photo: Genious At Work

Music: Two New Songs

NOT to __hack DirectInput

Blog: Sorry for Delay ...lay ...lay ...lay sorry