I discovered a new blog the other day in the same vein as Violent Acres; if you like that, you'll love this one too. It's written by a mom who has a few things to say, and she's not afraid to say them!
I present to you: Momus Iratus. I recommend you give it a read, she has a great writing style and a natural talent for blog-post-sized story telling.
Thursday, April 09, 2009
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
FSX pushback bug?
I haven't had a lot of time for PC gaming this year but when I do it's all Microsoft Flight Simulator for me. I got a copy of Flight Simulator X (FSX) for Christmas and it really is fantastic in terms of airports, scenery, and realism. The developers even wrote a patch that allows the game to utilize multiple CPU cores if your PC has them, which really boosted performance from the original version.
Anybody who has played the game or some previous version of it knows that even though it is fairly realistic, there is a certain level of suspension of disbelief at work that you need in order to have a good experience. For example, if you play the Caribbean Landing mission you'll notice there is an airliner holding short for the runway while you land. If you taxi clear of the runway rather than just ending the mission after a successful landing, ATC will clear the airliner for takeoff and you can watch him leave. As he is climbing out and turns away from the runway heading, he magically flies right through the mountain in front of him rather than crashing into it and comes out just fine on the other side. The same thing sometimes happens with floating runway lights, bouncing airport trucks, etc. These kind of things obviously are collision-detection (in the pixel sense, not the aircraft sense) related and don't really detract from the game.
The other day, though, I found something that felt like a bug in the gameplay: I was playing the African Relief mission (no spoilers here so don't worry if you haven't yet played it) and overshot the runway on my first landing on the dirt strip because I was carrying too much speed and couldn't brake in time before rolling a little way down the hill at the end of the strip. Not one to give up easily I tried to turn the plane around and taxi back up the hill but it was no go -- I was stuck. An alternative occurred to me: turn back around and try taking off down the hill and coming back around for another landing attempt. But, I didn't have enough energy even to turn around and the plane wasn't rolling back on its own. Just for grins I hit Shift+P, the keyboard command for "request pushback," normally used when you are parked at the gate and need a tug to back you up at an airport. To my surprise it actually worked! Out in the middle of nowhere Africa, on a hill past the end of the dirt strip I had skidded off of, an invisible tug started pushing me backwards and I was able to turn the plane around and attempt a takeoff. I botched the takeoff with a nasty bounce/stall/crash combination but I managed to refly the entire mission successfully the second time around.
So I wondered: was it really a bug, or is it plausible that when I requested pushback a bunch of the guys who were based at the strip ran over and started pushing us backwards for the takeoff attempt? I guess that explanation is believable and not totally out of line with other events that happen where you can't see the actors, but it seemed a little fishy to me.
Anybody who has played the game or some previous version of it knows that even though it is fairly realistic, there is a certain level of suspension of disbelief at work that you need in order to have a good experience. For example, if you play the Caribbean Landing mission you'll notice there is an airliner holding short for the runway while you land. If you taxi clear of the runway rather than just ending the mission after a successful landing, ATC will clear the airliner for takeoff and you can watch him leave. As he is climbing out and turns away from the runway heading, he magically flies right through the mountain in front of him rather than crashing into it and comes out just fine on the other side. The same thing sometimes happens with floating runway lights, bouncing airport trucks, etc. These kind of things obviously are collision-detection (in the pixel sense, not the aircraft sense) related and don't really detract from the game.
The other day, though, I found something that felt like a bug in the gameplay: I was playing the African Relief mission (no spoilers here so don't worry if you haven't yet played it) and overshot the runway on my first landing on the dirt strip because I was carrying too much speed and couldn't brake in time before rolling a little way down the hill at the end of the strip. Not one to give up easily I tried to turn the plane around and taxi back up the hill but it was no go -- I was stuck. An alternative occurred to me: turn back around and try taking off down the hill and coming back around for another landing attempt. But, I didn't have enough energy even to turn around and the plane wasn't rolling back on its own. Just for grins I hit Shift+P, the keyboard command for "request pushback," normally used when you are parked at the gate and need a tug to back you up at an airport. To my surprise it actually worked! Out in the middle of nowhere Africa, on a hill past the end of the dirt strip I had skidded off of, an invisible tug started pushing me backwards and I was able to turn the plane around and attempt a takeoff. I botched the takeoff with a nasty bounce/stall/crash combination but I managed to refly the entire mission successfully the second time around.
So I wondered: was it really a bug, or is it plausible that when I requested pushback a bunch of the guys who were based at the strip ran over and started pushing us backwards for the takeoff attempt? I guess that explanation is believable and not totally out of line with other events that happen where you can't see the actors, but it seemed a little fishy to me.
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