tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-187628132024-03-13T06:49:04.178+02:00My Big Fat Greek BlogNews about the weather, politics, anthropological research, environmental practice and policing the state...Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.comBlogger110125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-24194935078772692212012-12-19T19:56:00.000+02:002012-12-19T19:56:06.385+02:00FSX - Best Hardware Combination of the day (redux)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Those of you who read my blog will remember I had <a href="http://lkalamaras.blogspot.gr/2009/10/fsx-best-hardware-combination-of-day.html">posted</a> about what I considered 'best' quality hardware, to run Flight Simulator X. As that post was getting quite long in the tooth, I decided to update it here with my thoughts about current hardware...</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Reiterating, a couple clarifications first:</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />1)
Obviously, the absolute-best hardware for FSX would be the most
expensive hardware you can buy today, with the possible exception of a
graphics card, as FSX is not so GPU-dependent as it is CPU-dependent.<br />2)
We're going for bang-for-the-buck here, so I'll list my choice of what
you *should* get, in order to have the best combination for the
least-crazy money spent. Obviously, a 1TB solid-state disk that costs
$25,000 in itself would be awesome, but it falls outside the
normal-people category :-).<br />3) This list is already obsolete by the
time you read this post. Yes, the minute I post it, it's obsolete. Such
is the nature of the beast, such is the name of the game. If you want
up-to-date, do your own research.<br /><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">H</span>ere are my picks, updated for end-of-2012:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />0)
Software (yes, I know "best hardware combination", so let's get this
out of the way first): Windows 7 x64. Hands down, the best OS to-date. I know that most new PCs come out with Windows 8 these days, but there have been several reports of instabilities and problems with FSX (particularly when it comes to joystick compatibility - USB drivers usually require updates) to make me warn against it. Windows 8 has nothing to offer me, personally, as I will not be running FSX on a tablet PC to have any sort of need for a touch screen.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Windows 7 x64 (even with the small
issue with adding scenery for FSX, which has a <a href="http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproappcompat/thread/f4d60061-c75a-4296-8aba-b48320ea03d2">workaround</a>) remains my best choice.<br /><br />With the Windows choice out of the way, let's make sure we set the stakes for what it is we're trying to define:<br /><br />On
the one hand, we can be looking for a "pure" FSX box, which will run
Flight Simulator, possibly a couple FS-related utilities (Squawkbox) and
*nothing* else. On the other, we can be looking for a power-user PC
which is FSX-oriented, but will also run other software (possibly do
some video conversions from DVD to AVI, etc.). Keep this in mind, while
you read on...</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In my previous post, the choice of CPUs at the time was a bit confusing... Today, things have cleared up quite a bit: In my opinion, the best CPU to run FSX on is the i7-3930K, clocking at 3.2GHz and offering six cores of pure processing power. Runner up for those who can't afford the price tag is the i7-3770K, at 3.5GHz but with four cores available only.<br /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Combine this with the following components, and you'll have a box that is certain to help boost your desired FPS for the upcoming FSX addons which are sure to grab your attention!</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />-
Motherboard: Anything ASUS or GigaByte. The i7-3930K runs on LGA 2011 chipset, while the older 3770K requires an LGA 1155 chipset, so with that in mind, choose a motherboard at the middle of the available price ranges that will offer you those extra items (like USB3.0, eSATA, etc) that will make you feel best.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />-
RAM: Nothing has changed from my earlier recommendations here: Speed is important, but more so is budget. Grab the
MOST (16GB is quite normal these days, with several 32GB options and some 64GB ones that might be a bit on the extreme side) and FASTEST memory you can afford - make sure that you pick
reputable brands, if possible go with the motherboard's compatibility list
as these chips will have been tested to comply with standards. Be
careful to buy memory that runs at lower voltages, as power consumption
(and heat dissipated) play a role here too.<br /><br />- Graphics card: I wrote in my previous post:
"Flight Simulator X is CPU-bound. This means that there will be VERY
little difference observed (perhaps a half-frame or so) if you go from
an 8800GT 512mb card you bought awhile ago to a GTX295". This is true today too - however, there's a notable exception: There are several graphics cards in the market today that offer *too much* video RAM. Anything above 2GB is actually detrimental to FSX performance (it eats away on your available main memory and causes extra work without offering any real benefit to FSX). Reasons are beyond the scope of this article - if you don't believe me, though, you're free to google your way about this. Note: Another detail to watch here is NVidia vs. AMD - I am one of those who'll go NVidia all the way - purely because I consider visual quality better when it comes to Flight Simulator, plus I consider their drivers more stable. My personal pick at this time is a GTX 670 or similar - just make sure it's at 2GB - no more. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />-
Hard disk: With the proliferation (and subsequent drop in price tag) for Solid State Disks, my earlier suggestions are even truer today:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">For
Flight Simulator X, go with a dual SSD disk combination: One for
Windows 7 (128GB should be adequate at today's prices) and one for FSX (256GB for those
among us who like LOTS of sceneries loaded). Pay particular attention to
SSD speeds, while keeping your eye at the price tag. Speeds have improved tremendously over the past couple years and prices are quite decent for what you get.For movies and other data, use your older SATA regular hard disks - they're good enough for me :-).<br /><br />As before, I'd like to dedicate a sentence
to water cooling, which I've found to be much less problematic than
people had described it in the past. I've had my system for almost 4 years now and I have found that if you check the components every six
months to make sure the coolant levels are maintained (the liquid does
tend to require refills every so often), the system will run better than
the equivalent air-cooled one (as fans tend to collect LOTS of dust and
cleaning them is far more complicated - for me, anyway - than simply
refilling a cooler tank).<br /><br />Well, there you have it. Please let me
know if I've forgotten anything you consider crucial for your Flight
Simulator PC and I will try to accommodate!</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-70665447759865010872012-07-27T13:10:00.000+03:002012-07-27T14:36:55.022+03:00"It's....done."<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Didn't someone famous once say this?</div>
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<br /></div>
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Of course, in this case, this applies to two topics.</div>
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<br /></div>
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First, the demise of "Microsoft Flight" - who'd have thought it? Only about 95% of the people involved as beta testers and those third parties who tried desperately to alert the development team that the path they had chosen was so wrong... where would one start? The decision to only include a very limited part of the earth (albeit a beautiful one) as scenery? The decision to dumb down weather so that you could only fly in ISA conditions? The fact there was no ATC? No real selection of aircraft to pick from? So many wrongs...</div>
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<br /></div>
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Having been asked from the very beginning to be part of the effort, our team chose to be very pragmatic and careful about our involvement. As a Microsoft MVP, I had to be candid when asked (which was really not very often) but helpful at the same time. As there's still an NDA that's active, I cannot disclose all what's transpired (though I am sure people wouldn't mind anymore), but I can say that we were quite involved with the first alpha - up until the day Microsoft decided to throw a nice curve ball and tell all third parties "thanks for your time... here's the door" (Edit: contrary to what some people might try to convince you to support their self-conceived importance, third parties were all shown the door pretty much at the same time and received a stock email from the same person). That very day, our team agreed there's probably not much future in the MS Flight saga - not because we're anyone important, mind you, but mostly because the legacy of Microsoft Flight Simulator is really all the people who contributed to make it an active, buzzing community. Freeware and commercial products alike, those were the ones helping the product series live and grow. The biggest mistake throughout the years? Not enough communication by ACES / Microsoft with those developers...</div>
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<br /></div>
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...and this brings me to the second topic where "It's... done" applies:</div>
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<br /></div>
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After five fruitful years, I am no longer a Microsoft MVP - my area of expertise is Flight Simulator and, without a platform to talk about, it came as no surprise (even though the MS MVP team in Europe - leads and business alike - were really sad and were trying hard to keep me under a different role). While the award is given for "past contributions", it's easy to understand why, when I felt the way I did for MS Flight, I wouldn't be as active in that community. This is not to say, however, that I will not remain active and helpful to those who still live and breathe Flight Simulator X - that product is far from dead and its community has been alive and kicking.</div>
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<br /></div>
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So - while this post might sound a bit "negative" - it's really far from it - I think nature has a way of filling its void and with Microsoft out of the picture currently (and for the first time, really!), there will be room for other talented developers to prosper. You know who you are! We are all waiting for you to shine!</div>
</div>Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-89934635263314427742012-03-27T02:27:00.000+03:002012-03-27T02:27:31.238+03:00Flight Sim Labs A320-X team - reporting back home from Munich<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The FSLabs team is now safely back home and has posted some more screenshots of the upcoming A320-X. There was an excellent demonstration and discussion of all the technical aspects of systems and flight modeling that takes place inside the A320, but for now you can feast your eyes on the external model and virtual cockpit images </span><a href="http://forums.flightsimlabs.com/index.php?/topic/3955-some-more-news" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">here</a><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">.</span></div>Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-57771637792384100242011-12-05T09:27:00.001+02:002011-12-05T09:28:06.536+02:00Flight Sim Labs A320 - new pictures posted!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I am happy to report that the A320 is progressing very nicely - there were some new pictures posted in the FSLabs Facebook page that you can check out <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Flight-Sim-Labs-Ltd/111086188966359">here</a>.</div></div>Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-8345612101774432212011-07-29T08:01:00.001+03:002011-07-29T08:02:25.259+03:00Restore your System drive from Windows Home Server - a tip<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">My main office PC experienced a hard disk crash the other day. No worries, I said, that's why we've invested in the Windows Home Server backup setup, so that snags like this can be resolved with the minimum of downtime, right?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Wrong.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Four days later and several attempts at restoring (I could work in the meantime using my laptop) provided fruitless. I was close to giving up, formatting the new hard disk that came as the replacement and installing Windows 7 anew. I could not, however, ignore the "piss off" factor that was telling me I would not be defeated by a bloody program, especially since this is exactly why we had installed WHS in the first place - so we could restore anything, anytime.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Well, the problem was simple, silly and, as it turns out, easily fixable (aren't they all), but I couldn't really detect it as I never bothered sitting out the entire process (or timing it): When I would start the restore process, WHS would say that it would take about 3-4 hours to restore my disk. As such, I usually started this process at night, before bed, etc. only to find out in the following morning that it had failed with an "unspecified network error". </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The first time, I thought it was the Ethernet switch to blame, so I plugged the PC directly into the router where WHS is connected (topology not important, as it turned out).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The second time, I thought it was the (new) hard disk to blame, so I switched hard disks.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The third time, I decided to read all sorts of blogs and discussions which suggested I had to have the new disk formatted first, but without an assigned drive (C: or whatever), only mount it as an active partition.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The fourth time (I was getting close to throwing the thing out from the second floor window) I finally decided to give the error log some attention and the truth appeared in front of me: The "unknown network error" was in fact a timeout of the DHCP-provided IP address that the WHS Restore CD was getting for the PC's network card, as the router providing the dynamic IP was set (by default) to expire the DHCP lease after one hour (ONLY - what are they smoking?).</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Setting the router to expire the DHCP leases after a week and restarting the PC finally got the restore process to finish properly and I am now writing this blog entry from my main office PC.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Let's hope others might read this and save themselves the grief. </span></div>Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-27204579032539161382011-07-20T01:15:00.001+03:002011-07-20T01:15:43.345+03:00A picture is worth a thousand words...<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">so I wonder... how much are a thousand pictures worth? :)</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150251756104463&set=o.111086188966359&type=1&theater" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Here</a><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">'s a small preview of the A320 external model, for your viewing pleasure...</span></span>Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-40359896769271954892011-07-03T22:50:00.000+03:002011-07-03T22:50:39.157+03:00ILSpy - a free .NET assembly browser and decompiler<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">My good friend <a href="http://msmvps.com/blogs/arnogerretsen/default.aspx">Arno Gerretsen</a>, developer of various famous tools for Flight Simulator model and scenery development, found <a href="http://msmvps.com/blogs/arnogerretsen/archive/2011/07/03/an-undocumented-xtomdl-parameter.aspx">a very useful undocumented parameter</a> that can be used in one of the base FSX SDK tools, XToMdl.exe to help with scenery object manipulation.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This got me thinking: Knowing that most of the tools developed for the FSX SDK were written in a .NET language (C# or VB), would I be able to detect other undocumented goodies, or even possibly look into the source code to decipher some of the logic and/or see if there could be work-arounds available for known issues?</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This led me into a search for tools that can be used to decompile .NET code. Unfortunately, all my searches came up with commercial products that were more expensive than the funds I could allocate (namely: Zero dollars) so I was running on empty, until I bumped into a news article (written in <a href="http://dotnetzone.gr/">dotnetzone.gr</a>, the Greek software developers community) which explained that there is now an open-source .NET assembly browser and decompiler called <a href="http://wiki.sharpdevelop.net/ilspy.ashx">ILSpy</a>.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I downloaded and tested <a href="http://wiki.sharpdevelop.net/ilspy.ashx">ILSpy</a> and found it quite worthwhile, so I can only recommend for inquiring minds who want to know!</span></div></div>Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-69134384983107694332011-04-05T13:11:00.000+03:002011-04-05T13:11:22.137+03:00A320 - A small update<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I don't know if you saw, but we posted a small update on the development of the A320 for FSX. While it only shows the 2d captain main panel, it should offer some insight on what we're planning for the A320. To read more about it, go <a href="http://forums.flightsimlabs.com/index.php?/topic/3543-the-a320-a-small-update/">here</a>.</div>Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-61810709173934932882010-12-23T15:32:00.000+02:002010-12-23T15:32:00.808+02:00Was this for our own good? (Part III) - a.k.a. "Fault Tolerant Heap??? I don't want your Fault Tolerant Heap..."<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I've been doing some work on the AIRAC database loader for our upcoming FSLabs A320 addon... mainly to make it load faster. Well, that's an excuse - the real reason was, I read an article about the new Concurrency features that Visual Studio 2010 provides and I was really curious if using the Concurrency library would make things faster by parallelizing some specific pieces of my code - and guess what! It does!</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The example code I chose was the AIRAC database file that contains the NAV FIX points - all 183 thousand of them, which were previously being loaded serially through the file - I thought, wouldn't that be a good example for parallelism?</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I changed the code to allow for Concurrency - and had a simple heap corruption error... that I couldn't find at first (don't worry, I've found it since). Three test runs later, the debug version of my test application started running VERY slowly... and I mean VERY slowly... (about 100 times slower per 5000 fixes read in), making things quite undebuggable... ("but I hadn't changed anything, I swear!") and that was one of those moments when I started staring at the screen, not quite knowing "WTF" (I saw somewhere an explanation of this from a father to his child... Sir, it does NOT mean "Welcome To Facebook" - but I digress...)</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Then an epiphany occurred. One of those light bulb moments, when you look at the debugger output window and notice an extra line there that wasn't there before...</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> "Fault tolerant heap shim applied to current process. This is usually due to previous crashes."</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">A bit of <strike>Googl</strike> Microsoft Bing-ing later, and I could find the reason: Windows 7, in all its Microsoft spirit ("Don't worry, we'll fix it for ya!"), decided that my heap was getting corrupted too often by this irresponsible and stupid application executable and needed some more totalitarian help... ("Sir, nothing to see here, move along"), so it added the (debug) executable to its internal list of "applications which don't behave".</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Long story short, when FTH (Fault Tolerant Heap) services are active for a specific application, it starts CRAWLING instead of running properly because each heap activity (which, for 183 thousand entries means 183 thousand of them) would be monitored and followed...</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The solution was simple enough: Kill the specific FTH registry entry for that app, restart - all is well again.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The registry key where all this 'magic' exists is</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\FTH\State</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">if you find ANYTHING in there, other than the (Default) key, please be aware that that specific app will behave very poorly, because "Big Brother" is watching it.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Wouldn't the solution be simpler if instead of making our apps silently crawl, Microsoft would simply pop a message up saying "Your app sucks. Fix it, or else"?</span>Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-64020547121025284792010-11-26T00:08:00.000+02:002010-11-26T00:08:55.568+02:00FlightProSim (or ProFlightSim or ProFlightSimulator) - a scam?<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">For days now, I've been subjected to unwanted advertisement when I log onto my Facebook account, by a newly formed (?) company out of Australia claiming to have developed "The Most Realistic Flight Simulator Ever Created For Desktop Computers".</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Now, I've kept in touch with almost all the PC flight simulator development teams globally for the past ten years or so and it came as somewhat of a surprise to see an unknown entity suddenly appear with such bold claims - I admit, it felt quite embarrassing to me.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">It didn't take long, however, to understand what sort of "deal" these people are offering - misleading at best, outright shameful and quite annoying for the majority of simmer friends globally who have contacted me to ask if I have any "inside scoop" on this "new simulator", only to discover the truth at the end.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">You see, this is nothing else but a quiet rebranding of the GPL'ed (thus forever free) and well-known Flight Gear simulator that has been in development for many years now by a team of volunteers who do not charge (or receive) a single penny for their efforts.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Read the entire scoop <a href="http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php/FlightProSim">here</a>.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">To you, Mr "Dan Freeman- 13 Hickson Road, Walsh Bay, Sydney, NSW, Australia" (that's the owner of that "ProFlightSim" web site at the time of this blog post writing), all I have to say is: <b>Shame, Shame, Shame!</b></div>Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-87143448177540200892010-10-18T17:32:00.000+03:002010-10-18T17:32:14.641+03:00When to gripe to your Virtual Private Server ISP...<span style="font-size: small;"></span><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext">As some of you might know, apart from running Flight Sim Labs, Ltd., I have also been wearing the co-administrator hat for FSDeveloper.com for a couple years now...</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext">Not so long ago, the FSDeveloper admins (Arno, Nick, Jon and myself) selected to move FSDeveloper.com to a new server </span><span class="mediumtext">ISP </span><span class="mediumtext">facility, as demand had grown substantially over the years and the older one was showing signs of old age. For reasons of familiarity, we decided the new server would be a Windows-based solution, running on a Virtual Private Server (so costs could remain very low, as we have no real income to support this volunteer-based effort).</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext">This worked exceptionally well since the switch, allowing us to provide better service to our "customers" (Flight Simulator developers) with some nice new facilities, etc. </span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext">However, for the past couple months now, we've been getting reports by our users complaining that the server was not too stable - some times they'd be able to log on, other times they'd get connection timeouts or "reset by host" errors. While this was happening, our Domain Name Server also had some issues, so we attributed the problems to faulty name to IP resolutions.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext">Well- today the problem returned - and returned to stay. Nobody could connect to the web site or the forums, no matter what their location was, their browser, or their ISP. At the same time, however, the administrators could log on to the server via Remote Desktop, so it didn't look to be a network </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext">connectivity </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext">issue...</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext"></span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext"> </span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext">Digging into our server showed that while IIS 6.0 was running perfectly well, there were absolutely no user connections honored - instead, a bunch of "Connection_Refused" errors would appear every minute or so in the HTTPERR logs.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext"> <br />
Some aggressive googling later, we identified the culprit:</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext"> Our ISP has selected Virtuozzo for their Virtual Private Server hosting solutions and our FSDeveloper.com server is one of many VEs running on the same 32-bit physical machine.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext">While total free RAM on the physical machine is not as important, the case is not so with memory that cannot be "paged out" to disk (such as memory used by critical processes and drivers that need to stay in place all the time). </span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext">The problem was isolated to IIS6.0 and non-paged memory pool shortage issues. IIS will refuse any new connections if it detects that non-paged memory pool usage has increased enough to leave less than 20Mb available on the physical machine (hence the many "Connection_Refused" errors in the HTTPERR logs).</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext">We verified this was the problem by using a workaround - adding a "EnableAggressiveMemoryUsage" registry entry which temporarily fixed the problem, signaling that </span><span class="mediumtext">IIS should not refuse connections until free memory falls below 8MB of non-paged memory pool</span><span class="mediumtext">.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext">While we're elated that we can now serve our loyal FSDeveloper followers once again, we are a bit frustrated that the REAL solution will have to come from the ISP:</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext">a) limit the number of VEs on the same machine so non-paged memory pool usage is reduced,</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext">or </span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext">b) move our virtual server instance to a different machine with less VEs</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext">Solution c) is also a possibility: Selecting a dedicated server to host FSDeveloper.com - however, the expense for this would be about five times larger than the existing solution, so it cannot happen at this time...</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="mediumtext">Let's see what our friendly ISP has to say about this problem. I'll keep everyone posted when I hear back!</span></span></div>Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-33513116398388715742010-10-05T07:43:00.001+03:002010-10-05T07:44:09.450+03:00FSX Performance tip<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I see this question asked over and over again in forums: "What can I do to increase my FSX performance"? More often than not, the question is answered in ways that I'd describe as... entertaining, but far from true.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Here's a small tip that will fix your FSX performance, almost doubling your FPS, </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">if you are unlucky enough not to have been aware of the consequences: </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">If you run FSX in Windowed Mode and have the FSX window maximized, sometimes the Windows Start button will overlap your FSX window. If your machine is powerful enough, you'll tend to be annoyed by the seemingly low FPS, but performance will be enough for you to simply be puzzled.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Resize the FSX window to allow the Start button NOT to overlap (or simply hide the taskbar) and you'll find that performance will increase - sometimes even double.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Same holds true for ANY external window that overlaps the FSX display - don't let any of those small popups come in view, as your FPS will drop to almost half (the technical reasons are outside the scope of my note here).</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Let me know if you had this issue and if my advice above fixed it!<br />
</span></span>Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-87705330248707906712010-09-22T23:14:00.002+03:002010-09-22T23:14:59.636+03:00More info about Microsoft FlightMicrosoft posted some more information on Flight, together with another teaser video.<br />
<br />
Find it <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/games/flight/">here</a>.Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-28168704565037566032010-08-17T22:40:00.000+03:002010-08-17T22:40:03.699+03:00Microsoft FlightThe cat is out of the bag, it seems... (well - sort of).<br />
<br />
Watch the announcement video <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/games/flight/">here</a> and then talk about it <a href="http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21066">here</a>...Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-48403904160915104492010-07-01T21:16:00.000+03:002010-07-01T21:16:01.388+03:00Reawarded!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX5Y_sEpwgubumZb8YBpk1q8KARrWQ3EajdbYnuBYrPdtNMwWyEmlrK3e3Sh-JNqf5lJQLQnUGi-qPOj2C1u4mLYXA2vfSO-6YrS8EUbBbZNhHFHNCwqpGChywfHiFBHxqjt5o/s1600/MVPAward.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX5Y_sEpwgubumZb8YBpk1q8KARrWQ3EajdbYnuBYrPdtNMwWyEmlrK3e3Sh-JNqf5lJQLQnUGi-qPOj2C1u4mLYXA2vfSO-6YrS8EUbBbZNhHFHNCwqpGChywfHiFBHxqjt5o/s320/MVPAward.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Seems that Microsoft thought that I did good last year again, so they reawarded me as MVP.</span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">My sincere thanks goes to Alessandro and the other people responsible for this (you know who you are!) - I hope I can keep doing what I've been doing to deserve this!</span></span>Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-56463821368156304562010-06-25T02:44:00.002+03:002010-06-25T02:45:31.502+03:00PLEASE don't do this...<span style="font-size: small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I am going to address this blog entry to my fellow Flight Simulation Addon product developers. Some are more experienced than others, we all have a common goal, though: To produce quality addons which will make our simulation audience happy.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Fellow developers, PLEASE don't alter other people's (or companies') registry entries or paths. I know you think you're doing the world a service, but in fact, you're causing (inadvertently, I know it) severe support pains and aren't even aware of it.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Altering a registry key value, ESPECIALLY one that is meant to be controlled BY THE USER, goes against all programming principles we've all learned while programming under Windows. And when that registry key happens to be the setup path where Flight Simulator is installed, you're adding pain and suffering above and beyond your intended goal.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">So... please... for the sake of sanity (because where I've been, I am sure you will one time have to be as well). Don't do it. (or, at the very least, alert the user that you will be doing it... or... don't do it. Don't. Don't. Hope I was clear).</span></div>Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-50164452391993356212010-05-26T21:37:00.001+03:002010-05-26T21:40:12.190+03:00Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside...<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I don't generally reproduce other people's material as a way to attract readers to my blog, however I have to make an exception here to re-post a note from our <a href="http://www.flightsimlabs.com/">Flight Sim Labs</a> <a href="http://forums.flightsimlabs.com/">forums</a>, as I feel it most accurately represents why I gave up working at Wall Street to start my own flight simulation addon development software house...</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I know Dan won't mind me pointing to his very eloquently put comments <a href="http://forums.flightsimlabs.com/index.php?/topic/2853-concordex-experience-lnav-vnav/">here</a>.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Thank you Dan, for expressing EXACTLY why we at the "Labs" keep doing what we're doing...</span></span>Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-76680979968015833792010-04-19T22:34:00.000+03:002010-04-19T22:34:24.382+03:00Can you set DEP to "AlwaysOff" on your Dell laptop?<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">It seems that many people cannot - and unfortunately, this post does not talk about a solution, but rather as a heads-up, or a possible point of focus, for people who might have a solution to offer.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">But what is the problem?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Well, as far as I understand it (disclaimer: I do *not* own a Dell laptop), Dell laptops come with a version of preinstalled Windows Vista or Windows 7 on them which has some funky partition mapping on the drive, as well as some disabled features.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">For various reasons, there comes a time when users will want to turn the Data Execution Prevention feature off, by opening a Command Prompt Window and entering "bcdedit /set nx AlwaysOff". (This helps run applications that were developed before Vista was available which otherwise trip the DEP flags and crash on the user - some of them being Microsoft's own Flight Simulator series, FS2004 and FSX).</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The command can be successfully executed (with administrator rights or elevated privileges), but when the user reboots (sometimes MUCH later on), they are faced with an error 0x7b and a Blue Screen of death (BSOD).</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">So far, the ONLY reports we have are coming from users with Dell laptops who have NOT scrapped the Dell-provided Windows installations.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The obvious workaround is for these users to FORMAT their drives and install a clean NEW version of Windows (preferably, Windows 7 x64 now), that does NOT come from the Dell-provided disks.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">All attempts at contacting Dell about this problem have been met with no success for the moment.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">So... do YOU have a solution for this problem? If so, and you are STILL running your Dell laptop with the original, Dell-installed Windows and you were able to turn DEP AlwaysOff, I'm prepared to offer you a free Concorde-X license as a thank-you for sharing that information with me :). </span></span>Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-61437514134617535442010-04-06T15:30:00.000+03:002010-04-06T15:30:23.319+03:00How to cleanly install your NVidia drivers<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I get this question time and again. I usually suggest DriverCleaner, a utility that's very helpful in ensuring that there are no annoying remains of possible old drivers left in your system. However, I'll admit that's only half the story. For the best experience and the fullest solution, I recommend reading <a href="http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=518749">this article</a>, which describes step-by-step what you need to do to get rid of all issues, once and for all (well, until you have to redo it, I guess).</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Note: The article was written with Vista in mind, but it certainly applies to Windows 7 in the same way. </span></span>Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-54047982546436889802010-04-06T00:39:00.001+03:002010-04-06T00:39:44.747+03:00The 'disappearing textures' fix for FSX<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">A lot of bandwidth has been spent already by FSX users on a problem they are experiencing with complex add-ons, such as the Concorde-X, the LDS 767 and other similar products, whereby aircraft and scenery textures disappear after awhile, leaving them transparent, or worse, crashing the system, requiring a restart. This gets very frustrating, especially if it happens at the end of a long flight, right before landing your simulated aircraft.<br />
<br />
Thanks to the dedication and hard work of a distinguished member of the FSX Community, Jesus Altuve</span><span style="font-size: small;">, who I want to publicly acknowledge and thank via my blog, it seems that a fix for this problem (which has existed for the past four years, since FSX has been released) is now possible. Jesus has found some new fsx.cfg settings that are undocumented, but help alleviate this issue for everyone that has tried them so far.<br />
<br />
It was, however, noted that not every member of our community is equally versed in making changes in their computer, especially when these changes involve digging deep into the internals of Windows folders, some of which are even hidden, and applying edits to files that are normally best left alone by the ordinary FSX user.</span> <span style="font-size: small;"><br />
<br />
As such, I took some time to develop and provide an automated utility that will take care of the edits for you, allowing different levels of control to the various items that are there for editing.</span> <span style="font-size: small;"><br />
<br />
Version 1.0 of the automated FSX Texture Fix utilty is already released in the FSLabs web site forum downloads section. I'd welcome some feedback if you use this utility, as the news on how these edits work is constantly coming and more discoveries are coming out as time passes.</span> <span style="font-size: small;"><br />
<br />
Once more - please allow me to express our gratitude and thanks to Jesus Altuve</span><span style="font-size: small;"> for his dedication and hard work!<br />
<br />
Without further ado, you can download the utility </span> <span style="font-size: small;"><a class="bbc_url" href="http://forums.flightsimlabs.com/index.php?/files/file/66-fsl-texturefix-v10zip/" rel="nofollow external" title="External link">here</a>.</span></div>Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-67673871995347784852010-04-03T15:48:00.002+03:002010-04-03T15:50:24.081+03:00So it's out...<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The Concorde-X has been out for quite a couple weeks now and the responses have been overwhelming! So far, apart from a few small issues that all new product releases carry, our customers have been cheering this release, saying that it's one of the best products out there for Flight Simulator X!</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I was browsing the net today and stumbled upon a wonderful <a href="http://bit.ly/9ypyzf">podcast</a> (and a video too!) from our good friends at FSBreak.net, which describes in detail what they think of our product!</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Thanks guys, it means a lot to us that you feel this way!</span></div>Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-28576419311613498402010-02-25T01:03:00.001+02:002010-02-25T01:04:19.008+02:00Flight Sim Labs previews new Concorde-X in an amazing video!<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Those of you who might not have caught this news so far, please take a look:</span></span><br />
<br />
<object width="853" height="505"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/O3e5i6SGOtA&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/O3e5i6SGOtA&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="853" height="505"></embed></object><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></span>Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-14776078893630015382009-11-23T16:43:00.000+02:002009-11-23T16:43:53.008+02:00Some nifty additions to blogI wasn't too happy with my blog stats counter before, so I decided to replace it with Google Analytics (it's invisible to readers and allows me to see cool information on where my readers come from - I already filtered out my dad's IP address, because it tended to skew the numbers :)).<br />
<br />
Adding Google Analytics involved making a small change to my blog template, to add a tiny bit of JavaScript at the bottom. While doing that, I noticed that Google has added a bunch of "gadgets" which can be dragged and dropped into the template - a couple of them were cool enough for me to add.<br />
<br />
As a result, now you can "subscribe to" my blog using various methods and also become a "Blog Follower" - cool stuff! Good job, Google!Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-59787842943460937702009-11-19T20:10:00.001+02:002009-11-20T00:06:41.471+02:00Artisteer - how wonderful - and EASY - it is to design web sites now!As a current Microsoft MVP, I sometimes receive offers to test and endorse various products, as their developers believe my word carries a bit more respect than usual in our community (are they crazy? :-)).<br />
<br />
Generally speaking, most of the products are descent and relatively bug-free, but they don't fit my short-list of "stuff I *really* recommend".<br />
<br />
I'd like to devote a paragraph, though, to a product that really stood out from the competition, and that's <a href="http://www.artisteer.com">Artisteer</a>.<br />
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As I mention in my previous article below, Flight Sim Labs just unveiled the new web site design we were working on for quite some time. We had been using <a href="http://www.dotnetnuke.com">DotNetNuke</a> since the <a href="http://www.flightsimlabs.com/flight-sim-labs-ltd-has-opened-its-doors/">"start of time"</a>, but we weren't 100% satisfied, as it was slower than expected and had some issues with finding plugins that would fit the needs of our company. As such, we turned our sights onto <a href="http://www.wordpress.org">Wordpress</a>, a Content Management System that is lightweight but very powerful at the same time, giving our developers and management a lot more bang for the buck (well, it had to: It's free :-)).<br />
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Rather than designing things from scratch, though, our graphics designer / guru, Margarita Fiotaki decided to take advantage of the offer for an Artisteer license, as it was promising to ease the transition into a Wordpress skin / template theme that would match the look&feel design requirements of the company.<br />
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And boy, did it <a href="http://www.flightsimlabs.com">help</a>!<br />
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As such, I am very happy to promote Artisteer as a quality product which really has the capacity to dramatically transform the ease of use of creating websites based around WordPress and other CMS packages. Well done folks!Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18762813.post-5691698656699855882009-11-19T02:16:00.001+02:002009-11-19T02:17:31.495+02:00Flight Sim Labs unveiled a new Web Site look and new Forums!It's been a year since <a href="http://www.flightsimlabs.com">Flight Sim Labs</a> was formulated by a team of individuals who have a common goal: To produce the best quality add-ons for Flight Simulator that they can!<br />
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Since then, FSLabs released a few specialized products for their customers, mostly focusing around interfaces and drivers for specialized hardware, such as the Engravity CDU, the CPFlight MCP product family and the GoFlight instruments. <br />
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Fslabs developers also very close to wrapping up development of the Concorde-X flagship add-on product for Flight Simulator X, an aircraft that's been anticipated by thousands of simmers globally. The Concorde-X has already been receiving very favorable reviews by those who've had the pleasure of previewing it in various simulation shows around the world so the team is sure it will set new standards on how to enjoy simming beyond the speed of sound!<br />
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That's not all the team has been busy with, though! In the meantime, the crew has been developing a new web site and forum system behind the scenes and they're all too happy to announce that it's going live very soon! Some new content was added too, but the primary goal was to enhance functionality so the audience can browse more easily and enjoy some of the most recent advancements in "Web 2.0" technology.<br />
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I am proud to be leading this team of experts and I am sure the Concorde-X release will be enjoyed by a lot of people globally! But that's not all that's coming from FSLabs... <br />
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The next product is already in development... it's smaller, but not less recognized, has two engines, flies at lower than the speed of sound, but has carried a LOT more passengers over the years...<br />
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Can you guess what it is? :)Lefterishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09221431982591432214noreply@blogger.com0