Friday Development Update - February 07, 2014
Hello everyone,
A very busy week here in the office. I’ve finished the alpha version of the Fw 190D-9 manual. Really enjoyed it. Starting on the 109K-4 manual next week, should be easier and quicker. Had a lot of fun scouring gigabytes of scanned original documents looking for info on cockpit controls, system diagrams, procedures, numbers, etc. Totally new experience for me, even after what, 14 years of doing flight simulations.
Thanks to the manual and a certain button in the Dora cockpit, we have a new office meme. We’ve always been a memetastic group. Most people don’t realize just how juvenile a bunch of flight sim developers can be. One minute we’ll have an aircraft designer with 20 years of experience designing real planes fill out the whiteboard with formulas in order to double-check some flight test curves, and the next minute he’s bellowing animal sounds and making Gumbys faces.
We were woefully short on a DCS meme, and now, thankfully, we have one. We could not be happier.
There is a little thing stuck in the far back corner of the Dora’s left console that the manuals call the Flugzeugvernichter, that is, Aircraft Self-Destruct. Somehow the word Vernichter just really stuck, and now the entire office presses invisible buttons and yells “Vernichter”. We also have to add it to the end of every German aviation term we can. Spreizklappenanzeigen? Spreizklappenanzeigen Vernichter! Kraftstoffverneblerleitung? Kraftstoffverneblerleitung Vernichter!
What do you call a device that destroys your ability to disable the self-destruct button for your aircraft? A Flugzeugvernichtervernichtervernichter.
As any inside joke, it’s probably weird to anyone outside out small group of old friends, but, well, we enjoy the heck out of it right now.
Now, another really exciting thing we’re doing this week is playing with Oculus Rift. It’s pretty good, although the implementation is pretty basic at the moment. No 6DOF yet, and the world outside is a bit warpy and it looks like you’re inside an egg, but the immersion of being inside the cockpit is just superb. It is such an incredible breakthrough, the feeling is so life-like, that words simply cannot describe it. Once I put it on, I don't want to take it off. Could spend hours just flying over the landscape and watching things move around.
Great Scott!
Also, it’s really fun to bug people wearing a full face mask while playing a game. As you can see everything they’re doing on the screen, we love to add extra immersion by kicking and poking the player at the right moment. Also, it’s extremely annoying and maddening when those louts at the office break my immersion by kicking and poking me while I’m trying to enjoy an awesome gadget.
And finally, here’s a sneak peak at something else that's really beginning to shape up nicely.
Hope you guys have a good weekend!
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