De certa forma o cara faz parte da história dos Combat SIM...posted 06-01-2007 18:27 "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish"
bhodi
"For those of you that have read Douglas Adams book series, "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy." You will understand from the title of the thread where my post is going. [Wink]
For those of you who have not read the series.
Well, this is a goodbye post.
Yes, this is a 'I'm not posting here, or playing this game anymore thread."
Most often posts about I'm never coming back or I'm never playing this game again, come in three different flavors.
1. Oleg said two weeks for the next patch/addon and it took two months, plus it did not include XXXX.
I will not play games built by someone who does not tell the truth.
So I will never play the game or post here ever again!
2. Everyone knows the early war models only had one snap on the map pocket and all the cockpits have late war three snap map pockets.
This destroys the realism of the game, and I have posted a million times about how wrong this is.
Since Oleg will not fix this, I will never play the game or post here ever again!
3. The FM/DM/DRM is completely porked.
So I will never play the game or post here ever again!
Most often the poster will begin to post again in several weeks and within several months, they are posting again at a normal level.
Unfortunately, I will not be playing the game or posting here much anymore, for a different reason.
Do to the circumstances of my progressive neurological disease, I'm no longer able to actively participate in the IL-2 community.
The tipping point came when my best friend had to tear apart my cockpit and turn my flight sim lair/den into a healthcare space.
At that point, I knew I would never fly again and I might not be here to see "Storm of War: The Battle of Britain" released.
As I began to think back to the thousands of hours that I've have spent involved in the IL-2 activities with deep fondness, I found that this community has been a large part of that experience and that's what spurred this post.
As most people know, I have been heavily involved in the TrackIR development and have done voluntary e-mail support and tweaking of peoples profiles for the TIR.
I also worked on projects for Oleg, and was honored to see my name in the manual in the thank you portion of the credits.
I have over 1800 e-mails from TrackIR users and have never had a single acrimonious exchange.
That says something about IL-2/TIR users.
I'm also proud to say I made quite a few friends through this community, I will not list them as I would probably miss someone and cause unintended offense at the omission.
Since you've read this far, I hope I have you hooked enough to read a story about TIR and IL-2's development.
I'm not telling the story as a form of "Please Give Me a Pat on the Back", but merely as a bit of old flight Sim history.
Take this not so much as a story of "I Helped to Make This," but more as a "Forrest Gump" type story that history was made while I was standing around.
In college, I should have given up my dorm and just moved into the computer lab as all of my free time, and a portion of my "Not so Free Time" were spent flying Falcon 3.0.
Also, that computer lab access allowed me to logon to the bulletin boards for Flight Sims.
After college, I was blessed with a job that allowed me to upgrade my computer at home about every six or eight months.
So I was able to do/play flight sims with great hardware, I even had several conversations with the founder of ThrustMaster about the development of early Thrustmaster HOTAS sets.
One day I read some postings by a Russian who could barely make himself understood.
He was talking about a flight sim in Russia that he was developing.
Over time, there were more postings and people were urging him to find a US publisher.
After a few alpha screenshots, he landed a contract with a small publisher named Blue Byte.
He then had a website, e-mail address, and later a forum board to post too.
Everyone, including myself, was playing EAW or World War II Fighters.
Slowly, word spread about this new "little" flight sim set on the Eastern front.
I offered my help to Oleg on hardware files and another project, and he accepted me as a beta tester.
Shortly after this, I was diagnosed with a progressive neurological disease that would slowly rob me of use of my muscles and possibly kill me.
Being a hardware geek, the first thing I did was search out hardware so I could continue to use my computer.
I wanted to make sure I could communicate in the final stages of the disease.
During my searches for hardware I found a brand-new company named NaturalPoint offering a hands-free mouse that was around $100... the competitors products were around $1500 and were much less elegant.
So I sent off a check and received myTrackIR, one of the first hundred or so sold.
Now, at that time there was a big debate going on in the beta test fourms about what view system was best to use, Pan, Snap View, or Padlock.
Mouse view was just for sightseeing and to move the camera around for track movies as you could not fly and use the mouse to view with.
At some point, I posted about my using the TIR in IL-2 beta and what a neat piece of hardware it was.
After several months of beta testing, I had talked one or two other hardware geeks and to buying a TrackIR based on the "It's Only a Hundred Bucks" theory.
They all thought it was cool, and so several more beta testers bought it.
Then, the IL-2 public demo came out, for those of you not flying at the time,The IL-2 public demo was quite a bombshell and created a really good buzz about this new flight sim.
Then, beta testers started talking about the TrackIR on public flight sim forums and the buzz grew for TrackIR also.
I had been working with the software development Kit for the TrackIR to see if I could get it integrated and working well with my computer for my future communications needs.
I e-mailed NaturalPoint, and had been pleasantly surprised to find out that I was talking to the lead engineer/owner/chief bottle washer at NaturalPoint.
NaturalPoint had only been in business less than a year and had a total of eight employees.
During my conversations about hands-free mouse use, I mentioned to Jim that it worked really well in my flight sims and would he come to our forums and discuss his hardware.
Later that year I made a e-mail intro between Jim and Oleg, and those two guys took it from there.
That's all I have to say about that.
My e-mail addresses are all the same and I will answer e-mail as my health allows, whether friendly greetings or requests for help with TrackIR profiles.
Once again, thank you to all my friends who have posted, e-mailed, and shot my sorry butt down.
Keep your head on a pivot and check six! [Smile]
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Keep your head on a pivot and check six.
[email protected]
Sokol1