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From: doug@terak.UUCP (Doug Pardee)
Newsgroups: net.micro.cbm
Subject: Re: IFR (author's response)
Message-ID: <295@terak.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 25-Jan-85 10:47:49 EST
Article-I.D.: terak.295
Posted: Fri Jan 25 10:47:49 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 29-Jan-85 06:37:36 EST
References: <353@ssc-vax.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: Terak Corporation, Scottsdale, AZ, USA
Lines: 22

> Sublogic did an exceptional job simulating the
> aircraft, but fell down when it came to actually controlling it.  They 
> were left with the standard digital stick to control what is an analog
> function- the method they chose, coupled with the slow speed of the
> program, makes it impossible to fly in a manner similar to an aircraft.

I haven't tried FSII on the C-64, but I did get a chance to try it on
the Apple II-C, which has an analog joystick.  The controllability was
still bunk.  The problem was that the joystick was read immediately
after the new visual scene was presented, BEFORE you had time to
react to the current attitude!  You had to "lead" by about a second
on the controls, and I never did get the hang of it.

BTW, a few years ago I worked on a *real* flight simulator for a
contractor to USAF.  That system updated the out-of-cockpit view
30 times per second, with a 1/10 second lag between control input
and visual output (obviously 3 levels of pipelining were being used).
Even that small lag was unacceptable for simulating fighter-class
aircraft, so the control inputs were extrapolated 1/10 second into
the future.
-- 
Doug Pardee -- Terak Corp. -- !{hao,ihnp4,decvax}!noao!terak!doug