This is probably the most common question I’m asked about the simulator I built, with many of these questions originating from my related YouTube video.
Most people seem to assume that I spent some silly sum putting this thing together, but that’s simply not true. The truth is that this project was mostly about recycling a lot of older electronics and materials that were just lying around. It’s true that I did spend a decent sum building a high-end gaming computer for FSX. However, outside this computer and the flight controls (purchased from Saitek) the simulator itself only cost about $150.
Today at Flightsimulationguru.com we take a step out of the virtual world and into the real world as we review Virgin America’s in-flight entertainment system.
Whereas travellers were once satisfied with a free newspaper, today’s tech savy population increasingly demands high quality customizable content delivered directly to their seat.
For an HD version, use this link and select ‘Watch in HD.’
I had wanted to put this together a bit earlier, but have been traveling and without access to my FSX computer… as they say, better late than never.
Anyway, I spliced the above FSX footage together to reenact the amazing events that took place above and around New York City on the afternoon of Friday January 16, 2009. By now, most everyone is familiar with what happened, but if by some chance you’re not:
It appears that Microsoft has decided to close a major gaming division and as a result pull the plug on its longest standing Windows product - Microsoft Flight Simulator. Flight Simulator has been part of Microsoft’s software lineup since 1982!
During the recent holiday break, I took part in that great American pastime of lounging around watching the variety of college football bowl games. Having recently moved into the HDTV arena myself, I was anxious to see the action in all it’s 1080i glory.
I traveled to a friend’s house to watch one of the big games on ABC. On a side note, ABC currently broadcasts in 720p and not 1080i (like NBC, CBS and many other networks), but on most ‘normal’ size HDTVs the difference is not really noticeable. Anyway, as the big game came on a few people started asking ‘Is this HD? Do you have the HD feed on?’
Although the image was obviously better than standard definition (SD) television, and in the widescreen format, it didn’t really look that clear. It wasn’t the television, in fact the TV was a new beautiful Sony Bravia and we had just seen it in action with a Blue-ray disc before the game. No, it was Comcast and an obviously ambitious attempt to broadcast ‘HDTV’ using the absolute minimum amount of bandwidth possible.
Back in the old days with analog TV, the signal you got was essentially always the same regardless of who you were getting your signal from and regardless of if it was over a cable wire or antenna. The digital revolution has changed all that. Now, many homes have a single ‘data’ connection to the outside world which carries phone, video and the Internet all over the same wire. In fact, so far as the data network is concerned these things are all basically one in the same… just different streams of data all flowing over the same connection, which eventually gets split up inside your home by various end devices (cable box, cable modem and VOIP connection).
