Microsoft takes chainsaw to Flight Sim group…
According to this article, Microsoft has made some pretty serious cuts in the division that works on Flight Simulator. Hopefully this doesn’t spell the end for MSFS.
This would be a good time to remind you folks of FlightGear! 🙂 There’s ton of new work going on for the 1.9 release, including a lot of visual improvments now that the new Open Scene Graph integration is completed.
New forum online!
I’ve got a new forum up and running finally.
This forum package allows me to “gate” traffic from the simpits-tech mailing list to the forum and vice versa.
The forum also has a “Product Support” area that currently has two forums – one for my DIY cockpit projects and one for you orphaned Beta Innovations hardware users. I would be happy to add more forums as they’re requested, so if you want one added, sing out!
The forum can be found here, or by the link in the pane to the right.
New links page & Beta Innovations update.
I’ve added a new page where links to hardware suppliers and information will reside. It’s called Hardware Information, Suppliers & Support and can be found in the column to the right.
I’ve also added a mirror for all the old Beta Innovations hardware drivers & documentation. Leo recently updated the SDK and a few of the utilities as promised. The link lives in the new Hardware Information page.
I’ve also finally been able to resolve a DSL issue that’s been plaguing the site since the “blog farm” went live. It turned out that I was fighting TWO identical, failed DSL routers. It’s been replaced, so keep your fingers crossed!
Cessna 172 Panel drawings & Air-Core Motors…
Discussed today on the simpits-tech mailing list was the subject of Cessna 172 panel drawings. Freeman Pascal was kind enough to point to a link where CAD drawings could be had for those that were interested.
http://mycessnasim.blogspot.com/2007/03/cessna-172-panels.html
is were you can download those drawings from.
I was also informed of a company that will sell air-core motor movements to the hobbyist market.
The company is called Simco Ltd. and their products can be seen here:
http://www.simcoltd.com/specialty-oem/micro-air-core/
EMail issues…
If you’ve sent an email to geneb@simpits.org requesting a blog before today and you have NOT received your “Admin” email from the WordPress system (would appear to be coming from apache@ns2.simpits.org or wordpress@www.simpits.org), please contact me immediately.
Simpits Theme…
This place really needs it’s own theme, don’t you think?
If you know of a theme that would fit Simpits, please let me know!
If you want to create a theme for the main Simpits site to use, I can supply you with all the graphics & badges from the old site.
Simpits Blog?!
Simpits.org was at the bleeding edge of home-built flight simulator projects when it got started in 1999. Over the years, my ability to keep current content on the site has been steadily eroded. With a total lack of submissions and competition from great sites like mycockpit.org, I had to decide what to do with simpits.org.
I had to either kill it, strip it down to the basic file database or actually do something with it.
I really didn’t want to kill it. Simpits.org has been a great resource for a lot of people and I didn’t want to just shut it down. Stripping it to just the file database was a viable but not very attractive option for me.
In the end, I decided to make simpits.org a home for both the old content and new content in the form of project blogs.
If you have a cockpit project of any kind that you’d like to have a blog for, I’ll host it here for free. Any kind of simulation project is welcome. It doesn’t have to be about a flight simulator cockpit – it can be anything related to simulation. An add-on to an existing software package or something like my ongoing cockpit plans project. If it’s simulation related (space, boat, whatever!) you’ve got a welcome home here.
I’m using WordPress as the blog engine for this site. Each person will have their own WordPress installation that they can change as they see fit. The url will be in the form of http://www.simpits.org/username, where “username” is a name you’ve chosen. Any freely available themes will be made available on request – I can’t download them all at once, but I’ll be happy to grab whatever you need and add it to the public pool.
You won’t have any restrictions on the amount of drive space your site needs – space is cheap and I can always add more. 🙂
Each blog will have a link on the main page. Announcements of system changes and new blogs will also be posted there. I will ask that you not add any ads to your blog that don’t advertise something you personally provide. I’m providing this service at my expense, so it’s not fair to myself and the other users if you’re getting ad revenue for something I’m paying for. 😀
As I have the time, I’ll be adding some graphics from the old site just to spiff this one up a bit more. If you know of a WordPress theme that would be much nicer than what I’m using now (the default), please let me know!
If you’re interested, please contact me at geneb@simpits.org and I’ll get your blog set up as quickly as I can.
C’mon! Don’t just sit there, let’s go! 🙂