Northwest Flying Photography Blog

In 1982, Microsoft first published Microsoft Flight Simulator. In 1996, I had the fantastic opportunity of join the Flight Sim team, where I was happy to work until I left in 2003. Yesterday, the news came that the entire Flight Sim team had been given their layoff notice, and the studio that made Flight Simulator was disbanded. Some good friends of mine have just lost their jobs, and a lot of Flight Sim fans, myself included, are wondering about the future of the longest continuously developed PC title in history. The status of the franchise in not clear right now, but by all appearances, (and I have no inside info here) Flight Simulator is dead. I have a lot of great Flight Sim memories, totally apart from working there. I learned how to intercept and track a VOR radial in Flight Sim long before I took my first flying lesion, and I still fly the Simulator when I can find the time.
Hopefully all my friends will find something that they are equally excited about as Flight Sim, and I know that any other team in MS (or outside of MS) would be lucky to have them.

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The Reno air races that is. In another fit of generosity, my former co-workers at Microsoft Flight Simulator have seen fit to invite me to work the show at their booth, where they and I will be demonstrating the “Acceleration” expansion pack.

Due to work and home commitments, I only get to be at the show for Friday and Saturday, with Thursday evening and Sunday reserved for travel. I’ve never been to the Reno Air Races before, so this is a fun opportunity for me to hone my skills at photographing things moving very fast. Like 500 miles an hour fast. It will also be my first opportunity to see the Canadian Air force Demonstration team, the Snowbirds. I am somewhat ashamed to say that after living relatively close to Abbotsford for over 20 years, I have never made it up there to see the Snowbirds. I will casually also mention that I have never seen the Thunderbirds either. Although I did go to an air-show where the Thunderbirds were scheduled to appear, the show was fogged out. Suck.

Photos will be forthcoming, as always.

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Thanks to Slashdot for the link to this post: An auto pilot made from Mindstorms NXT.

This is just super cool. It makes me want to drop a bunch of cash on Lego stuff. Yeah, that’s what I need, another hobby. I hope this guy will post a video when he get’s his system up and installed in an RC aircraft. It will be interesting to see how it works….or if it works.

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A bit longer of a day today, so I’m writing in the morning instead of prior to going to sleep. The gang and I scored VIP tickets to the screening of the movie “Flyboys” It was a held in the EAA museum with free drinks and little finger snackies. I met Bert Ratan, who was kind enough to sign my pilots license, and saw Bob Hoover, Dick Ratan, and Paul Allen. The movie was OK, it had some good flying scenes and an OK story line, but I expected a bit more focus on the love of flying.

Earlier in the day I was at the flight line for the warbirds airshow. If was a lot of P-51s flying around, with a couple of Yaks thrown in for variety.

I missed the Lancaster flying in, but I did get a drive by shot on our way to the flight line for the airshow.

We weren’t parked far from the VIP tent, so I got to see Harrison Ford drive past on his way in.

Sean Tucker also stopped by and was kind enough to pose for photos

The coolest thing during the warbirds airshow was the Heritage Flight. A formation with two P-51s, a P-38, and an F-16.