NOTAM to all ATP pilots, forwarded to you by SNN!

This is the report about the proceeding, that took place last week in Salzburg.

About 30 people showed up to join me in the Salzburg conference and looking forward to, what might come up. Despite his original time conflict with a fair, even Stamatis made it to Salzburg in some miracle (grin).

The conference was opened by a presentation of Richard Cook, well known to us as (THE) instructor for all Boeing planes of BA. He showed us a lot of videos showing aircraft handling and methodes. Impressive a video of a stall of an aeroplane at takeoff run, while still sitting on ground...

Hans Kiener showed the newest capabilities of EPIC card to us, demonstrating original aircraft instruments being driven by our beloved ATP. That opens quite some possibilities for conventional instrumentation for Stamatis, Steve and others building their own cockpits!

Michael Schrotter then presented his cockpit to us. He has built a two seater cockpit, the highlights of which were a projection of forward view, full screen PFD and ND for each of the pilots, a center screen for the secondary instruments, an overhead panel (not functional though), nicely modelled glareshield (partly functional), thrust reversers, Intercom system, a beautiful cockpit lighting and much more very impressive, pretty stuff . The rig also had a separated instructors station. Michael took the burden to dismantle his rig at home (one day), drive to Salzburg (another day) and set it up again (took another day). Same applied for the way back. Many thanks to Michael for doing these huge efforts!

Steve Garry then introduced his rig. The cockpit has been designed after a real 737 cockpit, provides linked control of of yoke and pedals (snag was, that the pedals did not selfcenter though), a realistic trim procedure (allowing the stick to stay at the current position, when the load had been trimmed out, and not returning to a center position), a fully functional glareshield (autopilot console), full screen PFD and ND for each pilot, center screen for the secondary instruments, 4 28" monitors providing the view (one forward for each pilot), one doing left forward view and another one doing the right forward (those left/right forwards make taxiing or a circling approach very much easy!). Steve had to bring the rig over from Dublin, requiring two days of travel to and another two days back home. Of course, dismantling and resetting the rig costed him another couple of hours each. Looking at the amount of material, Steve had to bring with him, i got the distinct impression, Steve will have to use a Beluga next time, when he has to transport the rig (vbg).

After that presentation i was going to reveal the secret, of what i am working on this time. I fired up ATP. No change to be seen...

Well, then i changed to the aircraft menu and found some unknown plane, called "TEST MD-83". Of course, curious as i am, i selected that plane. The airplane settled on the runway, one wheel first, then rotating down putting the second main gear down, and finally the nose gear came down and jumped a little bit because of spring load. The plane finally settled at about 1 degree nose down. I slewed that aeroplane up a little bit, banked it about 15 degrees, nose up and let it fall. Amazing reaction of the aeroplane swinging around...

I established a cross wind of 38 knots. We could see the wind attacking the aeroplane on ground trying to flip it over (without success of course). I then reduced the wind to 20 knots (as i did not manage to fly that heavy crosswind before), and started the takeoff run from JFK 31L (Winds 044/20). Of course, the plane started to weathercock, asking for quite some steering and rudder as well as full aileron deflection to keep upwind wing low. When i lifted the nose, i had to add some rudder pressure to maintain track. After the main wheels left the ground, i had to do some break dance in order to keep aligned with the runway, as i had to crab the aeroplane into the wind now.

After reaching 1000 feet and accelerating to reduce flaps, suddenly engine no. 2 failed. I let her go for a while. We could see quite some yaw coupled with bank, until i decised to counteract and put in rudder. After having stabilized her, i got ready for a return to JFK 13L. I slowed her down, applied 15 degrees of flaps, gear down, then turned her back overhead Manhattan. I aligned with the runway, crabbed her into the wind and went down visually. At 300 feet AGL i changed to side slip (aligning the aircraft with the runway, lowering the upwind left wing and stepping into opposite right rudder) - later i was told, that side slip is not even modelled by the big full flight sims! I finally touched down left wheel first, let the right wheel settle and let the nose gear come down. Having need to steer quite a bit i managed her to keep on runway with remaining reverser helping in slowing down.

Then i showed, how that aeroplane is being configured by simply pulling a text file into the text editor, which showed us the configuration of instrument panel, the outside shape of the aeroplane (i used an MD-83 of Austrian Airlines), and the parts of the aircraft like fuselage, gear, each engine separately, each wing separately, stabilizers, fin etc. etc.

The aircraft is based on a true inertia system, fully written in 32bit code, and not using any single byte of the subLOGIC aerodynamics anymore. It is also based on full airflow calculation and modells all effects like normal ones, stall, deep stall, superstall, spin, Dutch Roll, Adverse yaw, "adverse roll" and much more. It uses original data of the aeroplane without modification and flies the exact performance as gathered from the FCOMs.

The aircraft shall be finished providing full autopilot features including Flight Director.

Another plane in the initial release of aeroplanes will be the 747-400 and some commuter plane not yet decided (perhaps Saab 2000, ATR or Jumbolino).

As the text file already indicates, the planes will be user modifyable later on.

As i consider the aeroplane development still to be in the research status (during the research i had to correct some aerodynamics book, as theories proved wrong!), i can not announce any release date yet. I hope, that it might become available by fall this year. Of course, no further (commercial) details set as well.

Next day Ugo Grandolini of LAGO announced: "ATP is dead, long live Airline Simulator". We all know, that ATP can no longer be produced by subLOGIC. However, LAGO got the right to reproduce parts of the ATP code and include new goodies. Airline Simulator will use the B747 subLOGIC plane with glass cockpit (modified A320 panel to reflect the Boeing colors, and also a Boeing like ECAM providing information about all 4 engines). It will come with the European Scenery and North Atlantic Scenery (covering and featuring Iceland, Greenland etc.), allowing flights within entire Europe (over 600 airports with more than 1400 runways) and full transatlantic flights to Boston, New York or Toronto without flaws in the scenery coordinate systems under full ATC guidance (and of course, full support by glass cockpit). The sceneries also can be used with original ATP. Airline Simulator will also introduce a new interactive multimedia manual.

Enrico Schiratti afterwards talked about his FMS, which will become available also for ATP shortly. More important in the moment, he had modified Schiratti Commander to work with ATP as well (we used it for radar of the competition), using the BGL files of FS5 as a background for ATP sceneries. Enrico also introduced his SC-Online, that is available here in SIMGAMES, allowing FS5 and ATP pilots to fly together in the very same environment and being controlled by the same radar controllers.

Afterwards Graeme Rodgers caught the attention of the folks, especially of Richard Cook and the other pilots, by presenting his FMS to the public. He has done a full representation of the Honeywell FMS and EICAS systems used in B767. At the first look you can't distinct, whether it is real or "just" a simulation. All pages are present and functioning as they should. Graeme adopted some of the parameters for ATP though. Just to mention his love for details: the FMC even calculates the stab trim and allowed range of trim after entering the balance and weight sheet into the FMC! Of course, aligning of INS etc. is simulated accurate to the original. The EICAS system (the Engine and System display) also features all pages of the the original 767 - he has even built the door pages and simulates closing the doors. Of course, engine startup and much more is simulated as well.

Mathijs Kok told us, that the future of flight sims will lie in ... (and he showed us a network cable). He mentioned the possibilities of SC-Online made available via IPX networks, the FMS of Enrico for FS5 doing full autopilot features via network cable and many, many more possibilities, also being used in 3DAGS Network Pro (allowing the cockpit rigs of Steve and Michael for example). Steve Garry introduced SIMGAMES to the auditorium afterwards. I don't need to repeat, what he said, we all know our place, don't we?

Stefan Geissler/Aerosoft announced the German Scenery to come up soon. He did a nice gag, reminding us of the good ol' times, when we were happy with the original cockpits of ATP (g). And still, the scenery looked very impressive and is full of details. One highlight is Berlin for example, where you might try to fly through the "Brandenburger Tor" with your 737 (unfourtunatly only once, as the wings will be ripped off at this attempt (g)).

Umberto Colapicchioni introduced the grid implications of the ATP sceneries and explained, how he managed to get around the limitations and allow great circle navigation and accurate routing across the Atlantic. Stamatis was very happy to hear that and can't wait any longer to do his first hop across the big pond.

Urs Wildermuth then showed us his Scenery "Around the World" to be released in about two weeks. The scenery allows to fly from Malta via Egypt to Hongkong, then going down to Sidney, going around South Pole and coming back to Rio de Janeiro. Urs did provide an environment, that makes exploration of this scenery a true and real adventure! Amazing Cloud effects (ever seen a CIRRUS cloud in ATP so far?), RAIN (!!! yes, rain!), a runway in the Antarctis (white in white, just some tire marks - lights at night) etc. etc. Just have a look on Mount Himalaya, incredible! And if you are not careful, you might crash into a B767, standing on some runways after having damaged the nose gear ... Make sure in any case to have enough fuel on board, better leave your passengers behind if in doubt (vbg).

I concluded the conference afterwards. Basically i said, that every module of ATP including 3DAGS is under consideration for improvement and will be done some time. Anyway, the results of the conference have been so positive and encouraging, that many left Salzburg without a doubt, that we will enjoy "our" sim for another couple of years, even if it will be called Airline Simulator now.

Simon Hradecky reporting from Salzburg, Austria