WHAT IS ATP? HERE'S A LITTLE HISTORY:
SubLogic, the maker of ATP was taken over by Sierra in November of 1995. Actually. Sierra bought into certain advanced scenery and other technologies possessed by SubLogic. New copies of the original ATP from Sublogic (or for that matter any of SubLogic's former products) are no longer being produced, distributed or supported by any company.
ATP's roots as a flight simulation program trace back to some commonality with Flight Simulator version 3 and even Bruce Artwick. I hope to have a more complete history of ATP soon. Harry Zanin and I are also working on what we hope will be a reasonably complete ATP "Bug list" of common ATP problems and solutions to post here or elsewhere. Notes on ATP career assignments can be found at Peter de Moor's website noted below. Since the takeover, Sierra has announced SPP for Windows 95 and its planned release for "early 1997."
It should be noted that Microsoft, in their press release that announced their takeover of the Bruce Artwick Organization (BAO-makers of Flight Shop for FS5 and Tower) announced that they also intend to develop a Windows 95 flight simulation. It will be offically called "Microsoft Flight Simulator for Windows 95" (Not "FS6.0") and its US release is planned for November 7th 1996. I recently added links to Microsoft's FS webpages via the "Favorite Links" link at the bottom of this page.
TIP: Speaking of Windows 95, I run all my DOS flight simulations like ATP and FS4/FS5 from a bootup Win95/"DOS7.0" prompt. To learn how to configure your Windows 95 system to do this, see my Boot Win95 to a DOS Prompt tech note.
ATP SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (For latest versions-Revisions D ("Blue Box") and E (The CDROM version): An IBM compatible computer with:
- An 80286 or faster CPU. (I recommend at least a 386SX/20).
- 1MB of RAM or more (2MB for Revisions D and E with ATC voice sound)
DOS 2.0 or higher (Go with DOS5 or higher!)
- 520-550KB free conventional memory. (See my Optimizing DOS Memory tech note!). Actually the closer you have to 600KB+ free is best.
- At least 512KB of RAM configured as Expanded memory (EMS) for ATC voice sounds.
- A true SoundBlaster compatible sound card for the ATC voice sounds. ATP has sound drivers for SoundBlaster and Adlib compatibles, and the PC Speaker. ThePC Speaker will only allow you to hear sound effect noises-no ATC voices.
- About 5MB of hard drive space.
Note 1: With all things properly configured, ATP will work as a DOS application from within Windows 3.1, WFWG, Windows 95, OS/2 versions 2.1 and Warp 3.0 and 4.0!
Note 2: The video and free memory requirements for adding USA scenery and the 3DAGS graphical packages are higher-usually around at least 600KB+ free conventional memory. See the applicable documentation.