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Flight Simulators and CFD / Finding Old Work / Looking Glass Studios
laxin84
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
Hey Everyone
I know this is a bit random, but I've got something I'm trying to get out there: Seamus Blackley (formerly of Looking Glass Studios, and more recently, famed co-creator of Xbox) had made an amazing CFD system for Flight Unlimited back in the day, and no flight sim has ever done it since (X-Plane developers even maintain that instituting any kind of real-time CFD system is impossible on modern hardware, though Blackley did it with Pentium 90's). No one has seen anything about it since, and I can't seem to find any way of contacting Seamus Blackley via email, twitter, or anything else.
Is there any way of reaching out to Blackley to see if he's interested in licensing his CFD system or if he'd be willing to open-source his old work on Flight Unlimited? It's industry changing information and work, and I'm really trying to either facilitate someone getting it out there, or getting information on what it was that he did so new developers can benefit from that knowledge. I've found a lot of times in my professional career that some pretty amazing work is lost because only one person ever took the time to do something that seemed hard, and then never documented it because he figured "well, someone else will do it too, of course". So far it hasn't... and real-time CFD would make a huge difference in a ton of modern games.
Those of you who don't know what CFD is: CFD = Computation Fluid Dynamics. Flight Unlimited featured a real-time simulation of an atmosphere in its game, and flight worked via actual interaction with simulated particles of air. All modern games use vector-based newtonian systems or pre-calculated physics based off databases of CFD computations from wind tunnels, which is partly why most modern flight sims feel so rigid, and don't communicate flight anywhere near the way Flight Unlimited did (actual pilots who've used both sims often talk about the "feel" difference).
Anyway, if anyone has any ideas, please let me know. Maybe someone could filter the idea of getting in contact with Seamus up to the PA guys, and they could use industry clout to arrange an interview, or maybe someone knows more about getting in contact with him than I do, but I feel like someone needs to make it happen.
Thanks!
I know this is a bit random, but I've got something I'm trying to get out there: Seamus Blackley (formerly of Looking Glass Studios, and more recently, famed co-creator of Xbox) had made an amazing CFD system for Flight Unlimited back in the day, and no flight sim has ever done it since (X-Plane developers even maintain that instituting any kind of real-time CFD system is impossible on modern hardware, though Blackley did it with Pentium 90's). No one has seen anything about it since, and I can't seem to find any way of contacting Seamus Blackley via email, twitter, or anything else.
Is there any way of reaching out to Blackley to see if he's interested in licensing his CFD system or if he'd be willing to open-source his old work on Flight Unlimited? It's industry changing information and work, and I'm really trying to either facilitate someone getting it out there, or getting information on what it was that he did so new developers can benefit from that knowledge. I've found a lot of times in my professional career that some pretty amazing work is lost because only one person ever took the time to do something that seemed hard, and then never documented it because he figured "well, someone else will do it too, of course". So far it hasn't... and real-time CFD would make a huge difference in a ton of modern games.
Those of you who don't know what CFD is: CFD = Computation Fluid Dynamics. Flight Unlimited featured a real-time simulation of an atmosphere in its game, and flight worked via actual interaction with simulated particles of air. All modern games use vector-based newtonian systems or pre-calculated physics based off databases of CFD computations from wind tunnels, which is partly why most modern flight sims feel so rigid, and don't communicate flight anywhere near the way Flight Unlimited did (actual pilots who've used both sims often talk about the "feel" difference).
Anyway, if anyone has any ideas, please let me know. Maybe someone could filter the idea of getting in contact with Seamus up to the PA guys, and they could use industry clout to arrange an interview, or maybe someone knows more about getting in contact with him than I do, but I feel like someone needs to make it happen.
Thanks!
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