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Original Message
"Intro flight tonight!"
Posted by Ben Chiu on 12-06-01 at 16:58z
Greetings!

We have a regularly scheduled chat tonight at 7pm PT (0300z) in the #Pilot_Lounge (check the chat area), and I thought it would be a good time to walk anyone interested through our Flight Room process. Please download the Fly_Now! Beta before the session. Also if you have RW installed, it would be a plus.

Hope to see you tonight!
Ben

Table of contents
Messages in this discussion
"RE: Intro flight tonight!"
Posted by Sancho on 12-07-01 at 07:21z
>Greetings!
>
>We have a regularly scheduled chat tonight at 7pm PT
>(0300z) in the #Pilot_Lounge (check the chat area), and I
>thought it would be a good time to walk anyone interested
>through our Flight Room process. Please download the
>Fly_Now! Beta before the session. Also if you have RW
>installed, it would be a plus.
>
>Hope to see you tonight!
>Ben


Hi Ben,
Very good idea. But what do you mean "tonight"?
This is 4 am in my home (LSZB). :-(
Happy landings

"RE: Intro flight tonight!"
Posted by Ben Chiu on 12-07-01 at 22:17z
Greetings Sancho:

>Very good idea. But what do you mean "tonight"?
>This is 4 am in my home (LSZB). :-(

Rgr that! We can arrange to hold other intro flights for everyone in other time zones. Just suggest a day and time and we'll gather up the required personnel. Four of our VPC staff are located in the UK, and Andor (who's an old pro at this online stuff now I might add) is in Australia, so I'm sure we can accomodate everyone.

Just FYI, in case anyone has any apprehensions about flying online, we've been keeping the intro flights to simple scenic tours around the host's home city. You don't need to know ATC or anything like that. You only need to be able to follow the host around (a game of "follow the leader") and they'll point out the landmarks for you. So not only will you learn about flying online at the VPC, you'll get the grand tour as well! :)

Ben

"RE: Intro flight tonight!"
Posted by Sancho on 12-08-01 at 17:46z
Hi Ben,
After loosing my former homes (FSForum and Gamers) and after getting a new FS (2K2 after 98) I realize that I am back at square 1 (inexperienced beginner).

I downloaded and installed FlyNow, but I cannot connect to the flight rooms. Hitting the "connect" button gives me the following 2 lines:
Getting Fastest Server ...
Progress 1 of 1:64.163.145.151.-1 ms
after a while, a blinking cursor appears and nothing more happens. I never see the login window.
(yes, I waited 5 minutes)

I tried to get into the VPC Flight Lobby, using "guest" as my name, since I couldn't register with FlyNow. I get
"connecting to servers ..." and then nothing more happens.

This report is typed Dec 8, 1745zulu.
I connect to the ISP via a cable modem.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.

"RE: Intro flight tonight!"
Posted by Ben Chiu on 12-08-01 at 18:35z
Greetings Sancho:

We had a problem with the FlightServer. We're trying to track it down. In the mean time, we rebooted the FlightServer and all is working as of 121840z.

Please let us know if you have any further problems.
Ben

"RE: Intro flight tonight!"
Posted by Ben Chiu on 12-08-01 at 18:50z
>121840z.

Erm, that should have read 081840z. :)

BTW, no need to apologize for being new here. We're ALL new here. Please remember that we're making this all up as we go along. :)

You're watching it happening and guiding the VPC's direction.


Ben

"RE: Intro flight tonight!"
Posted by Sancho on 12-09-01 at 17:00z
>Greetings Sancho:
>
>We had a problem with the FlightServer. We're trying to
>track it down. In the mean time, we rebooted the
>FlightServer and all is working as of 121840z.
>
>Please let us know if you have any further problems.
>Ben

Hi Ben,
I think you deserve some good news and praise in this phase for all the work you did.
I just want to let you know, that in the wee hours of your Sunday morning I managed to:
-Connect using FlyNow (after having opened my account)
-Create a game and then start the game which launched FS2002 with the multiplayer option active
Since all of you were still asleep (1645zulu, Sunday) I made a lonely early morning flight at KSBP.

The only question I have, is about the fact that I couldn't change the "maximum number of players". It always showed 1. I don't want too many, but more than 1 would be desirable. <sm>
Happy landings.
PS: I haven't figured out yet how to get those smilies.

"RE: Intro flight tonight!"
Posted by Ben Chiu on 12-09-01 at 19:21z
Greetings Sancho:

>I think you deserve some good news and praise in this
>phase for all the work you did.

Thanks, Sancho, but we're a team here. While I may guide things, there are quite few people behind the scenes helping. I couldn't possibly build the VPC all by myself.


>Since all of you were still asleep (1645zulu, Sunday) I
>made a lonely early morning flight at KSBP.

Fantastic! We have some new KSBP scenery for FS2K2 about to enter Beta, so you'll get to see a much closer representation of what it really looks like soon.


>The only question I have, is about the fact that I
>couldn't change the "maximum number of players". It always
>showed 1. I don't want too many, but more than 1 would be
>desirable. <sm>

It's a bug. Currently we have no limits set for the number of players for a game. I saw in FS2K2's readme that the game itself may limit players (didn't read it too carefully), but we don't limit players. Or server will allow as many players as want to join a game. Of course we're not sure what'll happen with more than 256 players because we've never had that many online at once, but the possibilities are exciting!


>PS: I haven't figured out yet how to get those smilies.

Click the Emotion icon short cuts link just above the reply window when replying to a message and it'll display all of the codes. Basically you just type a colon : and a close parenthesis ) one after another like this for a smiley. :)

Best!
Ben

"RE: Intro flight tonight!"
Posted by jerryrosie on 12-08-01 at 19:52z
:-)>>Getting Fastest Server ...
Progress 1 of 1:64.163.145.151.-1 ms <<

Same thing happened to me! Reloaded FlyNow and tried everything but finally gave up and posted a message that maybe the server was broken. Sure enough - one of us broke the server :-) Everything is fine now though and I was able to complete the process (all alone of course) but waiting now to try it with someone else logged on also.....

should be somebody who knows how this thing is supposed to work though <]:¬)

***Reality - the refuge of those who can't handle simulation***
Cheers, Jerry (N94)

"RE: Intro flight tonight!"
Posted by jerryrosie on 12-07-01 at 14:22z
OK Great! I'll try like he** to make it. hope I can find the door to the #pilot_lounge......

***Reality - the refuge of those who can't handle simulation***
Cheers, Jerry (N94)

"RE: Intro flight tonight!"
Posted by vgbaron on 12-07-01 at 16:25z
Ben -

The flight was fun and not too difficult to get the hang of. One thing tho, the only person I could see was Robert and no one was able to see me. Even when Robert was close to another person, he was the only one. Is there a setting I'm missing?

After you join the game and are told which airport to start from, how do you keep from all piling up at the end of one runway?

Anyhow, it was fun and I look forward to trying it again :)

Vic

"RE: Intro flight tonight!"
Posted by RobertVA on 12-07-01 at 19:47z
It is a total mystery as to why you were unable to see the other aircraft last night, but I was able to see the tag for your plane.

I haven't been able to get the ADF or DME lock to work in FS 2002 multiplayer with anyone yet though. I have made sure those features are checked in the multiplayer settings and tried the NAV / GPS switch in both positions. Cycling through players with the Ctrl-Shft-T has no effect on the ADF needle or the DME display. I tried changing the ADF source receiver switch too.

The host settings dialog doesn't seem to work properly for me either. The dialog comes up with the sesion name text box blank, and doesn't allow me to enter any text. The dialog won't allow me to change any other settings until the session name is set, so I cannot change any settings.


"RE: Intro flight tonight!"
Posted by Ben Chiu on 12-07-01 at 21:45z
Hi Vic:

>The flight was fun and not too difficult to get the hang
>of.

Well, we need to get Jerry up to speed next! :)


>One thing tho, the only person I could see was Robert
>and no one was able to see me. Even when Robert was close
>to another person, he was the only one. Is there a setting
>I'm missing?

Beats me since I still haven't loaded up FS2K2 yet. It might be a bug. If you have FS2K loaded, we can try that and you can see how it's supposed to/used to work. :)

I'm going to try and load up FS2K2 on Sat before our evening flight, so we can fool around with it some more to try and sort it out.


>After you join the game and are told which airport to
>start from, how do you keep from all piling up at the end
>of one runway?

What I do is save a flight with my aircraft in the tie down area. Save that flight as the default, then join FlyNow! This way, once you're connected, you'll appear where your default flight placed you.

>Anyhow, it was fun and I look forward to trying it again
>:)

Great! I'm sure that's the first of very many for you! :)

Ben

"RE: Intro flight tonight!"
Posted by vgbaron on 12-08-01 at 04:51z
Ben -

AARGH!!! my system has gopne blotto. made the mistake of flashing the bios and it's completely unstable. Locks up tighter than a drun after a few minutes - and this is without anything loaded. Got some emails into tech support but until I get it sorted out I won't be doing any flying for a bit. The system I'm on is a small xp development system.

frustrating....

vic

"RE: Intro flight tonight!"
Posted by andor on 12-08-01 at 03:26z
WOW.. what a response Ben.. good on 'yer :)
Again it proves one should read the Mesage board and keep up to date.. didn,t read the board till now (after the event) so last Thurs. night caught me napping..(still fumble around when joining) in spite of nice remarks about the "old pro" stuff.. OLD- maybe.. Pro-never :)
I could "see" Robert and Vic ok most of the time, Robert and I on the water and on the tarmac can cross check to the degree whether rudder (Amphibian) is up or down and I,m sure if we all get closer in the air we will experience similar detail.
Didn,t try any of the Multi-player ADF, DME etc settings Robert but will on Sat night ,if all flying.
A suggestion Ben, re us all blasting off in all directions, if we were given a VOR/DME close to departure airport where we could all "hold" and (gingerly) have a look at the "squadron". also Ha-Hmmm (sotto voice) allow ME time to get the aircraft settled down :)
Now really looking forward to Sat evening , hope to see you all there,
Regards,
Andyc.