Abacus Publishing add-ons for Microsoft Flight Simulator and Combat Flight Simulator

Flight Journal, Jun 2000 by Ethell, David

One of the strengths of Microsoft's line of flight-simulation programs has always been their extendibility. Both the venerable Flight Simulator (FS) program and its cousin, Combat Flight Simulator (CFS), allow extensive third-party customizing.

Abacus Publishing has been developing flight-sim add-ons for years and now offers a slew of products ranging from new scenery and aircraft to its Scenery Designer and Aircraft Factory. For CFS, it has introduced several products that allow the addition of aircraft and combat missions. Abacus's current offerings were developed for Flight Simulator 98 (FS98), but most work well with FS2000, though some require a patch to make them work. Depending on your goals for extending FS, you'll most likely find an Abacus product that suits you.

Customizing Tools

Airport and Scenery Designer 2.0. Airport and Scenery Designer (ASD) is one of Abacus's flagship products. It enables users to create entire scenery packs for FS98. Within a scenery map, you can add almost any object imaginable, including cities, airports, mountains and highways. This application is not for the faint of heart. Its interface is probably as simple as Abacus could make it, given its capabilities, but it took me more than an hour just to create my first airport. Expect to spend several hours getting acquainted with the interface. Once you've learned it, however, you're limited only by your imagination. I'm usually pretty happy with the scenery included with FS98 and 2000, but ASD allows you to correct and enhance your favorite airport instead of using the included one. You can also import real map and terrain data to make your scenery more realistic.

Don't expect to create anything that looks good on your first goaround, but before long, you may be sharing your scenery and airport creations with the rest of the world. Check out Abacus's websitewww.abacuspub.comfor files that other users have contributed.

Aircraft Factory 99. This works with Aircraft Animator and Custom Panel Designer, but it is complex. The construction of 3D objects requires much thought, and simulating a good airplane for use in FS requires time and patience. Aircraft Factory lets you build your own aircraft from scratch; you can add colors and textures (images that "map overtop" the 3D models to provide a realistic look).

Aircraft Factory comes with about a dozen sample aircraft, but all seem to lack polish; for example, the AT-6 control surfaces don't move, and many of the aircraft don't have rear views or side cockpit panels. This creates a rather unrealistic perspective when looking anywhere other than straight ahead.

Aircraft Factory's "wizard" will guide you through the creation of a new plane, but expect to spend time learning how to customize it. Creating a "quick and dirty" plane doesn't take much time, but making it look and fly correctly takes quite a while.

Aircraft Animator. Using this, I was able to add control-surface animation to some of the planes from Aircraft Factory 99 (AF99). Animator's effective wizard interface will try to edit an aircraft for you and will put movement in all the right places. Depending on the control surface, you can adjust the direction of its movements and other features; e.g., for propellers, you can specify the rpm at which they look transparent.

Animator also lets you add parameters that allow different parts of an animation sequence to come into play at varying times, and this gives a more random-or real-world-feel to the movements; for example, you may want the gear doors to open partway before the gear start to retract, or you may want the gear to drop faster at the start of the cycle and then slow down as they reach the locked down position. Most of the aircraft that come with FS are already animated, so this package is more useful when creating your own aircraft.

Custom Panel Designer.

This lets you completely rework the instrument panel on any of FS's aircraft. You can choose to start with the existing panel from the plane you're editing, or you can create a new panel from scratch using 21) bitmaps imported from your favorite paint program.

You start with a basic layout for the dimensions of the cockpit view. All of the FS gauges are at your disposal as you build your new panel. Most of the ones I designed looked much less convincing than the stock panels, but that isn't the program's fault. It just takes someone who's pretty good with a paint program to make a realistic panel.

Summary

Of all these customizing tools, you'll probably find Aircraft Factory most useful. Creating scenery and airports is the most difficult skill to learn, so users who get frustrated easily should steer clear of these. To design a well-polished aircraft, you'll probably want to pick up all three tools to have complete control over your design. All are definitely for advanced users. If you'd prefer to skip designing pieces and to purchase predesigned add-ons, the next set of packages may be more to your liking.

And now for Something a little Easier ... Predesigned Add-Ons