The Simulation market has been around for a long time. It’s still here and bigger than most people think. We know about Flight Simulators with their hardcore followers, but what else is out there?
Well surprisingly, after doing a little bit of digging around, there are a LOT of simulation games. Straight away, I’m going to discount things like SimCity, just because those sorts of games are more of a management game, rather than a hands-on simulation of something from every-day life.
As mentioned, this is probably the most well-known simulator, and is so well supported that you can buy hardware add-ons for the game, including proper yokes, rudder pedals and throttle controls. And that doesn’t even count the huge number of software add-ons, with new scenery, airports, aircraft – you name it.
For the truly enthusiastic, the game comes complete with a very good Air Traffic Control system, ILS systems at airports, with all the correct approaches you would expect. And the detail inside the cockpit has to be seen to be believed – the aircraft feel & look as per their real-life counterparts. Of course, this is not a lot of fun for the casual gamer as there is no “achievement” other than completing a journey. There are no timetables, or anything to stick to, it’s completely left open to the gamer to work out what they want to accomplish. There are, however, lots of missions which are also available and can be completed, to give the casual gamer a reason to play the game. The various tutorials, from learning the basic controls, to flying IFR, are there to help too.
There are other civilian-based flight simulator games like FlightGear (open-source), but most are of the military type, focusing on dog-fighting and missions. IL-2, and the classic F-16 are two that spring to mind in this genre.
Flight Simulator is the best system for the home, accurately simulating the physics and flight characteristics of the aircraft. Born in 1982, as version 1, Flight Simulator X, released in 2006, is the 12th version of the game – and hopefully not the last. ACES studios, owned by Microsoft, were closed in January 2009, so the future of this long-running game series is unknown.
The “Mule” (Multifunction Utility/Logistics Equipment) is one of the US’s latest Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV). Rather than attack the battlefield face-on, the Mule drives to it’s destination via Xbox Controller (or indeed air-lifted in via helicopter), and sucker punches the unsuspecting enemies of the state while they’re asleep (probably).
Nicknamed “Baker”, most of the changes to Wordpress 2.8 are behind the scenes. The overall back-end system being easier to use for the person in charge of the site, as well as having more customisation features on the Dashboard and post listing pages.
Amongst those is the Private Browsing Mode, already popular amongst Chrome and IE users. Private Browsing Mode disables all history being recorded and cookies being saved. Essentially keeping your browsing safe from prying eyes, it has always been heralded as a way to surf internet porn – and even sometimes the developers hint that this was the reason for it being included in the feature set.
Windows 7, the latest operating system from Microsoft, is trying to put to bed the bad press they’ve received recently with their Vista release. Windows 7, in combination with input from users, is being hailed as the best OS that Microsoft have released to date. It is quicker, leaner, and more compatible than ever before. Partly down to a re-written kernel, but also down to the modular approach to the OS – gone are all the extras like Movie Maker, although you’re free to add them to the OS if you want them. Also, with a Windows XP mode, applications are virtualised in a real Windows XP environment, with the help of Microsoft’s Virtual PC.
The court in Sweden have handed out a 1 years prison sentence for Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde. The court also ordered the 4 to pay damages of £2.4 million. Peter Sunde is quoted as saying, "Nothing will happen to TPB [The Pirate Bay], this is just theatre for the media."
If you’re unlucky enough to live outside of the UK, the US or Germany, then you will notice that the free use of last.fm to stream music has been taken away.
