On Wed, 2005-04-06 at 18:13, Josh Babcock wrote: > Arnt Karlsen wrote: > > On Tue, 05 Apr 2005 22:22:48 -0400, Josh wrote in message > >>Be warned, racy but authentic nose art... > > > > ..cute. We need more of these, to remain authentic. ;o) > > > > > > Yeah, this is an excellent opportunity to spread some historical > information...
Interactive history is certainly far better than dry facts in books, but we'd have to be careful how we "spread historical information". FlightGear might well be a great means of keeping the historical flying experience alive. The trouble is, AFAIK *no* airplane currently modelled in FlightGear has ever been verified against the original machine. I'm *not* knocking what Josh has done here - nor of course anyone else's efforts. FlightGear is great for all those people who (like me) cannot afford to pilot real aircraft, or who just don't want to. However, we can't ignore the fact that, good though it may be, FlightGear is basically a video game. [ I take it, Josh, that I'm right in assuming that you've not flown a real B29? Nor even put an accurate model of a B29 in a wind tunnel to check how well the FDM is doing its stuff? :-) ] That's not to be taken as a complaint, but if we don't make people aware of this, then in 100 years time they'll be trying to re-enact battles of WWII using your B29 model on "FlightGear 29.2.1 for HoloDeck" and wondering why the bomber jocks of WWII claimed certain feats which they can't duplicate in 2105. So they'll rewrite history books to reflect what the HoloDeck simulation showed (the historical accounts obviously being exaggerated!), and they'll be wrong. Just as we can tell that the ancient Egyptians had help from aliens in building the pyramids, 'cos they "obviously couldn't have done it by themselves". :-) Steve _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
