MiGMan

"One of the cool things about Microsoft Flight Simulator is the ability to do multiplayer flights with other players over the internet. I have done quite a few of these, most often group flights where we explore some interesting part of the world while we talk about flying or other things, over Discord or Skype. I've also done flights with my Australian friend Pete (a.k.a. "MiGMan"), often testing out routes in his ongoing MiGMan's World Tour (MMWT) Series. This is an enjoyable social aspect of flight simulation, where airplane nerds can talk with other airplane nerds about airplanes as they pretend to fly them!"

MiGMan and Flying Singer's first flight in MSFS 2020. Snaps from our training missions at NAS Key West. Great weather, great scenery!

A classic sim in it's time which integrated many of the elements of addictive gameplay.

Note the name of the RIO.

1999 | Beta version | Retail version

In this case a picture or two is worth a thousand words. This is some of the best fun I've had in 42 years of computer flight simming!

MiGMan gave a Flight Sim Masterclass on the November 14, 2006 episode of Good Game which is presented by ABC - Australia's National Broadcaster.

Stills from our second Tiger Meet!

MiGMan and Flying Singer flew in Algeria and Greece, practicing station keeping and formation skills while talking about the state of flight sims.

Practicing formation takeoff, landing and cross IFR (I Follow Roads) with two MB-339's in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.

A few notes about the campaign from 1998.

I had great fun with the fast paced missions some 20 years after initial contact. Here is a gallery of some highlights.

The P-51 Mustang was apparently known as the F-51 in the Korean War. What was one of the most formidable and effective air superiority machines in WW2 was, only 5 years later relegated mainly to a ground attack role. The jet age had begun.

"The F-80 Shooting Star was flying in Italy in January 1945 but didn't see combat.
On the 8th of November 1950 a Shooting Star shot down a MiG-15 in what is thought to be the first jet to jet air combat encounter. The first 4 months of the Korean war saw the F-80 bearing the brunt of the combat with over 15,000 sorties being flown."

"The F84 ThunderJet often ran out of runway in the hot Korean weather and was known as the ""Groundhog"" because of this reluctance to become airborne. I noticed fairly quickly in MiG Alley that on take-off it is important to keep the flaps down until the speed has built up and to keep the climb out fairly shallow. Other fliers have reported that a ""flaps up"" setting is best for takeoff, with a very shallow climb out... barely clearing the treetops at about 2 degrees climb angle."

The F-86 Sabre is modelled in the A, E and F Variants.

Your have five fighter squadrons and two bomber squadrons under your command.

The Forward Air Controllers in MiG Alley are a first for Combat flight sims.

The aircraft in MiG Alley use the classic "Finger Four" formation. This was known to Commonwealth pilots (Canadian and Australian) as "High Battle Formation". According to Christie Harris, who flew for the RCAF in the 1950's, "You started as a wingman, with three practically foolproof opportunities for disaster.

Like most (all?) folks, my first flight in MSFS 2020 had to be to my childhood home.

In my first caching experiment I cached the Williamtown RAAF base near Newcastle. That only used 45mb of space, so this time I set my sights higher. Or broader.

What I said 18 years ago about Flight Sim 2002 seems totally applicable to this new sim:

Previously to get anywhere near this level of detail for a particular locale you would have to purchase a 3rd party scenery pack and then suffer abominable frame rates.

With the ability to automatically generate buildings, trees, static and flying aircraft and the associated radio traffic this package must have sent shock waves through companies whose business was based on enhancing the Microsoft sims. Still, the open architecture is there and the Pro version even includes an object / aircraft construction kit.

I'd imagine some business plans are hastily being rewritten and in the end we are all better off.

The sim has the ability to support computers and graphic cards that aren't even built yet - but they will be!

Yet it still runs on an average PC and looks good. Who could have imagined 10 years ago that this level of detail and complexity could be modelled on a PC? Only in my dreams!

MiGMan, 2002

On an unusually grey Sydney afternoon in October 2006 I was a guest of Microsoft at the launch of their new flagship product - Microsoft Flight Simulator X.

Proflight was the first flight sim I had seen since the Apple ][ in 1982. I had bought an Atari ST to arrange and print music for my string quartet and included in the package was a demo of this amazingly fluid sim, running at 600 x 400 pixels (in monochrome). There began my true flight sim addiction.

Successful repetition breeds success.

I use them in Voice Attack to mimic the sounds of radio comms, with a bit of static and crackle!

Overview of my 5 MFDs. This may be useful to someone thinking of going this route with MSFS.

Join MiGMan in the cockpit for a chat about flight sims and related stuff!

Specs for the sixth version of the MiGPit. a project that has been running since 1992.

Specs for the sixth version of the MiGPit. a project that has been running since 1992.

Date: Sunday September 27th, 2020
Locn: MiGBase (Australia's Area 51)
Aircraft: MiGPit experimental
Pilot: P.C.
Added a second MFD and sent P.C. on a test flight.

Added to the MiGPit in 2020.

Which.. I found rather confusing, so I made my own.

i7 and large screens

In 2010 I bought a Lenovo 560 laptop, which has proved to be an amazingly reliable bit of kit, only retired from flight line service in 2020!

"I composed this fanfare in 2006 to promote a proposed Television series. "MiGMan Fanfare" (c) 2006 Peter Inglis. All rights reserved."

2006 Pentium rigged for silent running.

2004 Pentium 4 for Microsoft Flight Sim 2004.

In late 2001 I breathed new life into the Celeron-466 with extra RAM and a new video card, new monitor and a CD R/W. | Celeron, not Cylon.

In 1995 MiGMan and PC paid a visit to Amberley, a RAAF base in sunny Queensland, Australia. as guests of No.1 Squadron. Australia is the only country in the world operating the F-111, the Americans called it the "Aardvark", or "Vark"... the Aussies call it the "Pig". Aardvaark is Afrikaans for "Earth Pig"

I used to fly in my own home-built own cockpit, which shared scale with an F-16 if not much else! It was programmable if you had a day or so to spare!

8Mb RAM and a 15" CRT monitor. This was as good as it could get!

Re-reading the specs reminded me that the 1040 was ahead of the pack for a little while with it's 4096 colours and built in midi sound.

In 1982 the Apple II represented a huge leap forward in personal computing power.

What is it about? | Timeline | Data | Resources

Holiday snaps I took in Boston, August 2009 as a guest of Flying Singer and his charming family.

As part of the grand overhaul of the MiGBase in late 2020, I replaced a mess of external hard drives and their associated power supplies and USB cables with a nice little ICY BOX!

On an unusually grey Sydney afternoon in October 2006 MiGMan was a guest of Microsoft at the launch of their new flagship product - Microsoft Flight Simulator X.
The creme-de-la-creme of Australia's gaming journalists gathered at Kingsford Smith Airport, Sydney, and embarked on a champagne flight over Sydney Harbour in a C-47, the military transport version of the Douglas DC-3.

Table based comparison of the F-111 Aardvark, and it’s proposed replacement, the F-35 JSF.

Yes, back in the day, before the mighty internet, people used to talk on the telephone (a communication device which was attached to the wall.

MiGMan was keynote speaker at Australia's first ever Flight Sim Expo, held in the old Ansett terminal at Kingsford Smith International Airport, Sydney.

I was a keynote speaker at Australia's first Flight Sim Expo.

App management has gone from iTunes. Batteries that die every couple of years. Expensive hw. Time to migrate to Android.

As the title says: 'My first flghts' in many varied and wonderful aircraft. Each flight a new adventure!

... and having fun while I'm about it!

I enjoy flying the F-16 fast and at treetop level... who wouldn't! But at all levels I was getting stuttering and slowdowns. The stuttering being much more immersion breaking that any slowdown. Anyway, cutting to the chase after hours and hours and hours over many nights, I worked out the single most important graphic setting (for my rig). And it's one I would NEVER have guessed.

I obtained this in 2001 to try and run some of the older DOS sims which just refused to run on my Celeron-466 .

I demonstrated the HOTAS Cougar and TrackIR, flying a MiG-29 in LOMAC, then flew in s DC-3 with Junglist to the official launch of Microsoft Flight Sim X.

Due to help from staff at the ORBX forums, the Canberra scenery revealed it's full glory!

Peter Inglis’ submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Inquiry into Australian Defence Force Regional Air Superiority, 2006

In 1994 I was lucky enough to witness the first flight of a MiG-21 in Australia!

I composed and orchestrated this fanfare in 2006.

Rise of the Pentium. This is the year the Flight Sim Museum was born.

Flight Sims are inherently much more complex than most game genres, and therein lies the secret of their long term attraction.