question about MAIW

[DeepSea-Two-One]

I remember discussions about a military forum back in August, September and October 2003 as a subset of the AFCAD2 beta on the ProjectAI forums. Some military buffs such as Mike were key to discovering elements like the engine type to runway length relationships for takeoff of aircraft.

Some of the folks convinced Frank that PAI could do military packages, but those were a limited priority with PAI. Plus the key folks wanted to ensure that many additional things were included in the military packages than was normal in a PAI package.

The key members moved the military discussion from the PAI side of the website to the Flightsimmer.com/ FSGateway.com side of the site in the summer/fall of 2004 if my memory is correct.

The first real, exciting military package was "The New England Military AI Aircraft and Airbase Collection" by Dave O'Brien with extensive help from Michael MacIntyre and Wing Ng in January 2004. Most of the models were not real AI, but showed that amazing things could be done.

Anyone else remember how happy we were to have the AlphaSim A-10 to use as an AI model? I still have all the repaints and flightplans - just not active of course.

The C-17 model was a huge step forward for Military AI.

Rob Nieuwenhoven was a key contributor and one of the people behind the RAAF AI package - another wonderful early example of what could be accomplished.

Dexter Eadie also created some great examples of possibilities - with his Fort Rucker and JASDF packages in early 2005.

So many people contributed - but it was wonderful to see the group developed and working with WoA bring out the first package in the fall of 2006.

[MIKE JG]

Reggie that's some great history! Thank you for sharing. Even I didn't know most of that! We're redesigning the home page so maybe we can incorporate all this "history" into a little "about us" section for the new page.

[Firebird]

Careful, Mike. Your roots are showing.

[Greg]

Brings back so many memories

Can we use that, Reggie?

[DeepSea-Two-One]

Sure, but you need to check with some other folks to make sure my memories are correct.

I didn't name everyone - don't remember all of them. Stewart was there from the start. One key early member was a E-5 crew chief at KCHS on C-17s - Adam 'sirecks' Sereika.

Adam was our 'poster child'. Being a fan of military AI, a SEL PPL and a USAF Reserve active duty member - he chased and got his dream. He was commissioned an officer the US Air Force Reserve - went through pilot training. Where in 2004 and 2005 he was working on C-17 AI packages - by 2007 - he was flying C-17s.

The military AI fans had to fight two perceptions from the AI establishment. One was there would never be good AI models for military aircraft - no real interest. The RPP C-17 and Fernando Martinez C-160 showed what could be done. First Dave Friswell and then Henry's C-130s

But what really make MAIW possible was people like Nick and others who said "I want these planes and I'm going to learn how to model them"

The other is that because military aircraft did not fly regular schedules - their traffic AI patterns would be unrealistic.

Another early pioneer was Christian Muenier with his Royal Thai, Oman and Egyptian military packages in November 2004, German and the Netherlands in Feb 05, France in May 05

BTW does anyone still have a copy of the Military AFCAD Tutorial I did for KTIK back in October 2003. I lost it when a website went down and was unable to retrieve my backup.

[mikewmac]

I remember discussions about a military forum back in August, September and October 2003 as a subset of the AFCAD2 beta on the ProjectAI forums. Some military buffs such as Mike were key to discovering elements like the engine type to runway length relationships for takeoff of aircraft.

Some of the folks convinced Frank that PAI could do military packages, but those were a limited priority with PAI. Plus the key folks wanted to ensure that many additional things were included in the military packages than was normal in a PAI package.

The key members moved the military discussion from the PAI side of the website to the Flightsimmer.com/ FSGateway.com side of the site in the summer/fall of 2004 if my memory is correct.

The first real, exciting military package was "The New England Military AI Aircraft and Airbase Collection" by Dave O'Brien with extensive help from Michael MacIntyre and Wing Ng in January 2004. Most of the models were not real AI, but showed that amazing things could be done.

Anyone else remember how happy we were to have the AlphaSim A-10 to use as an AI model? I still have all the repaints and flightplans - just not active of course.

The C-17 model was a huge step forward for Military AI.

Rob Nieuwenhoven was a key contributor and one of the people behind the RAAF AI package - another wonderful early example of what could be accomplished.

Dexter Eadie also created some great examples of possibilities - with his Fort Rucker and JASDF packages in early 2005.

So many people contributed - but it was wonderful to see the group developed and working with WoA bring out the first package in the fall of 2006.

Hi Reggie,

Great to see you posting here on the early days of Military AI Packages. Those were very challenging, but very satisfying days as we struggled with and then discovered the relationship between an AI's engine type and which runway length it would take off on at multi-runway airports, how to actually have Military AI fly VFR and/or IFR TNG's and then either land or fly on to another airbase, how to effectively use either virtual or actual invisible airport waypoints for AI flights, how to create AI formation takeoffs, flights, flybys and landings, etc. It is really too bad that all of those many "sticky" posts on our ground breaking work were lost during the website shuffle that ensued, since many of those same old problems that we overcame continue to pop up here from time to time.

Working with Dave "TopGun" O'Brien and Wing Ng on our 2003 New England Military AI Aircraft and Airbase Collection (NEMAI) was a great experience. Dave did all the AFCAD's and FP's, I did all the aircraft repaints and AI FDE's and Wing did research and testing. I look back at that package now and it seems so primitive in all respects compared to what MAIW releases today, but it was the best that could be done with what little we had to work with back then and I am very proud to have been a part of the start of Military AI Packages for FS2004.

Mike MacIntyre

PS: Yes, I certainly remember how great it was to have the AlphaSim A-10 to use as an AI and we of course used it in our NEMAI package.