AstridRedfern
Member
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2022
- Messages
- 19
Hi all,
In brief:
I'm a frequent user of the Stack Exchange Q&A site, and I've been doing some research to try to answer a question on there. I think the Sun GX flight sim "Aviator" may be a possible answer, but I can't find any screenshots or in-game footage to back this up. I'm posting here to ask if anyone with access to Sun GX hardware like the SPARCstation could get the game running on there, and post some screenshots and/or footage online.
In full:
This is the original question:
scifi.stackexchange.com
(In comments, the OP clarified that this computer show was at Ashland Community College, Kentucky.)
After some research, I reckoned a modded version of SGI's flight (aka dog) flight sim demo and aerial dogfight game might be what OP was looking for, and posted a lengthy answer, including my evidence that the mod in question with the spaceship models existed and that there was a textured canyon in at least some versions.
Since then, I've come to suspect that AHI's "Aviator" might also be a possibility. These are my reasons:
1.) One of the planes available was a conventional fighter jet, the FA-18. The X-29 was also available.
2.) It was possible to construct new models for planes, and maybe missiles. A Usenet post (https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.sgi.misc/c/DKVVMEgO-0g/m/X4vjteZBMBYJ) stated:
This could explain the spacecraft (which the original Stack Exchange poster thinks MAY have been a Klingon spaceship, btw.)
In addition, the readme to version 1.2 stated:
(I suspect that even if the Batwing was added as a plane, they'd have had to remove it for copyright reasons. Especially after version 1.5 became a commercial product.)
3.) One section of terrain (at least in version 1.2) was a canyon. And not just any canyon, but the Grand Canyon. This scenery was stored in a file called aviator_gcanyon.dump (which in turn was stored in a .Z archive.)
(Incidentally, I have no idea if that .dump format had been used elsewhere by any other 3D modelling software, or if it was a format only used by Aviator. Does anyone know?)
Part of the reason I'm asking this site is that some of the users were reminiscing about it in the "Anybody here actually collect Unix stuff" thread:
and this is the first time as far as I know that anyone's even mentioned it since the days of the Usenet! In fact, one user even uploaded the 1.2 freeware version, and the free demo of 1.5.1, to http://bitsavers.org/bits/Sun/aviator (thanks Al Kossow!)
For anyone not familiar with the game - I posted a similar request to Reddit, and this included a description of the game and its origins, based on everything I'd been able to glean from here, the Usenet and elsewhere. You can read it at:
and it includes links to several Usenet discussion threads archived on Google Groups.
One person has actually replied to say that they've had some partial success with Sun OS 4.1.4 and their SPARCstation 20, and that they're trying to get the 1.2 terrain data imported into 1.5.1 (the version they've got running) and to deal with some console errors. I've decided to post my appeal here anyway in case they don't succeed in this, or in case anyone here has access to resources (like models they themselves constructed for the game) that the Reddit user might not.
So:
Could anyone here who has access to Sun GX hardware please see if they can get Aviator running on it, and if they can, please post some screenshots and maybe even an in-game video? Especially welcome would be any depictions of the FA-18 in the canyon - doubly so if it's flying "nap of the earth" style (i.e. fairly near the ground.) and doing a relatively slow flight. And this *is* possible for fighter jets - see https://aviation.stackexchange.com/...e-fighter-jets-so-loud-when-doing-slow-flight and
Cheers,
Astrid.
In brief:
I'm a frequent user of the Stack Exchange Q&A site, and I've been doing some research to try to answer a question on there. I think the Sun GX flight sim "Aviator" may be a possible answer, but I can't find any screenshots or in-game footage to back this up. I'm posting here to ask if anyone with access to Sun GX hardware like the SPARCstation could get the game running on there, and post some screenshots and/or footage online.
In full:
This is the original question:
Early 90s CGI short involving a camouflaged (not cloaked) Romulan or Klingon ship shooting down a fighter jet
This is, admittedly, a secondhand query, but one that I think I will recognize on seeing it and seeing Early '90s CGI short film about insects living inside a computer answered made me bold eno...
scifi.stackexchange.com
(In comments, the OP clarified that this computer show was at Ashland Community College, Kentucky.)
After some research, I reckoned a modded version of SGI's flight (aka dog) flight sim demo and aerial dogfight game might be what OP was looking for, and posted a lengthy answer, including my evidence that the mod in question with the spaceship models existed and that there was a textured canyon in at least some versions.
Since then, I've come to suspect that AHI's "Aviator" might also be a possibility. These are my reasons:
1.) One of the planes available was a conventional fighter jet, the FA-18. The X-29 was also available.
2.) It was possible to construct new models for planes, and maybe missiles. A Usenet post (https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.sgi.misc/c/DKVVMEgO-0g/m/X4vjteZBMBYJ) stated:
This could explain the spacecraft (which the original Stack Exchange poster thinks MAY have been a Klingon spaceship, btw.)
In addition, the readme to version 1.2 stated:
(I suspect that even if the Batwing was added as a plane, they'd have had to remove it for copyright reasons. Especially after version 1.5 became a commercial product.)
3.) One section of terrain (at least in version 1.2) was a canyon. And not just any canyon, but the Grand Canyon. This scenery was stored in a file called aviator_gcanyon.dump (which in turn was stored in a .Z archive.)
(Incidentally, I have no idea if that .dump format had been used elsewhere by any other 3D modelling software, or if it was a format only used by Aviator. Does anyone know?)
Part of the reason I'm asking this site is that some of the users were reminiscing about it in the "Anybody here actually collect Unix stuff" thread:
and this is the first time as far as I know that anyone's even mentioned it since the days of the Usenet! In fact, one user even uploaded the 1.2 freeware version, and the free demo of 1.5.1, to http://bitsavers.org/bits/Sun/aviator (thanks Al Kossow!)
For anyone not familiar with the game - I posted a similar request to Reddit, and this included a description of the game and its origins, based on everything I'd been able to glean from here, the Usenet and elsewhere. You can read it at:
and it includes links to several Usenet discussion threads archived on Google Groups.
One person has actually replied to say that they've had some partial success with Sun OS 4.1.4 and their SPARCstation 20, and that they're trying to get the 1.2 terrain data imported into 1.5.1 (the version they've got running) and to deal with some console errors. I've decided to post my appeal here anyway in case they don't succeed in this, or in case anyone here has access to resources (like models they themselves constructed for the game) that the Reddit user might not.
So:
Could anyone here who has access to Sun GX hardware please see if they can get Aviator running on it, and if they can, please post some screenshots and maybe even an in-game video? Especially welcome would be any depictions of the FA-18 in the canyon - doubly so if it's flying "nap of the earth" style (i.e. fairly near the ground.) and doing a relatively slow flight. And this *is* possible for fighter jets - see https://aviation.stackexchange.com/...e-fighter-jets-so-loud-when-doing-slow-flight and
Cheers,
Astrid.
