Arno Gerretsen : History

Wat was waar

arno — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 08:41:00 GMT

This title probably makes no sense to the non-Dutch readers, but it is the name of a website I came across today. On this website you can watch old maps and aerial photos of the Netherlands in a Google Earth style. And in this case with old I mean maps from the 19th century or aerial photos from the Second World War. So if that interests have a look at the site, I enjoyed it a lot browsing through it.

LibraryThing

arno — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 18:48:00 GMT

I have quite some books (despite my not so old age). I guess if I keep collecting them at this pace I will need a bigger house soon to store them, or I might have to give up some more space in the living room. In the past I have tried some computer programs to catalog all the books I have, but I never found any that I found easy to work with.

But last week I read in the newspaper about a site called LibraryThing. As a test I entered about two shelves of my books and I think I like the site. It makes use of different online databases, so that makes finding the books based on for example the ISBN number quite easily. And you can also see how many other people on the site have the same book and the reviews they entered for it.

And they also have a cool widget that you can use to show your collection on your blog for example. So below you can see part of the books I already entered. So if you are looking for a way to catalog your books as well, check out this site.

Strange maps

arno — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 20:28:00 GMT

A few days ago I came across this very cool blog that has a collection of all sorts of interesting maps. For example I found a blog post their about some Dutch annexation plans after the second World War. But there are is also a nice post about the presidential elections in France from last weekend.

I am not sure if more scenery designs are such "map idiots" like me, but have a look at this blog if you are.

Europa Universalis

arno — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 20:03:00 GMT

As a little exception, this blog post has nothing to do with Flight Simulator. Sometimes, when I am not designing scenery or developing new tools, I like to play a computer game as well. Ever since I picked up a copy of the game Europa Universalis II from a bargain bin, I have been a great fan of the strategy games made by the Swedish company Paradox Interactive.

In these games you start with a country in a historical setting and then you can try all sort of what-if scenarios to see if you can alter history a little bit. You could for example try to prevent Germany from taking the Netherlands in World War II (I never really succeeded in that) or try to battle with France and the UK in the colonization of the world during the 19th century.

And this week there was a little surprise in my mailbox, my copy of the new game Europa Universalis III had arrived. I haven't had that much time yet to play it, but it looks like great fun again. The only problem with these games is that they are quite addictive, so that will probably mean a little bit lack of sleep again...

The forgotten Douglas

arno — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 09:16:00 GMT

Those who visited the SceneryDesign.org forums in the past might recognise my old avatar in the picture on the left. This aircraft is (one of) my favorite aircraft and as it is a little unknown I was thinking about writing a blog post about it for a while already. So here is that blog post.

For those that have not yet recognised hte aircraft from this little avatar, I am talking about the Douglas DC-5. Ever since I once borrowed the book "De Douglas DC-5" from Piet Kok from the library, I have liked this aircraft a lot. Currently I own the book as well, but I think it is only available in Dutch.

Why has such an book been published in Dutch? This is probably best explained by the fact that only 12 DC-5 aircraft have been build, of which 4 have been used the the KLM, the Dutch airline. Due to the outbrake of the second world war these aircraft have never been used in the Netherlands itself, they have been used in the Dutch West Indies (Curacao) and the Dutch East Indies (Java, Indonesia). The other 8 have been used by the US Navy as R3D. A funny note is that one of the aircraft has been the personal aircraft of William Boeing for a while, before it went to the US Navy as well. At that moment William Boeing was no longer working for the Boeing Company though.

Unlike most other civil Douglas aircraft of that time, the DC-5 was designed by the El Sequndo division of Douglas (this division also build the SBD Dauntless for example). For its time the DC-5 was a quite advanced aircraft, having a nose landing gear for example. It still had a tailwheel as well, but that was mainly mounted to prevent damage in case the pilot was not really used to flying with a nosewheel. The aircraft has been designed as a feeder aircraft to be used on smaller lines, it could carry a maximum of 22 passengers.

So what went wrong for this aircraft? It must be called the forgotten Douglas now because it never really became a success. This is mainly due to the outbrake of the second world war. At the time the DC-5 was still a very new aircraft (first flight 20 february 1939) and some time would be needed to perfect the design. Due to the war this time was not there and it was decided that the DC-3 would become the standard transport aircraft. Besides that the El Sequndo division needed to be produce the Dauntless as well. So after only 12 aircraft had been build, the program was cancelled.

A last funny fact is that the DC-5 flew before the DC-4 as we know it know flew. This is because before the current design of the DC-4, Douglas was also working on a DC-4E. But as this aircraft proved to be too complex, it never went into production.

New York

arno — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 03:49:00 GMT

I am already a few days back from my trip to New York and here is a little travel report. Unfortunately I also brought back a bit of flu, so that is why I have not been really active the last days.

Our trip started at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol and luckily we departed from the G-pier, so I had a good look at the recently opened H-pier (I just modeled that one, so I wanted to check if it looked right).

The flight itself was with Delta Airlines in a Boeing 767-300. Luckily I had a window seat on this flight, so I could take a good look at the scenery. I have for example been looking at the sun reflection in the ocean for some while. Really cool how all those different colors blend. I must say that the sun reflections in MSFS don't look that bad, they certainly look better then the ones (or should I say lack of ones) in the image generator we use at work. I guess that is something we can improve in the future.

When we arrived in New York there was an overcast, so unfortunately we could not really enjoy that view from the aircraft. But we had two days left to explore the city, before our course would start. As the city is very big of course, we mainly walked around it to feel the atmosphere. Our hotel was nicely located in Manhattan, so one day we walked to the south till we reached the end of the island. And the other day we went up north to Central Park. And the last day we walked over the bridges into Brooklyn and back again. The view from those bridges was really nice.

I was impressed by the skyline as well. I have read the book "The island at the Center of the World" from Russell Shorto. It is about the first few (Dutch) years of the city of New York (then called New Amsterdam). In it are also some drawings of the skyline back then. The highest building was probably the windmill they had constructed. If you know see all those huge skyscrappers at the same place, it makes it hard to image how it once was.

Now that I am talking about the Dutch origin of the city anyway, did you know that Brooklyn comes from the Dutch town called Breukelen? And similar to that the name Harlem comes from the Dutch city Haarlem? Those are a few things that still remind of the Dutch origin of the city. Another is Wall Street. At the location of this street, the city wall used to be in the Dutch times. But I guess that is enough history for today!

From New York city we drove by car to Binghamton. Our course was given there at the university. At first I had never heard of that place and it did not really make sense why we had to go especially to there for a course on flight simulation.

But it seemed that Edwin Link designed and constructed his first link trainer in that area. At the local airport there is even an model displayed. So this region really has the roots of flight simulation and that makes it easier to understand why exactly that university has collected quite some knowledge on the subject.

The course itself was very interesting. A lot of different aspects of simulation where discussed. It ranged from motion systems, to visual systems, from control loaders to image generators. And of course the aspects of mathematical modelling for the simulation were also touched. In the end it was a really interesting week that provided a lot of information about simulation and all its aspects. I will certainly not become an expert in all, but it should always help to talk better with the colleagues who are.