Im back! I finally retired!!!

[Thomas J Wood]

Hello all, some of you may remember me but I was around here back in the hey days of cfs1-2-3 fs202-4-fsx. I left the flight sim scene for a long time to build up cr1 and simTECH into viable companies. I was working as a design contractor working on games like World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Assassins Creed and the latest one was Destiny 2 forsaken by Bungie.

Not exactly flight sim stuff...lol!! :P

But I did very well at it and I am now retired... FINALLY!! Yes Im old...53 years young this May!! How the freekng hell did that happen!! lol

So I took 3 months to just hang out with my faithful little wife and my bratty kids just to get reconnected and build a little tiny studio in my house to work on flight sim full time. I see that 3d prepared has taken off really well. I will wait for version 5 to start building for them, they are after all a military contractor.. and we will see how long they let us civies play around with their game.
For now I will work on cfs3 and fsx. I have around 30 planes in different stages of build so that's enough to keep me rockin for a good long time.

I'm by myself in this now and I like it like that, and I will lhave to get back on the band wagon, its been a while, but i did it once before and I will do it again. I will build the planes first for fsx just to cover some expenses for the server and a few programmers I will contract to for some of the stuff I want to do in my air craft. Then the planes will be converted to the cfs3 and released at the same level of detail that my fsx planes will be at.

I hope to solve some issues in cfs3 from what I learned working with the big boys, mainly the dx stuff and the land/ water / sky environments.

So stay tuned I will be releasing new stuff a few times a year and making life rough on the "big" guys around here...lol

Nice to see some of my old friends still around and I hope all of you are in good health and spirits!

I will show you some of my planes pretty quick and some stuff I just modded that is from other designers. Like my Catalina by Aerosoft, one of my favorite additions to my personal sim, of course I dissected it into many little bits and put it all back together better then stock...lol I cant help it...lolz! I will show it5 off to you all one day, I might even upload the modds to it here if they are cool with it, Aerosoft that is.

Ok all, sure nice to see you all!!

Lets get going!!

Thomas / Crashwoody

[LouP]

Welcome back Woody :-)

LouP

[nagpaw]

Welcome back, Woody! You've returned at an interesting time: FSX is still alive in various forms, although it's definitely into its twilight years. X-Plane and Prepar3D are having good runs, and many here and around the Web are grappling with the inevitable decision of which platform to select moving forward. Even FS2004 and CFS3 are still alive and well (just fired up the old install yesterday) with active communities out there.

Can't wait to see what you've been working on!

[TARPSBird]

Welcome back Woody! Good to see somebody return to the flight sim world. The ranks have thinned out a bit in the past few years, what with folks leaving the hobby or passing away. Looking forward to see what you've got cooking.

[Thomas J Wood]

Well I think we will be ok with cfs3 if we up grade it to modern standards. I will build some crazy detailed planes and I hope others will follow along as well with their excellent designs.
I don't think Fsx will be going anywhere soon. After talking to the folks at steam I think we are ok. 3d prepared though...hummm its military.. you know that they don't give a rats behind about us right? and Lockheed isn't a "game developer". So far they have been ok with us civilians farting around in the flight sim, fsx on steroids....lol.. but really for how long?

I'm not prepared to abandon fsx for some time to come, its pretty much free now and with orbix, freemesh x, and all the killer planes out there and new ones coming up...hint hint... I would venture to say we are safe.
If we can get a good water environment fix then we are set. I fixed the cache problem on my copy of fsx and have it pretty stable so Im happy. I have pretty good support still after all these years with sales still going strong just from steam bleed off and im not even promoting right now or have i for years and so Im content.

If 3d prepared is good in version 5 then i will move over to it and set up add ons for it because then it will be worth it as it will be a real new flight sim, going to 64 bit opens a whole plethora of possibilities. It will also show to me that Lockheed is serious about a long term relationship with our community.

But then again, with new planes coming for cfs3.... welll...its just so dang fun to blow up stuff!!



Crashwoody

[dhasdell]

That's great news. Your Aeronca is still a firm favourite, so a P3D v4 compatible one would be very welcome.

(As a slightly embarrassed PS, when not flying I sometimes hack and slay a bit in Diablo!)

[cavaricooper]

Welcome back!

As a former Champ owner I was excited to purchase your Champ a couple of years back. Fully committed to Prepar3D (currently using v4.4 x64) I’d be happy to pay for a “refresh” should you decide on that course of travel. Some of the modeling released here as of late has been just stupendous and the old girl remains near and dear to me.

Best wishes for your retirement!

Carl