Freeware Focus - Commander Team

By Andrew Herd (7 March 2005)

ne of the best things about freeware is the way it unshackles developers' imaginations, given that sales aren't the bottom line. Teams are pretty much free to develop what they want, which means that the sky is the limit, as long as members' interests coincide - the downside being that if anyone's circumstances change, projects can crash and burn at a moment's notice. The most mundane reasons can lie behind teams folding; I remember one from long ago where the gauge programmer had to fit a kitchen for his wife and spent so long doing it that he never returned. Given that development of a credible simulation requires hundreds (if not thousands) of hours of coding, debugging and testing, I guess it isn't surprising that more than half the projects trailed on simming websites fail to show up as finished code. If you count the stuff that gets talked up in the forums, the percentage of completions takes a dive down to something like 5% - the message is that it ain't easy and one of the reasons why we are running this series is that just about the only reward freeware developers get for their pains is the occasional email saying thank you. By all accounts those are outnumbered by an avalanche of requests to fix bugs and develop more stuff (-:

The developers we have chosen for Freeware Focus can consider themselves to be the elite - rare beasts indeed, because either they have released particularly sophisticated packages, or they have a long track record - and who better to feature this month than the group often known as the 'Commander Team'. Milton Shupe first came to my attention with a long series of flight plans, released back in 2001 for FS2000 and FS Navigator 3.0. From small beginnings these gradually spanned the world, ranging from Greece to Greenland and the Sierra Nevada to the Himalayas. I used to think of them as a lazy man's way to see FS2000's world and they sure took in some interesting airfields.

Then, in September 2002, came a de Havilland Dash 7, developed by Milton together with Scott Thomas, Joao Paz and Team 7, with a modified Aaron Swindle soundset. This was a truly exceptional simulation and I remember giving it an enthusiastic review, as until then, there had been a complete dearth of decent Dash sims - a situation which didn't last, because PSS released a Dash 8 shortly after. The Dash 7 stood out, not least because it was an inspired choice, but also because it was a remarkably solid piece of Gmax programming, at a time when Gmax was more talked about than used. The Dash 7 was one of the first products to come with three sets of textures, the higher quality sets being available by separate download and I ran it very happily on a 1.7 Ghz Pentium using the 32 bit skins; which says something about the efficiency of the programming. One of the most striking things about the Dash 7 - other than how little pavement it needed to get airborne - was that it was programmed to a higher standard than many commercial products which were available at the time. It really stood out from the pack, racking up over 38,000 downloads and quickly collecting a developer's award, an update to FS2004 for the passenger version (only) being subsequently release (DASH7V9.ZIP).

Just over a year later, Milton released an Aero Commander 520 with Scott Thomas and Andre Folkers. Nothing short of an inspired choice, this was provided in two versions, one with and one without a vritual cockpit, which meant that just about anybody could run it. After that, the team got the bit between their teeth - six months later came an Aero Commander 560A, which broke the 10,000 download barrier and gained its programmers a second developer's award. This was followed in very short order by an Aero Commander 680 Super; another ten thousand download package, that proved extremely popular with repainters, numerous additional schemes being released for it.

FS2004 was in the ascendent when the next slew of projects were released - updates of the Aero Commander 520, 560 and the 680 Super which were as popular as ever, judging by the stats. The attraction of these planes is that they are nicely coded sims which provide everything the discerning user could want in an easily installable package - and furthermore, they have very realistic flight dynamics. As I mentioned earlier, a significant amount of payware fails to deliver the quality that the Aero Commander team routinely achieve and if you haven't downloaded any of these superb twins, I suggest you get to it right away. Incidentally, one of my favorite repaints is the zebra-striped Ndoki charters 680 by Mike Huang (MH680NDO.ZIP) - you don't get to see many schemes looking like that!

In March last year, Milton, Scott and Andre added an Aero Commander 500 to their already full hangar, which - perhaps due to a surfeit of Commanders, didn't do so well on the download front by the team's previous standards, but they weren't deterred and an updated version was released in May and cracked the 7000 barrier. This is an exceptionally nice sim, which is provided with both clean and weathered liveries and has become one of my favorite addons - it picked up the team's third developer's award. If you flick through the library, you will rapidly realise that these awards aren't easy to come by, and very few developers have two, let alone three. The re-release is a nicely judged package which really delivers the goods (literally, it being a cargo version) and has become very popular with FS2004 bush flyers, not least because Milton's interest in flight planning seems to have been re-awakened by it and eleven plans are included.

Looking back across the four Commander variants the team have released is instructive, because each one represents an advance over the next - no stunning leaps forward, but steady progress. Many developers seem to get fixed in a way of doing things, but these smart twins clearly taught Milton and Scott a thing or two, because in June 2004 they uploaded a superb Howard 500 into the library. The Howard has an interesting history, because Dee Howard, who designed the original, started off in business converting surplus Second World War bombers for the corporate market. What he did was produce fast, long-range executive transports from A-26s and B-34s, backed financially by a Mexican businessman who just happened to see Dee's first conversion. But his ambition was to produce a transcontinental ship and when the 2500 hp P&W R2800/CB-17 engine appeared in 1956, he took one look at its two stage supercharger and water injection and decided it was a perfect choice for his plane.

Howard's next step was to buy something like 30 surplus South African and Canadian PV-1s, which he stripped for parts like wheels and engine mounts, but he still ended up having to design and build a new wing and fuselage, as the PV-1's service ceiling wasn't high enough for his liking. He also designed the pressurisation system, based on units he had seen working on Convair 580s, so the frequently heard claim that the 500 was a conversion isn't correct, he just didn't waste time reinventing the wheel. If Dee could use a part from another plane, he did, usually improving it in the process, but the bulk of the 500's structure was his own work - for example, it has about the fastest gear deployment of any plane of its era, thanks to some tinkering around he did with the mechanism he borrowed from various PV-2s (if you are thinking that the 500 is something of a hybrid, you are right).

A total of sixteen 500s were built between 1958 and 1963, but though the plane was a one of a kind, it nearly broke the company. Getting the hull certified was a nightmare and to cap it all, turboprops and the first business jets were starting to appear and a virtually custom-built, normally aspirated twin simply wasn't in the running. In the end, Howard lost his controlling share of his company, but he went on to work with Bill Lear, designing the wing and inventing the thrust reversering system that Lears still use today.

Only one Howard 500 remains airworthy in the US and Milton, Scott and Joao Paz have released a fabulous simulation of it, for both FS2002 and FS2004, so just about everyone ought to be able to enjoy it. The addon has been very popular, but I imagine many simmers have stayed away because they haven't been able to figure out what makes this plane so special - I hope this piece stirs up even greater interest.

After the Howard - just take a look at all the repaints that have appeared for it - the next project was a Shrike Commander, which appeared in August last year and has been downloaded over 7500 times. The Howard 500 brought the team a fourth developer's award, but the Shrike scored a fifth, which puts the team at the forefront of freeware development, by popular acclaim.

What next? Well, I guess time will tell. Much though Milton, Scott, Joao and Andre love Commanders, the fact is that they are gonna run out of variants to model soon, so I'm expecting a move to fresh pastures - but while we wait, our best wishes go to them and on our behalf, the thanks of tens of thousands of people who have downloaded the team's files over the years. May you all prosper.