Has anyone done “Space Explorers — The Infinite” 3D experience?

[JB47394]

What did you work on in your tenure there?

I started with an internal support group doing CAD/CAM stuff because in college I had implemented a drafting system with hidden line removal in one semester (as a result of taking a drafting course in college for an easy A, which the instructor wasn't going to tolerate). Very advanced for its time. It was a terrible implementation that didn't always work, but it did get me a job at a time when jobs were hard to come by. My entire career was a series of unlikely events.

Our first big package was called CAMPS, a system to move assembly line workers from sheets of paper to VT125 terminals. Text and graphics - at the same time! Ah, those were the days. The editor was designed along the same lines as EDT. I get giddy just thinking about the way things were back then. So primitive. So wonderful.

We also did a lot of software libraries for various things that were useful for new CAD/CAM products. I found out that most people cannot design a good software library, but there were some real masters at DEC.

Then it was on to desktop publishing, working on DECwrite, the equivalent of Microsoft Word. More stories there. DEC decided to buy a WYSIWYG desktop publishing package instead of building one from scratch, mostly to get a WYSIWYG formatter going right away. We bought a package written by a single engineer who was a Scot. When he showed up to instruct us on the design of the software, he was in a kilt. He figured we should get the full treatment. We had a team of a dozen engineers working on that thing for a couple years to get it up to the level of a full product. I did embedded images, the automated document index stuff (hello there, Chicago Manual of Style), session journaling, session recovery (which was awesome for users reporting bugs) and some other stuff.

There are a few mentions of DECwrite left on the web. None of CAMPS. The flight simulator was called VAX FLIGHT or DEC FLIGHT, so it's pretty impossible to find mentions of it today.

Oh, hey. Here are some screenshots from the flight simulator. The page is from 1998. So many more fun memories. Note that the simulator was multiplayer (including combat with guns and missiles), and it got good frame rates, especially once VAX workstation CPUs got beefed up (100+ by the end). No GPUs. We had everything in that. Cars, boats, planes, rockets, you name it.

Mostly stationed in ZKO and LKG and a bit in MKO

We may have been in the ZKO cafeteria at the same time somewhere in there. Thanks for reminding me of the site designations.

 

[scaesare]

I started with an internal support group doing CAD/CAM stuff because in college I had implemented a drafting system with hidden line removal in one semester (as a result of taking a drafting course in college for an easy A, which the instructor wasn't going to tolerate). Very advanced for its time. It was a terrible implementation that didn't always work, but it did get me a job at a time when jobs were hard to come by. My entire career was a series of unlikely events.

Our first big package was called CAMPS, a system to move assembly line workers from sheets of paper to VT125 terminals. Text and graphics - at the same time! Ah, those were the days. The editor was designed along the same lines as EDT. I get giddy just thinking about the way things were back then. So primitive. So wonderful.

We also did a lot of software libraries for various things that were useful for new CAD/CAM products. I found out that most people cannot design a good software library, but there were some real masters at DEC.

Then it was on to desktop publishing, working on DECwrite, the equivalent of Microsoft Word. More stories there. DEC decided to buy a WYSIWYG desktop publishing package instead of building one from scratch, mostly to get a WYSIWYG formatter going right away. We bought a package written by a single engineer who was a Scot. When he showed up to instruct us on the design of the software, he was in a kilt. He figured we should get the full treatment. We had a team of a dozen engineers working on that thing for a couple years to get it up to the level of a full product. I did embedded images, the automated document index stuff (hello there, Chicago Manual of Style), session journaling, session recovery (which was awesome for users reporting bugs) and some other stuff.

There are a few mentions of DECwrite left on the web. None of CAMPS. The flight simulator was called VAX FLIGHT or DEC FLIGHT, so it's pretty impossible to find mentions of it today.

Oh, hey. Here are some screenshots from the flight simulator. The page is from 1998. So many more fun memories. Note that the simulator was multiplayer (including combat with guns and missiles), and it got good frame rates, especially once VAX workstation CPUs got beefed up (100+ by the end). No GPUs. We had everything in that. Cars, boats, planes, rockets, you name it.

Ah man, good stuff. I seem to recall DECWrite being a thing that you'd run across files for in the early 90's.

That flight sim stuff is pretty amazing for that era. The screen shots with an F-117A! lol...

Thanks for sharing... sounds like a great time/environment...

(keeping this short as it's back within market hours)

 

[JB47394]

That flight sim stuff is pretty amazing for that era.

We had SO much fun with that thing. Custom instrument panels, moving parts on aircraft (landing gear, folding wings, etc), multiple people on the same aircraft (e.g. gunners on your B-17), cameras on missiles, ejecting from aircraft, recording sessions for playback. The features we implemented were just endless, and the modelers kept creating stuff we never planned for. There were some guys who even cobbled together a primitive joystick for us to play with. It was just a pin in a pot, so you flew by holding the pin with two fingers, but it worked tolerably well. All packaged up in a wooden box.

My biggest regret was that we never got around to simulating multiple engines properly. So if you lost an engine, you didn't get asymmetrical thrust. That, and I made people click the mouse for each shot from a gun. So if you wanted to get a machine gun effect, you clicked fast. So dumb.

@Electroman will undoubtedly remember VAXnotes, and we had a notes file for the simulator on SARAH:: The equivalent of today's forums, like TMC.

 

[scaesare]

We had SO much fun with that thing. Custom instrument panels, moving parts on aircraft (landing gear, folding wings, etc), multiple people on the same aircraft (e.g. gunners on your B-17), cameras on missiles, ejecting from aircraft, recording sessions for playback. The features we implemented were just endless, and the modelers kept creating stuff we never planned for. There were some guys who even cobbled together a primitive joystick for us to play with. It was just a pin in a pot, so you flew by holding the pin with two fingers, but it worked tolerably well. All packaged up in a wooden box.

My biggest regret was that we never got around to simulating multiple engines properly. So if you lost an engine, you didn't get asymmetrical thrust. That, and I made people click the mouse for each shot from a gun. So if you wanted to get a machine gun effect, you clicked fast. So dumb.

@Electroman will undoubtedly remember VAXnotes, and we had a notes file for the simulator on SARAH:: The equivalent of today's forums, like TMC.

Hehe... sometimes the "hobby stuff" at work environments like that pushes the state of the art... kinda like Spacewars! on the early PDP's... That stuff you guys built probably was ahead of any real avaialble flight sim stuff on that hardware at the time...

That joystick thing is funny... I'm a generation after.. but it reminds me of my hack for the Spy Hunter car game port I played on my C-64... the Atari-style joysticks only had one button, but the arcade game had 2 buttons (one to fire and one to do oil slicks, etc...). The C-64 version implemented the second button on joystick #2, which meant that you had to rapidly let go of Joystick #1, press the button on joystick #2, and then go back to try and keep driving. Clumsy.

I had run across a joystick grip from an old Battlezone game, and the grip had a fire pushbutton on the top. So, I took my joystick apart, cut thr trace on the PCB for the button on the base, and wired it up to cable terminated in a second joystick connector for port #2. I cut the rubber off the joystick shaft and took the grip with top-button, and mounted it on the joystick shaft, soldering the top button wires on the traces I had cut for joystick #1's primary button.

The result was a joystick with a top primary button, and 2nd button in the base, that plugged in to both ports. I now could properly play the game... lol. Not bad for a 14 yr old kid...

Also, I need to update my Geek Reading List with "The Friendly Orange Glow, The PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture - Brian Dear". It's the history of the PLATO system built in the early 1960's at the Urbana campus of the University of Illinois by Don Blitzer. It's Notes system had a number of direct descendants, VAX/DECNotes being one of them (as well as Lotus Notes amongst many others). Another great read...

(so much for keeping this short during trading hours)

 

[ecarfan]

Since it's the weekend and we are a tad off-topic already,

LOL, ya think?

 

[JB47394]

@Grendal's tolerance is much appreciated

 

[scaesare]

@Grendal's tolerance is much appreciated

Indeed, thanks @Grendal.

I promise we'll keep it to this initially off-topic thread, and not clutter up the real ones

 

[ecarfan]

initially off-topic thread

Hey, this thread is on topic for this forum. It’s about the ISS.