The Weird Support System

Some of you may not be completely aware that earlier this year BIA transitioned from an open, Mantis based support system for bug/issue reporting by customers to an e-mail based support system. The reasons for this are not so apparent, the only thing I've heard from BIA's end is "it's better". The question is, better for who? The trouble with this new system, is reporting is not highly visible, take for example if I spotted a bug in the current version and reported it via e-mail, there's a chance that someone else has reported it as well, resulting in two separate cases, requiring two separate responses.

So how does this rate in the efficiency stakes? it doesn't. During the start of the year there was a lot of discussion among military customers that BIA support on the forums or via e-mail was pretty much non-existant. This continued until only a few months ago actually, and despite the advertised 24-48 hours for a reply, this is regularly not the case. In one instance, I reported a relatively minor issue on the 8th of May and didn't receive a valid response to the question until the 29th of July. So what do we blame it on? The Game After Ambush contract or the change over to the "better" support system?

Either way, questions aren't being answered, perhaps they're happy to let people do their job for them?

Jamie.

New HMDs from VSS

Virtual Simulation Systems (unsure of where this company came from, it's quite possibly VIS) have shots of their new head mounted display system on their website http://www.virtualsimulationsystems.com/hmd.htm and a bit of text describing the products they offer in this line. VIS is the company that offers the call for fire/marksman dome I've mentioned previously, VSS seems to be advertising the same thing in 4ft and 7ft configurations.

Shown on the page is what looks to be the mentioned NVG-1 units which look like reasonable quality of replicas of in-service issued goggles. There appears to be no mention if head tracking is included with these or needs to be acquired separately.

In addition to this, these guys appear to be offering a variety of services and products that may be worth looking at if a little external development assistance is required.

Jamie.

Delays

OK, one more apology for delays to go out to everyone, the battle previously mentioned on this blog and elsewhere took a lot out of me, I've been ineffective after hours as a result. There seemed to be a suggestion down south that I wasn't acting in the best interests of deploying soldiers, a belief no doubt maintained as I've made no effort beyond this to put it down. I do not believe at any time I have denied any organisation the ability to support any deploying force in a timely fashion as I have not adversely affected their access to tools or skilled people to get the job done.

If it was my choice, this would never have happened and use of Acceler8ion would have continued in line with the terms outlined. New terms were recently forwarded to ASW, to which I got no reply and can only assume they haven't agreed at this stage, I can only hope if they were desperate to use the tool they would be employing it, but who knows.

End result and effect for now, is that until I reset and get "back on the horse", for the short term there wont be any immediately forthcoming works from myself, I can only say the next version of Acceler8ion will be released when it's done.

Cheers,

Jamie.

Moving Forward

OK, now that the IP wars are over, looking forward to Acceler8ion 0.03 on the horizon. I am looking at a number of features that have been requested by users, including a fix finally to the LBT export. Additionally I'm looking at XYZ export as previously stated, and EMF layer export. These features will essentially allow you to survey the game world and output data to use for whatever purpose you intend to. In addition place holder models for any object you don't have the P3D for can be generated allowing you to use anything in the objects menu you wish as part of your terrain and see a representation of that in V3, which will be replaced by the actual object when in-game.

This version would hopefully be no more than a week or two off, I've encountered some unexpected bugs along the way and have to adjust and remove those, I'm hoping to get 0.03 out nearly completely bug free.

Meanwhile 0.1 (we're jumping a few version numbers now) is already in the planning phase, bringing quite a few major features in consultation with users and responding to their requests. I would like to thank my users for being relatively flex and waiting patiently for all new versions, and for those of you having trouble, please understand I juggle your wishes with those of the girlfriend.

Cheers,

Jamie.