A Special Thanks to an Amazing Soul

:) Bill’s help has been invaluable to me too.
And honestly that sentiment hardly expresses the degree…
Think about it...to stand out so distinctly in such a sizeable and knowledgeable community really speaks volumes.
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And I’ve been astonished Bill has not received an MVP.
If you’ve ever messed with the SDK you’d know Bill is your foremost MVP.
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Hehe, I’ve always found Bill a modest man so this flood of praise is doubly entertaining ;)

Danny
 
Let me chime in and also say..................... Thank you Bill...... I have also been helped by the gentle soul.. and in my book is MVP.

Best of luck

Jim
 
Great tribute Bill. I agree Bill L. is a gem tot the community. I join you in applauding his continual efforts.:applause:
 
B - Brilliant
I - Influential
L - Legendary
L - Laudable

L - Leading
E - Eminent
A - Acclaimed
M - Momentous
I - Illustrious
N - Noble
G - Great!!!!


Whew!... ran out of adjectives!
 
When I started with gmax back in late 2001, there were dang few people (3 or 4) that knew anything about gmax and the animation tags. That was the discovery era and there were no SDK's then. Animation tags were dug out of the .dll's and listed by hand, and you had to experiment with how to make the animations work. It was very frustrating trying to animate the basics (gear, tires, flaps, lights, etc.) or even getting a model through the export process. Although Bill was not there then, his technical assistance could have been a great help.

I remember some of Bill's significant contributions early in the FS2004 life. These were VC Rain ... a pesky detailed setup that Bill documented in detail and shared with the community. That process worked the first time for me, thank you very much for that Bill. The next major thing I recall was his stumping for vc gauge backlighting. He championed this over at the Avsim Design forum where most of us scratched our collective heads and tried to understand. I am sure that some of us drove him to play some heavy drama organ music in those times.

These are but two important early examples of his community involvement that meant a lot to me and many designers. His willingness to visit and contribute to many forums to help spread the knowledge is certainly commendable. And you will see where he does a lot of behind-the-scenes assistance helping others, or donating code, or giving personal assistance when needed. That is what the community spirit and these forums are all about and Bill Leaming is certainly a contributor in spades.

Thank you Bill. :applause:
 
I remember the 'illuminated gauges' days well! I remember converting my planes to that. It took a long while to learn, and still I didnt totally understand how it worked. What an awesome effect though.

Bill Leamings tutorial showing how he did the lightmap though is what really made it look real. A normal bitmap would have made them look like 'daytime' textures, but Fr. Bill's tutorial shows that you use a vanilla color, and lightly cloud the illuminated zones with an airbrush, leaving some dark zones in there for actual shading effects in actual gauges. THAT was the finishing touch and effected the 'entire' sim community with everyone advancing to illuminated gauges.


Another thing Fr. Bill was teaching us was multi-material mapping, something I also struggled with. His program (I forget what its called) would auto-arrange parts onto a single map platform. Then you did the art on the pattern that was created.
 
Just to add some perspective to this issue of VC gauge backlighting, it will likely ding my reputation a bit but...

...truth be told, my nearly three year long quest to discover and "crack" the secrets of emissive gauge backlighting was largely fueled by selfishness, not selflessness!

You see, I simply cannot abide flying any aircraft that doesn't have a good lighting system!

That being so, the only way to solve this untenable situation was to first, discover how it was done, then make the technique freely available to everyone!

So, now you know the "rest of the story" as the late Paul Harvey would have said... :icon_lol:

I'd like to add my thanks to all the wonderful freeware and payware developers who've so kindly shared "tips and tricks" with me over the years.
 
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