New things from Soji

[Deleted User 2433]

Current trend of releasing pre-mature and updating later attitude is toxic. The current trend of software development is quite deplorable. That's not what I learned. People may call me outdated. But, if releasing a crap pre-mature software is the trend, I proudly stay outdated.

Pot calling the kettle black innit?

[Neocon]

Self-awareness is a skill not everyone has mastered.

[C05MIC]

I agree with Soji development has become fickle instead of giving a finished product that is stable and reliable its bits and pieces at a time but this is exciting news for android oh my GOSH AC3 ysflight on my phone I am in heaven THANKS SOJI!!!!!!!!!

[u2fly]

http://ysflight.in.coocan.jp/main/e2019.html

2019/04/05

(...)

Boeing 737 MAX-800

Some topics came to my attention.

• The crashed Boeing 737 Max aircrafts of Lion Air and Ehiopean Air had one of the two AOA sensors failed.

One of the TWO?  Sounded to me the MCAS system has such an important part of the auto-pilot.  Even Boeing dropped its long tradition of Yoke Jerk functionality and gave priority to the MCAS over the human pilot.  And, it was taking only two inputs?  The first aircraft that had an operational digital fly-by-wire computer control was F-16.  F-16 had 3 control computers, each of which were taking airspeed information from an independent Pitot tube.  If one of the three Pitot tubes failed physically or iced up, the computer takes votes and go with democracy.  Having three separate systems improved the reliability of F-16.

If there are only two inputs, it is good for a human pilot because a human pilot can identify which one failed.  We are trained to cross-check instruments.  From the computer point of view, having two input doesn't give redundancy.  When one fails, it doesn't know which to trust.  Still Boeing might have made an decision that the AOA sensor is unlikely to fail.  I can only guess.  But, I don't know if having only two AOA sensors was a good idea.  It's a very un-Boeing-like case.

• Control Software Issue

I am seriously worried about the wrong trend of programming. Too many programmers are thinking they can just release an incomplete software and then release updates to fix errors.  It is utterly wrong.  Even for-consumer products it is wrong. Users are not specimen. The trend can be contagious. If this wrong mentality is contaminating the control-software developers in the aircraft design field, I hope it is not the case, but it is scary. Someone needs to stop this wrong trend.

“Someone needs to stop this wrong trend”, — Lets fix YSFlight firstly!

• https://github.com/captainys/public/issues/1

P.S.: @CaptainYS, please, open sources of YSFlight - give us a chance to fix YSFlight!

[Deleted User 2433]

 Too many programmers are thinking they can just release an incomplete software and then release updates to fix errors.  It is utterly wrong.

I can't roll my eyes hard enough at the irony of his statement.

I had two paragraphs about my thoughts on the MAX crashes and even Soji's attitude but then I realized it's not going to matter because he won't give a shit.

[Deleted User 3849]

I can't roll my eyes hard enough at the irony of his statement.

I agree with you on that statement

[Turbofan]

Except in this case one of the entities isn't even coming up with updates to fix the errors present.

[u2fly]

• http://ysflight.in.coocan.jp/main/e2019.html

2019/09/28

Maybe I am old minded. I know I am. I still believe that computers must basically work stand alone. Network should enhance the capability, but the computer must function when cut off from the network. Purchased software or downloaded software should be usable as long as I take good care of the platform and backup media. I strongly believe that it is the users' right. Other than the code written for salary, programmers must be allowed to freely release code written for fun or for hobby. I strongly believe that it is the programmers' right.

But, what about online application stores like PlayStore and AppStore? Google and Apple can arbitrarily kill an application from their stores. In fact those cases have happened and been on the news. From the user point of view, an application suddenly disappears and becomes unusable. From the programmer's point of view, it is a violation of the right to release a code.

PlayStore and AppStore don't have to delete an application. Apple and Google casually modify or delete APIs, making old application unusable. (u2fly's note: this is not true; few Android developers already reported in last few month that their apps deleted from Google Play without any described reason) When I was young, the API specifications were not taken lightly. It was the platform developers/vendors' responsibility to maintain those published APIs. Some of them became technological debt, in which case old API functions may have become implemented on a compatibility layer and slow down, but still at least were functional. Now Apple is threatening to drop support for OpenGL. I am not saying the operating system should keep supporting poorly-written programs, programs using undocumented APIs, or with wrong usage of APIs. If an application strictly adheres to the published API specification, it should be supported in the future versions. I also understand that when CPU changes, or bitness changes (like 32-bit to 64-bit), or substantial hardware change, I understand some APIs gets difficult to maintain. But, otherwise APIs must not be casually changed or dropped. It's a mass murder of applications, I think.

As long as you have a web server, you can release your web app freely, but that is as long as you keep paying for your web server. Actually, in my experience many of Web apps disappear when I visit the same URL again.

So, maybe I choose to write only for Windows, then unless I code-sign my binary, the user is presented with a threatening security warning discouraging the user from running my executable. Ok. I am not saying code-sign is evil. I 100% agree that it is important to make clear the origin of the program. What's evil is the code-sign used to cost prohibitingly pricy, now even if I decide to spend $$$, certificate authorities united and stopped selling code-signing certificate to individual programmers. A private company, with absolutely no legal obligation, can arbitrarily decide whose program can be trusted.

Only option left is full open source. I personally believe that the programmer must have a right to choose in what format the program is released. It is not right to be forced to open all source code when someone wants to make a program available to public.

It is outrageous that private companies have right to decide whether a certain application can be made available to public or not. It is outrageous that a platform developers/vendors can arbitrarily disable applications in the name of version-up or security. It is outrageous that private companies have right to decide to whom those code-signing certificate is issued. I think it is ok to run a business for selling and managing those certificates, but they shouldn't be given an authority to decide who can make code open to public. It has been said that the regulation is way behind the technology. I don't think the current circumstance of software industry is healthy at all. The private companies have too much right regarding the fundamental users' and programmers' rights.

Of course I do understand those tech companies were unregulated in order to accelerate the development. Indeed by un-regulation those tech giants made millions of billions of trillions of dollars. Those money were re-invested for further development. That was then. But, is the technology growing that much now? Computers are getting just faster. Nothing else. I haven't seen anything that I felt really new. Even in this Artificial Intelligence bubble, the technology is not new. It is from the research traced back to late 1980s. Now computers got faster, it became practical, and people are finding new applications of machine learning (Or deep learning if you want to call. They are just the same thing.) Machine learning itself is not growing much. The current technologies are pretty mature. I think it is the time to think about the users' and programmers' right seriously.

One of my friends who was working for an auto company was saying that the auto maker is held responsible for a car once it is sold as long as it is working. Why a computer company is allowed to define product life cycle arbitrarily and stop supporting perfectly healthy hardware at will?

Those thought came to me while I was reading articles praising Apple Arcade (after losing my save data for Dragon Quest 5 and 7). Probably we will see masterpieces in Apple Arcade that should be in the computer-game hall of fame. Those titles will be eventually unplayable when the developer moves on to the next title. Miraculously I still keep a PlayStation1 working condition. I brought my Fujitsu FM-7 and FM TOWNS from my home, keeping them in working condition. Also I am keeping FM77AV and FM77AV40 I bought from Yahoo! auction in working condition. Therefore, if I want to run a historic old title released for those platforms, I still can. But, a title released as a subscription for a modern platform probably won't run after 30+ years. It is a loss for the users and loss for the developers who worked on the masterpiece.

There may be real damage from this culture already. I have been feeling the quality of the software in general, is falling like a rock. I very often feel like, is this a program written by a poor project scientist working for a college who is given the least priority in classroom assignment every semester? Commercial software give that feeling to me. Not free ones. Since a program can randomly be killed by the platform, programmers may not be motivated to write a long-lasting program. I have a feeling that programmers are not even motivated to write a stable program. They may be thinking they just release and update when someone complains. It is acceptable for some kind of applications for sure. But in other applications it is too late to release a fix after something catastrophic happened. I am suspecting this toxic culture in software development might have been a contributing factor for the Boeing 737 Max 8's MCAS software break down. (u2fly's note: this also happen with YSFlight; opened by me issue still not fixed and has no response from Soji)

2019/09/29

If you are believing what software vendors are saying: you will pay less money with subscription-based software services, think again. Software vendors do it because you end up paying more. Probably much more.

In pay-once software packages, you have a choice in how often you get a major upgrade version. You had control in how much money per year you spend for specific software package. You don't have that control in the subscription-based software.

Now software vendors may be keeping the monthly payment low for the time being in order to lure people into the subscription services. But once you cannot leave their services, they will raise the price.

There would be good software developers who would provide a good stable software for a reasonable price. But, I foresee users end up subscribing out-of-control number of services and paying hundreds dollars per month only to get a software never working stably.

On top of it, since the users do not own executable packages, an excellent software masterpieces may not survive to the next generation. Nothing is good about the subscription-based software services.

Minimum thing I demand those subscription-based services is I want to be able to export whatever data I create with those programs into a common data format. That can be JSON or CSV or any file format that an external program can recognize. If it is easy enough to write a reader in C++ or Python, I can do the rest. Theat way I can transfer to a different software when I don't like the one I use. I don't want to be locked in to a specific software environment.

[u2fly]

2020/01/06

• http://ysflight.in.coocan.jp/main/e2020.html

Happy New Year!

I have spent majority of my time during the winter break for Fujitsu FM TOWNS preservation project.
(...)
What about YS FLIGHT SIMULATOR development? Sorry, for the past two years, I was spending majority of my free time (aside from bowling and flying) for an effort to preserve Fujitsu 8-bit computer FM-7 series and then 32-bit computer FM TOWNS series. I'll spend time for YSFLIGHT again when this project winds down.
Actually I need to upload a macOS version that supports high-resolution mode in OS Catalina. I hope Apple doesn't drop OpenGL support, but if Apple really do that, I'll need to drop YSFLIGHT macOS support until I find an alternative and good graphics library.
Vulkan is a crap. I want to ask Vulkan people, if you want that much performance, why don't you write in assembly? Probably less than 1% of the programmers who can use OpenGL will be able to use Vulkan. Absolutely not for education. Vulkan is a crap.

[Deleted User 2433]

Vulkan is a crap

[Neocon]

Vulkan is a crap.

This post was made by the Romulus gang.



---------

But yeah, if he's not going to spend much time developing YSF he should, well, you know. I don't have to type it. open source

[u2fly]

But yeah, if he's not going to spend much time developing YSF he should, well, you know. I don't have to type it. open source

This!

With almost all software I'm using since 2012, that is open source, every day we get testing and fixing issues and community effort made just in one month really improve each software.

Latest YSFlight not only has no bugfixes in last two years, but instead ver 20181124 has new bugs in comparing with ver 20150425 and ver 20120701.

• https://github.com/captainys/public/issues

[u2fly]

Probably less than 1% of the programmers who can use OpenGL will be able...

/me ... to get running YSFlight in OpenGL1.x with more than 30 FPS.

[Welshy]

Considering the fact that he's using OpenGL2 I also have questions regarding where the hell he has been for the last 16 years since it was released. It took him almost a decade to support it, by which time 4.x had come out.

His complaining about Vulkan, considering what I've mentioned above seems unfair on the API. Yeah there's gonna huge differences when taking into account the fact that there were 12 years and 12 versions of OpenGL between OGL2 and Vulkan. Does he just live under a rock permanently? Like more than I do?

At this point rather than the game being open sourced I'd rather the assets were (DNM, SRF etc). That way we'd be able to start afresh without having to deal with all this legacy code.

[u2fly]

Considering the fact that he's using OpenGL2

As I remember, Soji previously told that he himself still use YSFlight OpenGL1.x for most of his needs.

[u2fly]

2020/06/05

• http://ysflight.in.coocan.jp/main/e2020.html

My father has passed away. Not from the Coronavirus. From the natural causes. He was 91 years old.

...

My father signed up Nifty-Server, which was a counterpart of CompuServe, when virtually nobody knew about the computer network. It was a commercial service, therefore it was somewhat user friendly and there were fun features. I learned how useful the e-mail was. Then I came to the Faculty of Environmental Information at Keio University, which was going ahead of other universities. While virtually no college students knew about e-mails back in 1991, my department assigned an e-mail address to every student and pretty much forced everyone to use. However, back then Internet e-mail could only send texts, no attachment, no pictures, nothing else. I was already used to Nifty-Serve, was sending binary files with no diffitulty. I honestly felt that the academia was years behind Nifty-Serve. I was half right and half wrong. While many professors were thinking computer games, graphics, and music were not the noble cause of using a computer and acting as if computer games didn't exist, I also met with several professors who were (in 1991) foreseeing that one day computer would handle all the media, graphics, audio, video, 2D and 3D. Now you all know who were right.

By the way, I was thinking to go to the local Hirosaki university and get a job local. My grade was not that good to be accepted to Keio University, the best private university of Japan. But, it was my father who found about the new department of Keio University accepting students who had a reasonably good grade and a special skill. I had won the second place in Japan High School Students' Programming Contest when I was a junior year, which was good enough to push me into the department. Well, if my father hadn't found about it, I would have been staying in Hirosaki. YS FLIGHT SIMULATOR wouldn't have been developed.

...

[Nodoka Hanamura]

>vulkan is crap

I'm going to peek my head in and say that's a load of horse sierra hotel india tango.

[u2fly]

2020/11/01

• http://ysflight.in.coocan.jp/main/e2020.html

...

Individual Developers can Buy Code-Signing Certificate again!

A few years ago (was it two years?) I tried to buy a code-signing certificate for YSFLIGHT and other free programs I post on this web site only to find no certificate authority sold a certificate to an individual developer any longer. I was told by COMODO (then) that they wouldn't sell a certificate to an individual. I thought to get one from another authority, but I found none that would issue a certificate to an individual developer. Later I found that in a security-related conference in that year, someone announced that they as an industry no longer would issue a certificate to individuals. They were saying as if they did a right thing.

They labeled all individual developers evil doers. Probably to them I was the worst of the evils since I was writing YSFLIGHT for fun and making it available. Well, such programmers are on the verge of extinction. They thought nobody cares if they crush and decimate those individual developers. I would resist, though.

That's what I thought then. A few days ago I got curious if it changed. I did a quick google search, and to my surprise, it DID change! I can buy a code-signing certificate as an individual developer again!

This kind of thing, once it get rotten, it never gets better, in general. But, it apparently was an exception. I wanted one not just for YSFLIGHT, but also for signing some code I write for my research work. I often send my binary to research partners. I am talking with a sales rep from SECTIGO now. Hopefully I can get one, and then release YSFLIGHT and Tsugaru with my code sign.

...

[Anon]

That time the YSFHQ Forums bullied Soji into releasing YSFlight's source code...

I want to see that happen.

[waspe414]

It's not an open source discussion, just a security precheck one.