To get the most out of your Macintosh, you will no doubt switch off as many of your system extensions as you can. But Sky! still needs a few to work properly. The minimum of extensions needed to run Sky! are: "QuickTime", and "QuickTime Power Plug". Some versions of the MacOS might also need the further extension of "StdCLib" which is included with Sky! in the System Extension folder.
We're very glad you came. We hope you'll find Sky! not only to be useful, but fun, too. After all, that's what it's all about, isn't it?
Sky! is what we like to call an environment exciter. In a nutshell, you load it up, pick a sky! you'd like to fly in, and go. That's it! We've tried to make it as simple as possible to just get going.
Here's how:
Getting Started
SETUP
When you start Sky! for the first time, you'll need to hit the SETUP button to bring up the Setup dialog. You then need to click on the BROWSE button which will cause Sky! to bring up the Macintosh open file dialog box. Just find the folder where you installed Fly!, select the Fly! application, and hit OPEN to return to the Setup dialog. At this point, if you click on the Setup dialog's OK button, Sky! will edit your fly.ini file to make sure everything's going to work properly, and it will also create two folders in your Fly! folder, which it will use for all the art and data. If you feel more comfortable having a back up of this file, please do so before running setup.
The changes Sky! makes to the fly.ini file are as follows:
useLensFlare=1 (turns on lens flare)
showDistantClouds=1 (shows cloud backdrops)
autosaveEnvironment=0 (turns off autosaving of environment settings.)
searchPodFilesFirst=0 (tells Fly! to use custom stuff)
sendFreeMoneytoUser=1
just kidding about that last one :)
Onward...
After you get set up, you're ready to try out some skies!
Start up Sky! You'll see a few buttons, and a big window with a picture that says "cotton fields" in it.
That's where you pick the sky! you want to fly with.
Use the left and right arrow buttons on the interface to scroll through the available choices.
Most of them are descriptive enough to give you some idea of what type of weather to expect, but we didn't go too far into detail because we feel it's more fun to check them all out, and be surprised.
When you find one you like, simply hit the Fly! button, which will load up Fly! along with your selected choice of environment.
If you ever want to go back to Fly!'s default unmodified graphics, simply choose the Fly! Default environment.
Also, try the "random" sky! It'll pick from all the installed skies, and you won't know what it is until you start flying.
That's pretty much it, folks. Like I say, we've tried to make it very simple.
** Error of type -491 **. A few people might experience this error while running Sky! Do not be alarmed if you do because it is only Sky! trying to use an extension that you have disabled. Use the Extension Manager to include the StdCLib extension. If you do not have this extension, you can find it included with Sky! in the System Extensions folder. Restart your computer to load this extension, and Sky should now work as it should.
Sky! was designed and tested primarily on 32 bit video cards. It frankly does not look all that great on the 16 bit cards (Voodoo, etc.) You are obviously welcome to give it a shot, but I will say that you will most likely be disappointed. There are a lot of levels of transparency, etc. designed specifically to take advantage of 32 bit cards.
Don't try to run Sky! and then run one of the Fly! Now ready-made scenarios. Due to the way the custom scenarios overwrite certain graphics and environment data, you will lose the settings that Sky! puts in, although you won't lose the custom graphics, so if you feel like it, you can always just put in new settings.
Occasionally, Fly! will totally mess up in the cloud graphics department. Whole cloud layers will turn black, etc. This happens primarily while using custom overcast layers. This is due to a known problem in the Fly! engine, and not a problem with Sky! Temporary solutions are to go into slew mode while in the air, and go upwards and downwards until the problem clears up. Occasionally, you may have to quit and restart Fly!
Make sure you don't turn on Auto Save Environments in the Fly! Auto Save menu. This will prevent Sky!s custom weather settings from loading correctly. If you are having a problem with textures and settings not loading, check to make sure this is off.
If the windshield effects aren't working for you, make sure Lens Flare is turned on in the Graphics menu.
Also, they work best with a zoom setting of 1.70 and above. To set the zoom level, hit [TAB] twice while flying to bring up the data display, and use - and + to alter the zoom level.
Hey, for those of you who fly over the generic scenery a lot, you'll notice something pretty cool at night over the cities. Take a look! It's just a little sneak peak at what's coming up very soon from us. Be sure to turn on night-lighting in the Fly! graphics menu for this to work.
For some reason, the wind settings stored in each individual Sky! file aren't always accurately brought into Fly! They show up strangely in the Environment menu. Furthermore, when ATIS is contacted, the wind settings are sometimes different from each of these! This is something we believe to be because of the Fly! engine, but we are working on trying to find a fix.
We realize that some problems may crop up which were completely unanticipated. We will do our best to rectify them as soon as possible, so email us if you find any.
There's a lot more to come for Sky! in the very near future, so watch for updates!
For those of you interested in creating your own distributable Sky!-paks, which contain your custom designed skies, look no further than the tutorial in the Sky!\xtras\tutorial folder. Bear in mind that these instructions were written from a PC perspective, as most of the smaller tools mentioned are PC tools. However, Mac people are generally smarter when it comes to graphic designing and such, so those of you with flair for that should be able to work out applicable solutions :)
Please feel free to email us with any suggestions, setting tweaks, wishlists, etc. you may have for inclusion in upcoming releases of Sky!
My address is jak9@howintheworld.com
For technical problems, email support@howintheworld.com
How in the World? would like to extend a warm thank you to the many people who contributed their thoughts and ideas to this product.
Tom Allensworth, Michael Jastrzebski, Eric "Havoc69" Rosebrock, Marty Schultz, Jim Razzi, Ken Wood, Alfred Quintus, David Sandberg, everyone doing add-on work for Fly!, and the tons of other kind souls in the Fly! community.
Also, we want to send out a very special thanks to our incredibly hard-working beta testers, Franklin Tessler, Gale Wells, Eric Krueger and Braun Tacon, without whom this product would have been a complete nightmare!
Lastly, how could we forget the two guys who basically set the ball in motion by inspiring me to climb to greater heights:
Keith Milford (you have him to thank for inspiring the windshield effects.) and a guy named "SFxMaN," otherwise known as Matthieu Laban, whos modified lens flare way back when clued me in to all this stuff in the first place!
Lastly, thanks to everyone at TRI for such an amazing piece of work. Fly! truly is groundbreaking.
I know we must have forgotten to mention some people, as that is always the way , so we deeply apologize if you feel you've been slighted.
Sky! is distributed as a freeware front-end/loader application for the Fly! flight simulator by Terminal Reality.
Sky! Copyright (c) 1999 how in the world?
FLY!, the FLY! logo, Terminal Reality and the Terminal Reality logo area trademarks of Terminal Reality Inc. Copyright (c) 1999 Terminal Reality Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This software is not endorsed or supported in any way by Terminal Reality Inc. or Gathering of Developers Ltd.
Neither how in the world?, Terminal Reality Inc. nor Gathering of Developers Ltd. is responsible for any consequences resulting from the use or misuse of this software.
