Non-PC Geeks

The “Round the World” race in Flight Simulator is coming into it’s home stretch as the teams are finishing up their way across the Atlantic. This was not without drama however. Mad Mike was pulling a late night due to a serious drop off of available pilots. Handing off the baton to jt_dub in Norway, Team AVSim knew they’d have to hustle - Team FlightSim.com had nearly 6 hours in bonus airport scores ahead of them. About 1.5 hours into Jeff’s 2.5 hour flight disaster struck - his computer crashed, forcing a baton handoff to his wingman who was about 20 minutes behind. Not only would Team AVSim arrive 20 minutes later, but would incur a 30 minute delay on the ground before starting the next leg.

The team was devistated by this event, the long hours and lack of sleep seriously caused spirits to sink. However, while waiting out the penalty time, it was noticed that the SAME thing happened to the baton carrier for FlightSim.com! Wow this is getting crazy! Suddenly the team was reinvigorated- we still had a chance. Several of the European pilot contingent woke from their slumber and joined in as well.

After taking care of our two 65N requirements, AVSim hit our 2nd below sea level requirement by a stop in Rotterdam, finished off our jet corridor by returning to Cork, Ireland. A quick hop back to mainland Europe and then a run down into France was in order with a short hop in an amphibian and a handoff at a lake to finish off our second water transfer. The team then used their “wildcard” to make a final run down across Spain to return to the Canaries. The race for AVSim will complete in the Canaries with a speed run from island to island, to pick up 3 bonus hours. After that, the team will have to sit and wait to see if FlightSim.com can arrive soon enough to allow their bonus time to give them the win or not.

Hold on tight race fans, this is going to be a photo finish!

It’s coming up on three and a half days straight of racing for the Flight Simulator Geeks…

Earlier today the race around the world was extremely close as SimOuthouse pulled a surprise manuever by interpreting the rules differently than other teams and used a jet to get to an Atlantic corridor in addition to using a jet in the Trans-Atlantic corridor. As a result of this surprise manuever, they were able to jump ahead of AVSim for the Trans-Atlantic flight by nearly an hour and a half. Looking at the image you can see SimOuthouse’s baton holder, Ferror, being chased by literally the entire AVSim team.

There’s the surprise, now for the heartache… SimOuthouse’s baton holder crashed after that long jet journey across the Atlantic. While that alone is not tragic since you can pass the baton off and only accrue a 30 minute penalty, the wing-man who had the baton passed to him also crashed while landing. Here’s what SimOuthouse posted about their failed landing:

“Second attempt in looked great (first approach slightly too high), but the main wheels hit a small ridge in front of the runway (perhaps 20 or 30 feet in front) and the aircraft exploded”

The crash over the crucial leg gives a distinct advantage to AVSim and Flightsim.com. Speaking of FlightSim.com, they have opted for a route with more bonus hours and have accumulated three more than the other team. While it looks like they are far behind on the world map, the race is far from over and too close to call. It’s expected that this will be the closest challenge ever.

The race is starting to get interesting as the teams reached the Pacific Ocean last night. There were a number of different “corridors” that were available. Inside a corridor, subsonic jets are allowed, and the leg distance/time restrictions are waved, but you must hit all the airports listed in the corridor assignments.

Team AVSim and SimOuthouse both appear to be choosing the southern routes that will shoot them out near the Andes Mountains in South America probably to pick up 2 high-altitude airports and their South American requirements. FlightSim.com has chosen for the crossing route, taking them from Tasmania up to Johnson’s Atol up to Alaska. Presumably, FlightSim.com’s route will allows them to pick up their >65N requirements since they’ve already done their high altitude landings in the Himalayas.

All of the teams have completed their Team Flight bonus flights, capturing maximum bonus times there, as well as a single airport bonus so far. Likewise, all 3 teams spent time in Southern Australia last night, taking advantage of good weather and daylight to knock off most of the historical aircraft requirements.

The interesting thing will be to see how AVSim and SimOuthouse get their >65N requirements in and how FlightSim.com will get down to South America and then cross to get their European requirements in.

It is expected that all 3 teams will make landfall in North or South America this evening and will take the better part of the next day before moving on to the trans-Atlantic crossings.

Another highlight was listening to various Abba songs through AVsim’s SHOUTcast stream.

Mad Mike has taken a break from the NonPCGeeks site for this week while he’s flying around the world in the 2007 Round-The-World Flight Simulator Race. The race pits teams from AVSim, FlightSim and Sim-Outhouse against each other in a race around the world with special rules, conditions and bonuses.

All teams were given the rules 24 hours in advance of the start of the race (10a EST on Friday). The rules include route requirements (such as two airports about 3000m above sea level and two airports below sea level), bonus airports and various rules such as if a plane crashes and which planes could be used in the race.

The teams use a SHOUTcast server so you can follow the chatter as they are flying around. Here’s Team AVSim’s SHOUTcast page which is Mad Mike’s team. Also, you can perform live tracking and check out the status of race on Google Earth. Look for 2002cbr600 on the AVSim team as that’s Mad Mike!

Looks like his team is furthest along with the most bonus time currently, but they have only done one of the required special landings while the other teams have completed water lands and have no hit and high altitude landings.

We’ll post an update everyday as well as a reviewed Flight Simulator gadget by Mad Mike.

Click on the image for a larger view of the AVSim team finishing a bonus run.

Last week it was announced that a Canadian Company named D-Wave would be demonstrating the first commercially working quantum computer on Tuesday Feb 12th. While this announcement has been covered pretty well in the press, so far we at nonpcgeeks.com haven’t been able to find any sort of coverage of the actual event. D-Wave claimed to be demonstrating their system solving several different problems. They also have stated that they’ll be leasing time on the system so 3rd parties could write programs to run on it.

Why is this a big deal? Quantum computers differ from traditional digital computers in that they can search a solution space in substantially less time than a digital computer can. For instance, say you’re trying to find the two numbers that are factored to create an encryption key. For a digital computer to do this, it has to search every possible number combination until it finds the correct one. In a Quantum computer, the entire solution space (all the possible combinations) are performed simultaneously (we won’t even attempt to get into the “how it’s done” here, but can recommend a good book called “A Shortcut Through Time”) arriving at the solution in only several steps, and vastly less time. As a result, quantum computers will be fantastic for problems that are currently classified as NP complete, but highly intractible.

If anyone has seen a good article describing the demo and whether it was successful, please let us know! We’re really interested in this new form of computing and the changes it could herald into our world over the upcoming years.

Net Neutrality - It’s being argued heavily in congress, in the trade journals, and many message boards. Everyone has their own opinion on the subject. I’m not going to try to convince anyone towards one side or the other here. Instead, let’s try to get some of the issues out on the table and then I’ll explain where I stand.

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