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Feature
July 5, 2006

International Flightsim Convention - Denver 2006
We Visit the High Country to See the Newest Way to Fly

by Chuck “Pfunk” Bellows

 

International Flightsim Convention - Denver 2006

Introduction

It started with a phone call. My editor, Doug Atkinson, called back in 2005, asking the question, “Hey, what are you doing next July?” It turned out that the first visit by the International Flightsim Convention on American soil would be on the first weekend in July. Considering how hot Texas gets in the summer, I readily agreed, thinking that at least for one weekend, I wouldn’t have to worry about dying of heatstroke.

Internal Flightsim Convention Denver 2006

IFC is, for the most part, a celebration of flight simulation in general. A good portion of it is dedicated to the Microsoft Flight Simulator platform and the nearly 200,000 add-ons it has spawned in its illustrious 25-year history. While IFC Global certainly isn’t exclusive to one product by any stretch of the imagination, the influence of the largest-selling flight simulator software in history is undeniable.

I would begin my journey from Austin, Texas to Denver, Colorado, flying by United Airlines. I hadn’t flown commercially since 9/11 and the last time I’d gone ‘wheels-up’ from Austin, the old Bobby Mueller Airport was still running. During my college years, many was the time I visited friends going to school in Austin and College Station and invariably I had to drive past the airport whose fences were right up against the service road of Interstate 35, and I was almost always driving at night. 

It wasn’t unusual to be driving along and have yours and a dozen other motorists’ vehicles illuminated by the landing lights of a Boeing coming in low over the freeway. It wasn’t a stretch of the imagination to wonder if tonight was the night everyone was going to get squashed by an airliner, either. Mueller has long since closed and I’d be flying out of Austin-Bergstrom, a former Air National Guard airbase that -like so many others that had been closed- had been converted to general aviation use. The biggest reason for the new airport had been the close proximity of houses to Mueller. Judging by the urban sprawl below me after takeoff, I give the City of Austin six months before they’re defending themselves in court over noise abatement.

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The First Night

I had the good fortune to check in right at about the time several exhibitors were getting their booths arranged. Without the throngs of convention-goers, the exhibitors actually had some time to spare for interviews. I really wasn’t sure what to expect. One of the first people I ran into was the director of IFC Global, Mark Seacock.

International Flightsim Convention - Denver 2006

Mark is a tall, genial fellow with a build like a professional football lineman. His previous career had been as a radio and television presenter and both his voice and his demeanor reflect this. After talking with him for five minutes, your first impression is that he’s an evangelist of sorts for the world of flight simulation, and it’s a role that he’s not just comfortable with, it’s one he relishes.

Irritated with what he considered as unfair treatment, it was his goal to provide a venue for flight simulation that allowed the community to demonstrate its professionalism and pride. From software developers to cockpit builders and enthusiasts of every stripe in between, all were welcome under his broad scope.

Four years ago, IFC had its first convention in the coastal resort of Blackpool and the difference from then to now is striking in terms of growth, and it’s something Silcock takes a certain amount of justifiable pride in. Their first convention started with a modest 40 booths and an attendance of around 1,200. This December 2nd and 3rd, IFC Europe will be located in Birmingham at the National Exhibition Center, boasting floor space of 50,000 square feet and 140 booths, the great majority of which are already booked.

His goal wasn’t just to be the biggest and the best. It was also to give the flight simulation community at large -whether as a hobby or a commercial pursuit- the dignity and respect it deserves. One would argue that he’s accomplished this. Silcock has no plans to rest on his laurels at all and as far as he’s concerned, he’s just begun.

Captain Mike Ray

The next interview…well, conversation…wait while I consult my notes. They’re a mess. Let me begin by letting you know who Captain Mike Ray is and what he’s doing for the flight simulation community.

International Flightsim Convention - Denver 2006

Captain Ray has more than two decades of service as a United Airlines pilot and prior flight experience as a naval aviator flying ASW aircraft. He is a walking, talking encyclopedia of flight knowledge. Witty doesn’t begin to describe him, and we would become running buddies for the next day and a half. Wherever Captain Ray goes, animated discussions about flying seem to follow him. Actually, they have trouble keeping up with him, as the man never seems to be able to sit still.

He’s the author of several excellent manuals that cover the operating procedures of Boeing and Airbus airliners in the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 environment, the contents of which border on hilarity on occasion, but after reading through one of them, it is the closest you can come to an actual Dash One manual for the real thing. Complete with graphics and illustrations, these manuals are the culmination of his entire career as an airliner pilot, gleaned from years of taking notes on various aircraft and their unique characteristics.

He’d had an epiphany the first time he saw a moving map display in an airliner. “It was as if,” he laughs, “my God, we can do anything.” After having learned the ins and outs of the FD-109 Flight Director, he remembered when he’d converted to the CRT screens. “Several guys,” he recalls, “just couldn’t make the jump. The same thing happened with going from steam gauges to tape instruments.”

Captain Ray is the kind of guy you could talk to for hours, but I had one more interview to try to squeeze in before Microsoft bought everyone beer at a cocktail party later in the evening.

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Just Flight

One of the most impressive booths belonged to the UK-based company, Just Flight. Their two emissaries, Alex Ford and Martin Wright, were in the process of loading about a dozen of their add-ons on three machines when they realized they hadn’t had anything to eat or drink in the past eight hours. I I having just checked in to the hotel not an hour and a half ago and similarly starving, the three of us adjourned to the bar for a small restorative.

International Flightsim Convention - Denver 2006

Alex and Martin have a passion for flight simulation, but were quick to point out one very striking difference between them and other third-party developers, a money-back guarantee that they rarely have to enforce.

“You see,” Alex explained, “we look at a lot of offers and there’s more than a few that we don’t publish because we want the highest quality.” Hence, the reason the return rate of their titles is low. By enforcing high QA standards, Alex reasoned, they’re better off because those that do gain acceptance traditionally do very well.

Martin is a military flight enthusiast and the man behind some of the tools they use in their own in-house development. Martin is also the only exhibitor to make me physically jump, using one of their many product trailers being displayed on a plasma-screen TV. I was conducting some ‘man-on-the-laptop’ interviews with convention attendees playing around with the FSX demo when I literally nearly jumped out of my shoes at the unearthly roar emanating from the Just Flight booth. It was their trailer for the RAF Tornado add-on and the twin-engined beast was literally shaking the floor of the convention hall. Martin turned around, a huge grin on his face, pointing at the screen and raising his fists in triumph. The Just Flight add-on for the RAF Tornado is not to be missed.

International Flightsim Convention - Denver 2006

Another add-on I got some stick time with was their recently-released Captain Sim C-130 Hercules. My usual test pattern for most MSFS add-ons is a very short hop from the Joint Reserve Base in Fort Worth, Texas to D/FW International, an approach I’ve shot hundreds of times over in numerous aircraft. The Hercules didn’t disappoint, feeling both graceful and ponderous. Graceful only in the sense that as long as you didn’t ask it to do too much, it didn’t fall out of the sky. With beautiful external models and a drool-inspiring cockpit view, a standard has been made that few can match.

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Pacific Aircraft

A good number of flight simmers are also modelers, whether real or virtual, so it wasn’t a big surprise to see the team from Pacific Aircraft at IFC Denver. It was my pleasure to meet and talk to Tyrone Wong, an executive with the company.

International Flightsim Convention - Denver 2006

Well, for a minute or two, I couldn’t talk to him. As a matter of fact, I tacitly established a ‘safe zone’ about five feet away from him because he was in the process of gingerly extricating a frighteningly detailed model of the USS Ronald Reagan nearly three feet in length, doing so with all the care of someone dismantling a Minuteman warhead.

International Flightsim Convention - Denver 2006

Pacific Aircraft makes mahogany models of any aircraft you can think of. No, seriously, anything you can think of. Want Grandpa’s Lancaster done up with his aircraft’s marking and numbers? As long as you have a photograph or some other guide for them, they can custom-make any aircraft and as you can see, they’ve recently begun to get into ships.

International Flightsim Convention - Denver 2006

I asked Tyrone how many hours it took to finish one of these. “Thirty to forty, “he answered, a hint of pride in his voice, “just for the carving. That doesn’t count sanding, painting and sealing.” All models are done by hand, no machine work at all. “Oh, sometimes they might use a belt sander to get the curves right,” he chuckles, “but the whole thing is done by hand.” As you can tell, the results are nothing short of amazing.

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 International Flightsim Convention - Denver 2006

The First Day…

Unsure of what I’d see, I rose early Saturday morning to get in before the crowds. I was greeted by bustling activity, and it had been going on long before my wake-up call. Somewhere in the middle of the night, NaturalPoint’s crew had arrived and their booth had just magically appeared, finished. Alex and Martin were putting in some minor finishing touches on Just Flight’s setup and the guys from eDimensional had a nice-sized booth-full of goodies for every simulation fan.

Through all this, Mark Silcock appeared calm and collected, getting the IFC staff ready for the steadily gathering crowds of conventioneers. It was a bit like checking into a real flight. Each person was given a boarding pass and a small bag of IFC goodies. Whether or not they would have TSA employees asking attendees to remove their shoes and go rifling through their luggage, I didn’t have the heart to ask.

International Flightsim Convention - Denver 2006

Once the crowds were let in, the room filled up fast. I was able to get a glance at the Matrox TripleHead2Go in action as eDimensional’s team had put together a demonstration setup and were inviting attendees to give it a shot. What surprised me was the number of people who’d never heard of some of these products. In addition to the other products they had for sale, eDimensional, which is based out of West Palm Beach, Florida, had also brought along their AudioFX Force Feedback headsets and the E-D Wireless 3D Glasses for customers to see and hear.

International Flightsim Convention - Denver 2006

I got to shoot a few day traps with Abacus’ Flight Deck 4 add-on, proving to myself that my career as a naval aviator would have been a short one. Thankfully, Arnie Lee was on hand to talk shop. Given the improvements of Microsoft’s FSX, you can bet you’re going to see the ultimate in carrier operations and naval aircraft familiarization, but Flight Deck 4’’s realism and detail alone were mind-blowing. The Hornet cockpit I was in was phenomenal, so for those looking forward to the release, I can only advise you to add this to your collection.

International Flightsim Convention - Denver 2006

Peter Cos of Flight Deck Solutions was on hand with a Boeing glass cockpit setup. Cos makes everything from cockpits for the enthusiast to movie props and it was the first time I’d gotten to see how Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 can put the instrumentation displays on separate screens to create working, interactive flight information on a cockpit MFD, taking flight simulation from just being on a computer to feeling of being on a real flight deck.

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Angle of Attack

If you haven’t seen their website and checked out the brainchild of Robert Trent and Chris Palmer, you’re missing out. Not many of us have time to flip through hundreds of pages of manuals –even ones as entertaining as Mike Ray’s- so the guys at Angle of Attack have come up with something new.

They intend to create training DVDs intended for the flight sim enthusiast for the Level-D 767-300 airliner. They’re going to take you from ramp-start to full shutdown using in-game video narrated by voice-over, giving the user detailed instructions on flight in the 767-300 for Microsoft Flight Simulator. No detail will be left out and each chapter of the DVD covers separate systems so that the entire flight deck goes from mystery to mastery.

I got a chance to talk to Robert –who is an Air Force firefighter at Eglin AFB in Florida- at the convention and I’ll advise everyone now to look for these guys on the cover of Fortune or The Robb Report in the near future. Trent and Palmer have a unique idea, and while it’s never been attempted before, theirs is one that will takeoff –so to speak- and really make a difference in how people learn the methods of aircraft flight.

Visit www.flyaoamedia.com

NaturalPoint

I have to have one of these now.

My entire mention of NaturalPoint’s TrackIR4 head-tracking device could have ended right there. That wouldn’t, however, do justice to the team of Warren Blyth and Kevin Fox, who had apparently worked though all hours to get their demonstration machines set up. They were a hit with everyone and I don’t think one convention attendee didn’t sit down and say, “Wow…” when donning the visor and looking around the cockpit.

Kevin invited me to sit down and give it a try and I think what did it for me was the fact that I had slid down in the chair a bit and noticed my forward visibility had diminished somewhat. So, I sat up a little straighter and was suddenly able to see over the dash of the Cessna I was flying. I think I said…wait a second, let me look at my notes, here. Yes, I believe I said, “Whoa…” in my best Keanu Reeves impersonation.

Transload Virtual Airlines

I’d never heard of a virtual airline before and I was delighted to meet the CEO of the longest-running virtual airline in the world, Ken Paulick of Transload Virtual Airlines. Ken is a homebuilder in the Denver area and is one of the people responsible for bringing an IFC event to the United States. Transload has more than seven major divisions making flights all over the world. From military aircraft to heavy airliners, they span the globe in membership.

International Flightsim Convention - Denver 2006

“We wanted to build a virtual airline that anyone could take part in.” Ken explains, “Too many of them, if you don’t make your scheduled flight, you’re downgraded. We understand that people have real lives and real jobs.” Transload has events nearly every night of the week and their busiest time is the Friday and Saturday nights, with about 20 or more participants. While we were talking, Dan Jones -Paulick’s second-in-command- was flying on their server and three other members were already online and making their scheduled flights.

They have their own skins for their aircraft that are downloadable from their website after a free registration as a member, and these are beautiful models. Paulick takes great pride in being the longest-running virtual airline, and his operation serves as a model for future endeavors. While their membership includes many experienced simulation pilots, they are always looking for new members and are happy to teach the incoming pilots how to operate in an airline.

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International Flightsim Convention - Denver 2006

Microsoft FSX Beta Demo

In the middle of the convention were the Microsoft demonstration kiosks, each running a beta demo of FSX. The machines were Intel dual-core rigs, and it was even featured on a few Dell XPS laptops. Saitek furnished a handful of its X52 HOTAS controllers. A couple of the laptops were using the Xbox 360 controllers. “We’ve had several professional pilots actually say they prefer it.”, grins Brett Schnepf, one of the ACES studio members. Actually, he’s ACES studio’s Community & Partner Development Manager. “That’s a fancy way of saying ‘technology evangelist’.” Schnepf laughs.

You’ll be seeing a lot of enhanced graphics in this title. Let me be the first to say that the lines between what is real and what is virtual is going to be blurred beyond your wildest imagination. It was that real. The system specs will be tremendous. I asked Schnepf and Flight Sim Community Evangelist Hal Bryan what kind of specs you’ll need to run it. Bryan chuckled and said, “Please remember that min system requirements are written by Marketing,” he smiled, “obviously, the faster machine you can get, the better.”

International Flightsim Convention - Denver 2006

Part of FSX will include ‘missions’ which are very similar to the ‘Adventures’ found in previous versions of Flight Simulator. “They’re mostly geared for the novice,” explains Bryan, “they’ll give the newcomer a reason to fly, instead of just getting into the air and saying, ‘great…now what?’” While you’re seeing a little more of a ‘game aspect’ in these, do not panic over the 360 controllers being on the kiosk, the team confirmed there are no plans for a 360 port…at least not now. FSX will ship with approximately 50 such scenarios and not all are meant for the neophyte aviator. “We have one where you’re going out to an oil rig in a helo to drop off an inspector and while you’re inbound, the rig explodes and now you have to rescue everyone off the rig.” Schnepf shivers, “It still gives me chills.”

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International Flightsim Convention - Denver 2006

I got my hands on the beta and one such ‘Mission’ was a very simple landing tutorial that brought you into a small airfield in Sitka, Alaska on the coastline. The air traffic around you was minimal, consisting of a Cessna Caravan. I was a little confused about what to do when my virtual flight instructor who must have sensed my bewilderment and gave me some instructions in order to get in the pattern to land. ‘He’ told me to follow the Caravan in, and I did so. The frame rate even on the laptops was actually quite playable and the scenery and weather conditions around me were, in a word, stunning. I can tell you the hardware you’re going to need to get smooth frame rates will have to be gutsy.

International Flightsim Convention - Denver 2006

The first version out will be a DirectX9 title it seems and once the DirectX10 hardware becomes more commercially available, a free patch will be distributed for the end user to all the goodness that this new API promises. DirectX10 will not be backwards-compatible with previous versions of DirectX. Legacy support was cut in order to gain the detail and realism that they wanted out of it. DirectX10 will also be Vista-only and using it in conjunction with FSX is going to push your rig to the very limit.

Later in the day, the ACES team members Bryan and Schnepf, along with Mike Singer and Mike Lambert held a seminar on the official release, which gave attendees the chance to pose questions directly to the development team. Of course, Capt. Mike Ray found himself with the dubious honor of having to sit between two members of the press. Dereck Scott of Computer Pilot, Capt. Ray, and I were watching with fascination and occasional amusement as the team trotted out the latest features of FSX.

International Flightsim Convention - Denver 2006

Microsoft is doing the best it can this time to get a timely release of the SDK out. Hal joked that the 2004 release was really named ‘Century of Flight’ because it took a century to get the SDK in the hands of third-party developers. A question was directed to the team about flight models and whether they’d change appreciably. The team, in the person of Mike Lambert, said no they wouldn’t, but that third-party developers were doing a pretty good job without too much interference. While physics haven’t changed much, the fidelity other aspects has gone way up to include a lot more system failures than before.

There will be two different versions of FSX released, Deluxe and Standard, with a $20 difference in price between the two. Details on what would be offered in each weren’t completely finalized, but users could definitely expect a lot more content for the Deluxe version. There would be new aircraft included along with the normal stable of aircraft we’ve come to expect. The Sitka approach mission I flew was in the ubiquitous Cessna Skyhawk that everyone’s flown.

But what about the graphics? Just what can we expect? Judging from in-game footage I saw in trailers and videos the team showed the seminar attendees, a lot. Expect not just enhanced scenery, but Microsoft has endeavored to create a living, breathing world. “Expect it to feel less like flying in a post-apocalyptic world.” Bryan joked. For this kind of fidelity, Microsoft turned to its own products to get the kind of immersion they needed. 

Enhanced roads and rivers have been brought in from Streets and Trips. You can actually do IFR (I Follow Roads) flying now and you’ll even see motor traffic on the streets and highways, including vehicle headlights. Zoo Tycoon contributed to the effort by lending the team the animals it would need. You’ll see herds of animals and they will follow migration patterns. They have also mapped over 6,000 stars so it’s now possible to fly by using the position of celestial bodies in the night sky. Expect about a 14GB footprint on your hard drive for all this goodness.

I can hear the question now and someone in the seminar beat you to it. If we crank up all these details, what happens to the frame rate? Bryan was honest. “It’ll choke it right down,” he admitted. FSX is designed to push your hardware to the very limit. “FSX is pretty much a benchmark platform,” Schnepf explains, “Back when the very first Flight Simulator was released, it was used to test a computer. If you had the hardware to run it, your machine was classified as a PC. FSX will be played on a new class of computers.”

The multiplayer code has been reworked from the ground up and you can now have a pilot and co-pilot flying a two-place aircraft over a LAN connection, and it will include not just control but also communication. This will bring a whole new dimension to multiplayer flying to this simulation as now you and a friend can enjoy the same scenery from the same cockpit. Unfortunately, there will be no out-of-the-box AI traffic in multiplayer. 

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Later That Evening…

 A formal dinner was enjoyed by a packed house that night, with keynote addresses from Brett Schnepf and Hal Bryan of Microsoft and Mark Silcock of IFC. Again, Captain Mike Ray happened to be seated at the table. Now, during breaks in the evening’s festivities, and while we were enjoying an excellent prime rib dinner, I tried to catch conversations between tablemates and they all seemed to be about the exhibits and FSX. I’m fairly certain mine was the only table that discussed landing airliners in such charming destinations as scenic Beirut or getting posted to Eritrea in the Sixties. The chatter at my table seemed to be more interesting, so I ordered another drink.

Silcock was up first, giving a roadmap that IFC will be taking in the future and what we can expect in coming years. While IFC has conferences in Spain, Holland, Germany, France, Poland, the UK and now the US, there’s going to be one more addition to the family, IFC Australia. Melbourne will be hosting a 2007 conference, and although there is not a date set, there is quite a bit of excitement that’s been generated and the energy will get kicked even higher as Hong Kong has also been added to the list of locations. Silcock and IFC are poised to be the driving force behind making flight simulation a much more prominent pursuit.

International Flightsim Convention - Denver 2006

He said something that night that has stuck with me and I hadn’t even given it a thought. Flight simulation allows, he said, anyone to experience the joy of aviation that they ordinarily couldn’t because of circumstances like finances or disability. My right eye has been blind since birth and it’s something that has prevented me from getting a private pilot’s license or entering the military, a goal I wanted to realize from my childhood, having come from a family of men who’d been in uniform or still were.

Unconsciously, I’d gravitated to flight simulation to gain something akin to the actual experience of flight. It was something I always wanted for myself and still want today. I am hoping that one day I’ll be able to get my Sport Pilot’s license, but until that time, I’ll be flying on a computer. Silcock was able to speak to the desire we have as flight simmers, to get to the core of why we do it. It’s for this reason, I believe, that IFC –no matter what location- will be integral to the growth of flight simulation, whether you’re a hobbyist or it’s your livelihood.

International Flightsim Convention - Denver 2006

Up next was Brett Schnepf and I knew there was a reason I like him. He’s a self-described disciple of ‘The Ronnie Van Zant School of Management’. Yes, that Ronnie Van Zant of Lynyrd Skynyrd. For that reason, the title of Schnepf’s presentation was titled “It’s a Rotgut Life”. Van Zant, Schnepf reasoned, would have made a hell of business manager and because of the way he set his band up for success, his was a model to follow. 

Paramount, he emphasized, was taking care of your people and tolerating no BS, comparing his no-nonsense approach to the time Van Zant fired his entire management team and replaced them with the manager who’d previously worked with the Rolling Stones, the basis of the album, ‘Gimme Back My Bullets’. Through the presentation, Schnepf’s business philosophy was something people have argued forever and it’s something I’ve seen over and over again in my own professional career. If you perform well and do what’s necessary to complete the task, you engender two things: respect and loyalty. If not, you’re shown the door.

Schnepf had given the entire presentation barefoot and offered a trivia question, the correct answer to which he would reward from a table piled high with goodies, the majority of which were expensive. He’d asked, “What about my appearance, what is it about me that bears relationship to the way Ronnie Van Zant was?”

At this time, I raised my hand, he called on me, and I answered, “Because Van Zant performed barefoot.” Now, I was under the impression that the prizes were to be given away in a raffle I’d just bought five bucks’ worth of tickets to. This was a surprise, and I’d had my eye on the FSX vouchers being offered. It would have been nice to have been one of the first to review it, but he reached down and handed me something else, an ATI Radeon X1900XT PCI-Express 512MB video card worth about $700. You notice I’m not griping. It was an effort not to ruin the dignity of the evening.

Unfortunately, I had an early flight and was informed by other travelers in the lobby that security procedures were taking longer than usual because of so many people delayed in Denver. I retired after the raffle concluded the evening’s events. Bidding my new friends goodbye, I crashed early.

Conclusion

That morning, I rose and packed, taking the airport shuttle to Denver International. I reflected on the many things I’d seen the previous day. From home cockpits to mahogany models to add-ons of every conceivable flavor, I couldn’t imagine how long it would take someone to cover the IFC Europe event. You’d need an extra day.

As I watched the three main concourses of DIA fall away from me to Earth, the Canadair CRJ70 picking up speed, I looked out the window at the panorama below. Just outside of the city, a small municipal airport could be seen, with air traffic taking off and landing. We’re almost there, I thought to myself, I saw things yesterday that put us closer to this than anything ever made. I’ve made friends that weekend that I’ll keep in contact with for a long time, and I wasn’t shocked at all by the feeling of community shared by everyone, from the exhibitors to the attendees. 

I saw exhibitors share equipment. I saw dozens of volunteers man booths and help exhibitors show their products to enthralled audiences. For anyone who can make it to an IFC event, I advise you to go. You’ll come away with the same feeling I have, and it’s worth the time and money you’ll spend and more.

Special Thanks To:  Mark Silcock, Captain Mike Ray, Alex Ford, Martin Wright, Tyrone Wong, Robert Trent, and the entire Microsoft crew.


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