Mike Stone's Aircraft

[victor_alpha_charlie]

Hey guys,
I have just come across a .zip file of every Mike Stone model from his website, just over 100 models, and 89MB. I believe he has given permission for this file to be distributed so if anyone would like PM me for it. I can sedn you individual .exe files too, most are under 1MB.

[Jimmy]

How did you "come across" such a file?

James

[VH-CC1]

voz forum http://vistaoz.org/smf/index.php?topic=5881.0

[victor_alpha_charlie]

Ok how can it be illegal? It's freeware...
On some FS Forum.. Can't remember where.

[Alex]

In the Mike Stone's readme's there is probably a line saying something like;

"You cannot re-package, re-upload or distribute copies of my work without my express permission .... etc etc"

He owns the rights to the work he created, following those guidelines in his readme's also shows some basic respect for him and the work he has done over the years. Probably unless he made the package, or told someone else they could, its not really legal.

Alex

Edit; Thanks for the update Naki.

[Naki]

The Mike Stone files are hosted by VOZ and can be downloaded from there as per the link Craig has posted above. It has the blessing of Mike Stone.

[ZK-Brock]

Yip, the only proper place to get Stone aircraft is the voz forums now.

[victor_alpha_charlie]

Probably where I found it then
I remember it was legal because Mike himself had posted on the forum giving permission.

[dunsfold08]

QUOTE (victor_alpha_charlie @ Aug 17 2007, 05:45 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hey guys,
I have just come across a .zip file of every Mike Stone model from his website, just over 100 models, and 89MB. I believe he has given permission for this file to be distributed so if anyone would like PM me for it. I can sedn you individual .exe files too, most are under 1MB.

I would like a copy of this 100 aircraft file at tracolla2@yahoo.co.uk ken smith

[Stumpy]

http://vistaoz.org/smf/index.php?topic=5881.0
That would be the easiet way, unless its already been sent. You have to sign up to the forums first though

[Naki]

As Stumpy said it would be easier to sign up to VOZ & download it that way (presuming it still exists) - pretty big file to send by email!

[GarryJSmith]

Hi Simmers,

Firstly, thank you for the privilege of membership to your forum, appreciated.

The reason I have joined is that I found this thread recently and thought you might all be interested in knowing that I have available for INDIVIDUAL Download all 107 of Mike Stone's FS2004 Aircraft.

Mike graciously consented to allow me to host all of his FS2004 creations and publish them all for the simming community to continue to enjoy. Mike also granted me guardianship of his aircraft files for the future.

Recently I migrated my site to a new server and I took this opportunity to integrate Mike's aircraft as a mini site within my site.

You can go directly to Mikes pages at Visit Mike's Pages

All 107 of Mike's FS2004 creations are available for free from the above pages.

Or if your inclined to have a look around at my site you can simply goto Visit Garry's Site

Many liveries there for many of Mike's Aircraft - again all for free.

No membership required - simply request that you Honor my and Mike's End User License Agreements (EULA's) in relation to using his or my work.

Happy simming to you all, and I hope there is some things of value to you at the above links.

[Naki]

Thanks Gary..and welcome to NZFF!

[Ian Warren]

Hello Garry and Welcome , I believe with your introduction and renown Mike Stone's aircraft , many are going to enjoy these addons , and Yourself , a very notable FlightSim painter with many credits , a lotta people here are going to contact you ... hey Garry .. Thanx again for joining us at NZFF

Ian

[GarryJSmith]

Thank you gentlemen for your warm welcome and kind words about my work.

Been tinkering with FS Graphics now for many years so have built up a bit of experience when it comes to FS repainting etc. Mike and I go back to his very first GMAX model (A320) for FS2000 I believe, and we have worked on many projects together since him doing the techo model stuff and me enriching his product with some graphics tinkering.

Mike gave it all up for some personal and health reasons and for a couple of years most of his aircraft, many outstanding, and some "unique" models were starting to fall off the flight sim circuit.

Mike's models have always been extremely economical and Frame Rate Friendly - basic but quality models across a broad range of aircraft, historical, modern and fanciful. I was reluctant to let them all fall into a black hole and no longer available to current and new simmers.

Therefore, my drive to give them some more life through a location where all of his 2004 models could at least be available from the one source.

With the advent of Microsoft dropping further development for Flight Simulation it is apparent that both FS2004 and FSX have a long future without much change, which is a good thing in some cases and allows a long period of stability for our simming environment. And of course a long period for Simmers to continue to enjoy the fruits of Mike's many years of labour for our pleasure.

Regards and happy simming to all.

[creator2003]

Good to have you around here and welcome Garry ,,i was wondering if you have the gmax source files to mikes AC ? as someone was asking me the other night about sticking VCs in some of them and the only way to archive that is having the source ..

[GarryJSmith]

Hi Mate,

Sorry to say, but no - no GMAX source files available for Mike's aircraft. Discussed this yesterday via PM's with one of the patrons here.

Though many of Mike's aircraft can be enhanced or enriched with "addons", "upgrades" or "revisions" by other people with various skills in various aspects of Flight Simulation development it unfortunately goes against the grain of Mike's EULA for his models.

A very large chunk of the reasoning for Mike leaving Flight Sim Model Making was the frequent plagiarism of his work - many people modified his work to run in other levels of the simulator or did personal hacks and tweaks without consideration of many other consequences - revised his air and configuration files without permission and often then republished his work as their own - or even worse then published it as a "Mike Stone update" and caused him no end of e-mails with complaints about modification or upgrades not working that he knew nothing about.

Sorry for the soap box message above - but we simply need to enjoy what we got for FREE from Mike, feel free to tweak and tinker with making things better for our own enjoyment. However we should avoid major independent upgrades of Mike's work and republishing them to the simming community.

Mike gave us well over 100 FS2004 models, also many FS2002 and FS2000 models, for free - thousands of personal hours expended - some outstanding, some average, and even some poor quality. But all for FREE - with the only expectation that simmers would enjoy what they got and a request that none of his work be plagiarized, altered and/or redistributed without consent.

Gees I am soapboxing again - sorry - but in a nutshell - feel free to enjoy what Mike has given us - add as many liveries as possible to the models - but lets not "abuse" another authors work with home brewed revisions or modifications and publishing things that might bring Mike's hard work over many years into disrepute because of errors generated by external sources.

Now stepping off the soapbox - hope you all understand Mike's outlook and expectation - and my need to defend his perspective.

Regards and as always happy simming.

[Ian Warren]

Well said Garry , At least many newbies to the Flightsim have a window to try anything/types , and with your paints/skins a little extra . we are not truly restricted you and create your own paints and add 2D cockpits .

[creator2003]

Yeah i know the story ,but i still dont get how modding something out there to better it can be anything but a good thing ,and to those who take credit for his work ,well thats just wrong but taking credit for something you did making his models more usable in whatever sim you are working with ,well theres nothing wrong with that and there are lots of exsamples of this payware and freeware ,just painting them is doing this or changing gauges flight dynamics etc all things that make a popular model to download thus creating the name mike stone is famous 4 in the sim world ..
Most source files are not available but people like Jordan Moore from hovercontrol put his bell412 /sc300 up for design source along with other models and look how they have come leaps and bounds with mods and other enhancements that make them what they are today ..
I have no hesitation in modding something for the greater good ,thats what it all about ,like i mod a sim that didnt have scenery or the guy who makes mesh /topo addon airports ,aircraft etc we are all doing it ,to bad that some dont understand it and thats the way it works in MS flight simulator ..

those that contact mike about problems etc on mods that were done with his models ,well he should use his delete button more in his mailbox ,just like payware developers do if you hassle them about cr@p ..

really and the end of the day we have 100 models that will get lost in time like everything else Fsim ,i hear peoples just use them for AI these days

[GarryJSmith]

Hi Good People,

Understand were your coming from Creator2003 - but please understand that "modifying something for the better" is a matter of perspective -what is better for you, your system and your simulator setup is not necessarily better for others across a broad range of sim versions, systems etc.

Mike's goal for development was - small, clean, minimum polygons, minimum frame rate impact and to be effective within the simulator program it was designed for. Hence no VC's miminum texture mappings over minimum number of texture images etc.

I have seen some of Mike's "released" aircraft which were less than 300k being rerelease after modification becoming multiple megabyte Downloads due to unauthorised addons and modification made and I have seen hundreds of re-releases by various modifiers that fail to work correctly in the alternate simulators and often inbuilding complexity that will not work in various PC hardware and/or software configuations.

One just recently released bodgie version for FSX with 3 liveries included (all textures converted to 32bit BMP RAW format) was a total of 21 megs for a download that was originally less than a meg. And to make matters worse this bodgie release fails texture wise with blocks of Black appearing in many places in SP1 for FSX.

So we come back to lets leave it alone, and dedicated to the sim program it was designed for. By all means add liveries, even new 2D panels etc - but release them independantly as "liveries for" or "Panel for" the specific Mike Stone aircraft and for the specific simulator program.

If you want to release a patch to make an FS2004 aircraft work within FSX for example - then you should refer to the original for download by simmers and then release only the patch content that you have created for inclusion or upgrade of the original. Packaging the original work and including your modification and releasing that as a new/revised product is infact illegal.

Yes Mike's aircraft make excellent AI aircraft - again due to his development strategy of small but effective design concepts.

Regards