streetl

THE CASE OF THE STREETLIGHT SIMULATOR

This column can be downloaded from CompuServe SimGames Forum (streetli.zip) and can be viewed online at www.simflight.com. Any resemblance to real person, places or things is absolutely intentional. There will be a new column in 6 weeks. Webmasters who want to use this column on their Flightsimpages can contact the author. This file can not be copied to other sources without permission of the author, in principle I do not charge fee for non-commercial sources. The original idea of this column was born just after Interstate 7 and some friends might see lines they spoke during the coffee we shared in the bar. So what?

When the first computer became available for home use an American programmer wrote the first streetlight simulation program. He called it Streetlight Simulator 2 because it made it look more mature than Streetlight Simulator 1. It was an instant success and they became quiet rich and famous for writing this program. This was to be expected because switching streetlights on and off is every child’s dream. And as we all know mature men are children with bigger wallets they kept the dream. Spending a small fortune on the hardware, incidentally the same as they use in the office, makes it seem like a more suitable, or should we say acceptable hobby for a grown man. While this programmer made version after version which all sold extremely well, a whole group of idiots started to see the streetlight simulator as more than a simple entertainment program. They got ‘into’ the simulator and started 'user-groups'. The first user-groups were nothing more than a bunch of friends that got together on a regular base and exchanged experiences and ideas. In fact you could do little more than switch the light on or off but that didn’t bother them too much. The graphics were crude but they simply imagined the surroundings and weather conditions and switched as realistic as possible. They got professional magazines and studied them, they visited streetlights in the wild and got invited to tours in streetlight factories and on occasion they got a chance to peek into the holiest place of all, the central switching room in the city hall. This fired their imagination even more and they became as enthusiastic as grown men can be. Which is as we all know as enthusiastic as God was when he invented the woman model of the species. Did he know how it would end… .

The programmer was surprised by his success but did not mind very much. He published a few data disks that had new surroundings for the streetlights to be switched on. Now you could select a city, place your light in front of the church and switch away. It was great! The fanatic users soon cracked the source code of the surroundings files and could build their own. This was the biggest thing ever to happen to the switching crowd. Now they could make files, exchange them with others and build collections. When Bulletin Board Systems got started it seemed like the most logical thing to use. They build bigger and bigger networks of connected systems, the biggest of them all used to be called SlFan (StreetLightFans). Not to be outdone, the big commercial online services started their own fora where streetlighters could meet and get files. Some where led like little African countries, others where made by the users, people who actually use the simulator.

The surrounding file thing went ballistic and soon the users could switch in all countries of the world. Almost all big squares were build, rebuild and build again by someone else. They used original maps and even visited the sites to make their files look better. A new market for surroundings design programs emerged and the original builder of the program made a lousy program for designing surroundings. It featured the worst designed interface ever and could make a father of several children cry like a little baby. Wherever sales of this program were high, liqueur and sedatives also sold well. But soon we had little add-on tools that could do even better things with the surrounding files. Soon the cars had door handles and little furry animals behind the windows and everybody built his own house. Most looked like an architect's worst nightmare but it was like playing God. You could build your own world and pretend you lived in it. Some scenery designers started to go to church because they now knew how hard it was to design a world.

Just after the magic moment. Lamps are spooling up to 100% candela and operator is ready for after switching checklist. Notice the multiple lamp posts in the background. For now this is work in progress, it is a static model, not operable.

They made drawings of the traffic patterns on the streets and even got additional software that could make the cars actually do the moves!. Now they had traffic moving in and out of the light. It was more realistic than the real thing and some users went crazy and lost contact with the real world. They even made recordings of the sounds these lights made when switching on and off to upload them to the file exchange boards.

But a new thing would really make streetlight simulation come to maturity. A new software product allowed them to design their own lights. Now this was a dream come true for most users. They always had favorite lights and now could design stern Russian build lights to be placed on Red Square, elegant models for Paris and hyper modern illumination systems for Tokyo. Soon we had over 5000 models to choose from. All different paint jobs, all different switching characteristics. Of course most looked like they had been designed by a drunk Dada artist and switched like a Russian nuclear reactor but it was another step in building your own world.

Using the Online services they connected their computers to each other and simulated streets and dreamed of simulating villages, cities, countries and yes, why not, continents. The lights would be switched on when the sun sank beneath the horizon and switched off when it appeared again. Giant waves of simulated lights would pulsate around the globe. Of course we would never simulate polar areas because 2 switching a year is boring.

The great group of fools became a market and soon we had hundreds of boxes with commercial products. Some were great others were bad. Specialised magazines like the French LightSimulateur published articles about them so they sold each other. Many programmers who used to work for the fun of it now smelled cash and started to sell his products. Sometimes using the shareware principle but more often via more conventional methods. A few textures for a streetlight, combined with a video of a spectacular switching could sell for $50. Not for long because the enthusiasts who bought it and were deeply disappointed told their friends so. But a new set of freeware files was easily found and dumped on a CD-ROM. More often than not, and hidden by a PO box address these publishers forgot to ask the original authors for permission. This saves a lot of hassle and sharing of the loot. When done well you still can get pretty rich from this, enough fools who will buy anything that has! ! ! N_E_W L_A_M_P_S ! ! ! on the cover.

But let's not forget that there are other street light simulator programs for sale. Of course the one we talked about until now is by far the biggest and most successful but there are others. A few promised to be successful but sank into oblivion within months, they just could not measure up. Others were slightly more successful and kept a fanatic group of users who found satisfaction in telling 'the others' that their simulator was vastly superior, the only one who survived over the years was Streetlight Switch Operator. This simulator could be run on computers that were close to the huge machines used to calculate ballistics of pre WW2 guns and their users considered this an advantage. The others didn't mind very much, they did not want to look at lamps that looked like drawn by a kindergarten child and switched like a bedroom light. While defending themselves the users of the smaller sim designed ‘Professional Switching Models’ that were so complicated you had to be a certified electrician to operate the simulator. Btw, the command to switch the light on in this simulator was complicated. It was something like ALT-RIGHT SHIFT-UNDERSCORE-A while at the same time pressing the right mouse button and joystick button number 3 twice. Of course this was never done before reading a complicated checklist and yelling out loud "CHECKED !!" after each item. These checklists looked like this;

Outside light conditions set to DUSK (CHECKED!!)
Light manuals in the operating cabin (CHECKED !!)
Light Bulb in good condition (CHECKED !!)
Check power source (CHECKED !!)
Expected switching time above minimum's (CHECKED !!)
Check coffee level (CHECKED !!)
Declare ready for switching to main switching station (CHECKED !!)

By then it was pitch dark and if it was not a simulator but the real thing the lamp would have been destroyed by cars hitting it. The much bigger group that used the light simulator would have fallen asleep by that time but who cares? This sim would have died would it not that one men was so stubborn and refused to buy a modern computer that he kept on working on it. Later they included some new files and managed to sell the ancient program a second time to all the folks who bought the original. This is certainly an interesting concept and worth remembering. Of course this sim will soon be dead as a dodo. But they played their game and felt like great kids.

Some went completely overboard and organized championships street light switching. With all simulators networked and hooked up to weather programs that simulated fog, storm and rain they tried to switch as realistic as possible. Other network programs simulated burned out lamps, dog pissing against the poles and drunken football supporters with stones. For 24 hours they switched away and were very happy. Of course the media loved it and portrait them as silly fools. Others went to world congresses with names like MicroLight, these were events where commercial people could meet each other and enthusiasts could show how much they cared for their own favorite lamp.

Now ain't that crazy?

Mathijs Kok