Does anybody have any info about the 2011 version of 5th gear? Is there an estimated date of release, or anything like that?
There’s no official release date set, yet I do know the 5th Gear guys have been hard at work. If Blake doesn’t get on here, I’ll ping on him about it in the next day or so.
As a general rule of thumb, they don’t like to release it until at least Week 4 of the build season. They don’t get the rules ahead of time, so that basically gives them 4 weeks of time to develop the rulesets/models/etc into the sim. It also gives plenty of time for teams to come up with their own designs such that they shouldn’t be influenced by the designs they see in the sim. Quite literally, they’ve had to code in ‘magic’ to the simulation robots to get their nuances to work properly in the PhysX engine. Unfortunately, that just doesn’t translate into the real world. Go figure :rolleyes: silly software guys get all the easy stuff.
Thanks a bunch, that info really helped.
I was up until 2:00 last night.
Thanks for all the hard work Blake. It’s awesome you guys do this for us.
David
Thank us when we finish, not before. 
and… You can sleep when you are dead.
Blake
PS: You are welcome
Ignore this post until you’re done. (I’ll be to busy playing 5th gear then to post)
Thanks a ton!
I’d like to thank Blake and the rest of the 5th Gear team for not releasing the software until after my first exams.
Folks,
In addition to doing Chris a favor ;), we had a few thing to iron out; but…
I am going to stick my neck out and say that the initial release is literally hours away (should be less than [Edit] 48 [/Edit]). We have it “built”, We are in the process of getting it onto/into a couple of download sites. Watch this thread for a link announcment.
If you are at the San Antonio or New Jersey Regionals LM folks are going to set up 5th Gear there.
I’m bracing my self for the inevitable flood of bug reports and requests for improvements - Go ahead and fire away once you have used it a little bit - First releases can always use improvement.
After a quick search in this thread, please post new bugs/requests here and David, Jim and I will get to them as soon as we can.
Blake
I see what you did there. Sneaky.
LM had our 5th Gear logomotion running all day Friday and will again be set up all day Saturday at the New Jersey regional. Stop by and be one of the first to try it out! (We also have some cool prizes too!) The San Antonio Regional should also have 5th Gear running Saturday.
As with any first release there are some issues to overcome but the 5th Gear team has done a great job getting this ready. Hopefully they’ll be comfortable with a public release soon so more people can try it out. I know many people asked today if they could get Logomotion yet.
As a side note… Blake I sent an e-mail (work address) out about half an hour ago with some of the issues we encountered today. No show stoppers thankfully.
Anyone have the link were I can get the 5th gear download? Sounds like it was working at the regionals.
We have submitted requests to have it posted on both the WPI Think Tank and a public-facing Lockheed Martin site. We are waiting for the admins at both locations to approve the requests and thereby let the public (you) begin downloading it.
Mr. Ross, do you know if they’re exhibiting the 5th Gear software at the Peachtree Regional again? We, over at CircuitRunners Robotics, have been the ones helping to set up and run the 5th Gear program for 2009 & 2010 at Peachtree with LM, but we haven’t heard anything from LM, GeorgiaFIRST, or Jim Rundquist.
With all the hectic fun of FRC build season, I can certainly understand if you haven’t heard anything directly from Jim, but fear not; he has been writing code for the simulator this year (feel free to ask him why he either created or didn’t already fix any bugs you find); and he has the Peachtree Regional in his sights.
So, “Yes”, at Peachtree 5th Gear will be available for fun and for challenging other teams/mascots to contests in its vritual world.
Blake
PS: THANK YOU Circuit Runners for all of your help at the World Championships that were hosted in Atlanta. That will be a tough act to follow now that the Worlds will be in St Louis.
I’m (not so) patiently awaiting this software’s release, hoping that we can use it for driver training before our regional this Thursday.
How long do you anticipate it will take to get approved on one of the two websites? If someone were to provide temporary public hosting for the file, would you be willing to pass it along? 
Folks,
Go here (WPI’s Think Tank pages) now for the initial 2011 5th Gear release: http://thinktank.wpi.edu/article/141
Once again - A BIG THANK YOU to WPI for their generous donation of downloading services that complement our LM download site.
Ignore the “2010” in the Think Tank page title (we need to change it from 2010 to 2011).
Please take notes on bugs you find, but also please give us a chance to post a list of known bugs (soon) before we fill this thread with duplicates. Once we put up our list, if you have more bugs/requests to add, then please do post them here. We expect a modest number of those reports. Like you guys & gals building the robots, we very nearly have to ship/release as soon as we finish coding and modeling; so our testing plans often get the short end of the stick…
Enjoy!
Blake
PS: If you want to tell us you like 5th Gear; or especially if your team thinks it is a useful strategy/planning tool, or is a useful practice tool for drivers, coaches, and/or scouts; you have my permission to post those messages any time - no need to wait!
I like 5th Gear and think it is a useful strategy/planning tool, as well as a useful practice tool for drivers, coaches, and/or scouts. 
Thanks for the hard work! There, I said it after it was done this time
Thanx,
David
Hey I installed 5th gear, installed the latest drivers and whenever I try to start a server, the game crashes and asks me to install the latest drivers and they are the latest.