ANTIC The Atari 8-bit Podcast ANTIC Interview 366 - Bruce Artwick: Flight Simulator II, Night Mission Pinball
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Sep 7, 2018 
Bruce Artwick, co-founder of SubLOGIC and mind behind Flight Simulator II, shares his journey from childhood aviation dreams to pioneering microcomputer graphics. He discusses his groundbreaking master's thesis on real-time 3D displays, the challenges of programming for 8-bit systems, and his partnership with Microsoft. Additionally, Bruce recounts the creation of Night Mission Pinball to rival Bill Budge and his current interests in tech and preserving software history. His insights will inspire fans of simulation and gaming alike.
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Origin Story Of Sublogic
- Bruce Artwick started Sublogic after publishing a 3-D graphics article and selling ready-made code on cassette and tapes at swap meets.
- He named the company 'Sublogic' after a multiplexer board project and sold graphics software for early S-100 and 6800 machines.
Thesis To Microcomputer Graphics
- Bruce's master's thesis on real-time 3-D flight displays at U of I seeded the techniques he later used in commercial flight simulators.
- He transitioned from PDP and Raytheon minis to hobby microcomputers and demonstrated 3-D transforms on early micros.
Memory Efficiency Beat New Algorithms
- Moving Flight Simulator to microcomputers required tight assembly and careful memory mapping rather than novel algorithms.
- Bruce squeezed 16-bit style math into 6502 code and drew detailed memory maps to fit the simulator into tiny RAM.