I was just messing around with the code... I'm surprised I was able to accomplish this much (especially in so little time):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZO6UjdczWM

Sorry about awful framerate and quality... my PC is pretty awful.

http://gamedesign.mooo.com/flying.zip

Nice addon

Hey, this is really cool! The funny thing is that the animation makes it look like Dobbs is angling his arms out intentionally to swoop around the screen, hah.

Nice start!

Simon.
[Dr. Dobb's Journal publisher.]

Thanks! To be honest, this is my first "foray" into C++. I've had the fish book sitting next to me for almost a year... But yeah, I'm pretty good with Python (and I know a bit of Java) so transitioning is pretty easy.

I did notice the download I setup doesn't work. How do I distribute a program after I build it?

Your download does work, it just looks like you built with a newer DirectX SDK. I had to update my DX runtime for it to work.

To distribute C/C++ program there's a few simple rules:
1) Always ever distribute release builds
2) Check dependencies
You can use the Dependency Viewer from Microsoft to do this. It'll show a huge list of DLLs which are directly and indirectly needed. Look at the list in the lower half. Especially the msvc-something dlls. These are usually the culprit. These carry the runtime for Visual Studio.
With all newer versions it's not enough to simply put the DLLs inside your exe's folder. People will need to run the VCRedist setup files.
It's not half as difficult as it looks.
3) Of course if you use some 3rd party libraries you need to provide setups (or the DLLs if legally allowed along your .exe)