Frank told us that he started off his career writing Macintosh shareware. Frank spent three years at Sierra On-Line in Oakhurst, California, where he worked on over a dozen game titles -- most recently Middle-Earth and Quest for Glory V. Having moved back to his native Massachusetts, he's reponsible for all of the terrain and 3D model rendering in Flight Unlimited III, along with Flight 3's editor "FLED", the algorithms that define its outer terrain areas, and its challenges subsystem.

Kevin Wasserman

I approached Kevin very carefully. He turned and smiled so I edged a little closer. When he spoke I felt a lot better cause I knew I wasn't dragging him out of deep thought and massive equations. Kevin is the Physics programmer for all the aircraft flight models. I don't know if the hula girl on the top of the monitor has anything to do with it, but the note pad to the left of his keyboard certainly did. It was covered with all sorts of equations from Calculus to Trig. I didn't even want to ask. I must have looked extremely confused because Kevin jumped right in and started explaining the floating aircraft on his screen with the bobbing lines. Immediately I caught on and got very excited.

Flight Models

Kevin's editor allows you to watch the forces on every part of the aircraft. Pitch, Yaw, Roll and Drag all being represented real time as the aircraft moved through the air real time. Sometimes green lines, and sometimes red each indicating some vector of force. The text you see sprayed across the screen on the left gave Kevin numerical feedback on what was happening with the aircraft. It was extremely exciting to watch and it gave Nels and I real insight on how the team can create such realistic models.

Pat McElhatton

Pat is the lead programmer for the group. Therefore he gets to put it all together and make it work. This is the guy that makes the builds happen. And the builds are what brings each new revision to life. I would say this guy is pretty important considering all the source code goes through him. We talked for a while, but I was left pretty much speechless when I looked at his two monitors. It meant nothing to me ... What can I say. You can tell he is extremely smart, just look at that smile.

Bill Farquhar

As we where leaving I asked Nels, "hey, how do you pronounce that guy's name that did the raindrops?". Nels replied with "which one was that?" I answered with "The one with that dead human skull on his desk." Then Nels let out a low pitch response "Ohhhhh, that one!". Well it seems Bill is the programmer for the weather system and sky rendering, in fact he is famous for inventing the raindrops. We had a great talk with Bill and from what we could tell he didn't have his head in the clouds! Just think if he could get a patent on those rain drops than it could never rain again without his permission.

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