Andreas Jaros
I'm Andreas Jaros, 24 years old (born 1976) and a student of
mechanical engineering/aeronautics at the Munich Technical
University. I live close to Munich, Germany. My love for aviation
began very early, probably when I was one year old and made my first
trip to Japan (though I can't remember it!). Since then I became more
and more interested with every flight I made. I'm a flightsimmer
since 1994 when I got my first computer (486-DX2 at 66 MHz) and one
of my first programs was of course the Microsoft Flight Simulator
version 5.0. Since then I bought every new version of the Flightsim
when it was released.In 1997 I got my first modem and was impressed with the flightsim community on the Internet. It was a completely new experience to download so many exciting add-ons for free instead of buying expensive add-ons often of very low quality. I also downloaded several tools for panel designing and because I was not satisfied with the panels that were available I started to design panels myself and try to make everything as realistic as possible. The most fascinating place in an aircraft for me was always the flight deck with all the buttons, readouts and switches.
My first panel was an A310 panel for FSFW95 that had many downloads (you can still get it here) and was very successful and all the email I got was very motivating to make more panels. Soon I got to know some other great panel designer, Hiroyuki Toyohara and Konstantin Prokopiu. We helped each other in exchanging new ways, techniques and ideas for improving the design of panels and founded the Freeware Panel Designer Association (FPDA) that still exists at http://www.flightsimmers.net/fpda
Then FS98 and the great panel SDK were released and this allowed us to creat gauges we always dreamed of instead of hacking and hex editing existing gauges. It made everything much more realistic and much easier to do.
I started in 1998 my A320 panel where all gauges are completely new, programmed with many features like a much more realistic engine startup or realistic ECAM displays.
Meanwhile FS2000 became available and I released an FS2000 compatible version of my A320 panel. But I'm still working on the A320 panel. It will be a completely new programmed version that I try to make as realistic as possible. You are probably wondering why it takes so long till I finish something? Well, I like to make things as realistic as possible and this takes quite a lot of time and my real life with university is also quite busy so don't expect that I will release panels faster.
Probably some are wondering why I'm such an A320 enthusiast. Well, several years ago my favorite aircraft was the 747-400. But after my first flight with an Airbus, an A300-600 I began to like the Airbus aircraft more and more. And all the new features in the A320 with its fly-by-wire control and all other computer controlled systems fascinate me very much. It is a fantastic aircraft with many new ideas that help to make flying more safe and comfortable. This is why I decided to design the panel for the A320, it's now my favorite aircraft.
Andreas Jaros
jaros@bigfoot.de