Max Roodveldt
I've always been fascinated by flying--there was a small airfield
near the town where I grew up. As these things go the chance of
flying myself always eluded me, but that's life I guess.So when PC flight simulation arrived it was an opportunity not to be missed. I could even build my own world and planes when FS4 reached my shores. FS5 was even better; Flight Shop made for better planes too. But it really started to be fun with the release of the FS98 SDK in 1998.
Always a hobby programmer, it opened endless possibilities. Finally I could do my own instruments and what better ones to start with than metric substitutes for the instruments of the default Schweizer, because all my soaring books showed metric ASIs, AIs and VSIs, so my first release was a set of metric gauges: an airspeed indicator, an altitude indicator and a vertical airspeed indicator in kmh, km and m/s...
Klaus Leiber must have been one of the first to notice, and asked if it would be possible to do a photo-realistic panel for a DG-300. I said yes without hesitation--what did I know?
Other "customers" include Roland Stuck with his ASW-20 and Wolfgang Piper with his great collection of classic gliders before I finally found the courage to release some planes of my own. And the collection of planes is growing every few months.
Release of a Flight Viewer brought a flurry of related activities: a web site with races by Chris Gordan, a Tour de Suisse by Paul-Roger Torti and a lot of new projects to consider.
Virtual soaring has been a wonderful hobby so far and seeing the number of related sites grow--thanks to Kees Jansen and Len Wagner for starting that--clearly shows we haven't reached the summit yet.
If only more designers would join the fun...
Max Roodveldt
http://www.flightsimmers.net/fszwever/
Huizen, the Netherlands