Justin Tyme
lifelong love of aviation began sometime in 1956 before I could
walk too well. My father had obtained his PPL for about $200
three years before I was born and about half-way through my second
year I took off with him for the first time in the back seat of a
Piper Cub. There are many fond early memories of low-altitude
joyrides over the rural landscape of western Pennsylvania. Many
years later when he obtained his CFII and began flying for pay, I had
more opportunities to fly with him. I had always dreamt of
obtaining my own PPL, ideally with my Dad as my instructor, but the
cost and other factors prevented the dream from becoming reality and
Dad eventually retired from aviation.
The roots of FSGenesis extend back to the spring of 1994 when I scraped up enough money to rent a computer for three weeks. Mostly just tinkering around, but a trip to Wal Mart resulted in an impulse purchase of FS4, which provided many hours of fascination flying between Meigs Field and Champaign.
FSGenesis began during the spring of 1995 on an off-the-shelf 75 MHz Packard Bell computer. I had recently reentered Indiana University of Pennsylvania after a long hiatus from school and took part of my first financial aid check to buy a computer. About three weeks after that I got my first internet connection hooked up.
Naturally, my first Yahoo! search was for "flight simulator." I was astounded at the amount of flight-sim-related sites and began eagerly exploring. I soon found the IUP Flight-sim Mailing List and subscribed.
In the course of my explorations, I was disappointed at the lack of add-on scenery covering my home area, Pennsylvania. So I resolved to learn how to make my own. After a few fits and starts with BGLGEN, and with valuable help from Alfred Grech, I managed to create basic (very basic) renditions of our local Jimmy Stewart Airport and Ebensburg Airport, 20 NM to the east.
About this time the first version of Peter Jacobsen's SCBUILD (father of Abacus' Airport & Scenery Designer) was released. This first version didn't do airports very well, but it certainly simplified tiles, roads and rivers. The addition of Schiratti Commander's Scenery Maker enabled me to create some nice Western Pennsylvania mountains, and good ol' Airport 1x did the airports. Within four or five weeks after placing my first synthetic tile, I released my first scenery effort to the public. WPA09B.zip was surprisingly well-received by the simming public and encouragement inspired further development over the next several months. Two more full versions of Pennsylvania followed within the next year, as well as three versions of Delmarva, and West Virginia was released early in 1998..
In August 1997 I was voted by the the readers of FlightSim.Com as the World's Favorite Scenery Designer, an honor and responsibility I humbly accepted. Also, during this time I was recruited by Abacus Software as a tech support consultant for the newly-released Airport & Scenery Designer. I also undertook with Tim Dickens, later editor of Full Throttle magazine, my first commercial scenery project, Around the World, released by Abacus during the 1997 holidays.
By this time scenery designing was taking more and more of my time, so much so that I had little time left for schoolwork at IUP. It was becoming apparent that I would soon have to make a decision about whether or not to continue designing scenery. It was a choice between giving it up and getting a real job, or turning the hobby into a business. Over the next several weeks I mulled over the alternatives in my mind. My enjoyment of designing scenery and a sense of responsibility to the world-wide simming community eventually resulted in the decision to continue designing and become a commercial developer.
I announced my intentions during March of 1998 and the decision was generally well-received. I took the summer of 1998 off from classes at IUP to lay the groundwork for the business and begin work on PANJ98, FSGenesis' first commercial venture. PANJ98 was first released to the public on August 23rd and since then has enjoyed steady sales.
Future plans include other commercial scenery packages. Upstate New York is scheduled for a Spring 1999 release, Delmarva 99, during the summer of 1999, and Manhattan/Connecticut/Long Island during the Fall of 1999, as well as continued development of PANJ9x, and other commercial projects through SkyDesign in Germany.
FSGenesis would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone: the developers of the tools I use, my scenery teachers, students, and all the end users of FSGenesis products for their encouragement and continued support.
Justin Tyme
justin@fsgenesis.com