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Interview With William Ortis About William Ortis When did you first get interested in aviation and do you or people in your family have any real world aviation experience or memorable experiences? Since being a child, kindergarten, dad was taking me up in his planes on early Sunday mornings. We as a family also went to 'fly-ins' and dad sometimes competed in contests. He was a member of the local EAA in San Diego back then in the late 1960's. Tell us about some of your favorite real world aircraft and what it is you like about them? The classics have always pulled me in as well as the concept planes of tomorrow. On classics, I loved how they tried to make things modern 'way back then' and seeing how they did it intrigues me. They were trying to figure out how to make aircraft back then. Some amazing stories of manufacturing, such as with Bellanca, early Cessna, Fairchild. Who do you consider your mentors in the flight simulation development world and why? Bill Lyons - a master and craftsman and he taught me about kindness. The owner of Carenado - he has done well with them and now has Alabeo as well. My dream has been to speed up production and make my planes incredibly real, and his assembly time and realism is way up there. I admire that. Development When did you first start developing for flight simulators and tell us about how you started? Man, I think it was like in FS2002. FS started carrying Gmax and I thought I could make some of my concept planes in FS, so I started then. I did a futuristic four seater turboprop. I think it's still on the major download sites. [Editors Note: Some of the earliest aircraft we have for Bill were for FS2002 in 2003. Great aircraft like the Pilatus Visage high speed turboprop, Fairchild 24R, Voight V-173 Prototype Fighter, Stargate Goa'uld Death Glider 2, Death Glider Kah 2, Jabiru B, Seruphum Delta Wing Concept Aircraft and Seruphum Jet version and Quad Dleta Wing, Falcon Twin Jet Concept Helo, Sport Blimp, Wasp Personal VTOL Concept Craft, Disco Vollante STOL Concept, and many more.] How many designs have you done? I am afraid I do not know. There are countless planes on the hard drives that I have never finished. Lots of concept planes, some production planes, etc. So many aircraft... sigh. [Editors Note: currently 193 files show up on FlightSim.Com when you search Lionheart]. Do you have a team and if so how many people work with you and what are their roles? I have a small team. Dwight does instrumentation that I cannot do. When we are stumped, we go to the great guru Bill Leaming. I have a master model maker, John MacNeil, and an excellent air files maker, Wayne Tudor. I am looking forward to a world class model maker and painter that is known for his 3D artwork, Ronnie from the Netherlands. How did your Mooney Acclaim end up being included in Prepar3D as a default aircraft? I offered to make a new version of their old Mooney Bravo for free. They couldn't afford to pay me, and I thought they needed a new one, so I offered to make it. I learned a lot about Mooneys and the newest model Acclaim. I never dreamed there were so many and that they were that fast now. What do you find different about developing for Prepar3D than developing for FS2004 and FSX? Well, in P3D, planes do not need materials, like back in the FS2004 days. You can have untextured parts (prototypes) in the sim running fine, where in FSX, they are black and tend to mis-locate in the sim during a flight. Also P3D tends to run code that might have a slight error that FSX just cannot run. P3D is like a designer's dream as a sim platform to design for. What software packages, tools or utilities do you use during your development? For years, I used Gmax and Photoshop 6 (very ancient). I just recently moved up to 3DS Max and Photoshop CS6. These are expensive and it has taken me this long to save up to get them. I highly recommend Gmax for starting out with, and when you get the money and understand how Gmax works, 'then' move up to Max. I also use FS Panel Studio, every now and then FS Sound Studio, and the incredible, freeware Audacity. What do you find to be the most challenging aspect of a project and why? Learning about the plane. I love aircraft (vehicles for that matter) and so I get to learn a lot about these fantastic machines. Digging for pictures of how the rudder pedals look, door seams, performance aspects, how they handle. It's great... It's like a dream job. In what ways do you see development changing in the future? Super detailed aircraft. Right now, some of us are up to half of a million polygons. It's massive. The detail race is moderate. Right now, the compilers cannot keep up with us. Prepar3D Team are redoing their compiler for instance right as I write this, so that it can create compilers that can hopefully make one million polygon model exports. I also hope to see other 3D design engines making exporters for P3D and FSX, such as Blender, Lightwave, etc. Actual aircraft design engineers tend to use Rhino 3D, so it would be nice to see them able to compiler FSX / P3D planes also. What made you decide to start developing for Prepar3D? I was about to quit making planes for FSX. I was tired of the glitches, blinks, hickups, pink runways, pauses, hiding clouds, and black hole collapsing black parts syndromes of FSX. I was so so so tired of its problems. The SDK wasn't the best either with a lot of issues in that. I was going to go back to FS2004 only and see also about making planes for X-Plane when someone said that Prepar3D had lowered their prices and had a trial version I could try for $10.00. I tried it and FELL IN LOVE! No glitches or blinkies, no pausing and crashing, it just ran. It ran and it ran good. I was in from that time forward. Products Did you always use the name Lionheart Creations and how did you come up with it? Lionheart Creations was the name of my design firm years and years ago. It was to be an industrial design firm that specialized in vehicle design (cars). When I was at Land Rover Engineering, I started to push my little firm as our company was bought out a couple of times. When I got into payware for FS, I naturally used my old business name. Lionheart came from Kate Bush, one of her songs. I loved it. We know you do both payware and freeware, do you plan to always support both? Yes. Presently I am trying to find ways to speed up production. I want to offer 'rapid prototyping services' to industrial clients and manufacturers that need concept planes for in-house use. I also need to speed up production on planes for LHC, so I am building a team that can do that, increasing production times. Then, when I am up to par on speeds of kicking out designs, I can also get back into some freeware. What things do you feel make your designs stand out or at least makes them unique? Details and gizmo add-ons. For instance, the Pasped Skylark has a cool antique looking manual and a popup hand flight pattern calculator. The latest Piper Pacer collection has an optional modernistic hyped up bush plane version like you would find running the canyons of Alaska today. I like to add 'things' that bring a sim pilot into that era, things that were used in the old days for that type of aircraft. I also like to make the paint kits so that you can change 'everything', including the pilots shirts, hair color, etc. I want my planes to be able to be totally changed as to how a person 'wants' them, totally personalized, like how I like to do my planes that I buy from other teams. (I go in and change airspeeds, change out color schemes, redo the interior, etc, until I like it). What do you feel are your most popular products and what do you think has made them so popular? The Quest Kodiak is the 'peoples choice'. They really cling to that bird. The history of the Kodiak is also very cool. The futuristic bush plane of tomorrow, 'today'. Built like a tank. The second is the beautiful Epic LT turboprop, loved for its sleek lines and performance; a super lightweight carbon fiber airshell with the massively powerful PT6-67A turbine powerplant. It's more like an air racer then a small biz plane. How do you choose your next design or project? Well, it was by what I like most, but lately it's by what is in the assembly line queue. I have several in production and the one that is closest to being finished will be finished. But selecting a plane is up to me and what I like. If I do not like it, I will not build it. I have had offers even by manufacturers and I declined (politely). It takes so long to make these things and why not make it fun instead of a job of misery. How many aircraft do you have on your drawing board and can you talk about any of them? Well, some I want to keep quiet on. About a dozen. I added a plane to the list the other night. To tell you what I am doing next, the Fairchild 24 and the very futuristic Panthera. I am working with the factory on the Panthera. Its mesh is being built by John, while I am working on the Fairchild. I have several others as well but I'll keep quiet on those. If someone was to ask you the difference between flying in FS2004, FSX or Prepar3D, what things would you point out? My first love, from beginning to end, was FS2004. I was a 'Niner' (FS9) freak for a very long time, up till a few months ago. I never could get into FSX. It was rough on me. P3D was like a mix of FS2004 and FSX, like 'what FSX should have been like'. Mind you, and I tell people this, P3D doesn't have some of the things that FSX has, like active weather, a startup selection center, and a large handful of planes. P3D starts up right into a flight, and doesn't have a large selection of planes. What you get when you purchase Prepar3D is a platform, Earth, and its airports. You can then deck it out like you would FSX. You are purchasing a new 'sim code platform'. That's what you are buying. And... If FSX is running fine for you, you might as well stay there. I happen to love the glitchless performance of P3D. Pick out four of your most favorite aircraft, you've designed and tell us what it is you like most about them and why? Ack! This is a hard one. Epic LT; the shape and learning to make gauges. Epic Victory jet; the shape and how fun they are to repaint; and the interior. What a jewel... Wittman Tailwind; Basic and lightweight, super fast performance, like a 1950's hotrod. Pacer Package; I can get into a classic restored version, or a modernized bush model or a beat up, scratched up, muddied up baby that needs some TLC badly and take off into the mountains. Tell us more about your aircraft donation program and how it works? I had thought I had taken that off of my web site. Some people will tragically get rid of an old plane in a hangar or tarmac tie down, junking it instead of finding an owner for it. Being able to find planes that look abandoned and see if their owners want to get rid of them is quite difficult these days with airports not allowing people on the tarmac to check out planes, etc. So I offered a program for people to donate planes that they wanted removed, planes that they just didn't want to sell, wanted to get rid of, to the point of selling them to a junkyard who would turn such a plane into parts. I hate that. So that's what it was about. It never 'took off', pardon the pun. Its sad to see a Fairchild Metroliner 4, or Fairchild 119, or Lear 23 or Cessna 120 or Bellanca 240 going to a boneyard. Makes me sick. Future How do you feel about the future of flight simulation in general? Awesome! It could be the next gaming avenue once again. I tried to get into the sim world myself, creating a sim for Mars, another for the Star Wars saga where you could go from planet to planet, purchasing the next planet that comes out, using hyper drives to go from each world, and each world being super extremely detailed, where you could walk around, have a house structure, drive a hover car to the next town, etc. Outerra are making a sim platform that is incredibly stable and smooth running. It can be used for such 'adventure' platforms and themes. When Prepar3D goes to 64 bits, my thoughts are that it will become liquid smooth in performace and will suddenly take a major interest in the market. 32 bits has been the killer. 64 should knock down the barriers and make things right and bring us into the future of what we can 'now' do in the sim worlds that such platforms enable us to build on. What can sites like FlightSim.Com do to support you and the hobby better? FlightSim.Com has always become a top of the line site. Their search engine is second to none, they have a great library of add-ons. Nothing comes to mind for improvement. What are some of the most important things a site or community can do to help the developers? Lower advertizing costs could help us out. The more planes we sell, the more we can afford such as food, gas, 3DS Max, computer equipment, hiring on team mates. Piracy has sought to destroy us but honest people and good web sites like FlightSim.Com have helped us out by keeping the piracy down as much as possible. What would you like people to know about you, your work or products that we have not covered? It's all about flight... flying... the joy of flight. Exploring the countryside in a plane of your choice, rainy day or clear, night or noon, it's about flying and having fun. Practicing for a license or keeping fresh on your techniques and navigation. That's what it's about... I would also like to say that the Lockheed Martin 'Prepar3D' is a 'flight training simulator.' FSX is not meant to be for this avenue. So if you are serious about flying, I suggest P3D. William Ortis Lionheart Creations Ltd. Download William Ortis files