Development

When did you start developing for flight simulators?

A: When I got X-Plane v5.53 software back in the year 2000, I was thrilled by Plane-Maker. As a real-life pilot and aircraft performance and flight model analyst, it "spoke" familiar language to me: You build a complete aircraft, then you test-fly it in the simulation and compare its performance to real-life aerodynamic phenomenons. In 2010, after a decade of using and testing X-Plane, mapping its strong and weak points, I decided to dedicate a web site to experimental and prototypes aircraft for X-Plane flight sim, called it WWW.VSKYLABS.COM. VSKYLABS is Virtual Sky Labs. The first developing projects were the lifting bodies projects, with the approach, final and landing handling as the main focus.

How many designs have you done?

A: I have designed about 25 original projects, and until now shared 6 of them:

1. The UL-104 Ultralight bush plane prototype.
2. The PJSP-1 FireFly Valveless PulseJet engined sport plane.
3. The DFSP-1 Ultralight Ducted-Fan sport plane.
4. The BioFly, a testbed for CG and thrust vectoring configuration of a fly replica simulation.
5. The Ballistic Lander concept for Mars aerial exploration.
6. The Personal Lander concept for Mars.

In addition, about 15 more replicas of real-life and science fiction aerospace vehicles and cars.

What do you consider your best or most popular work?

A: Definition of "Best" or "Popular" depends on the users; As it says: "someone's garbage is someone's treasure". For example, the XB-70 Ducted-fan R/C model project was the most complicated and long-lasted project I have made, involving a lot of real life field-work experiments and dozens of simulator evaluation hours and "backstage" tuning of the flight model. It is a real treasure in my collection. When I developed this project I knew it's not going to be a popular one, because the lack of R/C models interest among the X-Plane community. Another example is one of my most popular project: The Gerry Anderson FireFlash (from the T.V. show "Thunder Birds"). It is a simple minimal freeware project, without any 3D cockpit or systems, and somewhat of poor appearance quality. I wrote a brief aerodynamic explanation of it (in a spoken language...), asking the question "is it a plausible design?". I got a lot of responses to this project, and it is the most downloadable project in my hangar. I consider the PJSP-1 FireFly (Pulse-jet sport plane prototype) as the "Best" project, that corporates complete aircraft design, high quality appearance, 3D cockpit and original features in its design (as the portable retractable landing gear aerodynamic tank, which I intend to build for real-world R/C models experiments).

What do you find to be the most challenging aspect of a project?

A: The most chalanging aspect of a project is determining its purpose and objectives. Project objectives, as narrow as they can be, will force you to do research and focus. Another challanging aspect of a project is adding it an extra value by "seeding" inspiration seeds in it. That's the reason why I like experimental prototype and research aircraft.

Example for following and focusing on a project purpose: When I developed the R/C Ferrari F40 and the Lamborghini LP500, the main purpose of the project was "Drifting". A lot of questions came up during the research: Can a ground vehicle in X-Plane drift? Will the drifting handling be accurate? Will it be the same on different scales and weights of cars? What are the limitations of Plane-Maker in this concept? And much more... On the development phase I realized that in order to get the "look and feel" of a controlled drift in X-Plane's environment, the car should be scaled down to about 40% in size and much more in weight, making it a large scale R/C car (full scale physics had a poor handling quality X-Plane environment). The drift was the objective, and the result was an addictive add-on in a form of a semi-scale car. Car size was not the objective. Addictive drifting was! Flight simulation environments are not real-life. There are lot's of "dead spots" in it. As a developer, you should know most of them. Sometimes, aircraft performance in the simulator is limited by the "dead spots", and the design will behave great on one side of the flight envelope, but really wrong on the other side of the flight envelope. In that case, project objectives are essential. For example, There is nothing wrong in designing a complete aircraft for landing simulation purpose only.

What software packages and tools do you use?

A: AC3D, Freeware software such as gimp and free sound editing software.

The Team

What other developers or teams have you worked with and what were their rolls? How many people work with you or your team?

A: One man's work (myself), with help of some of my colleagues (test pilots, R/C pilots, aeronautics engineers). External help is usually consulting flight characteristics qualities and aerodynamics phenomenons of the model.

Real Life

Do you have any experience, interest in real aviation?

A: Yes. I am a real world pilot with almost twenty years of experience including instruction. I have flown several types of airplanes including ultralights, general aviation and high performance jets. In addition, I'm deep into R/C model airplanes, with almost 30 years of experience, including scratch building and flying almost any kind of flying R/C form. In my actual work I am an aircraft performance and flight model analyst in a small research and consulting company.

Have you ever considered doing flight simulator development full-time?

A: Yes, I have. It will probably happen in the future. The quality and power of simulation tools nowadays is going to create an "egg/chicken" dilema for me: should I consider developing real-world aircraft?

Future

How do you choose your next new design or project?

A: Replica project is usually started with this:

1. Creating it to check the simulation environment for future developing purpose.
2. Creating it to learn about a unique aircraft design (like the FireFlash or the XF-85 Goblin).

Original project usually starts with:

1. Give my thoughts a "real" presentation.
2. Check its plausibility. (A little secret: if there's an original model of mine flying in X-Planes skies - It will eventually fly in some form in the real skies, starting as a R/C version of it).

What simulators do you design for now and what ones do you plan to develop for in the future?

A: X-Plane is the only design platform for me, for now. The reason is that I'm interested in flight model and aircraft performance, and X-Plane is the most flexible and reliable for this purpose. (It's not perfect but it's the most accurate in my experience to real-life performance).

In what ways do you see development changing in the future?

A: It seems that people are having a steep learning curve in the last couple of years. Designing complicated 3D animated models and complicated virtual cockpits is going to be a common ability among amateur developers (like me). Freeware projects quality is on the rise and I think it will affect the path of the payware projects. We will see companies moving the focus of their projects to professional/airliners simulations, rather than "small sized" projects as we saw a few years ago (for example: light and GA airplanes). Another territory which I think will grow bigger is scenery development. We saw a hyper-speed-process of visualization in Google; from sat imaging to street view in half a decade!. I thing that mass community behaviour and technological resources will give birth to a real evolving global scenery as a base environment in flight simulators in the future.

Your Thoughts

What can sites like FlightSim.Com do to support the hobby?

A: Aim for the most advanced enthusiasts, but do not forget the ones that are slower or old fasioned. Also connect the simulation aviation world with the real-life aviation world. By doing that you'll mark the hobby not only as a gaming hobby but also as a virtual aviation hobby.

What would you like people to know about you and your work?

A: I am planning to expend my X-Plane development to real-life world, build scaled down R/C models of the projects. The UL-104 Ultralight is on the drawing board, also the portable retractable landing gear aerodynamic tank that is a part of the FireFly. Many more original and replicas aircraft are on the way to VSKYLABS hangar.

JetManHuss