Development

When did you start developing for flight simulators and what got you interested in it?

I first started developing for MSFS way back in 2001 when I did my first photoscenery experiments. Back then there were not as many photoreal sceneries as there are today, and I was totally fascinated by the idea of flying over real world terrain. I will never forget the wow effect when I loaded my first scenery into FS2004. I've been hooked ever since then. My good friend Joop, who I develop my sceneries with, started a year before me (2000) making scenery adjustments.

Tell us about the nature of your designs and what you do?

As mentioned, Joop is the other member of the team, and he creates all our airports. The airports are very important because most of the time the layout of the default airports don't match that of the real world, which causes double or misaligned runways. He also brings a little life to the otherwise empty default airports by placing all kinds of objects. This makes a huge difference as an airport should feel alive. Over the years Joop has made more than 1000 airports which if you think about it, is quite awesome and an amazing feat. Myself, I create the photosceneries and the elevation mesh.

What do you consider your best or most popular work?

That's hard to say. We think most of our sceneries covering large cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix or Salt Lake City are the most popular. However, sceneries covering scenic areas like the Canyonlands, Glacier or Grand Canyon and all our other National Parks are also very popular.

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

The most challenging aspect is to get the colors right. Most of the time the colors in the original aerial imagery are not correct and often there are abrupt changes. We try to eliminate all of that so as to achieve as smooth and realistic flying experience as possible. In areas with many lakes or coastal areas, defining water bodies is also a challenge. In this case, you have to define an alpha channel that matches the textures to a couple of pixels so as to make them look good and believable. With large waterbodies or coasts you also have to define a blend channel for a smooth transition to the default water.

Yes, a lot of photographic sceneries suffer from having textures of different shades, so how do you go about about fixing that?

As I already said, this is often the greatest challenge. We do not just pull the imagery and throw it into the resampler. Most of the time we do a lot of image processing to get colors, saturation, brightness and contrast right. Sometimes we do a whole area twice.

For Joop, large airports are a real challenge, as not only does he have to adjust all the runways, taxiways and buildings, but he also has to adjust the information so that the AI traffic behaves correctly.

What have been your favorite projects?

My personal favorite probably is the Canyonlands area, but I like all the national park sceneries we have created.

What software packages and tools do you use to develop?

Joop uses ADE165, developed by Jon Murchison (ScruffyDuck) to create his airport improvements. To minimize the impact on frame rates, he only uses default objects from the FS library. For myself, I use mostly Photoshop and programs from the FSX SDK. I also use a couple of small utility programs that I wrote myself and which aid me with my work.

Who would you consider to be your mentors or inspiration in the development world if you have any?

I think we would both agree that all the developers who provide great freeware or payware add-ons are an inspiration to us. Everything that makes our hobby more realistic (enhances our feeling of flying) is always a positive and should be congratulated. Then there are the forums, full of generous people sharing their information and expertise. Without this community there would be far less add-ons and realism in FS.

Gottfried, do you develop payware/freeware sceneries or both?

Joop and I develop only freeware because it is our hobby and we would like it to stay that way. We don't want our hobby to become stressful and commercial. Furthermore, providing freeware gives us the widest audience possible.

The Team

Is the team just yourself and Joop, or are there any other members you work with?

No, as you stated in your question, it's just Joop and myself.

Have you worked with any other teams in the flight simming world?

No, but Joop is also a member of the NL2000 team where he creates their airports too. As well as this, he also provided airports for Spanish, Italian and Hawaiian scenery projects.

Real Life

Do you have any experience in real aviation?

Unfortunately my only experience with real aviation is as a passenger, but Joop has had lessons in both a Cessna and an ultralight.

What started your interest in aviation?

From my first flight as a passenger at the age of 12 I have been fascinated by flight. Think about it; what could possibly be better than soaring high above the ground and seeing everything far far below? Joop's interest with aviation started when he was bitten by the MSFS bug back in 1995. This was when FS5.1 was soaring high!

Gottfried, do you and Joop have any memorable flights in real life?

Some time back, I took a helicopter flight (Robinson R22) in San Diego, with just the pilot and myself. What I remember most, is that flying in such a small helicopter is totally different from flying in a big jet. You are so close to the ground and "feel" the thing flying by the seat of your pants. During this flight, we overflew the airport twice and below I could see all the big jets landing and departing. That was an experience I will never forget. For Joop, his most memorable flight was in a TECNAM ultralight in the northern part of Holland and again, is something he will never forget.

Future

How do you choose your next new design or project?

Currently we are working on expanding our Idaho coverage. Idaho has some extremely beautiful mountain terrain like the Sawtooth area, so we are really looking forward to that. However, we won't say any more about this, as we want to keep a little surprise for you!

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

We develop only for FSX and P3D and have no current plans to change that.

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

We both hope that future flight simulators remain open so that everyone who wants to, can provide content to enhance its appeal. There is always the danger of closed systems where only payware exists, and that would be a very bad thing for our community. Joop and I agree, that Lockheed Martin is doing a really great job on improving P3D and we both very much hope that they are successful with their product.

The future of P3D does look very promising. What features would you like to see included in possible P3D releases?

Mostly improvements on the flight model. Although I have no real world flight experience myself, I have sometimes read what real world pilots have said. Because of this, I think there is great potential for improvement, especially in regards to helicopters and aerobatic aircraft, or where an aircraft is performing at the edge of its flight envelope.

We could also use a multiplayer weather model where everyone experiences the same weather environment. This would be cool for multiplayer flying: "request 20 degrees right turn to avoid..."

I forgot to mention, that I sometimes fly on VATSIM and enjoy all kinds of scenarios; IFR with jets, VFR with light aircraft and helicopters or a fast leap with a military jet.

Your Thoughts

What can sites like FlighSim.Com do to support you and the hobby better?

Sites like FlightSim.com do a great job. It is a great place for coming together, getting all kinds of information and spreading freeware. Currently I really have no idea what you or similar sites could do better. Talking of support, we would really like to take this opportunity to thank all the generous people who support our project or provide download bandwidth (which is never free). Without them we would not be able to deliver terrabytes of scenery each month.

Gottfried, how do you and Joop feel about the future of flight simulation in general?

I think the answer from both of us would be generally positive. We hope that enough young people stay/get interested in flight simming so as to appreciate the differences between the rich world of flight simulation and flying games. We also hope that the flight simulator user-base continues to grow so that it can be developed further, and to provide us with even more realism.

What are some of the most important things a site or community can do to help developers such as yourself?

We think the most important thing is that they enable us to keep in contact with our users by collecting comments and wishes, and keeping us informed.

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

What we would like people to know about us, is that we get great satisfaction and fun creating sceneries for others to enjoy. As long as we continue to have fun, we will make new sceneries. There is so much great landscape out there, and we have so little time to cover it all.

All the best.

Gottfried and Joop!
BlusSkyScenery: http://www.blueskyscenery.com
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