Jarrad, thank you for taking the time to speak to FlightSim.Com about your work. Your reputation as a prolific and talented scenery designer at Orbx is well known, so we are extremely grateful to you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk to us.

Jarrad, when and how did you start developing for Orbx?

I've been with ORBX since late 2007, when John Venema invited me to make some contributions to FTX AU Blue, the first ORBX product, modelling the cityscape of Perth. Prior to this, I had done a little bit of airport development with John via his enormously successful Vista Australis (VOZ) project for FS2004. My first fully-fledged project with ORBX was Jandakot Airport (YPJT) for AU Blue, which was released at the end of 2008.

Prior to joining the Orbx team, what experience did you have (if any) in scenery design?

I've been a scenery developer for (far) too long, having made my first feeble scenery attempts when FS2002 was the new kid on the flight sim block. Myself and a couple of other Perth guys formed a team called Westsim Design Group in 2002, with lofty visions of re-creating our entire home state of Western Australia. We released several freeware and limited payware sceneries for FS2002 and FS2004, most well-known of which was our freeware Jandakot airport, released in 2003. Our last major release in early 2006 - Murray Field for FS2004 - was actually designed to blend seamlessly with the aforementioned VOZ freeware project, and hence the start of my working relationship with John.

As part of the Orbx team, do you get to choose the airports you work on? And if so, how do you go about the selection process?

I am fortunate to have full autonomy in the selection process at ORBX. Given the huge amount of time and effort that will go into any scenery project, it is imperative that I choose an airport that I will enjoy developing - there is little use to move ahead on a project on financial motives alone as it's likely to result in either an under-par project or developer burn-out.

So that being said, there are several aspects that need to be considered during the selection process. Of course there are the logistical limitations - is there suitable GIS/orthoimagery available for the area, and is it possible to get airside photographs? But more important is the "interest factor" - will the airport and area be a drawcard for simmers, as well as being an interesting project to develop.

Airport size, location and surrounding terrain are all important, architecture (who wants to look at a generic box terminal?), unique features and unusual elements all contribute too. I prefer to make airports that are genuinely useable by as many types of simmers as possible - the sweet spot for me is a field that handles GA traffic, bizjets/helicopters and airliners.

What is outside the airport fence is of high importance to me, and just as important as the airport itself. As such, I try to include as many non-airport features as possible, in a large coverage area. The reason for this is two-fold; as a GA/low-and-slow flyer, it's great to explore the surrounding area in detail, and as a by-the-numbers procedural pilot, having full situational awareness for area departure and extended finals (not to mention the circuit area) is vital, so therefore having a highly detailed and accurate extended coverage area is crucial. Having specific areas in the coverage area is useful too - whether that be areas of higher detail (downtown, landmarks, etc.) or even specific landing areas (helipads, hospitals, additional minor airstrips, etc.), this creates further incentive to explore a scenery beyond the airport gate.

When it comes to orthoimagery, how do you work out how much area to include outside of the main airport? Is there a size limit to sceneries, or is it more of a time/work/performance factor?

The availability and cost of any orthophoto is always the first hurdle. Following this, I approach each project differently. Paramount in my mind is to provide an interesting area to explore outside of the airport - it's imperative that a scenery package includes something extra, aside from just the airport itself. This will vary with each product, and as a result the size of the coverage area will differ.

My two largest coverage areas are Jackson Hole and Palm Springs, primarily because they include such impressive geography around the airport. Because of this, I wanted to capture as much as was feasible. Usually I find specific reasons for choosing the boundaries of a scenery; it's never a case of making a large project "just for the heck of it". An interesting point of interest or landmark near the edge of a project (Morongo Casino and Indian Wells Tennis Center at Palm Springs, the I90 Canyon Bridge at Spokane, or the Laguna Seca Raceway at Monterey, for example), or fully capturing an important geographical feature such as the Teton Range at Jackson Hole or Bridger Mountains at Bozeman, will often help define the boundary line.

Of course this adds a great deal of extra work to a project, but to me it's important enough to spend the time and effort. As an example, I spent 65% of the development time for Palm Springs on content outside the airport boundary. As far as physical limitations go, the only limitation I consider is how well my computer will handle the large source files; with individual file sizes of up to 15GB, editing source geotiffs in Photoshop can get a little tricky at times!

With that size, I can imagine! What software do you use for development and what kind of system are you running?

Aside from running Photoshop CC, I basically keep to the stock tools of the trade: Max, GlobalMapper, the FSX/P3Dv2 SDK, a couple of in-house proprietary tools, and of course the wonderful suite of programs from Arno and the guys at FSdeveloper.

I run a fairly middle-of-the-road desktop by today's standards (i7-2600 @ 3.4 GHz / GTX760 / 16 Gb Ram); with this machine I manage to keep a very smooth FSX and P3Dv2 setup without going over the top. I think this is important as it helps when developing performance-friendly scenery to test it on an average system. I also have an excellent laptop for when I hit the road - the ASUS UX51Vz - which for its slimline size and weight (I wanted to avoid a bulky and heavy gaming laptop when travelling) easily handles all the developing tasks I throw at it. I made both Redding and Bozeman entirely on this machine.

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

I relish the chance to learn a new technique so as to get an aspect of a project "just right" - for example with Palm Springs I spent a day getting my head around a little-used module of 3DS Max in order to get the shape of a small part of the terminal roof to look more realistic. Modelling and texturing are definitely where the lion's share of effort goes into a project - but the flip side is that they are also the most enjoyable.

I find the menial, repetitive tasks the most challenging purely due to it being harder to stay focused. Autogen annotation is the bane of most developers' existence - I spent four weeks alone placing generic houses and trees at Palm Springs. The result was definitely worth it (an enormous area of color-matched photoreal with dense hand-placed buildings and vegetation), however it was a struggle to get it done.

Jarrad, how long does a typical project take to develop and which projects have been the most time consuming?

This can vary wildly, but in recent times I have tried to keep most projects within the 3-5 month development cycle. I've just released my fourth airport (KPSP) in a 14-month period; however the efficiency of this timeframe is primarily attributed to a fairly "lean-and-mean" development cycle.

Project management is key. Like all scenery developers, I have fallen victim to many of the common pitfalls of design work; feature-creep, pre-emptive show-and-tell and competing development priorities can often lead to lost time, so I've tried to be more disciplined in those regards as I move forward with each new airport. The longest and most arduous project I have worked on was one of my earliest; Cairns International took around 18 months to complete. I was learning new design techniques, and certainly added a large amount of "extras" to the project, and as such learnt a great deal on project management in the course of development.

Yes, I can imagine it's temping to keep on adding extra details (as you say feature-creep). With that said, how do you cater for the different levels of hardware that your sceneries will be used on?

At a baseline level, I endeavor to make scenery that is as performance-friendly as possible without compromising too much on detail. With each project, I write up a detailed "performance budget" to work within, and use this as a yardstick throughout the development cycle. That being said, every user's system is going to be different, just as every user's priorities such as weather, type of aircraft, AI level, scenery level and the likes will be different. This is where the ORBX control panel becomes important. It allows users to pick and choose different elements of any product to cater to their own system and preferences.

Jarrad, out of all the sceneries you have created, which ones are you most proud of?

A loaded question and my cop-out answer is "all of them", of course! But to be honest, I put a huge amount of work and passion into every scenery I do, and I hope that this is conveyed through the quality of the final product. I only choose projects that I have a keen interest in, it's very hard to work those late nights on an airport that holds little interest! As such there is a great satisfaction that comes with signing off at the end of each development cycle. That said, a few of my favorites include:

Palm Springs International (KPSP) - recently released, this had been on my wish list for a long time. A beautiful location that I've been lucky enough to visit several times in my travels. As well as the location, I really love the prominent mid-50s architecture. The outdoor terminal and air museum were great fun to make, and the enormous coverage area gave many opportunities to add plenty of "extras".

Broome International (YBRM) - One of my newer airports, this was a bit of a gamble as it was a return to an Australian project (of which the ORBX team had moved on from several years prior). Being a regular holiday haunt of mine, this airport was also a long-time wish list project so it was highly important to capture the atmosphere of this tropical holiday town. The color palette, flora and terminal architecture are very unique, and it was important to get these as close to reality as possible. I was very lucky to have access to some of the most amazing ground imagery both in quality and resolution, which also helped a lot. Lastly, the location is quite special (again!) - the airport splits the town in half, so arrivals are over a spectacular beach and mangrove swamp, and short final is over the very center of Broome (keep an eye out for the open-roof cinema).

Felts Field Spokane (KSFF) - the one non-airliner friendly airport I've made over the past three years. I had a great deal of fun with this busy GA field. The terminal is pure Art Deco, and the little extras like the working clock were fun to play with. I did get a bit side-tracked with this project though; given its downtown location, I decided to model most of the city of Spokane as well - the result being a great deal more custom skyscrapers, buildings and bridges than I was intending.

Cairns International (YBCS) - One of my earlier projects with ORBX, and the longest development cycle by far. Tropical rainforest meets Great Barrier Reef meets resort hotel mecca, Cairns was a massive undertaking purely just for all the "extras" that were included. 747s mix it with a busy GA scene, dozens of helicopters doing Reef scenic tours and even amphibians based out of the harbor, there are few airports in the world with such a busy and diverse traffic circuit. Add to the mix a wonderful final approach over the resort skyscrapers and marinas of downtown Cairns, a 1500 foot mountain smack-dab in the middle of the circuit, and crocodiles lurking in the airport drainage ditches, it's still an area I like to spend a fair bit of my simming time.

With all this said, if you asked me the same question tomorrow, I'd likely give you a totally different set of answers!

When creating scenery, are all objects custom made for that particular scenery, or are some objects shared with others?

I like to make the absolute majority of assets from scratch for each project.

One of ORBX's most prized assets is its enormous and high-quality library of 3D objects - essentially re-usable components that can be incorporated into any ORBX project. Whilst this is an enormous help, personally I try to create as much content from scratch for each new project, limiting ORBX library usage to time-intensive components such as animated people and static aircraft, amongst others.

As well as giving each airport its own unique flavor and avoiding the "cookie-cutter-syndrome", our customers have high expectations of our products (and rightly so), and as such I endeavor to put as much localized detail as I can into them. My aim is to capture the feel of a location as much as to create an accurate representation - this can be as obvious as ensuring that an airport follow-me truck has correct door signage (KMRY), down to more subtle examples such as locally-unique flora (Monterey Cypress) or custom hangar-wall montages (Palm Springs Air Museum).

The Orbx team includes so many talented developers, all of which have produced stunning work. As a team, do you ever find yourself competing with each other?

I certainly don't feel that amongst the team, in fact quite the opposite. The ability to bounce ideas off each other, share resources and methods, and generally foster creativity creates an excellent atmosphere to develop within. Whilst we all work in different corners of the globe (most working from our private studies or home offices), we do chat with each regularly both through formal and non-formal channels so as to share ideas.

Looking at all the products that Orbx have released over the years, which product would you say has been the most impressive or groundbreaking?

I'm sure my answer will disappoint some, but I'd prefer not to pick any particular product over another. The early years of ORBX produced some amazingly ground-breaking work; I'm sure many experienced readers will remember the impact that the original Australian regions and airports had on all of us when they were released. I have to also say that the past 18 months has been another golden era for ORBX. I am amazed at some of the recent work being done by my fellow developers both in the airport and region/global arenas. Keep an eye out for some very impressive things happening over the course of 2015!

Talking about the future, P3D continues to impress (with each new release adding additional features), so as a developer, what key features would you like to see implemented in future releases?

This is a question I get asked quite a bit actually. Lockheed Martin have been keenly listening to our feedback and requests for features, something that we have all been very grateful for. We have a couple of issues and features that LM are working on at the moment, but these are more of a back-end technical nature. In terms of key features, I'm very much looking forward to having 64-bit compatibility, as this will open the door towards implementing more details and features in my products. Aside from this, the ability to have a performance-friendly method to implement conditional models (such as seasonal components) would be brilliant.

Do you have any tips for budding scenery designers hoping to be the next 'new' recruit at Orbx?

It's an excellent time to get into scenery design. As a community we are very fortunate to have some wonderfully accessible resources such as Fsdeveloper to help upcoming developers. For those that are new, I'd recommend starting off with a small airfield. You'll be surprised at the variety of tools and methodology you'll need to sink your teeth into even for a tiny grass airstrip.

And for those with a little more experience that are hoping to join the ORBX team, fear not, all of us are keenly talent-spotting for the next up-and-comer. One of the biggest factors we are looking for is the ability to self-manage a project from start to finish. We see many talented designers but it's that ability to complete a project in a timely manner that sets a developer apart from the pack.

Jarrad, before we end the interview, what would you like people to know most about the work you create?

First and foremost, I am enormously grateful to everyone who supports our community and developers such as myself. Developing flightsim software is not particularly glamorous work, with many long (and late) hours put in to get a product ready for release. I put a lot of myself into each airport I develop, and as a long-time visitor to FlightSim.Com, it brings me a great deal of pleasure to see your readers enjoy the work I do.

Jarrad's Published Works for FSX:

• KPSP Palm Springs International (2014)
• KMRY Monterey Regional Airport (2014)
• KRDD Redding Municipal / O85 Benton Field (2014)
• KBZN Bozeman Yellowstone International (2013)
• YBRM Broome International Airport (2013)
• KSFF Felts Field Spokane (2012)
• KJAC Jackson Hole (2012)
• 74S Anacortes Airport (2011)
• YBCS Cairns International (2010)
• YPJT Jandakot Airport (2009)
• YCUN Cunderdin Airport (2009) (Freeware)
• YBLN Busselton Regional Airport (2008) (Freeware)

All products are available from Fullterrain.com.