Development

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

SSG at its core has three founding members: Ricardo Bolognini, Carlos Garcia, and Stefan Keller. Stefan started about 4 years ago by taking an existing free aircraft which had been abandoned by its development team, and with their permission, started to enhance and build upon it. The aircraft in question was the 747-8 Intercontinental (or passenger model). At that point in time Boeing was still in the design process of the real aircraft, so Stefan became interested in modifying the aircraft to match what Boeing was doing. Boeing was to build the freighter version of the aircraft first, and as the design process evolved, more and more details emerged about the real aircraft. Therefore, Stefan was able to incorporate some of this information into his new X-Plane model. At the time, he was just tweaking the design thanks to the built-in tools that X-Plane came with. It never occurred to him that it would go any further than that.

Stefan has been flying desktop flight simulators in one form or another pretty much since their infancy back in the mid 1980s, but this was the first time that he was able to make his own aircraft designs. And, as a pilot in real life (since the 1990s), the most fun part of the process for him was to make adjustments to the aircraft and then test fly them to see if they had the intended results.

Ricardo started three years ago when he finally got his copy of X-Plane 9 (all the way from the U.S.). He had known about X-Plane since version 7, but he could never get a copy of it in his home country of Brazil. He had to satisfy himself with downloading the free demos. But when he was finally able to buy it from the U.S. and have it shipped, it took about a month for it to arrive at his home. After he installed it, he went to X-Plane.org, signed up and downloaded the EADT x737 (v3.8). To Ricardo, it was just simply amazing, but being Brazilian, he also wanted a good Embraer E-Jet because of his background and also because Ricardo just loves aviation. A Brazilian plane would have been nice, but he couldn't find any detailed ones, so he started one in Plane Maker and after about a month he had his own E-Jet models that he started sharing on the X-Plane.org site.

The community reaction to these initial projects was very satisfying, and that is how Stefan met Carlos, and eventually Ricardo. This was when we decided to pool our resources and skills together to form SSG and take things further than any member ever could individually.

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

Well, we at SSG are focused on airliners. We think they are popular because they are the most familiar aircraft to the flying public and they want to experience what they are like to fly in a deeper way by "flying" them in X-Plane. As for what we do, this has changed as our designs have become more sophisticated. Stefan is not a 3D artist, but he does do some of the 2D textures. He also provides direction and coordination, and works hard to obtain information for use with our projects. He also tries to bring his aviation background as a pilot and in airline operations (when needed) to the table, and our goal is to ensure that our designs are as realistic as possible. Stefan also writes the documentation for the aircraft.

What do you consider your best or most popular work?

We think the 747-8 is our most popular work. It is an iconic aircraft, so that's not really surprising. In terms of sophistication, our Embraer jets are more sophisticated than the 747, but that will change when our new 747-8 (now in development) is released.

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

Initially with the 747-8, Stefan found that the most challenging aspect of the design process was to find solid and reliable information. During the development stage of the real 747-8, it is only natural for Boeing not to release too much information on the aircraft for competitive reasons. Also, during this time, very few pilots were actually flying the aircraft, so there was not that much material available. This meant that we had to make a lot of assumptions and educated guesses. The other challenge we faced was how to make the airplane fly in a realistic manner. Stefan has limited experience in full motion flight simulators, so this was invaluable, as it allowed him to experience what a heavy jet "feels" like. We have tried to capture that as much as possible in our designs. Sometimes, designing aircraft in a simulator is more of an art than a science.

For Ricardo, the biggest challenge is to get the most systems working in the aircraft and for it to perform in the simulator as well as is possible. We want realistic behavior and proper flight dynamics characteristics for all our aircraft.

What have been your favorite projects?

For Stefan it is the 747-8. The 747 is his favorite aircraft so it has a special place in his heart. Therefore, attempting to bring a realistic adaptation of the aircraft to X-Plane has been very rewarding for him. For Ricardo it is also the 747-8 at the moment. The plane is consuming all of his best efforts, so as to implement our own unique system architecture. It is becoming (so far) the best aircraft we could ever have imagined producing.

What software packages and tools do you use to develop?

Stefan uses Plane Maker and Airfoil Maker - which come with X-Plane and for textures he uses Adobe Photoshop. Ricardo uses several applications, but we have added others as we needed them. Currently Ricardo uses Plane Maker, Airfoil Maker, AC3D for modeling and animation, Mac OS textEdit for coding, Adobe Photoshop CS2, Normal Mapper, SASL, Logic Audio 8 for audio and recently bmGlyph to convert fonts to a FNT bitmap font format.

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

For Stefan, Dr. Gary Hunter has been a huge help. He knows so much about X-Plane, and he has a keen scientific mind. His X-Plane designs fly beautifully and we feel privileged that he even answers our emails. Dan Klaue's series of Plane Maker tutorials he posted some time ago were very helpful to Stefan as well.

Ricardo's mentors are as mentioned before; Dr. Gary Hunter (the X-Plane wizard), Mr. Peter Hager, Mr. Michael Wilson, and Mr. Javier Rollon. We should note that we have reached out to many other developers in the X-Plane world for advice, and some have reached out to us as well. It is a really great community and we share advice and opinions quite freely, which is nice.

Do you develop payware/freeware or both and why?

Both. We started with freeware, partially because we were building on another team's work and also because we didn't have to worry about deadlines or keeping paying customers satisfied. We also wanted to give something back to the X-Plane community for all the great freeware add-ons that we enjoyed over the years. The move to payware was a difficult decision, but ultimately we all have lives and families and real jobs, so we had to justify the enormous amount of time and effort we devoted to SSG in some concrete way. It is also impossible to do some of the things we are planning to do in the future without some additional resources. For example, we have entered a partnership with VMAX to produce our upcoming 747-8 payware series, which will allow us to use official Boeing data to make our models as accurate as possible.

The Team

How many people work with you or your team?

Carlos, Stefan and Ricardo joined forces and founded SSG just over two years ago. However, we have other people who work with us and we consider them a part of the team as well. These include Bill Grabowski and George Garrido. Gary Hunter is an honorary member, of course. Tim Gleason and Sean Kelley are our technical advisors.

Carlos Garcia

Ricardo Bolognini

Stefan Keller

What do the various members of the team do?

Our principal designer is Ricardo. He has the 3D skills that make our advanced designs possible. He and Carlos are the performance gurus, and they fine-tune the flight model with a lot of flight testing and tweaking. Ricardo does most of the system programming, but Carlos is also quite knowledgeable in this area and he is always bringing new resources and ideas to the team on how to do certain things. Stefan helps where he can and calls upon many of his friends and colleagues in aviation when we need additional information or clarification. Carlos is also our ambassador in a way because he is well known in the community and seems to know everyone and every project!

Bill developed the 2D panel for the most recent 747-8 version, and he is an extremely skilled artist. George has made most of the repaints for the E-Jet series and will continue working on textures across projects. Gary keeps us on the right track and we go to him when we encounter obstacles and seek guidance. Tim and Sean are excellent technical advisors who know the real aircraft, which helps tremendously.

What other developers or teams have you worked with and what where their roles?)

We are happy to announce that we recently started a collaboration with Javier Cortes, the well-known developer of the UFMC for X-Plane (http://ufmc.eadt.eu). So he is helping us bring a fully integrated FMS to the 747-8, which will also drive the Navigation Display and will communicate with the automatic systems on the aircraft.

Real Life

Do any of the team have any experience with real aviation?

Yes - Stefan is a commercial, multiengine pilot and flight instructor. He also used to be a load controller for a European airline and worked in flight operations at that time. He currently works as an aviation consultant. Tim and Sean, of course, are professional pilots, and we are very fortunate to have them on the team. Carlos and Ricardo only have experience as passengers.

What started your interest in aviation?

For Stefan it was traveling at a young age. His father's career took the family all over the world and he spent a lot of time in planes and airports. There has always been something magical to him about aircraft, as they took him to see new worlds (and return to familiar places) in speed, safety, and comfort.

Have any of you had any memorable flights in real life?

Stefan flies a lot as a passenger these days, and as a pilot he has had quite a few special flights as well. He was a passenger during an approach into Tokyo a few months ago and the aircraft was hit by lightning, which was interesting to say the least. Another memorable flight was to Dubai when he saw huge oil flares at night over Iraq. Seeing the Northern Lights over Greenland from the cockpit of a 747-400 in which he was allowed to visit, was rather special too.

Ricardo's interest in aviation has been with him since he was young and he became an RC modeler and pilot. Around 1990 he started using Microsoft Flight Simulator, but had to stop using it when he changed to a Mac because of his job. That is why he later switched to X-Plane, as it's been available for the Mac from the beginning.

Carlos comes from a family of people who in one form or another have been involved in aviation. His grandfather was head of mechanics at Avianca during the 1960s and 70s. He also has many relatives that work as pilots with well-known airlines in the U.S. Like many others, he started with Microsoft Flight Simulator, but later became more interested in Formula One and NASCAR sims. Eventually, he returned to his passion for flight and this time he decided to try X-Plane 9.

Would you like to share what you all do in real life?

Stefan is an aviation consultant, so he gets to do interesting research and face challenging situations that he helps work through. He is also a Captain in the Civil Air Patrol, which is the volunteer auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force. CAP performs search and rescue flights and members also mentor young cadets in the program. So aviation is a huge part of his life at the moment.

Ricardo is a sound engineer by trade. He started very young in his brother's sound company and after taking a lot of courses he entered into the music world as a live sound mixing engineer and programmer for many Brazilian bands.

Carlos is a company administrator and at the moment he works for a company that distributes medical equipment in Colombia.

What other hobbies or things do you all do for enjoyment?

Stefan does some DJ-ing, and likes swimming, and travel. Ricardo plays the acoustic guitar, and he likes to make music. Carlos's hobby is to travel through his city on a bicycle and he also does some mountain biking. He also likes tinkering with electronics and mechanical things.

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

So far, we are able to do it only as a side activity, but we are always open to new possibilities.

Future

How do you choose your next new design or project?

The two biggest factors is whether we like the aircraft and also, is there enough available information on it so as to create an aircraft in X-Plane. Finally, for payware, we have to consider how much demand there would be for it.

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

So far it's only for X-Plane. We don't really see us developing for any other simulator anytime soon. As for the projects, we have a lot of them that are still in the research phase. With several aircraft on this list, we would like the next one to be a vintage turboprop, such as the Lockheed L-188 Electra. Ricardo is especially fascinated with implementing a well-known navigation system called LORAN for intercontinental flights and military uses in that aircraft.

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

X-Plane is in an interesting position right now. With Microsoft abandoning the desktop flight simulation field, and Prepar3D specifically avoiding the game/hobby sector, X-Plane is gradually becoming the only platform of its kind. Of course, that may change, but this situation has spawned a large number of new teams to start developing for X-Plane and led established developers from other simulators to bring their products to X-Plane as well. Time will tell what emerges, but it is certainly exciting to be where we are now.

Your Thoughts

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

In the past, X-Plane has suffered from the perception that it was somehow secondary or inferior to Microsoft Flight Simulator. We think Microsoft made great sims, but X-Plane is the only platform that is still growing and improving - Austin and his team are constantly working on enhancements to the program. For a while X-Plane lacked sophisticated add-ons like those which exist for the Microsoft sims, but that is changing as well. So we would say, keep telling simmers about what we are doing in the X-Plane world and encourage them to give us a second look. For one thing, we never understood the "all or nothing" approach. Many of us fly in FSX and FS2004 as well as X-Plane, and they all have things to like, so why not try X-Plane as well?

How do you feel about the future of flight simulation in general?

Home computers are becoming so fast and powerful, that it really opens up all kinds of possibilities. Between this and the internet and networking options that now exist, increased realism at a reasonable price is becoming more and more available to a larger population as time progresses. Also, aircraft themselves are becoming more computerized, so there seems to be a natural move towards integrating real world flying and flight simulation in a variety of ways.

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

We find that the biggest advantage of a site or community is the feedback. We get some good ideas from users, as they sometimes encounter things we never even considered. Also, it helps to humanize the developer. We are not some huge corporation out to take your hard-earned money. We are avid simmers just like you who decided to move behind the curtain, so to speak. So we treat all people like we would like to be treated, and we think it works both ways. Overall, it has been a wonderful experience and we have "met" some great people. We think sites like yours really help new users come to grips with what X-Plane can offer. Other users may be highly experienced in the sim but may not actually realize a particular application or add-on exists. So sites that include reviews are very important as they help make order out of chaos.

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

We try very hard to create the most realistic add-ons we can with the skills that we possess. We will even go looking outside of the team in order to implement the features that people want. Also, we all love flight simulation and aviation, and we hope that our enthusiasm and dedication shows in our products. Ultimately we make the add-ons that we ourselves would want to fly.

Supercritical Simulations Group
www.supercritical-simulations.com