My name is Rachael, though, you may know me better as AvAngel, a Youtube Content Creator producing videos within the genre of flight simulation. Over the past eighteen months, I've reviewed a lot of aircraft and add-ons that have come to this fledgling new simulator, including the Zenith 701 STOL and the Daher Kodiak 100 produced by Simworks Studios. Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with Alex Vletsas, the Director of the studio for an in-depth conversation about developing aircraft for a sim that seems to be evolving as fast as we can keep up.

Rachael: "A personal question to begin with Alex; tell me about your journey into the world of flight simulation and how you ended up leading a development team?"

Alex: "For Flight Simming, and aviation in particular, I had always liked airplanes since I was a child of nine or ten years old. Initially, I was split between bulldozers and aircraft but eventually aircraft won me over, and when I got my first computer, I got my first flight simulators; Flight Simulator 98, and Jane's U.S. Navy Fighters back in 1996.

With development, I started at age 12 working on modifications for Half-Life and Unreal and later, in the early-2000s when I was at university, I started working with Project Airbus where I had auditioned for the position of cockpit modeler with them in Flight Simulator 2004. I went on to build their A380 cockpit and later their A330 cockpit - the latter was never released.

In 2011, I started working on the F4 Phantom which was initially intended to be a freeware release but became so complex it evolved into a payware product. This ended up being our first product for Simworks Studios which we founded officially in late-2015 and released as open beta early 2016.

Simworks was a part-time venture at first but after a few years it became so successful that I had to decide if I wanted to continue with it or my other job, and in the end, this whole world became my full-time job. There are now three of us that have a stake at SWS and we work with 7 and 15 people, some full time while others are contractors. To mention a few, Jamal Ingram, who did the model of our T-37 and exterior of the Phantom, Matt Wynn, an excellent texture artist and master-scrutiniser, Paul Frimston and Pam Booker for their flight dynamics expertise, Kevin Miller who did the Zenith 701 3D model and textures and who is actively working on our current projects. There are many more people that we have worked with and still are on the team, all exhibiting a passion for quality and respect for what they want to deliver.

Rachael: "Quite the history, that leads me on to my second question for you: How has this simulator been to work with in comparison to legacy simulators?"

Alex: "The modeling and artistic processes are much improved, and production times once we pass the initial hindrances are much faster and we can squeeze in a lot of visual detail very easily. The biggest benefit is systems modeling; with FSX and P3D (Prepar3D) we had to build a lot of the systems using XML or C++ coding. The new sim contains a lot of these as modular systems. For example, electrical and fuel systems; things we were planning to create in-house with P3D, Asobo [Studio] just served us on a platter.

There are things MSFS does badly too, though the flight model is lacking parameters to fine-tune the aircraft and this results in planes that fly okay but lack the fine nuances we could achieve in P3D. I'd say it is like wanting to carve a statue out of a tree but all you have is a saw. No files, no sandpaper. Add to it that the platform is unstable, as sim updates break features, tools, change specifications or just change entire parts of the aerodynamics, forcing us to redo the flight model or code. It's not a development environment where one can say, we will start a project in January and have it out in June. A sim update will derail things and this is because these areas of the simulator are not being improved but were incomplete to begin with. We've learned to live with it, but we don't like it."

Rachael: "You mentioned modular integration, is this worth the disruption that change brings rather than having to make a lot of these systems yourself? Is the omelet worth breaking the eggs?"

Alex: "The new systems are great, I'd rather use these than make them on my own and I hope they bring more of it to the table. Now, is it worth the disruptions mentioned above? I will just say that it could have been done in a better way and leave it at that. The end result from some of these changes is that we will end up with a very robust development framework, making some aspects of plane-making very accessible to everyone. Until then, we have a maintenance nightmare in our hands.

What we do like though is that the new sim refreshed the market. It's honestly great for the sales side, I won't lie... but it also has brought a lot of new talent to the development side. With P3D we were struggling to find developers to help us as people were practically retired from the hobby. We now have a boom of freeware aircraft, scenery, mods for the default aircraft; it's creating a whole new generation of talent to help the community and developers grow."

Rachael: "The Kodiak release generated more interest than has been seen in a long time. Were there web difficulties or did you expect demand to be as high as it was?"

Alex: "No, not really, we knew it would be popular but we didn't expect it to be as big as it was. The Zenith 701 for example was manageable, the Okavango Delta generated almost four times the traffic and we lost the server for a day so when it came to the Kodiak we thought, well how far down can it drag us? We decided, in the end, to budget for double the traffic of Okavango to protect ourselves. The release came and we found ourselves without a server for three days, you can imagine that we were very surprised. It turns out we had 10 times the traffic of Okavango, and we honestly couldn't have expected that! We tried to go way above what we expected and we couldn't meet the demand."

Rachael: "It's incredibly exciting to see that sort of attention within the sim, and the Kodiak in particular is considered an example of the gold standard so far for the platform. How do you as a developer approach the various roadblocks presented by the sim and the accuracy of your aircraft in terms of access to data, sound engineering, and dynamics accuracy?"

Alex: "That's a good example... When we first decided to go for it with the Kodiak, I contacted Daher and they were happy to provide factory data, pilot information and such, which allowed us to really start in earnest on the project. The level of realism we wanted to go for was something accessible to most sim pilots, accurate, but also not a high fidelity study level model as honestly, the sim could not handle it at the time and still can't in some respects. Our goal was to hit the sweet spot between a default plane, and the sort of release someone might expect from the guys at PMDG, but always with proper flight handling.

From a graphics standpoint, before starting work we did a lot of research and experimentation with the graphical tools of MSFS. We knew where we wanted to go with it, but it was a learning process. Every now and then we spotted something wrong and corrected it. Sometimes, the problem was subtle but serious, so we had to put in a lot of work to iron it out. We spent six months fixing the exterior model to be up to snuff for release, as it wasn't easily paintable. Add to that the experimentation that was ongoing during its development.

When it comes to the sound side of the sim and Wwise in particular, it's something we tried to initially play with ourselves but found that there were far more capable people than us in that specialty. I reached out to Mike at Sim Acoustics who came onboard to help with the sounds for both this, and the updated sounds for the Zenith. He's a very talented guy and was able to access an aircraft in Germany from which he was able to record every sound, inside and outside, putting together a really comprehensive sound package and even got us footage of things we needed on the modeling side."

Rachael: "On the point of sim updates, we often hear how tricky things can be with Asobo [Studio] in terms of communication with and forewarning developers. What is your experience of keeping ahead of the curve with active development?"

Alex: "Asobo [Studios] are very open to suggestions, though I found it best if you come to them with both a problem and a possible solution; say, a physics paper, article, or hard facts on how something should be done or work. That usually gets their attention and you make their life easier in the process.

Personally, I've had suggestions that fell flat but also ones that were implemented very fast as I learned how to give suggestions with data at hand. Third-party developers are a high priority as we help to push their product further but, at the end of the day, they work for Microsoft, and will always have to listen to them first and foremost... that is what pays their salaries. It's a tough balance for them."

Rachael: "You've publicly announced the RV-14 and Dash-7 projects, tell me about these if you can?"

Alex: "The RV-14 is a project we picked up in September, along with the RV-10, 8, and 7 models. As an aircraft, the RV family are fun but far simpler than the complex turboprops like the Kodiak and PC-12. We want to build a package that has a flatter learning curve to get into, but allows for accurate flight and operations with more advanced systems to dive into compared to, say, the default Extra 300.

The Dash-7 is not our plane, actually, but a contract we're doing for PILOT'S GesmbH (Company), though it's mostly developed by us. It actually started late in the P3D 4.5 days and was announced. Soon after came P3Dv5 and MSFS' announcement which took the market by storm. The customer eventually decided to do it for the new sim. I can tell you that it's going to be a good product, fly and look as good as we can make it, while being accessible to all users. Unfortunately I cannot say more about this,"

Rachael: "To add onto that, you announced this week that the RV-14 will support the TDS Garmin 750. Add-on avionics are a growing topic with simmers calling for native integration of x or y, how did you decide to go with TDS, and what does this mean for systems like the PMS50?"

Alex: "For the RV, we decided to give people the choice of both PMS50 or the TDS Garmin units, in fact the free version of the PMS50 is built in; if you have their payware version it will work out of the box, so the option is for the TDS unit as a supported extra in this case with a mod.

Overall, they're two different systems as the TDS model simulates the GTN750NXi while the PMS50 models the older GTN 750 model. The biggest difference is Navigraph integration in PMS and TDS with Garmin's databases. We wanted to give people options for both to allow for choice, but supporting mods is a tricky thing for a developer as relying on a given system that may end its support or break can be troublesome so we must be careful. The Working Title G1000 NXi for the Kodiak was not an automatic decision for example, we needed to see their support level and progress and future plans before we relied on it with integration support to ensure our product wasn't left high and dry if it broke after a sim update which can happen to anything not built into the sim at a core level."

Rachael: "What can you tell me publicly about future plans for SWS, any hints?"

Alex: "Oh many hints! We have our hands full with the Dash-7, the Floatiak [sic], the RV-14, and the PC-12 down the line, intended for Summer... depending on how fast avionics development proceeds. This year we want to do the RV-10. We do have two planes that are wildcards that are unannounced, one, is a piston aircraft, and we're working on it currently. Another is a twin turboprop that we're currently researching. That's as much as I can say!

As far as turboprops go, they seem to be a hot thing for us and MSFS simulates them far better than older sims. The Kodiak is a testbed for us in developing aircraft both at the engine and avionics levels. We're looking into features like hot starts and engine overstress, and this will come to the Kodiak and future aircraft we produce, so we hope to really push the bounds of what we can do with the simulator. The important thing for us is to make sure the new guy to the sim isn't put off when he torches the front of his plane, but we also want to satisfy those with the desire for more."

Listening to Alex talk was illuminating; his insight into working with Asobo and the evolving state of development leaves me hopeful for the future of the simulator. The modular nature leaves far better potential for advanced aircraft down the line, and while now, things might seem occasionally bleak, I feel we'll see the environment stabilize with time. Simwork Studios themselves have some very exciting projects coming up, and if they come close to the Kodiak in polish and poise, I'll be one happy simmer myself.

AvAngel
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/avangel
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AvAngel_Sim
Contact Email: avangel.sim@outlook.com
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