Interview With John Venema From Orbx
Conducted By Dominic Smith
Development
When did you start developing for flight simulators and what got you interested in it?
I first began developing textures for FS2004 for a project called Bird's Eye View (or BEV), back in 2003 I think it was. Not long after, I began creating my own textures for Australia purely for personal use. I began to post preview shots on a temporary forum and soon it grew into a major freeware project called Vista Australis (or VOZ), which incidently became possibly the most downloaded freeware project for FS2004 in its day.
Tell us about the nature of your designs and what you do?
Orbx tends to differentiate itself on the quality of our FTX (Full Terrain Experience) textures, that is both for landclass ground textures and those used at airports. First and foremost we make new ground textures and landclass for large regions of the world such as the Pacific Northwest in the USA, or England in Europe. We've done a bunch of these FTX regions to cover Australia, New Zealand, the UK, most of the USA/Canada western coast areas and currently we're working on Norway in Europe. These regions include new textures, new landclass, elevation mesh and vector data for roads, railways, coastlines, lakes and rivers. Additionally, we add many POI's like bridges, photo-real mountain areas, etc. Each FTX region is meant to be a stand-alone simulation area where you can enjoy them out of the box.
Of course, sitting on top of those FTX region we make FTX payware and freeware airports. These are designed to blend cohesively into the region so you can experience incredibly detailed airports right down to seeing mechanics repairing a C172, the groundsman sweeping the apron, and trees and grass blowing in the breeze. Because of this immersive level of detail, Orbx tends to focus mostly on GA, VFR and regional airports.
What do you consider your best or most popular work?
FTX Global is probably our most popular product since it creates a "Region Lite" for the entire planet with a single installer, and uses six years of ground texture development. So in essence, FTX Global is a celebration of all the hard texture work that went into our earlier FTX Regions, but engineered to create a one-stop solution to provide those famous Orbx textures over the entire planet. So yes, we're very proud of FTX Global.
What do you find to be the most challenging aspect of a project?
That varies from project to project. An FTX region is challenging purely from the scale of it (for example a whole country like Norway takes an enormous amount of work), whereas an FTX airport is challenging from the perspective of getting good photographs of buildings and objects around the airport so as to model and texture it the best way possible.
What have been your favorite projects?
For me personally I loved working on our debut regions in Australia; I poured a lot of passion into those four areas (which we now sell as a single region covering all of Australia), and it was pioneering stuff for us back then. I also enjoyed working on airports like Tamworth, Israel's Farm, Walter Sutton's, Aeropelican - you can tell by their names they were quaint destinations with loads of character in them.
John, was there a particular reason why you chose Australia as your first major scenery package (both freeware and payware)?
It was mainly because I was living there at the time and wanted a better scenery to use in the sim (I was studying for my PPL).
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