Development

Could you tell us about the nature of your X-Plane designs and what you do?

Bear East is the nom de nerd of X-Plane users K. Grace (me) and Jayson Ng. We model Asian airports that strike our fancy, for whatever reason. Jayson lays out the airport and creates ATC routing, and I do the custom modeling. We started out concentrating on just the marquee buildings, such as terminals, towers, etc. but we've now amassed an inventory of Japanese ground vehicles and other items to populate the aprons and surroundings.

If we have a signature style, it's that we try to create a little jewel-box of each airport, with elements that make the user feel like they're in a place with a distinct atmosphere. We mainly want to provide touches that say 'you are now in Japan.' The Japanese signage and advertising billboards, the real and made-up company logos on the tarmac vehicles, the plethora of taxi companies and buses on the roads around the airport; we want these things to give visitors a sense of having arrived in a different world. For those of us living in Japan, we want each package to give a little jolt of recognition. I've never been to any of the airports we've done but people who have will recognize the local taxis and buses.

       

The accuracy and realism of the sceneries are as close as Google and Flickr and so forth will allow us, but that's more in the service of placating my obsessive tendencies. Both myself and Jayson are more interested in presenting a portrait of a place than an absolutely exact replica, so there are fictional and fanciful elements in every scenery.

What do you consider your best or most popular work?

So far we have only created a handful of airports together and these are as follows:

• Sapporo Area Airports Package (RJCC/RJCJ New Chitose Airport and RJCO Sapporo Okadama)
• RJFT Aso Kumamoto Airport
• RJOM Matsumoto Airport
• RJDA Amakusa Airport

Separately, Jayson and I have created a number of other sceneries for Japan, the Philippines, and Korea. Our output is very slow, which is to say I in particular work at a glacial pace.

       

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

Without a doubt, my biggest challenge is stopping. It is really hard to say, OK, this is finished. There is always some detail that could be improved in a model, and Google relentlessly serves up evidence that your model departs in some way from the real thing. For obsessive types like myself, the challenge is to focus on the big picture and let go of the tiny details that no one will ever see or care about. My success on this front has been mixed.

But enough about my personality disorders! Something that others might find useful (especially modelers), is that this hobby has taught me that careful planning will help in every respect. If your package is too resource-intensive and/or complicated to install, not everyone will be able to use it, so it's important to make models that look good without bogging down the user experience. Trial and error is the best way to progress, as in most things. Start with something, do the best you can on it, put it out there, then try something new that builds on what you've learned. Your workflow will get more efficient, your planning will help you avoid problems down the line with texturing, and you'll have models that enhance the scenery without eating up frame-rates and memory.