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Terry Flemming Developer Interview Conducted by Dominic Smith Development Terry, when did you start developing for flight simulators and what got you interested in it? I only started developing for flight simulators in the last four years. Until that point I was just a casual user. I became interested in developing for them after I joined an online WWII re-enactment group for the 91st Bomb Group. The group was flying B-17 missions in formation over Europe using some good FLAK effects. I'd not seen these effects before and became intrigued as to how they were implemented. After learning all I could about how the simulator effects were generated, I set about developing effects that could create a greater ambiance for WWII settings than were generally available. Could you tell us about the nature of your designs and what you do? To date, all of my designs center on historical WWII airfields of the USAAF 8th and 9th Air Forces and the RAF. I try to capture the airfields with the best accuracy possible. These historical airfields tend to be spread out among adjacent villages and towns with sometimes as many as 10 or 15 separate sites. I like to include all of these outlying sites so as to create the best rendition of what the area looked like in its prime. I view my designs as not just scenery for the simulator, but rather a 3D capture of a historical site. In addition to the "look" of the airfield, I like to create a "feel" to it as well. The "feel" part of my designs started out as audio effects of period aircraft starting, taxing, taking off and flying over the airfield, such as with my "RAF Bassingbourn, Steeple Morden" scenery which was my first release: After audio effects for ambiance, I commenced with visual effects in my later designs. For my designs, it's all about historical accuracy and a little creative license to bring about the look and feel of being there, rather than just a static airfield. Looking at the sceneries you've created, what do you consider your best or most popular work? What I consider as my best work, would not necessarily be my most popular. It's a bit hard to judge popularity as designers of scenery don't generally get a great deal of feedback from the community. The only way many designers have of judging popularity is the total number of downloads for a given design. If you use this criteria for popularity, I would say my "Advanced Landing Ground A-11" package is the most popular. The work that I consider my best would be "RAF Bury St Edmunds (USAAF Station 468), simply because I believe it to be my most historically accurate work. When creating your sceneries, what do you find to be the most challenging aspect of the process? If you are aiming for historical accuracy, two factors present significant challenges. The first being the availability of clear information with regards to the physical makeup of the airfield. Plans for many of the RAF and USAAF stations are available, however they're often not quite clear enough to discern what building types are being used, so sometimes photographs of the installations are required to determine what particular building type is being used at a particular place in the design. This can lead to a lot of searching. The second challenge is the availability of the correct scenery objects to match the building types. Fortunately, for me and other designers of RAF WWII scenery, Ian Pearson continues to produce excellent models of the standard RAF building types. Without Ian and others producing period models of buildings and static aircraft, my designs would not be possible. Terry, what have been your favorite designs to date and why? I think the design I had the most fun with was "Advanced Landing Ground A-7." Getting the artillery sounds and visual effects timed correctly was a challenge and I was pleased with the results: What software packages and tools do you use to develop? For the design layout I use sign Editor from ScruffyDuck Software. The bulk of my effects development is done with Arno Gerretsen's FXEditor. Since creating sceneries for others to enjoy, who would you consider to be your mentors or inspiration in the development world? I think the guys at the 91st Bomb Group re-enactment site with their FLAK effects inspired me to do effects work. With regards to WWII airfield development, I would have to say Ian Pearson inspired me. Do you develop only freeware, or have you created payware sceneries? I develop only freeware. WWII military airfields are sort of a niche area that the commercial developers most often see as lacking revenue potential. So it's up to myself and other enthusiasts of this genera to make these designs available. Real Life Do you have any experience in real aviation? I was an air traffic controller with the US Army. A side benefit of that was having a lot of pilot friends who provided me flight time in various aircraft, both fixed and rotary wing. Now I wish I had friends like that! Terry, how did your interest in aviation begin? My father cultivated my interest in aviation. He was a B-17 pilot with the real 91st Bomb Group in 1944-45. He taught my brother and I to build detailed models of WWII aircraft, as well as flyable balsa stick model designs. There were always stacks of books on aviation around for me to devour. I wonder how many of those reading, remember flying balsa wood models! Do you have any memorable flights in real life which you could share with us? A flight in the B-17 "Yankee Lady" was very memorable. The feel and sound of those four Wright Cyclones at takeoff power was just awe inspiring. As I moved about the interior of the aircraft, I tried to imagine what it would have been like to be flying through FLAK and not being able to do a darn thing about it. It brought to mind one of my father's stories of a combat mission over Germany. They were taking FLAK and one of the engines oil pressure gauge was acting erratically. Dad bent down close to look at the gauge and gave it a tap to try and settle it. Just then a golf ball size piece of FLAK came through the windscreen and embedded itself in the headrest where Dad's head had been. It's not hard to imagine why so many of these crews did not come back. Terry, would you like to share what you do in real life? I've been an Electrical Engineer in the telecommunications industry for about 35 years. When you're not busy having fun creating sceneries, what other hobbies or things do you do for enjoyment? I do a lot of research on the 91st Bomb Group, mostly on the many people my father photographed during his days at Bassingbourn UK as a B-17 pilot. I have no idea who these guys were. My research has resulted in the identification of a few of the men in dad's photographs. I've also been able to connect with a few of the men my dad flew with. However, their numbers are fast dwindling and I'm racing to capture as much of their history and stories as possible. I balance this indoor activity with a fair amount of hiking, fly fishing and other outdoor activities. With all the time you spend creating sceneries, have you ever considered doing flight simulator development full-time? No. I view my flight simulator development as another one of my hobbies. I have too many other hobbies to do it full time. Future How do you go about choosing your next new design or project? Primarily I look for WWII airfields that have not been done before. Sometimes they have connections with my father's history. The next thing I look for is the availability of good information on the layout of the airfield. Most often this information comes in the form of the Air Ministries site plans which can be purchased from the RAF Museum, sometimes though you can find the plans for free on the internet. I also check the satellite views of the location to see if there are remnant structures that can help place the layout more accurately. Terry, what simulators do you design for now and which ones do you plan to develop for in the future? I currently develop for FSX and P3D only. However, I see more and more freeware being published for X-Plane, so perhaps it's time (soon) to test the X-Plane waters and see what interest there is for this genera of scenery in that market. In what ways do you see development changing in the future? I believe the trend in scenery development will be more dynamic scenery, as this can be created with add-ons such as SimObject Display Engine. I think we will also see more automation of things such as scenery object creation. The simulators with the newer graphics engines will continue to implement increasing amounts of detail to their environments. Your Thoughts What can sites like FlightSim.Com do to support you and the hobby better? A better feedback mechanism would help a lot. Designers need to know what the users liked and disliked about a design. It should be some way of soliciting feedback that doesn't take the user much time to complete. How do you feel about the future of flight simulation in general? Right now, the flight sim landscape is more fractured than ever. There a several competing simulators, all of which have different development flows, which means developers can't completely leverage everything they have done on a design from one sim to another. However that doesn't seem to be much of an impediment to the commercial developers. They continue to port designs between simulators, so they must be making money in doing so. I think we are near a 'cusp' in the simulator world. On one hand we have the legacy simulators with outdated graphics engines, but with a huge mass behind it (i.e. folks who have many $$$ invested). On the other hand we have newer simulators which take good advantage of the newer GPU capabilities for graphics and physics. At some point in time the difference in the graphics between legacy and new will become too great to ignore. Terry, what are some of the most important things a site or community can do to help the developers? Here again I think feedback is most important. Developers have their own ideas of what the users would like but that doesn't necessarily coincide with what the users want more of. In my case, feedback on the special effects is important, i.e., are there too many, not enough? Lastly Terry, what would you like people to know about you and your work? I'm always open to suggestions of new ideas, especially in the area of special effects. I'd also like to develop some WWII Luftwaffe airfields, however I lack good scenery objects for standard Luftwaffe airfield buildings. So if anyone wants to tackle the scenery objects, I'm willing to do the necessary research and airfield layouts. Terry Flemming Terry Flemming add-ons
