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/images/notams/notams20/iblu0920.jpgIt's out! KPDX for Microsoft Flight Simulator has beenreleased. You can get your copy of this highly detailed custom airportby visiting the Flightbeam store. The price is only US$14.99 for new customers. If you previouslypurchased KPDX for Prepar3D or X-Plane, you're entitled to anadditional 30% discount on that already low price. Instructions are onthe store page. Source iBlueYonder Previews Portland Airport For MSFS

/images/notams/notams20/yond0918/portland-1.jpgIt's been a busy month here at iBlueYonder HQ. We're so happy toannounce the upcoming release of our first product for MicrosoftFlight Simulator - KPDX Portland International Airport! As with theprevious versions for P3D and X-Plane, we'll be releasing it inconjunction with our partners at Flightbeam. The plan is to make itavailable this weekend. In the meantime, here are a few shots to whetyour appetite. /images/notams/notams20/yond0918/portland-2.jpgSource

/images/notams/notams19/iblu0201.jpgIn our quest to keep expanding and improving our products, KPDX hasjust been updated to version 1.3. This time 'round, we've added newapproach light 3D models to the runways and a switchable nightlighting system so you can toggle between dynamic and static lightingin P3D4. We've also added some lovely static airliners (alsoswitchable) to liven up the airport if you're not running an AIprogram. And not to bury the lede, but we've also begun the officialdevelopment of KPDX for X-Plane 11! Thanks to everyone who encouragedus in that direction. XP pics soon! For more info, or to add KPDX to your collection, visit https://iblueyonder.com/portfolio/kpdx-hd/ Source

/images/notams/notams19/iblu0104/kpdx-1.jpgWelcome to the City of Roses! This is an airport we've been wanting to build for a long time. Itwas rendered in FS2004 to great acclaim, but for the last 12+ years we'vebeen waiting for a new version to come along. The wait is over! KPDX is an important airport on the US west coast. It's the largestairport in the state of Oregon, and the second busiest in the PacificNorthwest (after Seattle). Our version pulls out all the stops inPrepar3D version 4, taking the new generation of 64-bit sims muchfarther than was previously possible. It's also our first partnershipwith Flightbeam. We think you'll love the result. /images/notams/notams19/iblu0104/kpdx-2.jpgFeaturesUses the new Flightbeam Manager system (no Addon Manager/Couatl required)Configuration Manager allows you to customize KPDX to your likingUtilizes SODE for advanced jetway interaction with aircraftIncludes large photo-real area representing the industrial district of North Portland with OSM-based autogenKey textures are rendered in 4096_4096 high resolutionIncludes custom static GA and military aircraftP3Dv4 dynamic night lighting includedLeverages P3D's material scripting engine for seasonal vegetation, dynamic water puddles and light animationsIncludes detailed rendition of Cascade Station shopping area east of the airport /images/notams/notams19/iblu0104/kpdx-3.jpgPurchase iBlueYonder - KPDX Portland Int'l /images/notams/notams19/iblu0104/kpdx-4.jpg

Bill Womack Developer Interview Conducted by Dominic Smith Bill, could I begin by asking you about how and when you started developing for Orbx? That question takes me back to 2007 and the Microsoft developer conference. It was a gathering of FS developers unlike anything I've seen since. Everyone was there! I was rubbing elbows with nearly every notable designer, developer, and programmer in the FS universe, not to mention most of the ACES team as well. I remember going out to dinner one night with Holger Sandmann (with whom I had already been working for a while), Allen Kriesman, and John Venema among others. John pulled out his iPhone at some point and started flipping through some shots of projects his company was working on. I was just blown away by the beauty of the shots, not to mention the attention to detail. I can't even remember what the pics were of at this point, but I just remember thinking "how could any serious scenery developer not want to be a part of this?" Holger had recently started working with Orbx, and he had positive things to say about the company as well. After a chat with JV about my interest, plans were quickly laid for me to start bringing some of my work into the Orbx universe. The rest, as people say, is history. Prior to joining the Orbx team, what experience did you have in regards to MSFS development? I started off in 2003 with the intention of developing some fun Alaskan bush sceneries. My first release was the Antelope Trail Ranch for FS2002. A few months later, I talked my way into working on the Reading Regional Airport project for MAAM-SIM (a flight museum in Pennsylvania, USA). With a mid-sized airport under my belt, I got the attention of Francois Dumas at FS-Addon, and together we did a few projects such as Freight Dogs, Tongass Fjords, and the original Plum Island airport. Through my contacts in the hobby, I also did some airport modelling for RealAir Simulations, such as Bear Gulch (included with the Citabria/Scout/Decathlon aircraft release) and RAF West Malling, circa 1943 (included with their Spitfire). My first FSX project was Dillingham Airport in Hawaii (PHDH) for Aerosoft in 2006 - a project that I still get royalties from to this day, to my great surprise. After initially joining Orbx in 2009 and producing three airports, I decided to try my hand at creating my own brand - iBlueYonder - in 2013. Through that label, I produced three more airports; Nantucket Memorial (KACK), the fictional Heron's Nest bush scenery, and Plum Island/Minute Man Air Field. Once I rejoined Orbx again this year, those releases were folded into the Orbx offerings. Bill, when given the task of starting a new scenery project, do you get to choose the location yourself, or is it a team decision (what factors help you/team decide)? For the most part, I've done the location choosing myself. I have always taken a long view when it comes to deciding on an airport to model. Instead of just thinking individual airports, I consider the whole region and what possibility there is for groupings of airports. If a given airport catches my interest, I look at what other options are nearby, within a couple hours flight by GA aircraft. If there are enough to form a nice grouping, I'll bump it up on the list. Once I've settled on a region to study, I'll check what source aerial imagery is available for orthophoto backgrounds. Luckily, in the USA there is fairly good coverage of this sort, and most of it is freely available. If it looks like my area of interest is well enough supported, data-wise, it mostly comes down to what interests me. I've turned down requests to do quite a few airports after finding that they consist almost entirely of sheet-metal prefab buildings with no real character. There needs to be some sort of quirkiness or charm for me to be interested in a given place, whether in architecture or location. For instance, when I was looking at Plum Island Airport in Massachusetts, I wasn't initially sold on it. Then I discovered that it claimed to be the oldest operational airfield in the US. That piqued my interest. What clinched it was discovering that there was a property dispute going on between the airport and its neighbor, and the neighbor had claimed one end of the runway, put a fence across it, and parked his boat and RV on it. At that point, it became irresistible. What do you find the most challenging aspect of a project? Without a doubt, the hardest thing about any project is knowing when to stop. I get so wrapped up in creating details and making the airport feel as much like the real thing as possible, but at some boundary, that realism has to give way to the less detailed surrounding world. I sometimes struggle with where to draw that line, and then to stick with it as development wraps up. There is always more that can be done, but at some point, you have to let go and just release a product. Bill, how long does a typical project take to develop and which projects have been the most time consuming? I'm not sure that "typical" applies in this case. My projects have been so wildly different from one another. The original Plum Island scenery that I did back in 2008 is still my shortest project. I set a goal to do it from start to finish in 30 days, and basically stuck to it. On the other hand, I was organizing some files recently, and found that the Nantucket project spanned nearly 7 years from initial photography to final release! Now of course, there is a lot of other work that got done in that interim, but it does point out how a project can have multiple starts, stalls, and re-starts. These days, I'm much more disciplined and focused. Depending on the size of the project, I'll take between 2 and 6 months to create an airport. How does creating payware scenery differ from the freeware you have created in the past? I'm not sure there's very much difference. Of course, technically, it's the same amount of work using the same tools. My most recent freeware, the Heron's Nest island scenery, was one of the more complex works I've done, mostly because I decided to model the entire island as a 3D mesh. I suppose I could say that the payware is made more to please the customers while the freeware is there to tickle my own fancy, but I enjoy the payware work just as much if not more. So, there you go - a non-answer if there ever was one. Of all the projects you have been involved in (indirectly and directly), which project are you the most proud of? The one overarching motivation that's constant in my life is competition. Not with other developers, mind you - although I get plenty of inspiration from them - but with myself. I can be a pretty harsh judge of my own work at times, but it's because I'm always trying to outdo my previous projects. All of this is a long way of saying that my most recent release is always my favorite; in this case, KVUO Pearson Field. With any luck, that will be toppled by my next project. Bill, when developing a scenery, what would you say your main role is? Principally, I am the wearer of many hats! I have always had a strong entrepreneurial spirit. I am never satisfied unless I have at least a decent working knowledge of every aspect of whatever I'm working on at any given moment. In almost all my projects, I've done the initial site photography, the modelling, the texturing, placement, and any other work necessary. I have at times been aided by some talented developers who have skills that complement mine, but even then, I like to understand what they're doing. It's a compulsion. Are the objects used in your sceneries all custom made by yourself, or are they from a shared resource at Orbx? In general, I create nearly all the objects I use. On occasion, I've either purchased pre-built libraries of objects, or dipped into the vast array of Orbx libraries to help round out a scenery. The trick is picking things that look as much as possible like they belong in the world I'm creating, which can be harder than it seems. For instance, even when I purchased a library of static cars, I ended up taking apart the library, baking ambient occlusion maps, adding shadows, and remapping the textures to optimize performance. It's seldom a drag-and-drop operation. How do you go about sourcing all the necessary information needed for creating a scenery? To start, I usually like to visit the airport I'm about to build so I can photograph it myself. With the small GA fields, I've been fortunate to have found a number of airport managers who were very cooperative. In some cases, they were even sim fans who were delighted to have their home base re-created digitally. The site photos are my primary source material. Secondarily, I have had people take photos for me as follow-ups. For example, with Nantucket, my original photos didn't include a new FBO building that was built after I visited. A friend who lives nearby the field took some additional shots for me once construction was complete. Thanks to the Web, there is also a plethora of information available to reference for almost any location on earth. The combination of browsing Flickr photos, Google Earth, and street view photos rounds out the info I generally need to get a project completed. Obviously, nothing but my original photos and those of friends are used in the final textures, but I don't depend a lot on photos for that anyway. How do you go about finding the balance between visual detail and performance, and how much is this a factor in your development? Detail and performance are the co-dependent twins of good scenery work. Without detail, there's no reason to download a scenery; without performance, it won't stay on the hard drive for long. As it happens, my whole career has been built around balancing these two, even well before I was involved in FS work. I started my digital design career doing CD-ROMs, before the web was a thing. I quickly learned that photos in those presentations had to look good, but also had to be 8-bit because so few people had 24-bit displays. Then I graduated to web design, where the look had to be compelling, but also optimized for dial-up speeds. Balancing performance of a scenery with its look is just more of the same. With simulators, how much detail I can put into a given project is mostly a question of overhead. How much work is the sim already doing to present the default area or airport before I start working? In the case of a remote area like the Heron's Nest, there's a lot of breathing room to work with so I can relax and focus on detail without sweating performance much. For an airport like KVUO Pearson Field that's almost literally a stone's throw from a large international airport, performance becomes more of a challenge. Fortunately, with the advent of 64-bit sims, we've gotten a bit of a reprieve. They can really soak up the details without slowing down much, if at all. Orbx have recently started developing for X-Plane 11, so what challenges do you think you face with this new platform, and how does it differ to say the MSFS/P3D series? X-Plane 11 is a very different beast in some ways from P3D or FSX. The terrain is set up in a way that demands a whole new way of working. I admit to some growing pains as I grapple with how to get the best out of the terrain mesh, but I'm getting there. Luckily for me, the biggest part of what I do, which is designing and placing 3D models, is fairly similar across the platforms. There were a few new tools to learn for XP, although nothing near the dizzying (and sometimes confusing) variety that I assembled for doing FSX work, but fortunately they're well documented as is the process of creating XP scenery in general. I must say, 90% of the time, X-Plane is a delight to work with, especially after all those years of MSFS work. And the results! To spend time in the 3D modelling program creating all that detail and then see it come to life in their world with its beautiful lighting and atmospherics is magic. In the past, I always tended to leave the night lighting of a given project for the very end, mostly because it's dependent on the day texturing, but also because it was such a pain in FSX and P3D, and I was never completely satisfied with the results. In XP, I still leave it for the end, but for another reason entirely - it's like a delicious dessert after a good meal! Their night lighting effects are the strongest aspect, graphically, of a beautiful sim. Thinking of the future, if you could choose one feature for each of the different platforms to have, what would you choose and why? Between Prepar3D v4 and X-Plane 11, we've basically got one complete, beautiful, and performant sim. Unfortunately, the best bits are scattered between them rather than gathered in one place. Bear in mind that my focus with either sim is on graphics, and take that into account with my answers. If I could choose one feature from P3D that I'd gift X-Plane with, it'd be the look of their water. It doesn't obviously repeat the way the waves in XP do, and it actually reacts to the weather around it. Graphically, it's quite beautiful to look at. I find the water in X-Plane to be a bit lacking on that count. From X-Plane, if I could, I'd take their beautiful lighting and light scattering and splice it into P3D. More than any other feature, that's what makes screen shots taken in X-Plane look so realistic, especially when compared to P3D shots. Lighting is one of the areas in P3D where I think you still feel the drag of the MSFS family tree holding the sim back. With either of these two platforms, or for that matter with others like Aerofly FS2 or DCS World, look at the hairs we're down to splitting now! It's a great time to be in the hobby, whether as a developer or enthusiast. Technology marches on, as it does, and the results are digital worlds that are quickly becoming nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. I find it all just fascinating. Bill Womack