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Interview: Art Poole Development When did you start developing for flight simulators and what got you interested in it? I purchased SubLogic's flight simulator program back when personal computers were becoming popular and acquired most of the Microsoft versions that followed. It wasn't until I studied the FS2004 SDK that I got involved with the use of XML files, Gmax and AFCAD to create scenery for my home airport near where I lived after retirement. I guess what got me started was that I needed a hobby, there appeared to be a real need to upgrade scenery at most of the airports in the simulator, and Microsoft had provided the basic tools which were expanded by others. Tell us about the nature of your designs and what you do? Since the airport scenery is for my use, I currently design for the flight simulator configuration on my computer. Therefore, it is optimal for FSX with UTX. The intent is to make an airport in Flight Simulator look as nearly as I can to the actual airport so that a real world pilot would recognize the layout and buildings. My interest is in general aviation, and I concentrate on small or mid-sized airports. What do you consider your best or most popular work? KDAB (image below, left) is my home airport and has received my earliest and continuing attention. Based on the number of downloads, Montego Bay (image below, right) has been the most popular, I guess due to the international interest. More techniques are learned and more tools become available the longer you do this, so different aspects of the work get better. Therefore, the best work is hopefully still to come. What do you find to be the most challenging aspect of a project? Currently, finding time. After retirement, I have found so many fun things to do in addition to the weekly chores. Limiting efforts to small airports helps. When the airport is larger, there is a lot of repetition and boredom sets in. I got about half way through Fort Lauderdale Executive KFXE and gave up. It must be the most densely-populated general aviation airport anywhere. What are some of the more unique or special aspects of what you create? What I do is the way I visualize that it should be, so I don't consider anything unique or special. I use tools provided by others in a manner that I think those software creators intended to allow those with limited knowledge to create or improve scenery. I'm trying to find a compromise between complete reality and the mass-produced airports in the original simulator package. What have been your favorite projects? I was provided extensive photos of everything at Plant City Florida Municipal Airport (KPCM) allowing me to model and texture everything as in real life (image below). That was fun. Usually, I have to rely on outdated aerial photos from Bing and make my own textures from scratch. What software packages and tools do you use to develop? Airport Design Editor, Flight Simulator Design Studio, Paint Shop Pro, DXTBmp, LibraryCreatorXML, ModelConverterX, AI Flight Planner and so forth. Who would you consider to be your mentors or inspiration in the development world if you have any? In addition to the developers of freeware that I use (who provide endless support) there are a large number of individuals who have answered my questions in the FS forums and elsewhere on the internet. Tutorials on Farfy's Page have been especially helpful in the use of FSDS to create the models. Do you develop payware/freeware or both and why? Freeware only. I want a hobby, not a job. The Team How many people work with you or your team? One other than me. My wife. What do the various members of the team do? I do the computer research and design work. My wife provides sustenance, love and a great deal of tolerance and understanding. What other developers or teams have you worked with and what were their roles? None, other than individuals who have furnished photographs for airports that they requested be done, and the developers of the software. Real Life Do you have any experience in real aviation? I learned to fly as a teenager and obtained my license in 1958. I quit flying when it conflicted with the cost of supporting a family and my life insurance terms sometime in the 1970's, so it didn't really last very long. What started your interest in aviation? Like my friends, I grew up with model airplanes and was fortunate enough to find resources to learn to fly in the local flying club. Any memorable flights in real life? Yes, many near-death experiences. That's an exaggeration, but there was one serious encounter with a thunderstorm. My flight instructor invited me to go with him and two others to North Carolina from Daytona Beach to pick up a club plane that had been stranded due to weather the previous week. We got as far as Savannah, Georgia flying VFR and could not continue due to weather. We refueled and headed back under low clouds that had moved in. Following the interstate highway through rain trying to get south of the weather, we encountered a downdraft and zero visibility and my instructor just barely kept the Piper Tri-Pacer above the trees. We finally got vectored back to the airport and had to spend the night in Savannah. The small amount of instrument training received was of great value to me on a number of occasions though I never flew IFR on purpose. Back then, the instruments in the airplanes I mostly flew only included altitude, turn-bank, rate of climb and airspeed indicators for zero visibility conditions....no artificial horizon let alone a "glass cockpit". Unless I had more than one passenger, I was flying a Cessna 140 (image below, left), Piper Super Cub (image below, right) or Aeronca Champ. Memorable experiences weren't all bad. I especially loved the group flights from Florida to the Bahamas and all the rum punch. Would you like to share what you do in real life? After retiring from construction management, I have been heavily into tennis, sailing and sitting on the beach along with some kayaking, RC aircraft models and pondering the meaning of life. None of what I do now is done very seriously except maybe the tennis on occasion and definitely not the pondering. Have you ever considered doing flight simulator development full-time? Are you kidding? When you get old, everything you try to do is full-time. Future How do you choose your next new design or project? My original intent was to cover the state of Florida to the extent that airport information was available, and I have sporadically gone beyond that. Suitable projects in Florida have pretty much dried up now. I have recently been receiving photos for various Bahamas airports from someone who travels around the islands and will continue with that as long as information keeps coming. What simulators do you design for now and what ones do you plan to develop for in the future? I gave my old computer with FS2004 to the boy across the street, and FSX is all that I am now interested in. I've never tried using X-Plane or Prepar3D. At my age, there are no future plans other than continue to enjoy all aspects of life. In what ways do you see development changing in the future? I don't. I keep reading the news and forums on web sites like yours to get a feel on this issue. Your Thoughts What can sites like FlightSim.Com do to support you and the hobby better? It's amazing to me how much I can learn (or be misled) from the internet. FlightSim.Com, Avsim.com and FSDeveloper.com are really doing a great job fulfilling my needs for information about flight simulation. How do you feel about the future of flight simulation in general? Good. Microsoft's actions were making it questionable, but I'm seeing it moving more now toward a flight simulator than being a game. FSX, as well as FS2004, continue to be made better by add-on developers even though they are not taking advantage of 64 bit systems. What are some of the most important things a site or community can do to help the developers? Keep the articles and forums active with news about techniques, problems and solutions. What would you like people to know about you or your team and work? With this interview, I think people may know more than they want. What is your work flow when you do a project? In most instances, I have started by reviewing Google Earth and Bing satellite images and determining the latest available. Bing also has "Birds Eye" views which are helpful in revealing the sides of all buildings. Without the birds-eye views, it is impossible to create realistic buildings for the airport unless other imagery is available. Airport authority and FBO web sites also may provide pictures of facilities. In fact, airport authority web pages often contain lots of detailed information useful for scenery design. If it is determined that adequate, reasonably up-to-date information is available, I first capture the airport satellite view with the Windows snipping tool (one overall view or in segments) and save to the computer. These .jpg images can be used as a background in Airport Design Editor (image below). The background images drastically slowed the program in ADE's earlier versions, but it seems little affected in newest versions. In ADE, the images corner coordinates can be entered to place the backgrounds, but I just take a measurement within the image in ADE and a measurement in Google Earth (usually of the runway length) to establish a factor to apply to the image dimensions in ADE. Degrees can also be entered to rotate the image, and it can be moved with the mouse to align with the runways. I have found that most runways are properly located in FSX, so I use them as a reference in locating the background (there are some glaring exceptions). Runway markings, glide slope indicators and lighting are modified based on information available from the background image and web sites such as AirNav. Sometimes runways have been lengthened, closed, renumbered or added since FSX was released. Taxiways and aprons are replaced following the background image. Google Earth's measuring tool is useful in determining the exact taxiway widths. A new airport background is drawn using ADE to coincide with the background image, and the old background is deleted by placing a small exclude polygon in a location within the old background but outside the new background (image above). The old airport background does not display in ADE, so it is necessary to connect ADE with FSX and move to such a location in FSX. ADE is also used to change land class around the airport to look more like what is in the satellite view by placing polygons tagged as the desired land class (images below). Since the scenery is optimized for use with Ultimate Terrain X, road locations are noted in FSX, and roads are added around the airport that are not shown. UTX works better with residential roads inactive, so any roads that are included only as residential are included in the airport scenery at the same locations as placed by UTX. This is accomplished using the ADE vector tool. Earlier, I modeled numerous buildings to replace the FSX generic buildings using FS Design Studio and compiled them into libraries using LibraryCreatorXML. The buildings could then be placed as library objects using ADE. Since then, I decided there were fewer steps to creating the scenery and distribution of the finished product was easier by placing the completed models directly into ADE and eliminating the need for libraries. The buildings in the libraries mostly used the textures already in FSX while the models loaded into ADE now mostly use custom-made textures, often from photos (image below, left). The textures are created with Print Shop Pro as .bmp images (image below, center), then DXTBmp is used to add alpha when needed for transparency and export them as DXT1 or DXT3 extended bitmap images. FSDS is used to create the models in much the same way as Gmax with the benefit of compiling for FSX within the program (image above, right). The model is added to the list in ADE (image below, left) and placed on the airport (images below, center and right). After all buildings are in place, fences, vehicles, trees, shrubs, even debris are added utilizing default FSX library objects. Also, objects from libraries developed by others are included, such as Jim Dhaenens' lightobj.bgl. This can be carried to extremes, but I limit such objects to just enough to give some resemblance to reality and friendly frame rates. The completed scenery is tested, a readme text file is composed, and then everything is copied into a .zip file for upload to the online library. Software used: Airport Design Editor X v01.50.4402 copyright 2007-2011 by Scruffyduck Software FS Design Studio v3.5.1 copyright 2000-2007 by Abacus Software and Louis Sinclair Paint Shop Pro Ultimate Photo X2 v12.50 copyright 2008 by Corel Corp DXTBmp v4.00.96 copyright 2000-2004 by Martin Wright Library Creator XML v2.0.3.0 copyright 2010 by Arno Gerretsen Art Poole View Art Poole add-ons in the FlightSim.Com file library
