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Interview With Earth Simulations Conducted By Dominic Smith When did you start developing for flight simulators and what got you interested in it? Well here's our full history so far... When Darren first started out in FS he was coordinating a community project called VFR Add-ons, some readers will remember this fondly. This was before he started to work professionally on Gen-X for Horizon Simulations. There are many fewer flight simmers around these days and so fewer people to contribute, but we do still believe that there is a willingness amongst the remaining community to chip away at making the scenery environment ever better. Like most people who get into FS development, we started with just wanting to improve on our local airport. Once we started though, we kind of got hooked, as the possibilities to keep on improving things and adding more and more realism can become endless and is more than a little addictive. We started Earth Simulations after Darren was made redundant by Horizon Simulations back in 2008. Earth Simulations was born in March 2009 with the very first scenery release of Alderney for The Channel Islands. We had pretty good feedback from our customers right from the start, so that really helped to keep us motivated and to keep going against all odds. Not wanting to give up on the dream of creating quality sceneries that so far nobody had yet created using the new capabilities of FSX, we had come too far and worked too hard to give up at that point. There seemed to be a lot of people who would appreciate our efforts, and let's be honest playing MSFS all day for a job beats doing the same thing as an unemployed person! It was a real struggle to get started as we had literally nothing in the bank to fund us going forward, but somehow we got it off the ground with our first Island scenery, Alderney. Our next scenery was The Isles of Scilly which Darren created pretty much on his own, as at that point Vikki had to go out and get another job because there wasn't enough money coming into ES to pay the bills. Treescapes was Darren's next project which was successful enough to allow Vikki to come back to work for ES, taking some of the weight of development from Darren's shoulders. In 2010 we were approached by The Defence Helicopter Flying School and asked to produce a large area of scenery in Shawbury for their training simulator. This was a massive 3,500 sq. km of highly detailed and accurately hand placed autogen and bespoke modelling that took us and 4 full time people the best part of 6 months to complete. This actually turned out to be highly unprofitable unfortunately, even though we were allowed to sell our work to the public. People just don't seem that interested in that particular area for FSX, even though it is a good deal larger than our Island sceneries and is well covered with autogen and bespoke models. So it seemed that Islands were the way to go. Guernsey was our next project and turned out to be much harder than we anticipated due to the sheer volume of the population there, but again was a very well received scenery. Treescapes for Scotland came next, volumes 6 & 8 was a real mare to do as it all had to be edited by hand because the data used to produce it wasn't as accurate as we'd hoped, meaning it didn't match the photo scenery. You wouldn't believe how many forested areas have been felled since the OS data was acquired, it's really quite shocking! We started work on the Isle of Man next but probably as a result of working far too many hours and way too hard Darren fell seriously ill at the beginning of 2012. We then had to stop and re-prioritize as it took the whole of that year for Darren to recover from illness and get back to being well enough to work again. It's a miracle that ES survived that year with very little income without going under, but somehow we're still going. Work commenced on The Isle of Man and Treescapes volume 7 in January 2013. We had real problems getting an installer made for the Isle of Man and in the end Darren managed to do it himself after a lot of head banging swearing and hair falling out! The Isle of Man is by far the largest and most detailed of the Islands we have created so far. Next up and by popular demand... we are working now on Jersey to complete the Channel Islands, and a new project of National 3D autogen called Autogenesis. We also aim to redevelop the UK photo scenery with updated source data at super high 30cm pixel resolution. The first area is complete and is available now. You'll be able to read a review of this scenery on FlightSim.Com. Photogenesis and Autogenesis 3D for The Scottish Highlands NW was released in August. So as you can see there's plenty for us to be getting on with! If we live through all that we have planned above we would also like to do The Isle of Wight as we live there. The Isle of Wight is a beautiful place and with our local knowledge of the Island and easy access to resources we could do a really good job of it. Island sceneries do seem to be very popular and it would seem very wrong not to do our own Island when we've done all the other UK Islands. Tell us about the nature of your designs and what you do? We chose to create the British Islands because they are contained areas that are all very diverse and beautiful places that are largely unspoilt areas. Islands tend to have many interesting and historic places of interest and of course lots of lovely coastline. They all have airports, airfields and helipads. They are the kinds of places that people like to visit for their holidays, so we figure that they would also like to visit them virtually. We love to see animations, anything that can simulate the real world is good. It makes the scenery come alive when you can see things moving as they would in real life, that's the whole point of a simulation to us. Making it look real, if it moves in real life...it should move in the sim. But of course all this moving takes its toll on your PC's performance so you can't have too much of it. As home PC's get more powerful we'll be able to add more and more detail. We have a number of animated objects in our sceneries such as a horse being trained in a sand school, a horse rearing up as you approach it in your plane, a horse that is having a roll, horses that are munching on the grass, tractors doing various things, diggers, boats, trains, people, combine harvester, cars, lorries, dolphins, whales, seals, cement mixers and let's not forget the bonking bunnies! I think what sets us apart from other developers (apart from the fact that we are a husband and wife team only), is the level of detail that we produce, such as our seasonal textures including spring, summer, autumn, winter and snowy effects, that are unique to ES. Soundscapes that are unique to ES. Night lighting that is hand edited. The time and effort that we put into the small details like the grass textures, various animals & birds, animations, bespoke modelling, effects like transparency and waves in the coastal waters, hand edited coastal cliffs and rocks that make them look so much more dramatic, as they do in real life. We aim to add as much accuracy as we can without making the product non-viable. We can't model every house to look exactly as it does in reality but we try to place the correct type of building e.g. townhouse, bungalow, farmhouse, hotel, etc. by researching the area we are creating in as much detail as we can, as we go. We place every tree by size and type e.g. coniferous or deciduous. If there is a place of particular interest historical or iconic we try to model those places in fine detail. Airports are obviously of most importance to our customers so we try our best to replicate them as closely as is possible, adding everything we can see or find from real photos. The vision for us is to make the very best scenery and really push the boundaries of what could be achieved in FSX. This is difficult as it is a delicate balance between what we may be able to add in terms of detail and what the average home PC is capable of running. There have been many times when we've had to scale back on the original plan for a project because we've over done it. Also we have to think about making each project viable financially so that we can stay in business. We had visions of great riches but we've had to revise that plan! What do you consider your best or most popular work? The Island sceneries are very popular, our latest Island scenery is The Isle of Man which has been well received and praised for its detail and accuracy. The Isle of Man is probably the most accurate to real life that anyone has ever made for FSX, as it has hundreds of bespoke buildings. The Airport at Ronaldsway and surrounding buildings are true replicas and there are loads of accurately modelled coastal buildings that look just like the real thing. The Castle Cornet modelled at Guernsey is one of our proudest achievements because it was such a complex model to build. It took absolutely ages and was a real labor of love. Such a challenge to model because of all its different levels, tunnels, pathways and uneven and sloping ground. It would have been great if we could've visited the castle to get photos for our texture resources and positional references because finding pics from all angles was very difficult. What do you find to be the most challenging aspect of a project? There have been so many challenges for us to overcome, I could write a very long list just for the past week! Developing the actual sceneries is the easy bit for us, although it is very time consuming. The difficult parts of development are with things like installers; they have been a constant problem for us. Our sceneries are complex by any standard and creating an automatic installer for them to work in every situation is a near impossible task. Especially when your skills lie elsewhere and lean towards the artistic rather than the technical. Because we are such a small operation we mainly struggle with time, there are so many things for the two of us to cover... Installers, web site development and maintenance, customer support, fulfilment of orders, stock control, accounting, promoting and marketing, etc. I could go on. All before we can even get started with actual development of new projects, so it can be difficult to find any spare time to relax. Customer support takes up a lot of our time. We find that because of the complexity of FSX an awful lot of people run into problems so varied that they come to us for help on a regular basis. We try our very best to help anyone who is having problems, but sometimes it can take several emails just to establish what the problem is and then lengthy replies to help fix whatever the issue is. The majority of customers are lovely, polite and a pleasure to help, but occasionally we do have one that will be rude, demanding and frankly will ruin the whole day for us. But I suppose this is the same the world over, although few could argue that the fight simming world does seem to have a disproportionate amount of grumpy old men. LOL. There are not many products that a person can purchase that will offer support over the timespan that we do, some come to us repeatedly for years after their original purchase for support. This accumulates over time and can make it very difficult to actually make a sale worthwhile financially. Sometimes by the time you have answered all the emails you've lost half of the day, along with half of your energy. This is such a niche market that there are a finite number of potential customers to target your products at, so we do actually struggle financially to keep it going. Source data can be a challenge to find sometimes. When you are trying to model something and you don't actually know what it looks like, it means hunting for photos that show that specific object from all sides if you want it to be right. It would be great if we could visit places that we create, not just for a holiday of course but to collect the resources to make even better models and textures for them. What have been your favorite projects? That is a seriously difficult question to answer. Some of what we would consider to be our most impressive projects have turned out to be the least financially rewarding. A case in point is our Shawbury Fields add-on. With this, we got the pleasure of knowing that it is being used to train real RAF Pilots, but then the disappointment of the few sales it made to the consumer market. We don't believe it has yet been recognised for its true worth. What software packages and tools do you use to develop? PaintShop Pro and 3DSMax are amazing tools (once you figure out how to use them). There are so many tools that are used to produce our sceneries, too numerous to list. Things change rapidly, it seems almost daily that there's a new tool that can be utilised in some new way, or there is some new improved data available. We spend a good amount of time researching this sort of stuff and try to make good use of it when we can. We also plan and develop many of our own tools and only wish we had more time to develop these faster than we're ever able to manage. Who would you consider to be your mentors or inspiration in the development world if you have any? Arno Gerretsen is without question my all-time hero and has contributed more to the scenery design world than any other I know. Lars Hoyer is not only a great friend but has also made Earth Simulations possible, especially in the beginning. Orbx have some great people working for them. We are certainly envious of some of the raw artistic talent evident in many of the sceneries that they have produced. As a group of course they are able to spread the workload and each is able to specialise in a specific area, so they do have the opportunity to become real masters of their crafts as individuals. Do you develop payware/freeware or both and why? In the early days whilst we were learning our skills and we still had "proper" jobs our stuff was all freeware. Now we supply freeware and develop payware to earn a living. We like to be able to supply freeware as it's nice to be able to give a little gift to our customers who are very loyal. We also supply freeware add-ons that have been developed by others such as Tony Meredith who has kindly donated many great freebies to our site. The Team How many people work with you or your team? There are just the two of us actually employed by ES, we are a husband and wife team. Luckily, (unlike a lot of married couples) we actually like to be together! Notably Lars Hoyer has helped us out loads, and through shared interests, is Darren's best friend. Tony Meredith is also a good friend and his knowledge of airports has been invaluable, his contribution in helping us and indeed the entire UK flight simming community cannot be underestimated. What do the various members of the team do? Darren is the one who tends to bring it all together at the end but along the way we both have a hand in most things. We share the load with customer support which is the first job of the day. We try to offer people a very good customer support experience by answering people quickly so it's monitored throughout the day. We both enjoy the artistic, creative bits of the job most of all, with Darren specializing in 3D modelling and Vikki in texture creation. Darren will be the one who thinks of new ideas and processes and turns them into a reality, while poor Vikki gets lumbered with the more repetitive and boring aspects such as autogen placement and quality control editing tasks. If you order a boxed product, then it's Vikki who has to package it and then trudge to the post office for you. What other developers or teams have you worked with and what were their roles? We've always been independent, which to be honest is how we work best and the way we like it. We did have to employ some young school leavers (including our daughter) to help with autogen placement for Shawbury as we were on such a tight schedule and it was such a huge area to cover by hand. This required us to rent office space which was extraordinarily expensive, nowadays we work from our home. Real Life Do you have any experience in real aviation? Virtually none is the short answer unfortunately. We have a bit of a confession to make...our interest in flight sim doesn't stem from an interest in aviation, but is more a fascination with the ability of the software to create a virtual model of the real world. Darren has always had a fascination with modelling in general (ever since childhood) where he once spent his whole summer holiday creating Airfix planes and steam engines in his room. Any memorable flights in real life? Darren served in the Royal Engineers and was stationed in Northern Ireland in his youth, and is fond of recounting the stories of the numerous exhilarating low level (hedge hopping) flights in helicopters. Abseiling from a helicopter was an experience not to be forgotten either. Like Uncle Albert from Only fools and horses, he'll take any opportunity to say "during the war..." We've both had a few flying experiences, pleasure flight from Sandown on the Isle of Wight in light aircraft so that we can experience and learn what we're aiming to achieve in sim. We had a flight in Seattle on a float plane which was an amazing experience whilst we were attending the last Microsoft Flight Simulator development conference. What other hobbies or things do you do for enjoyment? We have five children (grown up now), and four grandchildren plus one on the way. We don't see nearly enough of them because we're so busy working, but when we do it's great. When we can, we like to get out with our border collie "Wiggle" for walks and bike rides, she loves to run with us if we go for a bike ride and is very well trained to do it safely. Living on the Isle of Wight there are lots of beaches to visit and many beautiful walks. But to be honest apart from short daily walks with the dog most of our time is spent working; whole days off are very rare to nonexistent. We haven't had a holiday for five years. Future How do you choose your next new design or project? We actually did a poll asking our customers what they wanted most some time ago. The three top requests were: Support for P3D installations 3D buildings for national coverage New high resolution 30 cm photo scenery for national coverage All of these requests we have acted upon and we are now working hard to produce. What simulators do you design for now and which ones do you plan to develop for in the future? We design our sceneries to be used in FSX and P3D. We don't have any plans to develop for X-Plane or others. In what ways do you see development changing in the future? That very much depends on what our customers want, but we will try our best to develop what is requested. As home PC's become more powerful and capable of running with more detailed content we will try to keep up and provide it. We're always trying our best to push our development and content to the maximum possible. Your Thoughts What can sites like FlightSim.Com do to support you and the hobby better? We think that FlightSim.Com already does a great job of supporting struggling developers like us, after all... this interview is effectively free advertising for ES and is a great help in getting people out there to notice us. One of the major shortfalls for us as a small company is the time and money needed to spend on marketing our products well enough so as to really capture the public's attention. As hobbyists, FlightSim.Com is providing you with all the information and opportunities to get involved in a great number of different developers products. So we're not sure what FlightSim.Com could do better to be honest as from what I can see they are doing a great job already. There are other sites we have contacted (and offered review copies of our products) who have not even responded to our e-mail. This is disappointing, though I suppose some sites only do advertising if you can afford to pay for coverage. How do you feel about the future of flight simulation in general? That's a hard question to answer and I wish I knew. At the moment P3D is the front runner, but does have the issue of being targeted at either professional or academic users only. These licensing restrictions are unsure enough to exclude the overwhelming majority of casual flight simmers, which is a great pity. Up until the decision to bring out the childishly silly Flight, Microsoft's development of Flight Sim appealed to both serious and casual gamers equally well, striking the right balance. We are watching the development with Dovetail Games with great interest. What are some of the most important things a site or community can do to help the developers? As a small business struggling to make ends meet and unable to pay for expensive advertising, sites like this one that get behind us and tell the community about us and what we are trying so hard to provide for our customers are a godsend. When people buy our sceneries and appreciate the results of our efforts to produce quality sceneries it's so gratifying to see them spread the word by talking about it on other sites. It is not just gratifying but also helps to give others the confidence that their money will be well spent if they buy our sceneries. What would you like people to know about you or your team and work? I suppose we would like people to understand that we are just a small business (husband and wife team) and that we work very hard to provide the best sceneries that we can for very little reward so far. We hope that people enjoy our sceneries and will come back and help support us. By purchasing our sceneries, customers help us in achieving our aim of completing the whole of the UK with Photogenesis and Autogenesis 3D. We've heard a lot of people say "I'm waiting for my local area first" or "I'll wait until it's all finished" which we understand but without the support of our customers as we go forward it won't be possible for us to carry on. We don't think many people have realised yet how much the new photography has improved and just how good the Autogenesis 3D actually is, and how amazing it will be if this is expanded to cover the whole of the UK. But for that to happen we need the support and belief from our customers. We need them to give it a try rather than holding back and waiting for the whole thing to be completed. It is a massive undertaking to develop these products for us as a small company but with the support we are asking for we believe we can do it, and do it good... No not just good but outstanding. Web site: https://earthsimulations.com