20mm: Eric, welcome to SimHQ. I know you’ve been a member here for quite a while, and I really appreciate your taking the time to talk with us.
Aeyes: Thanks, I’m happy to tell you what I can.
20mm: How did you get started building simulation aircraft cockpits, and do you remember the first one you did?
Aeyes: I am a professional artist in my non virtual life, and do oil paintings with 17th century Dutch navy ships as subjects. My oil paint art site is here for those who might have an interest in that.
I had to learn Adobe Photoshop many years ago because the Internet was booming and websites for artists were popping up everywhere. I loved it and still do, started out with Photoshop 4.0 which was great and now I use Photoshop CS2, which is about 5 versions advanced.
My love for airplanes and flight-simming led me to believe I could do those graphics and when Falcon 4.0 was released back in 1998, I got as they say ‘infected’ with the sim. After doing some pie-screens and skins I got in contact with a guy called ‘Little John’ and he introduced me to ‘the Silkman’. They had just started a modding group called “F4 Alliance”.
F4Alliance wanted to make a MiG-29 add-on with all the bells and whistles and I was going to do the cockpit graphics for it. A member named ‘Xis’ helped me out a lot getting to know the ins and outs of a 2D cockpit datfile He was one of the early pitmakers for the F-16. The F4Alliance MiG-29 mod was successfully released and it was good to have a chance to fly for the red side, especially for online squadrons. Also good as a tribute, because the MiG-29 plane is a delightful design, and clearly a dangerous opponent for the F-16 Viper.
MiG-29 Cockpits
20mm: I can certainly attest to the danger part, and I agree what a great design it is. Beautiful. You mentioned F4 Alliance, tell us some more about your work on Falcon 4 and later on with Falcon 4: Allied Force.
Aeyes: As I say, I got a taste of making pits with the MiG-29 cockpit, and started making other add-ons like the A-10, C-130, SU-27, F/A-18C and F-4 Phantom, all in 1024×768 resolution. As soon as it became possible to add a higher resolution I began working on a graphically much more detailed cockpit for the F-16.
I quickly noticed that this was not going to take one or two months but more likely six or seven months, and many hours a day. I also realized that due to the download numbers of the freeware cockpits at the cockpits.nl website, it would be costing me money for the download traffic. I made the decision to move from freeware to payware on the high resolution material only.
Understand, this was pioneering in a world of freeware Falcon 4 add-ons, and there were many opinions about the step to sell high quality “Superpits” graphics as payware add-ons. To me, there was no way around it though and the success of the F-16 Superpit led to more great pits over the years like the F/A-18C, A-10, F-15C and F-15E.
These all took at least six months each to make, and I have received help from many good people giving additional support with things like installers and cleaning up of datfiles. Some I would like to mention especially for their help over the years are ‘Fixitman’ and ‘Homercide’ for his great installers and of course ‘Daws’ for his 3D cockpit contributions. Some of these are little masterpieces. There are a lot of other people that have lent their valuable assistance and I’m very appreciative of all their help and wise counsel.
Falcon 4: Allied Force was special. After working with a lot of different Falcon 4 groups to achieve compatibility for the pits, I frankly wanted to avoid some of the politics involved in that process. However, the invitation of Lead Pursuit to team up for an official unifying Falcon 4 release was too tempting. You don’t get many chances to be an integral part of the team releasing a high fidelity flight sim, and I am really proud to see Falcon 4.0: Allied Force in the shops with my work in it.
F-16 Cockpits
