My better half always rubs my nose in 'The Fact' that women are better at multi-tasking than men, and although I usually agree with her (trust me, THE ingredient for a healthy relationship), I have to disagree with her on this. The past couple of weeks have been crazy at the McPhat Studios offices. Working on (or Alt-Tabbing as I call it) between 3 three Texture- and 2 full 3D and artwork projects simultaneously is something we could not have managed a couple of years ago.

Although the 'main podium' may seem calm and serene from an audience perspective, backstage is one big dynamic, crazy mess.

Like the Boeing assembly line, every single member of the team works on and supplies his or her part of the final product. Dhierin's working on the PMDG 747-X GE's, Tito on the LDS767 RB211's, Frank's pathing the 747 fuselage like a mad man, Snorri's working on the 747 wings and tail, Sara's brushing her way through the DC-9 gauges and main panel, Jamal tries to keep up, mapping the DC-9 VC, Luke is shaping the exterior 3D model, Nicolas crafts a yet to be disclosed twin, Kevin tries to keep the website from not crumbling under the weight of the 25.000 odd monthly visitors, while I'm working on the 767 pay-ware World Airliner and freeware liveries.

Where we used to have a weekly , relaxing Friday afternoon 'how are things going'- meeting, these are now replaced and pushed to late night 23.00 quick and occasional Skype talks due to the hefty workloads. I sometimes catch Frank at home, still online at 2A.M, Snorri pushed it to almost 5AM a couple of days ago and I get a regular 'I'm off to bed, see you tomorrow' at 12AM from Dhierin and Kevin.

If one would look at this as a bad thing or a problem, finding a cause of what or who to blame so a solution can be found, is part of my job as a Lead Designer and after a lot of tinkering I can only point the finger to ourselves.. It's us. We did this ourselves, we're the ones to blame.

Raising our own and subsequently also the entire industry's bar when it comes to aircraft graphics by launching High- and Ultra High Definition Textures is where things quickly 'went south'. The days that we could start and wrap up a repaint in a mere few hours went down the drain when I first talked to Leen (our Quality Controller) about 3 years ago, asking him the question : "Say Leen, what if we blew up those tiles to 4096?" Words I sometimes wish I never uttered in the first place. It was a good thing though, PMDG followed with the J41 (2048), Captain Sim with their 767 (2048), Carenado has a whole line of (brilliantly) 2048 mapped GA planes and we take care of the remainder.

Choosing to go Flight Simulator X only was our second 'mistake'. Not only do we have to redo stock kits from the ground up for the diffuse maps ; Specular and Bump maps have to be HD as well. If that paint chips off on the diffuse map, it better chip off from the spec and bump as well. How else would you make a tail look like this? How else would you 'detach' the wing root joints from an ageing Super 80 so it looks like this and not this, without touching the actual 3D model?

Looking back, as we near our third anniversary as a real, 'tax paying company', I can only say : 'We raised that bar, we took it, threw it up high in the air and yes sometimes when we're at work in the middle of the night, it comes tumbling down on us like a Stuka bomber, but we can only blame ourselves'. Still, I think I speak for the entire team when I say :

It's a 'mistake' I don't regret making..

As we are slowly easing into the last month of Q1 of 2011, I think it is safe to relax, sit down and look back at what was a hectic, but also a successful 2010.

In our second full year of operation as a pay-ware outfit (we started halfway 2008 with the first E-Jet), we released as many as thirteen World Airliners for the PMDG MD-11, the Captain Sim 757 and the FeelThere E-Jets v2. One would say quality would suffer from the sheer quantity, but our first AVSIM Gold Star award (for the E-Jets v2), which we received in November has proven otherwise. We worked hard, shifted from Normal Definition to primarily High And Ultra High Definition repaints, brought in some new talented people, while some of the main stayers upped their ante and had fun in the process.

That was 2010 in a nutshell. Time to look forward at what 2011 has in store for us.

As a design studio specialized in exterior textures we have worked for and with 'the big boys', (the) PMDG (MD-11) being the latest in the list of developers that already consisted of Wilco, FeelThere, Level-D, Flight1, Captain Sim and Coolsky.

Now, if you ask me (and for the sake of virtually having a conversation, I'll just pretend you are indeed asking me) ; the only one missing from the list, the cherry on the pie, the cream of the crop, is the PMDG 737NGX. As talks with Robert -from PMDG- progress it is just a matter of time, before we've achieved the (highest?) goal we set for ourselves when we first started doing freeware repaints as a group back in 2007 : adding a flagship PMDG product to our portfolio.

With the vast majority of operators and liveries of the 737 it is a project that will keep us occupied for the most part of 2011 (and perhaps even into 2012). But if wheeling in the NGX was 'The Goal', the highest achievable, we set for ourselves, what's next? Does it end? Retire and spend our days on our yacht (we don't have a yacht), hop on our private jet (nope, no jet either) and relax by the pool of our beach house (wait, no beach house?) in the Maldives?

H to the No, it is time to move on and broaden our horizon, something we have been doing behind the scenes for the past couple of months as we were hired by Flight1 to do all the artwork for the Coolsky DC-9. This means we are responsible for not only the exterior (HD) textures, but also the interior, but most noticeably ; the 3D model, both exterior, virtual cockpit and virtual cabin. Being 'eye-candy enthusiasts from the EGA (some even CGA) era' we set the bar high and in my next entry I will let you guys get a taste some of the stuff we've been doing.

For now, back to work on the PMDG MD-11 World Airliners 5 and the first couple of Level-D 767 World Airliners.  Duty calls..