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..