Many of you will remember that Tom Allensworth – in his interview this past October with ETC Interactive's Mark Pechnick about ProPilot's revival – suggested that Mark would be back with more detail in the near future. Well, it's been quiet for a time, for reasons explained below. But Mark's come through now in this exclusive interview with AVSIM Online!

AVSIM: Hi Mark — and welcome to Avsim OnLine. Why the silence regarding the upcoming ProPilot 2?

Mark: Since the purchase of the ProPilot product line, as well as additional combat-based flight sim assets from Sierra Online just a short 6 months ago, we have reinvented ourselves as flight sim developers. We want to take advantage of all the wonderful manufacturing and visual display system possibilities afforded us due to ETC's extended experience in advanced motion-base and centrifuge technology. This does not mean we are abandoning ProPilot to pursue loftier goals, but only to say we are looking at other relevant platforms to better the product line as a whole.

Thus, ensuring our current development is acceptable across a variety of flight simulation platforms is a primary contributor. In addition, given this new environment, we do not wish to address ProPilot 2™, in and of itself in a vacuum. In particular, manufacturing and FAA certification has entered the equation for us and we have rethought our primary objectives and business strategies so when we do release product details, they are in fact the actual details and make sense within our overall business objectives.

AVSIM: What then is your role within ETC as a division?

Mark: We are tasked with providing a solid and consistent stream of flight simulator software to accompany ETC's great motion-base technology, to provide the basis for procedural trainers as a middle ground, and to allow this experience to be available at a low-cost to anyone through a desktop product, whether for training or entertainment.

AVSIM: What products are currently being produced at ETC Interactive?

Mark: We are not only producing ProPilot 2™, but a higher-end procedural trainer entitled ProTrainer™ this year, as well as providing the backbone software for the motion-based General Aviation Trainer, GAT II™.

The GAT II™ has been an interesting product for us to work on in that it has been our first involvement with a motion-based system, FAA level II certification, and spatial disorientation training. If any of you are attending the Oshkosh Air Show this summer, don't miss the ETC booth so you can stop in and take a flight.

We are excited about introducing a higher-end version of ProPilot 2™, entitled ProTrainer™. Many of you who are more inclined towards a serious flight simulator, for aviation relevant reasons, may find this more to your tastes. We will be announcing the specific features of this product this summer. We can say at this point that IFR proficiency tests are the basis of this product, as are some exciting new developments regarding both control hardware and flight planning capability. Much of this is shared with ProPilot 2™ and again, we feel ProPilot 2™ will only benefit by the association. We have targeted the next AOPA, in Ft. Lauderdale, FL later this year to visually convey what this product will be all about.

What you really want to know about is ProPilot 2™, however, so lets get to it.

AVSIM: What are the primary design goals of ProPilot 2?

Mark: We will try to explain this in the most direct terms possible. These statements are more of a design philosophy than a feature list.

Our primary goal is to give you a flight simulator. This may sound obvious and almost ridiculous, but it involves basic aspects of the product such as maintaining frame rate to an acceptable level and thereby ensuring a smooth flight experience. We cannot take advantage of our enhanced flight models and controls in any other fashion.

A secondary goal is to be more system savvy, particularly with DirectX and the variety of Windows-based systems out there currently. This means in particular support of such features as Direct3D support (now known as DirectX Graphics), screen resolutions up to at least 1600x1200, use of 3D sound, great force feedback effects, and so on.

A third goal has been to provide an intriguing flight simulator experience for the novice as well as the advanced user, as well as those in between. This may be the most difficult challenge of this type of product. After making the point of the new "serious" side of our development, we do not want to imply that all we are producing are trainers and that they will not be entertaining. In fact, there is an unusual perceptual relationship between what is real and how it ends up as entertaining or generating the "wow" effect.

Our last, and perhaps most important goal, is to provide an airspace which encompasses a weather system capable of realistic transitioning as is experienced in flight, and to provide the virtual reactions which result from this system as pertains to ATC and other traffic, and of course the effect of all of this on you, the sim pilot.

AVSIM: Can you provide an overview of the feature differences of ProPilot 2 and the now defunct ProPilot 2000?

Mark: Yes. We can address these by topic in a general fashion, so we will.

Aircraft: They have all been completely redesigned, some have been upgraded (for instance, the King Air is now a 350) and we have added new aircraft, such as the Schweizer 300B helicopter. Our instrumentation is greatly enhanced in acuity. We have employed a modern approach to flight dynamics in general, as well as their effect on the flight modeling of the general characteristics of a particular aircraft. In fact, these are the same models used in some of our certified simulators.

Scenery: Our scenery has also been completely redesigned. Most of the changes involve composite texturing schemes, enhanced use of available information from the government, and a new relationship with the weather system.

Weather: Our weather system has a life of its own now. This creates other dynamic events in our airspace. We are of the opinion that this indeed adds to the realism beyond the all important flight dynamics of the aircraft. This aspect of our product line will provide endless flight challenges to you as a sim pilot.

Graphics: By now we all know of the situation with nVidia and 3dfx. Our primary graphics system is now Direct3D by choice, but we have ported the glide 2 API to the glide 3 API so anyone with a Voodoo 5 card can use our products with their FSAA. So both APIs are supported.

Sound: Enhanced everywhere and in 3D.

Controls: We have developed a suite of excellent forced-feedback control effects.

Open architecture: We are addressing this at a first step level. We are starting with a panel and flight dynamics editor, an innovative lesson and performance evaluation editor, which we refer to as a profile editor, and finally scenery editor capabilities.

User Interface: On the whole we have restructured our interface to take advantage of the features addressed above. In particular, flight planning, weather, and associated open architecture editors have resulted in the primary design changes.

AVSIM: Do you have any last comments?

Mark: Only that we have tried to keep this informal. We will be announcing these products in a more formal manner in the upcoming months where exact feature specifications, screen shots, and product availability will be provided.

AVSIM: Mark, thanks for sharing ETC Interactive's objectives for training simulators, and especially concerning the new ProPilot 2 product. It sounds exciting, and we're sure our readers are looking forward to hearing of specific features – and lets see those screenshots soon!