A Developers Hall of Fame ?

[Dominique_K 10,133]

In the new FS sim thread, some fellow simmers show rancour at the developpers community. Not me, I've seen this hobby live and proper for almost 40 years and I know what I owe them.

To the best of my knowledge there is no FS Hall of Fame. Maybe some of them deserve kind of a recognition. Criterion ? They made the hobby what it is now.  Many made great products too but they rode the wave. I chose people I see as innovators.  

Scenery Design :

Justin Tyme (FSGenesis) and Todd Klaus (Terrascene for Fly!) : Pioneers in the 1990's in the use of GIS data

Allen Kriesman, Holger Sandman, John Venema : Integration of GIS data and art in mega-sceneries 

Richard Goldstein : inventor the small moody airports à la Darrington we've learnt to love and that, I guess, inspired the OrbX people.

Arno Gerretsen and Jon "Scruffyduck" (ADE) : a trove of utilities to help we, the little  guys, to make our own sceneries

Aircraft

Scott Gentile, Rob Young, Tony Randazzo, Milton Shuppe  : Aircraft modeling witchcraft  

Utility

Pete Dowson :

I've missed some of course. Feel free to add them below keeping in mind they must have changed something in our hobby not only brought up a nice plane or scenery or utility.  Also, please, refrain to add anything negative. You may not like the pricing policy of this one or the bad temper of that one. Not the issue here.  It is a positive thread 😊 ! 

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

You should redo this as a poll. Generally a HOF has induction criteria, so you might want to think about that aspect also.  

[fs4fun 366]

A few other suggestions: Luis Sa (Sbuilder, SbuilderX), Don Grovestine (AIFP, ADE GP Editor, and many other tools), Jim Vile (RIP, many innovations in airport design), Dick Ludowise (terrain expert), Doug Dawson (gauge tools, sound gauge). All these folks have freely contributed enormous time and effort to make this hobby what it is.

Bill Womack is a legendary scenery designer who has also made some really good painting and scenery design tutorials for beginners/hobbyists.

[fs4fun 366]

I would also add Bill Learning who has helped so many people with gauge programming, modeling, lighting, animation, etc and also worked on a number of popular payware aircraft models.

[Mace 1,902]

Adam Szofran -- bgl tools from the 1990's, and of course many sims since

Manfred Moldenhauer -- for SCASM

Eric Ernst - ground-breaking panels, LevelD etc.

possibly Dino Cattaneo as well -- great modeler

Barry that would be Bill Leaming

[charliearon 3,017]

Manfred Jahn, Rob Richardson to name a few more freeware aircraft developers.

[fs4fun 366]

2 hours ago, Mace said:

Barry that would be Bill Leaming

oops, thanks for the correction. Bad eyesight on my part. LOL

[overspeed3 410]

 

How 'bout Sidney Schwartz for a couple of dozen airports?

[Wobbie 938]

1x 'p' .... not 2x!

[Dominique_K 10,133]

a correction to my earlier post it was of course Jon "Scruffyduck" Masterson.

[Dominique_K 10,133]

13 hours ago, fs4fun said:

A few other suggestions: Luis Sa (Sbuilder, SbuilderX), Don Grovestine (AIFP, ADE GP Editor, and many other tools), Jim Vile (RIP, many innovations in airport design), Dick Ludowise (terrain expert), Doug Dawson (gauge tools, sound gauge). All these folks have freely contributed enormous time and effort to make this hobby what it is.

Bill Womack is a legendary scenery designer who has also made some really good painting and scenery design tutorials for beginners/hobbyists.

I am with you with these names and I don't know how I missed Luis Sa. His SBuilderX is behind so many sceneries !

Edited June 19, 2019 by domkle

[Dominique_K 10,133]

13 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

You should redo this as a poll. Generally a HOF has induction criteria, so you might want to think about that aspect also.  

Thanks Jay. I thought of a poll but it gets a little complicated. We have  already about thirty names in various specialities (aircraft, sceneries, sceneries design, tools etc). I should have called the thread" The Developers Recognition" thread 😃 !

The criterion would be that they should be innovators of sort, they made something that didn't exist before or develop it in a most significant way.  For our enjoyment.

For instance, the use of GIS data. Justin Tyme introduced the USGS mesh and LC in Fs2k2 (as I remember) and Todd Klaus showed us how to mesh them into a scenery with vector data in Fly!. Nobody, to my knowlege, had done that before. Kriesmann, Sandman and Venema brough it to a superior level. Innovators. The landscapes we fly in, is theirs. And I am grateful to them for that. 

In another field, Randazzo has perfected complex aircraft modeling (since his 777 for Fly! -who remember that he begun to model for Fly! ?) or Gentile has perfected the modeling the piston engine. BTW I should have added the guys (I do not know their names)  from Majestic for importing into the sim a turbine engine simulation.

EDIT Adding Steve Small from  FSD for FDE modeling.

Edited June 19, 2019 by domkle

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

Once you have a bunch of names filter them out using your induction criteria and start a poll with the reduced list.

[Jim Young 2,356]

I also like Lorby Si's Addon Manager which has many utilities within the utility to help make adding scenery to P3D much easier. 

[Alan_A 1,650]

Don't forget Alexander Metzger and Bernt Stolle when it comes to flight modeling.

And if we're going way, way back, I'd nominate Laemming Wheeler, who I think developed the first-ever flight simulator add-on aircraft.  There are times when I still miss his Hungwell Gypsy - yes, that's what he called it.  It was a sort of tandem trainer, a little like a T-6.  And it was the first one that taught me that a third-party airplane could be dramatically better than what we now call default.