Interview of Wolfgang Hake, the author of Eastern Alps . March 27, 2006




The first addon scenery for a simulator is always an event but especially when it is for Condor.
Taking profit of the Condor Scenery Toolkit, Eastern Alps, twice the size of Slovenia (see Facts and Figures) undoubtedly brings new fresh air. This very nice scenery is the first complete release by Wolfgang Hake also known as "Mosquito" on the Condor forums. In this interview
he unveils the making of his addon and shares with us his view on the future of scenery development for Condor.



French Condor
 Hello Wolfgang, could you please present yourself ?
Wolfgang
Well what shall I say ? I'm 18 years old and I live in Munich, Germany.
I began real life flying when I was 14, got my license last year at 17 and since the last summer, I have been flying at Koenigsdorf - south of Munich.

French Condor
 Before Condor, have you ever worked on sceneries for other
flight simulators ?
Wolfgang
Well, I have been working a bit on sceneries for FS2004 but never finished a complete release. It was more some trial-and-error game.

French Condor
 It seems that initially you were working on Western Austrian Alps. Why did you finally choose to model Eastern Alps ?
Wolfgang
The different names might create a weird impression, but in fact, the "Western Austrian Alps" are the "Eastern Alps". The naming with "Western Austrian Alps" was just a title for the first topic about the scenery in the Condor forums but with further development I changed it to a more general name : Eastern Alps, which covers the eastern area of the whole European Alps.

French Condor
 Eastern Alps was the first scenery for Condor, hence a huge number of requests when it was released. And one could see the solidarity of people offering bandwith for download...
Wolfgang
I must admit, I did not really think that the "rush" on the scenery would be that big. I uploaded the scenery to my webspace but only about 5 hours later it was "down". It was really great that so many people offered their help without which I think it would not have been possible for the scenery to spread so much until now. Again, I want to say thanks to the whole Speedbattle Team (Andreas Kippnick, Stefan Kessler), Bob Bayens and the rest of the Lowlands Cup Team as well as Martyn Weber...

French Condor
 What tools did you use to create the scenery ?
Wolfgang
I basically stuck to the tools mentioned in the first tutorials. These are of course all the small tools included in the Condor Scenery Toolkit as well as the ones provided by the LandscapeEditor. Further on I used Terragen for the rendering parts which was not completely new to me as I worked with it some years ago. For the graphics and textures I used Photoshop and for 3D-modeling, 3D Studio Max.

French Condor
 What was the most difficult thing you had to overcome ?
Wolfgang
The most difficult part in the creation of the scenery was the 3D-modeling-part. I only had a bit experience in 3D Studio Max and had to learn many things from scratch. This rather bad knowledge also caused some major bugs with the custom designed fields which will be - hopefully - cleaned out by the next version/patch.

French Condor
 What are you most proud of ?
Wolfgang
In fact - nothing. It was/it is just a problem that the scenery has way too much bugs, which would not have been necessary.

French Condor
 Your scenery follows Condor's graphics style (handrawn). Will you keep it that way in the future ?
Wolfgang
Condor uses quite a unique way to display landscapes. In opposition to other products, Condor uses the handdrawn style instead of satellite pictures for example. This gives the Condor-Landscape a very special look we should try to keep in other sceneries/versions. However, the next versions of the Eastern Alps Scenery will definitely make use of certain satellite-material e.g. as city-ground-textures.

French Condor
 It's good to see lakes and glaciers in Eastern Alps ! Do you think
it is possible to add the major VFR landmarks such as main roads and rivers, at least symbolically ?
Wolfgang
Implementing lakes basically was just a first try which still needs some
improvements. And as far as the glaciers are concerned, there is only one (at the Grossglockner), where I tried for the first time to include satellite- materials. Unfortunately I did not find yet an efficient way to implement
roads and rivers in Eastern Alps, but I hope I will be be able to do it within the upcoming versions of the scenery.

French Condor
 What areas of improvement do you foresee in scenery development for Condor ?
Wolfgang
I think there are a lot of possiblities of improving the landscapes in Condor and I'm always impressed when users post new ways of creating more realistic sceneries for Condor in the forums.

French Condor
 Easter is closing fast. Do you think one can find easter eggs in
the Eastern Alps ?
Wolfgang
I don't want to prevent anybody from searching, but at the moment I
admit there won't be any "easter eggs" to find.

French Condor
 Would you like to say something special to your fans ?
Wolfgang
Well I just wanted to thank everybody for his/her patience for the bugs still present in the scenery. They will of course be corrected and I want to announce that we have some "nice things" in the upcoming updates of the scenery. Some information about this was already published in the Condor forums in the last days and more precise facts should be available within the middle of the next week.

French Condor
 Wolfgang, thank you very much for your scenery and for your time. We wish you good luck for all your future projects :o)



Top of page














































































































Eastern Alps
by Wolfgang Hake
FACTS AND FIGURES


• Time of development
...- 3 weeks

• Size of the scenery
...- 180 x 300 km

• Highest mountain peak
...- 3 850 m

• Number of custom airports
...- 4

• Total number of airports
...- 12

• Number of new textures
...- Approx. 1 900

• Number of downloads
...- Over 2 500


SCREENSHOTS




















DOWNLOAD


What ? You do not have Eastern Alps yet ? Go get ! Click here. If you want to discuss about this scenery,
go to the Condor forum. And please do not forget to say thanks to Wolfgang ;o)














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