First of all, I'd like to say that I dream of airplanes and flying since I was a very young kid. My oncle still remember when he took me to a toy store to buy me a present for my birthday and I started telling him all the old airplanes (fighter and civil) characteritics while I was holding those boxes of little plastic planes made by "Airfix". He's almost 60 now but he's the one who reminded me that episode, not long ago. Then I grew up and I lost interest until I was about 16 and my dad started to tell me he used to have a PPLicence (which turned out to be a damn lie). That lie kept me interested in flying but I never made a single move toward real airplanes as I was too busy racing with karts, cars, playing soccer and a lot of other stuff I couldn't live without (you know what I mean). I am a computer geek and I have been dreaming of Microsoft Flight Since back to the 90's when I first saw an advertisment somewhere. But I was too busy with too much stuff so I never bought it.
Finally in the 2007, back to Italy (after 13 years spent between NYC, North Carolina and Holland), I was at home in a cold day of December with my wife at the last months of pregnancy of my daughter Alessandra (a.k.a. La Birba), I decided to buy FSX. It was a dream came true and the harder it was, the more attracted I was to it. (I love challenges). I wanted to learn everything, from take off and landing to IFR, IVAO, etc. I have 3 companies to run but FSX and IFR theory got me very much, or better say too much, so at some point I realzied it was better to pull off from the sim for a while as I was going to bed at night and wake up in the morning thinking about charts and IVAO more than about my business.
I have never been interested in addons because 1) I was too much into learning to fly and 2) my PC at that time was barely able to run at 20fps with no autogen and no clouds. I didn't care… I wanted to learn to fly!
Then at some point, when I have learned all it was needed to fly in IVAO everywhere in the world I started thinking about how the world looked like and so I got my first add-on (on a brand new PC) which was the global terrain mesh. What a change! Unrecognizable!
Then I got an environment improvement addon that really makes a huge difference in FSX.
Then in Feb. 2009 my son was born and, I have to admit, I was a little sick of flying as it was not stimulating anymore. Nothing else to learn. Plus, my son and my 2 years old daughter… you know…!
Then November 2009, I met the project SIRX. They were looking for some Photoshop guys to help in the optimization of photoreal imagery to make Italy photoreal ground textures. It was like entering a new world. It was the real world! When I went there the first time, they have shown me a flight over Florence (where I live) and I was shocked! I couldn't believe my eyes. They told me what SIRX was and I immediatelly fell in love with it so I started to work with them. The guys there are awsome, professionals and very friendly. They all wanted me as "ground textures optimization cooordinator" and I was very happy to become part of the team. Unfortunatelly it didn't work with SIRX but 2 months of testing and working at the textures opened myself to this add-ons world.
At the end of December I've posted some screenshots on my personal blog and I also makde a video that I placed on Youtube. After only a couple of days I got an incredible amount of emails from simmers and professionals alike with lots of compliments. I developed some graphich optimization scripts that allow me to optimize and produce large areas in a very short time frame in all the variations (seasonal, night and hard winter) and that seemed to be something that had awaken the interest of big guys in the aviation industry, beside the desktop users. So I founded VERO to start producing gloabal ground textures and, why not, complete photorealistic sceneries. Big project, I know, but hey… I believe we can make it big and, plus, I love challenges.
I have to say that I was very lucky to meet those guys as in a very short period of time I have learned many things about FSX and addons in general.
Now we are here, very passionate about what we are doing and very optimistic about the future of flight simulation.
Some people asked me if I was sure about developing for FSX, since Microsoft left the development (and sold the whole program to Lokheed-Martin) and this is my answer…
Microsoft, with FSX, made something that is going to be up-to-date with the next 10 or 15 years hardware so, they went much further ahead than what was needed with today's hardware technology. The result? They stop developing as there was nothing else to develop, beside addons to make it look better. And this is exactly what VERO is all about: contributing to make FSX look REAL (vero, in Italian) in the years to come!
So, what's next? What is the next generation of flight simulation? What will be the improvements in flight simulators in the future? REALISM!
It will be all about flying at 60fps with full-featured airplanes on a REAL world environment, with a level of photorealism that will grow and improve to the point where we will feel like being inside a movie or inside a real airplane. Few years from now and we will all fly at home on full-motion full-simulators as hardware and technology will reach such a low price that "low budgeted" users will be able to fire simulation programs featuring super detailed 3D models (fully covered city areas) + full autogen + 10cm/pixels resolution photorealistic ground texture, making all running so fast and smooth as web pages in today's internet browsers.
FSX is ready for all that, even though it's not perfect. There is something I really believe it's a shame not to see in FSX (and I really whish someone out there will be able to fix it): clouds shadow cast rendering.
FSX pilots… the world is about to be yours!
Gabriele Cripezzi
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