An interview of Mathijs Kok (1/2)

Direct from Paris, and the 7th edition of the Mondial Simulation, we have been very pleased to meet and interview Mathijs, Project Manager at Aerosoft.

Aerosoft booth today at Le Musée du Bourget, Paris.

Mondial Simulation Paris

An interview of Mathijs Kok, Project manager at Aerosoft.

Part 1

- Mathijs, about the possibility to develop the next generation of Mega airports, like Munich V.2 or II ?  Do you think you have developed new technics in order to start these projects ?

Mathijs : For some of the airports, yes. We are now redoing Frankfurt, we will redo London Heathrow and i think we will also redo Paris CDG. The potential copies to be sold is large enough to launch such projects. The problem with opening a new version is that the cost of production are very high.

- I wouldn't have thought that since you already have designed the airport, you have the photo materials..

Mathijs : Most of the time, when we are redoing a project, we restart it from scratch. Because the technology has changed.

- Can we imagine the use of new technics, that can include all the bridges, like in Paris CDG ?

We are still under the limits of Flight Simulator. It is not always easy. But yes, we have learnt a couple of things about designing bridges and the most of all, how to improve the framerate on these heavy complex airports.

Mathijs Kok, Airdailyx Sept. 2012 at Paris Le Bourget

- A few months ago, the company (and you) have announced your intention to develop more of eastern countries and Asian airports. You did Yekaterinburg and now there is this Indian Varanasi project, but anything new for China or Japan ?  Or is it too hard to get the pictures ?

Mathijs : These projects are useful to us but all of them are started by teams who want to do them personally. But Aerosoft, internally, we want to develop an airport in Saudi Arabia and another one in Bahrein but it's still really difficult to get authorizations. And in China, it's almost impossible. The strange thing though, is that in China, flight simulation is an official sport ! We tried to establish contact with people in charge in airports but they are not answering.

- And what about Taipei ?

Yes. Yes we will do this project next year for X-Plane and FSX both.

Japan used to be a huge market and we sold thousands of copies of airports in the past (about fifteen thousand copies of Tokyo Haneda airport for instance). But the market is not significant anymore. We would be lucky to sell a few copies of an airport today in this country.  

- That explains why Overland and Aersosim are not investing so much in airports anymore...

And to put things in perspective, the German market is larger than the American market and by a large margin. Microsoft still sells more copies of FSX in Germany than in USA. And that is because Europe is still the main market where people still play games on PC computer.

* *  *  * *

- Can you admit that you are disappointed by X-Plane sales ?

Mathijs :  No !! Not about the simulator itself. I am not going to give you the numbers but the simulator is very easy sale for us. A lot of students in  schools are buying X-plane 9 and then X-Plane 10 today. But selling addons is a little bit more difficult. That, i have to admit. And we still have work to do. [ Dom : a question of price ? ] No. The first addons were questionable in term of quality so people were reluctant to buy addons  but we are now releasing very good products for X-Plane. Like Toulouse for example.

The core of the exhibition, this morning in the Musée du Bourget, near Paris.

Aerosoft, Simware, and many other exhibitors are there.

Thanks very much to Mathijs for his time !
Translated from audio interview. Part II to be published tomorrow.

Follow us this evening, first pictures of the Mondial Simulation.


Thanks !

Dom Mason
ADX