An exclusive interview with... Mathijs Kok !

Direct news from Aerosoft. Projects in 2012, Opinions on new platforms etc. Mathijs has taken the time this morning (sunday !) to answer to our interview request. Thanks a lot.

1) Airdailyx : It seems that, besides X Plane, Aerosoft has now opened a friendly look at Prepar3D (P3D). Do you have any plans or are you negotiating with Lockhed Martin to improve P3D access among simmers ?

Mathijs Kok : We got great contacts with LM, but they are moving very cautious in regards to the ‘hobby’ market and I doubt we will see them changing their point of view on that. But it IS a better FSX and it IS being worked on. So we will try to make all our new add-ons working in Prepar3D and that’s all we can do. Personally I almost never start FSX anymore!

2) You have announced three months ago a new move toward eastern and Asia sceneries. Any new project on this matter ? Some of us were expecting some good FSX chinese airports.

Mathjis : We just added Russian to our language selection and are considering Chinese as well. The big problem however is that we need access to the airports to do good work and for China that is just out of the question. But I expect we’ll have four major airports in those regions in 2012.

3) Now the hard question : some Aerosoft projects look like stuck.  I am thinking about DA Crj aircraft, Dusseldorf, Lyon. Can you take the opportunity here to give us some news ?

Hard question indeed, lol.  First of all it is good to note these are project we do not ‘manage’. They are done by external and independent teams. Second, they are not related so the reasons they late are varied. I can’t give a lot of details on the individual projects, nearly all we note is shared via the forums, we got very little to hide here. None of them is stuck though, they all are being worked on. Internal projects can also be late of course, for example if professional projects need to be completed, they always have priority, but they are far better controllable.

4) Antarctica X (LimeSim) was an enormous project. Is is the kind of project that generate slow but recurrent profits for a long time ? Are you - and Normann - happy with the sales ?

We are seldom happy with sales, always room for improvement! But it’s okay. This is one of those projects that are useful to show what’s possible, to expand the simulator. We like to do these projects as sort of an experiment. Sascha knew this would not be a major seller like Frankfurt airport. But that said, we were surprised by the fact many people think this is an empty continent. It’s not and aviation is the only transport. Antarctica X is not just a scenery, it’s a simulation of the transport on a whole continent. The manual has all information on that. We know that people who buy Antarctica spend many many hours exploring it.

The Airbus X Extended project.

5) Some of us were surprised to heard about Thorsten and Emilios new team. Does this change anything for Aerosoft and are going to work all together ?

Well they are not really a new team. Emilios is helping Thorsten on a project but he is also working on new projects directly for us. However I expect little changes. Thorsten has decided to sell his products on his own, so we’ll not do the installers, manuals, support etc. But they will most likely still be in our shop and where possible also in boxed format. But wait for the new project from Emilios, it will be stunning.

6) Airdailyx : Can you give a short agenda of the year 2012 ? some large projects incoming ? A new serie (dangerous airport for instance), progress on Aerosoft Simulator ?

Mathijs Kok : 2012 is very much a transition year. We got loads of new simulators, X-Plane 10, MS FLIGHT, AeroflyFS and we are seriously looking at all of them.  We have also just completed a re-organization of Aerosoft so we can handle the changing market better. Note this is not a bad sign, in fact it means hiring more staff!  We are now more a ‘content’ producer. All we make should be usable in as many projects as possible.
Soon you will see the first products that will have FS2004/FSX/Prepar3D/X-Plane installers. One thing that’s important this year is that many or our big projects are being overhauled and moved to X-Plane. Many Mega Airports will get new version as the airports have changed (new runways etc).  At the same time we will spend more time on the trains and bus simulators, As long as they are ‘serious’ we know they will sell very well.

I know this is not a lot of news, but we got to keep some surprises!

Thanks very much for your time, Mathijs.

I am grateful if you can answer to this interview !

Welcome!

Copyright Airdailyx January 2012.

credit Aerosoft.

The german editor celebrating its 20th birthday

Left to right, Mathijs Kok, Winfried Diekmann, Tiziana Krueger,

Mungo Amyatt-Leir and Sascha Baumhoer.