by CoachTom » Tue Feb 27, 2024 4:08 pm
Just found out about this this morning - I'm still in shock. I just posted the following over at flightsim.com - part of the "Daily Update" series of posts in The 2024 Australian Air Rally:
“I’d like to take the rest of today’s Update to tell you about a friend named Ilan Papini. The Ilan I knew loved three things: Flying, sailing, and making computers do impossible things to simulate the first two. In 1998, he released Hang Sim, which still has the best modeling of thermals of any flight simulator I’ve seen. He followed this in 1999 with Virtual Sailor, the first open world nautical simulator, which came complete with a set of tools for developing boats and scenery for the program.
“Ilan wrote exquisite code, but was not very good with words, at least not in English, as his native language was Hebrew. I received Virtual Sailor as a gift in 2000 and, although I enjoyed it thoroughly, I grew frustrated by the lack of documentation. I contacted him with a question, and found him to be the most accessible and customer-focused developer who I have personally known. I was so impressed that I offered to write the documentation for him, just for the price of a single license of each new product he released.
“I developed a couple of sample chapters for him. He liked them, but asked me to hold off on any more work because he had something else in the pipeline that would change everything that I was writing. That. ‘something else,’ was Vehicle Simulator, which is what I’d call an Omni sim, since it simulated everything – I could literally drive from my home to the airport, fly to the marina, sail for the afternoon, fly back, and drive home, all in the same sim session. In fact, I wrote this into a sample intro for the Vehicle Simulator manual, that Ilan loved. But, more changes were coming, so why don’t I hold off on the manual until they’re done, so everything’s right.
“He asked me to be a beta tester for a couple of other sims that he was developing. Rocket Simulator was about designing missiles to down terrorist rockets before they destroy your city. Ilan was a Haifa resident, and this was more than a simulator; it was a mitzvah – never did I feel what it’s like to live under constant threat until I played Rocket Simulator.
“Fire Flight was also inspired by events around Haifa, in its case the annual forest fires that menaced the city and outlying towns. You pilot a water bomber with the same flight and atmospheric physics as in Vehicle Simulator, drop your load on a fire, then swing around to a body of water and pick up some more. I suggested that he develop a California scenery to go with his Haifa area, but he was more focused on the water modeling. The water in Fire Flight is head-and-shoulders ahead of Vehicle Simulator’s
“That water became the basis for Virtual Sailor Next Generation. Although it still contains the flying and driving physics modules from Vehicle Simulator, it is intended as a dedicated marine simulator. Since it came out in 2021, Ilan had been improving it constantly, including re-releasing it as 64-bit native. He never lost his dedication to his customers, sometimes turning out extensive revisions to correct what seemed like a little problem in a week or less.
“The last time I wrote to him was on 8 October, 2023, to ask if he and his loved ones were okay after the attack by Hamas. He answered:
“‘Thank you very much for your kind thoughts and words, it is indeed a very difficult time here, me and my loved ones are OK, but my heart is aching from the brutal and senseless massacre of 600 civilians and kidnapping of a 100 more.
“‘I feel it will get worse before it gets better.’
“Ilan was the sole guy working on Virtual Sailor NG and his other products. He did other work, too, because sales from his
www.hangsim.com website weren’t enough to pay the bills and build a nest egg for retirement. Like all Israelis, I was certain that he was called on to help the war effort in any way he could. Besides, all of the action was down toward the south of Israel; Haifa was relatively unscathed. I figured I’d avoid contacting him again until things settled down – I figured the last thing he had time for was to answer best wishes.
“On the 9th of February, Ilan was doing what he loved. He took an ICP Savannah LSA up around Meggido – the Armageddon place. An eagle hit the plane, sending it to the ground. Ilan actually survived the wreck, but succumbed to his injuries in the hospital.
“I only found out about it this morning. At first, I didn’t believe the news, and spent an hour verifying it. Every second since then I’ve spent wishing that I had been a better friend. I found a tribute to him over at AvSim, and finally found his obituary in Haipo. It said that he was buried on the 11th, and that he leaves behind a wife and two children - I didn’t even know that he was married or had a family. They will be sitting in his brother’s house at 41 Einstein Street, Haifa. I wonder what the rules are for sitting Shiva in a Saratoga.
“Ilan Papini, father, husband, friend, sim developer, sailor, pilot, gone from us at age 60.
“Killed by the only thing in the skies that knew the thermals better than he did.
Just found out about this this morning - I'm still in shock. I just posted the following over at flightsim.com - part of the "Daily Update" series of posts in The 2024 Australian Air Rally:
“I’d like to take the rest of today’s Update to tell you about a friend named Ilan Papini. The Ilan I knew loved three things: Flying, sailing, and making computers do impossible things to simulate the first two. In 1998, he released Hang Sim, which still has the best modeling of thermals of any flight simulator I’ve seen. He followed this in 1999 with Virtual Sailor, the first open world nautical simulator, which came complete with a set of tools for developing boats and scenery for the program.
“Ilan wrote exquisite code, but was not very good with words, at least not in English, as his native language was Hebrew. I received Virtual Sailor as a gift in 2000 and, although I enjoyed it thoroughly, I grew frustrated by the lack of documentation. I contacted him with a question, and found him to be the most accessible and customer-focused developer who I have personally known. I was so impressed that I offered to write the documentation for him, just for the price of a single license of each new product he released.
“I developed a couple of sample chapters for him. He liked them, but asked me to hold off on any more work because he had something else in the pipeline that would change everything that I was writing. That. ‘something else,’ was Vehicle Simulator, which is what I’d call an Omni sim, since it simulated everything – I could literally drive from my home to the airport, fly to the marina, sail for the afternoon, fly back, and drive home, all in the same sim session. In fact, I wrote this into a sample intro for the Vehicle Simulator manual, that Ilan loved. But, more changes were coming, so why don’t I hold off on the manual until they’re done, so everything’s right.
“He asked me to be a beta tester for a couple of other sims that he was developing. Rocket Simulator was about designing missiles to down terrorist rockets before they destroy your city. Ilan was a Haifa resident, and this was more than a simulator; it was a mitzvah – never did I feel what it’s like to live under constant threat until I played Rocket Simulator.
“Fire Flight was also inspired by events around Haifa, in its case the annual forest fires that menaced the city and outlying towns. You pilot a water bomber with the same flight and atmospheric physics as in Vehicle Simulator, drop your load on a fire, then swing around to a body of water and pick up some more. I suggested that he develop a California scenery to go with his Haifa area, but he was more focused on the water modeling. The water in Fire Flight is head-and-shoulders ahead of Vehicle Simulator’s
“That water became the basis for Virtual Sailor Next Generation. Although it still contains the flying and driving physics modules from Vehicle Simulator, it is intended as a dedicated marine simulator. Since it came out in 2021, Ilan had been improving it constantly, including re-releasing it as 64-bit native. He never lost his dedication to his customers, sometimes turning out extensive revisions to correct what seemed like a little problem in a week or less.
“The last time I wrote to him was on 8 October, 2023, to ask if he and his loved ones were okay after the attack by Hamas. He answered:
[i]“‘Thank you very much for your kind thoughts and words, it is indeed a very difficult time here, me and my loved ones are OK, but my heart is aching from the brutal and senseless massacre of 600 civilians and kidnapping of a 100 more.
“‘I feel it will get worse before it gets better.’[/i]
“Ilan was the sole guy working on Virtual Sailor NG and his other products. He did other work, too, because sales from his www.hangsim.com website weren’t enough to pay the bills and build a nest egg for retirement. Like all Israelis, I was certain that he was called on to help the war effort in any way he could. Besides, all of the action was down toward the south of Israel; Haifa was relatively unscathed. I figured I’d avoid contacting him again until things settled down – I figured the last thing he had time for was to answer best wishes.
“On the 9th of February, Ilan was doing what he loved. He took an ICP Savannah LSA up around Meggido – the Armageddon place. An eagle hit the plane, sending it to the ground. Ilan actually survived the wreck, but succumbed to his injuries in the hospital.
“I only found out about it this morning. At first, I didn’t believe the news, and spent an hour verifying it. Every second since then I’ve spent wishing that I had been a better friend. I found a tribute to him over at AvSim, and finally found his obituary in Haipo. It said that he was buried on the 11th, and that he leaves behind a wife and two children - I didn’t even know that he was married or had a family. They will be sitting in his brother’s house at 41 Einstein Street, Haifa. I wonder what the rules are for sitting Shiva in a Saratoga.
“Ilan Papini, father, husband, friend, sim developer, sailor, pilot, gone from us at age 60.
“Killed by the only thing in the skies that knew the thermals better than he did.