My 6th birthday party. Flying Leatherneck Museum, San Diego.

A Note About My Cockpit Designs

Growing up, I always wanted to be a pilot. Flight sims were a way for me to connect to that world I yearned to join. Building and flying simulators are a way for me to stay connected to that dream and indulge a different love: the love of making.

To me, aircraft represent the epitome of machine as an extension of a person. To pilot an airplane is to meet one’s full potential as a bipedal animal with consciousness and curiosity. To move a complex and beautiful machine—the product of countless lives of engineering passion—through the sky as comfortably as an eagle would be otherworldly.

My flight simulators are physical structures, complete with functioning controls that works as one “giant joystick” for the simulation software that runs on a computer. The cockpit is not just an inert physical structure; every switch lever and dial electronically communicates with the simulation.