An interview with Fernando Herrera, Carenado’s Marketing Director.
Jarn: Bienvenido, Fernando. Perhaps you could start by telling us about Carenado’s beginnings?
Fernando Herrera: Well, that was near the closing days of the year 2000. Three flightsim enthusiasts who had been collaborating together and producing free add-ons for the FS community came up with a hi-quality Cessna 152, then uploaded it as freeware at Flightsim. A couple of days later they realized it was the most downloaded file of the month! That success got one of the guys thinking about commercial possibilities. He was an old school-mate and good friend of mine. He approached me asking if I’d like to join them as an investor and general manager. I accepted and the Carenado Team was created. We released our first commercial aircraft in March 2001 (it was the Piper Warrior, which was a complete success). The original team, which remains the same, is made of four people: a modeller and programmer, a sound, FDE, and manuals designer, a texture artist, and me, mainly managing the commercial side of the business.
Which of your products is the most popular?
For FS2002/2004 our most successful aircraft was the Cessna Centurion. For FS2004 it’s the Cessna 206 Stationair.
Your products seem to be circumscribed to General Aviation. Has Carenado ever thought of going to the side of Big Iron, warbirds, etc?
From the beginning we have concentrated our efforts on small GA aircraft for several reasons. First, it’s surprisingly difficult to find good GA aircraft for FS. Also most real-world pilots have surely flown one of them for real (those aircraft are the most popular ones, to be found in any flying club around the world). Moreover, GA is the type of aircraft we can have real access to here in Chile, South America, where we are based.
We are really not interested in developing heavy metal aircraft or warbirds. We believe the niche of small GA aircraft is where our abilities shine best.
Are there any people in the team who flies in real life?
When Carenado was founded none of us flew. Nowadays three of us are pilots and fly every weekend.
What are your impressions on FSX, from a developer’s point of view?
Regarding FSX, I only have good comments for it. For developers the new platform allows for greater freedom and creativity, we can release better add-ons. For users, I look forward to SP1 + DirectX 10 + Vista, believing performance will be even better. At the end of the day the overall experience has been excellent.
Carenado’s been really quiet for some time. Have you been busy behind the scenes? Any interesting stuff coming soon?
It’s been quiet because we’ve been observing how things went with FSX and Windows Vista. We made up our minds about not releasing any FSX products for only a very few people. Now, and after the release of SP1, we are pretty sure the “exodus” to FSX will really begin to happen.
It also took us some time to understand the new workings of FSX (we actually went through some complications at the time of adapting to it) but right now we are in the final phase of development of our next project, which will be the best aircraft ever made by us! We will release it both for FS2004 and FSX. The FSX version will feature more details and better textures for the models. I can’t reveal any details yet, but I can only tell you it will be amazing!
We’ll be eagerly waiting for it! Thank for your time, Fernando!
Thank you, Jarn!
I have asked Fernando for a sneak preview, and he promised to think about it!
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