Flight sim guru Jim Mackonochie passes away

Industry veteran Jim Mackonochie has passed away after a battle with liver cancer.

Mackonochie was a pivotal figure in the flight simulation industry and despite being heavily in demand from a number of aviation-related industries never strayed far from video games, such was his passion for the genre.

He had in the past worked as the MD at a host of companies including Mattel Interactive, Mindscape and The Learning Company. He also founded Mirrorsoft, a software company within Mirror Group Newspapers.

Mackonochie made a welcome return to the games industry in 2009.

In a way, I never left games,” Mackonochie told MCV at the time. After the collapse of The Learning Company, I worked as a consultant handling brands for Encore Software, a US publisher.

However, I have always been an enthusiastic publisher of flight simulator titles, so working with TFC on both military and game simulations was natural. It is great to be back in publishing.

We are committed to the industry, because it’s one side of a two-headed coin. Military simulation and games. And who knows, now Microsoft is to close its ACES studio that produced Flight Simulator, I guess we could become the only girl left in town.”