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Before Terry Welsh quit his job working at NASA's Moffett Field in California, he used to ride his bike to work every day and leave it chained under the world's largest wind tunnel. "The coolest thing about working at a place like that is that everything's so big," Welsh explains. "Everything's gigantic. That wind tunnel has an 80 by 100 foot test section where they'd put planes. They can put full-sized aircraft in there, and the intake vent is about five times that area."Welsh, who was a contractor attached to UC Santa Cruz, spent his days at Moffett Field building simulations. By night, he started putting his own game together - a cave flyer called Retrobooster. As exciting as it was to work near the world's largest wind tunnel, it ultimately wasn't as exciting as game development. Eventually Retrobooster took over and Welsh quit his job to devote all his time to it..
"The part that made it easier is that the programming is very similar," he says when asked about his change in career. "I was doing graphics programming on both ends. With games, though, it's more creative. I'd been at the NASA site about six years and while it was a good job, I'd been working on this game project for a while and the testers were really enjoying it. I figured that this was a good opportunity to find something new to do."
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