Ben’s career at MAK stretches across two of our most well-known products. He spent eight (ish) years working on VR-Forces, where some of his most significant contributions included SMS inheritance and restructuring, and the transition to a VR-Vantage-based terrain implementation. The next decade of his MAK career has been hyper-focused on VR-Engage, where he’s shaped MAK’s first-person role player application used by simulation and training teams around the world. Lately, much of Ben’s attention has been on developing new drone features and functionality for the MAK ONE 2026 release. Some of what you’ll see in VR-Engage 3.3 includes new drone movement models, improvements to loitering and tracking behaviors, and a few general tweaks that create a stronger foundation for future drone capabilities. As he put it, drones aren't going away anytime soon.

When asked why he’s stayed at MAK for so long, he responded with a classic Ben-shrug and simply said, “The people. We’re all one team here.”

Ben’s interests outside of work lean toward “standard nerd stuff,” as he put it. He’s a big fan of board games, Ultimate Frisbee, and rogue-like video games. One of Ben's more unusual recent hobbies is teaching himself the Shavian alphabet, an alternative writing system for English inspired by George Bernard Shaw's belief that traditional spelling was unnecessarily complicated. (A relaxing hobby!) 

For those who think they know Ben well, his first job might still surprise you. Long before joining the modeling & simulation industry, he spent his days on a paving crew operating a road roller and tamping freshly paved roads. Today, life looks a little different, with much of his time outside of work spent with his wife and 6-year-old twins.

Ben may have spent the last 18 years successfully avoiding the MAKer Spotlight, but his contributions to MAK's products have been harder to miss. We're glad we finally had the opportunity to share a little more about the person behind the code.
Stay tuned for our next MAKer Spotlight.

We’ll unveil the next MAKer Spotlight in our What’s Up MAK newsletter in November. Stay tuned!