It's not a name people are most familiar with, but his contribution to X-Plane resulted in a significantly expanded library of freeware airliners. Meet Christian Riviere, or just by his username “Riviere”. Almost half a million X-Planers have downloaded his works in some form ever since XP8.

Not the most public profile in the world of X-Plane; with each upload of his creations, Riviere in his french-y tone, distinctively describes his product on X-Plane.org’s download repository in short and stout sentences that delivers the point across. Users in return are gifted with a decent recreation of popular airliners like the A380, A350, A320, E-Jets and props like the Dash-8.

Riviere’s contribution to X-Plane stems way back in X-Plane 8 according to his list of file uploads, he began producing renditions of Russian airliners, the first aircraft he made was an Ilyushin IL86 in Siberia Airlines colours for X-Plane version 8.50 on February 7th, 2007. He then embarked on small business jets like the Falcon jets and western propliners like the ATR. Then moving to regional jets like the E-Jets before the A320 series. The pinnacle of his contribution so far is the release of the A380. It appears that Riviere hasn’t made or released any Boeing airliners.

The recent add-ons are generously equipped visually; each aircraft is decked with decent exterior modelling, 3D Cockpits, and even cabins! But serving as a base for users to download and fly while they await a more sophisticated simulation - systems wise it defaults to basic functionality just to keep virtual pilots getting from point A to point B.

His A380 amassed over 120k downloads on the .org, his other recent aircraft easily passes over 1,000 downloads. All his submissions dating back to the early days of X-Plane 8 comes to a whopping over Four Hundred and Ninety Thousand downloads.

While his releases are nowhere near the level of sophistication of freeware projects like the Zibo 737, or even Ksgy’s LET - L410 Turbolet, Christian Riviere’s commendable effort to bring a platform of freeware planes for users to download as “filler” products has what got us to reward his aircraft work in this edition of No Money Mondays. His coverage of almost all of Airbus, Embraer, Bombardier and Dassault line of Aircraft spanning three generations of X-Plane arguably makes him one of X-Plane’s most prolific, disruptive and giving developer of all.

If you’re interested in seeing what Riviere has to offer, check out his list of file submissions here. As for Riviere, thank you for helping to make the X-Plane freeware community to what it is today.