Flight 1 Open Day 2011

Posted: Friday, September 9, 2011 - 0:44
With less than three weeks left before the Flight1 Open Day on September 24th 2011 final preparations are underway for what will undoubtedly be an excellent day out for all. They have finalised details of the talks, presentations and friends new and old who will be attending.

The Flight1 Open Day is an annual event offering guests a unique day out, bringing the best of real world and virtual aviation together. They look forward to seeing you all there, for a free goody bag on arrival and a guarantee of entry simply register.

Tower 2011 Updates

Posted: Friday, September 9, 2011 - 0:22
A Service Pack (SP) has been released for KSFO San Francisco International for Tower! 2011. Existing customers can re-download their product by using the download link they received upon purchase.

Boston Logan KBOS for Tower! 2011 has been released and it's available from ATCSuite and feelThere BTW, ATCSuite.com has been completely rediseigned.

Sim Savvy Photoreal America

Posted: Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - 13:07
Sim Savvy is pleased to annouce that Photoreal America no longer fits on a 500G hard drive. Eleven northeastern states and three western states have been upgraded using the new 50cm NAIP aerials. The product now ships on a 2 terabyte USB hard drive ($100 value) in order to hold it all. Additional high resolution states will be sent to upgrade customers monthly until all states are completed. Free samples of the 11 states are available for download at the website. Additionally, Sim Savvy would like to thank the AvSim staff for creating the The Photoreal Scenery Support Forum .

Captain Sim Releases Their 737 Captain

Posted: Tuesday, September 6, 2011 - 14:47
The 737-100 has been revealed from Captain Sim's hangar. This highly detailed digital replica of the Boeing 737-100 aircraft comes with high resolution textures in 3 liveries. There are hundreds of animations including the control panel. Inside you'll see the flight attendants in various airline uniforms and the passengers.

Vilnius X from Aerosoft

Posted: Saturday, September 3, 2011 - 19:14
Staff reviewer Rick Desjardins heads overseas to Lithuania to check out Aerosoft's Vilnius X. "The airport is located approximately 6 km south of the city of Vilnius and is the largest airport in Lithuania. The terminal is noteworthy because of its 50's Soviet era design characteristics."

"The ground textures within the airport were really well done especially those used for the hard surfaces; I thought they were exceptionally good. Dirt and rubber stains were easily seen on the apron and in the parking areas as well. In addition, the markings and asphalt appeared to have suffered the effects of aging."

"Vilnius airport has been completely rebuilt from the ground up giving the sim pilot an opportunity to experience a realistic recreation of the airport. The airport has a simple design; a single runway with the buildings concentrated along the southwest side. Aerosoft surrounded the airport with a photo scenery base and populated it with autogen and several local landmarks."

"Overall, Vilnius X is a very good scenery. Aerosoft has taken an airport that was neglected in FSX and turned it into one that is interesting and worthy of being in any simmer’s repertoire of airports."

Real Environment Xtreme Service Pack 3 for X-Plane

Posted: Saturday, September 3, 2011 - 13:06
Real Environment Xtreme announces the release of Service Pack 3 of REXPlane for X-Plane. Fixes include an updated backend processing code of the weather sync feature, fixes for formatting of the metar.rwx file handling of temp and dew point, updated backend code for better performance of the WASYS system and moved processing of weather to their new database system.

Latest News From Aerosoft

Posted: Saturday, September 3, 2011 - 0:06
Anchorage X - The biggest city of Alaska is now available for FSX in all of its beauty. The download of Anchorage X contains the most important airport of Alaska, Ted Stevens International (PANC). The newly created scenery comes with all of its buildings and institutions and also features a detailed recreation of Lake Hood (LHD), the biggest sea plane airport of the world including a large number of static aircraft. Another highlight is the fantastic night lighting and effects.
Keflavik 1.01 (FS9/FSX) - The biggest volcanic island of the world, Keflavik X is now available as a new full version. Version 1.01 contains some AFD file corrections for FS2004 and FSX such as corrected parking positions and taxiways. Keflavik Airport, the only international airport of Iceland is 50 km to the southwest of the capital Reykjavik and has also its functions as a military airfield. The airport model has been created true to the original and is an ideal add-on for their Iceland X scenery.
Bell 206 JetRanger III (X-Plane) - The DreamFoil Bell 206 JetRanger III is the first helicopter in their shop for X-Plane. And it's a solid sign that Aerosoft takes X-Plane serious these days. The DreamFoil Bell 206 JetRanger III is a gem in X-Plane and certainly comparable with what they had to offer for FSX. It comes with special modules for sound (it even simulates the muting of sound when you put the headset on) and systems, so the startup is almost 100% realistic. It's a very complete product and Aerosoft made it dead easy to install. So if you fly X-Plane on your PC or MAC (not LINUX btw) you got a new bird to try out.
Baltic Island Hopping: Bornholm Island 2011 - This time you'll fly to the island of Bornholm! FSX and FS2004 pilots can now fly to the airport of Ronne, Denmark. Bornholm is an island in the Baltic Sea and just a short hop from the south coast of Sweden (37km). The detailed scenery is a perfect image of the beautiful landscape of the island. Owners of either version for FSX or FS9 can now buy the other version with a 50% discount. Just enter the serial code of the purchased version during the order process.

Carenado C337H Skymaster HD FSX Released

Posted: Friday, September 2, 2011 - 15:02
This new aircraft comes with 5 HD paint schemes, 1 HD Blank texture featured in 2 models (one pilot and two pilots).
Some of the documentation includes: Normal and Emergency Procedures, Performance tables PDF, Quick reference table PDF, Operations Tips and Reality XP Integration PDF, the Carenado GNS530 Users Guide PDF and Recommended Settings PDF. Complete details and a list of all the features can be found at the Carenado C337H website.

Flight Control Replay Voice Edition Released

Posted: Friday, September 2, 2011 - 14:52
Flight Control Replay Voice Edition permits you to record and play flight situations in FSX with a variety of options. This new version has very useful features. The Voice Command Recognition feature allows you to use speech commands. The Voice recording feature allows you to record your voice. When you play a flight situation previously recorded you can choose to play only the flight situation or the flight situation synchronized with your recorded voice.

Airport Studio V 1.01 Available

Posted: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - 12:56
Flight1 has released an update for Airport Studio, the only airport editor that runs inside Flight Simulator. The update includes several improvements and bugfixes, For more information and to download the update, please visit the Airport Studio Product Page for full details.

Orbx Release 1WA6 Fall City Airport

Posted: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - 12:46
Orbx has released 1WA6 Fall City Airport. For the first time ever, Grass blows in the wind, trees sway and leaves fall from trees onto the ground in the fall. There are hyper-detailed aprons and runway and grass and trees so realistic you would swear that you're actually there. 1WA6 is a unique private airport surrounded by beautiful homes, some whose access is by crossing the main runway. With the world famous Snoqualmie Falls nearby, a wonderfully picturesque setting.
Features: Custom ground imagery at 7cm per pixel! Fully custom modeled airport and houses FSX gmax poly runway, aprons and the Beautiful Snoqualmie Falls location. Includes PeopleFlow animated characters, TextureFlow optimised and excellent FPS. Includes custom GA AI Traffic movements and color matched seasons.

Pro Flight System from Saitek

Posted: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - 2:05
Benjamin van Soldt looks at a complete flight sim hardware ensemble from Saitek, namely their Pro Flight System. "I can say very easily that I love the Saitek hardware reviewed. Setting up the hardware to allow actual flying in FS is easy, if a bit tedious. Using the controller section of the FS settings tab, you can set everything up the way you like it, but I really recommend FSUIPC for more advanced stuff."

"The actual flying with the hardware is great. All the equipment is of good quality and seems sturdy enough to keep working for a long time. The yoke has been intelligently put together, with firm hand grips and buttons that are placed at exactly the right spots. The throttle quadrant is just as easy to setup as it’s fun to use. Being able to move actual levers instead of ramming the keyboard or moving a depressingly little thing on a joystick is an enormous joy. Like the yoke, the throttle quadrant is very versatile in that you can replace the handles on the levers to suit the function you gave it (throttle, mixture or condition lever). The pedals are easy to setup and require hardly any fiddling. Only the toe brakes might have you going back and forth in the FS settings tab."

FS Dreamscapes Hagatna Guam

Posted: Monday, August 29, 2011 - 12:07
FS Dreamscapes have released their most advanced Photoscenery to date Ultimate VFR Guam, a taste of things to come with Ultimate VFR and Ultimate VFR Xtreme packages. Fly to the exotic island territory of Guam in Micronesia, located in the Northern Marianas Islands in the Western Pacific Ocean. Features: 1.2m High Resolution Aerial Imagery, 10m High Quality Elevation Data, Nightlighting System with 3D Lights, Ambient Environment Sounds.
Generic FSX and FSX Acceleration Scenery Objects, Custom Buildings Including University of Guam, Bank of Guam, Carmen's, Hagåtña Basilica, Chamorro Village, Paseo Stadium and St Jospeh's Church and School. Moving Freeway Vehicle Traffic, Pleasure Boat Traffic. Hand Placed Apra Harbor Ship, Aircraft Carrier, Coast Guard Vessels and More.
For the full experience FSX Acceleration should be installed as it adds many more elements to the scenery.

737 NGX from PMDG - A First Look

Posted: Saturday, August 27, 2011 - 17:49
AVSIM's Editor-at-Large Maurice Pratt climbs aboard his new 737 NGX from PMDG. "PMDG's just-released 737NGX is an exceptional achievement in flight simulation realism. As fidelity to real-world aircraft advances, computer system's performance can be an issue as well. Can any add-on product, especially an exquisitely modeled commercial transport aircraft, meet all these expectations? I believe PMDG has done just that with this product."

"Speaking as a hobbyist rather than as a professional pilot, I can't say more about this product's fidelity to the actual 737 NG flight and performance characteristics than that it "just feels right" when flown by hand. Under autopilot control its performance is precise, exactly following parameters as entered in the computer display unit and MCP."

"I believe flight simmers seeking realistic air transport operation will find the PMDG 737NGX product offers an experience level never before seen in our hobby."

FSFlyingSchool for X-Plane 9 C172 Edition V1.2 Released

Posted: Friday, August 26, 2011 - 12:47
FSInventions announces a free update to their FSFlyingSchool add-on for X-Plane 9, this latest update introduces an exciting new feature which is free to all owners of FSFlyingSchool for X-Plane 9 Cessna 172 Edition.
The artificially intelligent instructors now support flights in the Carenado c172, pilots have a choice of aircraft for their flights with instructors in X-Plane, choosing from the default c172 or the Carenado c172.
Newcomers can download a free demo. Existing owners can download and install the latest version for free.
To find out more, watch movies, download demo, etc, visit the FSFlyingSchool Website.

Texans Vol 2 from Flight1/Sky Unlimited (Revisited)

Posted: Friday, August 26, 2011 - 1:35
New staff reviewer Drew Sikora revisits Sky Unlimited's Texans Vol 2 and adds to the comments of Reviewer Peter Hayes. "I strongly suggest you read Peter's review first as I will not be covering as many details of this product as he did. While I read through Peter's review and have nothing to contradict, there were some additional issues I noted with this product that he and I agreed should be published.".

"Based solely on the performance of the aircraft and their operation, I have very mixed feelings about this product. While my remarks reveal that coming to fully understand and appreciate this plane can be a bit of a rough road, it can also be worth the journey as the flight modeling is superb and she really is a fun aircraft to get around in. If you're an old warbird fanatic looking to expand your library, then you'll no doubt enjoy this bird despite its quirks."

KHQM Bowerman Airport FTX Pacific Northwest Demo

Posted: Thursday, August 25, 2011 - 0:38
Orbx has released a payware-quality freeware airport KHQM Bowerman which is located within the Olympic Peninsula PNW Demo area. Anyone who has not yet experienced Orbx's FTX or their payware airports can now do so for free by downloading the expanded PNW demo which also now includes KHQM.

FSX AI Spotter Project

Posted: Wednesday, August 24, 2011 - 14:47
The FSX AI Spotter Project comes from the passion to observe aircraft departing and landing at one airport. Some real time traffic providers are on the Web. Why not create a program that integrates that data within FSX ?

FSX AIS is the answer to the above question. Download the shareware release of FSXAIS and the freeware "connector" for FlightAware (Web provider of real time traffic) together with the specification (free) for all who want to create these flights.

Active Sky Evolution Service Pack 3 Released

Posted: Wednesday, August 24, 2011 - 12:52
Active Sky Evolution Service Pack 3 has been officially released, incorporating the latest round of fixes and enhancements. SP3 is a recommended update for all Active Sky Evolution users. The changes include improved location change detection, improved precipitation interpolation, a new ATC wind lock feature, and fixed winds aloft interpolation logic that would occasionally result in improper wind directions. Active Sky Evolution is the latest effort in high- fidelity weather simulation with a focus on realism. Advanced flight and weather planning, comprehensive mapping, an in-flight weather radar gauge, private wx data network access, advanced air effects and universal graphics add-on compatibility are just some of the innovate features that set Active Sky apart from the rest. To download SP3 or learn more about Active Sky Evolution, visit the HiFi Technologies website.

Cessna T182T Skylane from Flight 1

Posted: Wednesday, August 24, 2011 - 4:16
Staff reviewer Peter Hayes looks at Flight 1's Cessna T182T Skylane. "Descriptive wise the T182T is a four seat light (GA) aircraft with fixed landing gear, powered by a single turbocharged and fuel-injected piston engine, built with an aluminum metal skin. It has excellent visibility and stability is enhanced by the high wing design with externally braced dual-spar wings plus conical camber wing tips. Basically it is that Turbo option which gives the plane just that bit more oomph so that it can carry more and fly a little faster."

"Another excellent FSX plane from the Flight 1 stables. To me this is the GA variant of the Flight 1 Cessna Mustang and is up there with the A2A Accusim, Eaglesoft, and Real Air renditions of similar types of planes. It is a great GA plane and it can be used for fast touring as well as lazy speed grand touring. This is an excellent plane and one that you would want to include in the premium part of your virtual hangar."