New Products available in the Avsim Store

Posted: Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - 15:49
The VRS F/A 18E is now available at the Avsim store. The F/A-18E Super Hornet by VRS is one of the most detailed fighter ever made for Microsoft Flight Simulator. It's a true fly-by-wire plane that accurately simulates all the features of a F/A-18E Super Hornet . Developed by engineers, this plane received the highest grades in all reviews. It you are looking for the real deal, get the F/A-18E Super Hornet.
Heavy Hitters Professional Pack by FS2Crew is a compilation of 7 products. You can save 75% by purchasing this pack. FS2Crew products are a great complement to your favorite planes. They create a virtual crew for Flight Simulator, just like in a real flight environment.
Milan-Malpensa by Sim-Giants is extremely detailed scenery with tons of details. Sim-Giants now provide live support on their web site!
Visit the Avsim store today and do not forget about our bargain bin section

4 Sceneries from Tropical Sim Reviewed

Posted: Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - 2:03
Staff reviewer David Rogers heads into the caribbean for a look at 4 sceneries from Tropical Sim: Aruba, Curacao, Tocumen and Providenciales. "This is a refreshing set of Caribbean airports for FSX. While there are countless FS versions of places such as St. Maarten�s Juliana Airport, and Nassau�s international airport, it is sometimes nice to investigate lesser known places. Tropical Sim�s scenery is available as single airports, or as �bundles� which include a number of airports.."

"My first impression of Tropical Sim�s Aruba for FSX was that the scenery was pleasantly detailed, pleasing on the eye but not state of the art. The plus points at Aruba is that the main terminal, and in fact all buildings, are nicely detailed and well textured. This is a nice little field to take off from and fly visually around the island before returning to the field for some touch and go�s, or to land."

"The detailing at Curacao seems a little better than Aruba�s to me. Most of the quality is high at this airport, but it is not always consistent. Curacao looks nice and I�m pleased to say that its performance in FSX is almost identical to that of Aruba."

"Tocumen is the largest airport in Panama and the only one with two runways. My single biggest criticism of this airport scenery is that it does not blend into the default FSX surroundings as well as the other 3 airports do. Frame rates and FSX performance at this airfield are again great."

"As I land at Tropical Sim�s Providenciales, the airport immediately becomes my favourite in this batch. There is something about the palm trees, or maybe it�s the lovely static aircraft that are abundant at this airport. Providenciales feels a little like FlyTampa�s St. Maarten, alive and really �local�, like you�re there!"

Aerosoft Releases The PBY Catalina

Posted: Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - 1:05
The feature list of this project is extensive, from special xml extensions for the flight model to a innovative sound module that expands what FSX can do. The images that are available at the Aerosoft site sure look impressive and show a very detailed virtual cockpit. Included are the PBY-5, PBY-5A and the PBY-6A in many different versions. You need to read the 400 page manual, it actually is a REAL Catalina operations manual, not one for an FS product, to keep the engines running sweet as there are many new failures build into the engine management module. If you like your aircraft to be weird looking and leaking oil, the Catalina should not be missed.

Tilt Rotor Now On CD

Posted: Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - 1:03
Take off like a helicopter, Fly like an airplane! Tilt Rotor is poised to revolutionize the way we fly. By combining the speed, altitude, and comfort of a turboprop with the vertical takeoff and landing capabilities of a helicopter, you can enjoy the best of both worlds.

The recently reviews Tilt Rotor is now available in Download and CD-Rom versions. For more information, video and pictures visit the Wilco Publishing website.

VFR Germany 3: South from Aerosoft

Posted: Tuesday, May 5, 2009 - 2:16
Senior staff review David Wilson-Okamura continues the German landscape exploration with Aerosoft's VFR Germany 3: South. "This is the third volume in Aerosoft�s series of German photo sceneries for FSX. Volume three covers the south of Germany and includes Baden-W�rttemberg and most of Bavaria, including the Bavarian Alps."

"The basis of the VFR Germany product line is aerial photography, licensed from GeoContent. Aerial photos are taken at lower altitude than satellite photos, and therefore have more detail. After processing, these photos have the same resolution, 1 meter per pixel, as the default scenery tiles. If you look at them long enough, you�ll notice that the default tiles are crisper-looking, because each of them has been worked over in Photoshop so that it looks as good as possible."

"VFR Germany 3: South is my favorite volume in the VFR Germany series so far, for two reasons. First, it seems to have fixed the problem with autogen sometimes obstructing runways. Second, southern Germany is more mountainous and therefore -- to my California-trained eyes -- intrinsically more scenic."

Bell Agusta 609 Tilt Rotor from Wilco Publishing

Posted: Sunday, May 3, 2009 - 18:44
Staff reviewer Etienne Martin gets 2 aircraft for one with Wilco's Bell Agusta 609 Tilt Rotor. "The Bell Agusta Aerospace Company 609 is marketed as the first civilian tilt-rotor of its kind. The aircraft flies like an airplane and lands like a helicopter thanks to two nacelle mounted Pratt & Wittney PT6 turbo shaft engines delivering almost 2,000 HP each."

"The package includes 11 different liveries and several models tied to the specific function (luxury, ambulance, search/rescue and military). The visuals are very pleasing at any distance with smooth curvatures and lines, and no notable polygon problems. The reflections, especially with the self shadow feature enabled in FSX, make for a realistic look. A trip to the texture folder indicates we have an FSX model here complete with bump-maps and FSX specific rendering."

"The Tilt Rotor does not include a 2D cockpit, although several secondary panels can be displayed as pop-ups in that view. The aircraft is designed to be flown solely from the virtual cockpit (VC). The VC had little impact on frame rates on my system, so I don’t expect that many will have issues running this VC."

"The panel includes the standard avionics and three glass displays. If you are familiar with glass cockpits, everything is where it is supposed to be. In fact, the simplicity of the cockpit as implemented helps compensate for a huge learning curve associated with tilt rotor operations."

"The tilt rotor as Wilco implemented it in this release is very responsive, dare I say almost too responsive. This trait makes it very difficult to fly in VTOL mode. It darts forward and climbs like a rocket, slows down very quickly (by rotating the nacelles) and is relatively docile when on the ground in helicopter mode in full vertical mode."

"The Wilco Tilt Rotor has easily taken the top spot in my hangar as the most flexible aircraft. This bird can go just about anywhere except land on water, it has good range and gets there at the speed of a twin engine turbo-prop with all the benefits of a helicopter. For short to medium haul missions or just to explore scenery, it is a terrific aircraft to fly. The Wilco Bell 609 Tilt Rotor is a novel product providing a truly unique experience in the world of Flight Simulator."

FS Aspen for FSX/FS2004

Posted: Saturday, May 2, 2009 - 17:22
Flight1 Aviation Technologies and Flight1 Software are proud to bring you the FS Aspen GA Glass Panel solution for Flight Simulator X and 2004. The Flight1 FS Aspen PFD system integrates virtually all instruments and gauges into an easy-to-use display for all your aircraft within your flight simulator and is one of the hottest selling GA retro displays available today. The package includes the FS Aspen PFD, S-TEC Fifty Five X Autopilot, User Guides & Manuals, Flight1 Gauge Utility, and a demo version of FS Panel Studio.

Indo-Pacific Landclass from SceneryTech

Posted: Saturday, May 2, 2009 - 1:48
Staff reviewer Arjun Murthy takes a look at Scenery Tech's Indo-Pacific Landclass. "Indo-Pacific Landclass Scenery covers a large area from New Zealand to Australia to Papua New Guinea to Indonesia and many other places. This scenery is a part of the many Landclass sceneries including South / North America, Asia and Europe published by Scenery Tech."

"This landclass uses the default FSX scenery files and modifies it to form a more realistic representation of what it is like in real life. A few places in the scenery are exactly the same as the default. The majority of mountains ranges are changed. Since this landclass uses the default FSX scenery files, there should be no increase or decrease in frame rates."

"The Indo-Pacific Landclass add-on scenery from Scenery Tech is very good in some areas but not so good in other areas. Although the same formula is used for the definition of cities (that can be viewed by Virtual Pilots), each city and town is different in small ways. Although it may take away a little touch of realism, it certainly does counteract it by inputting realism into other areas."

TrackIR 5 Released

Posted: Saturday, May 2, 2009 - 0:47
NaturalPoint is proud to unveil TrackIR 5, successor to the best-selling head tracker in the world, TrackIR 4. Through a series of hardware enhancements as well as completely overhauled software, their fifth generation head tracker offers new levels of precision, freedom and reliability.

More Precision - With a 640 x 480 sensor resolution, TrackIR 5 has triple the number of pixels as a TrackIR 4, resulting in radically more precise tracking and further tracking distances. Combined with NaturalPoint's new Precision Grayscale analysis, it achieves a reporting resolution of 96,000 x 72,000. The result is a potent 10-fold increase in effective resolution over TrackIR 4. See a video demonstration of Precision Grayscale on the Product Comparison page.

More Freedom - TrackIR 5's 51.7° field of view is an increase of more than 12% over TrackIR 4. Enjoy more trackable real estate as you move around as much as you need to. Like to sit close to your monitor? Track a fuller range of head motion from up close. Want to keep your distance? Leverage the higher resolution with the wider field of view and enjoy more room than you'll know what to do with at larger distances. With an effective resolution of 1850 subpixels per horizontal field of view degree, you'll still enjoy tremendous tracking fidelity.

More Reliability - TrackIR 5's intelligent design aims to reduce damage from wear and tear with a magnetically attached base and USB cable anchor. The newly designed software introduces NaturalPoint's Spurious Marker Rejection to help filter out unwanted light sources in hostile conditions.

Airport Design Editor Version 1.40

Posted: Friday, May 1, 2009 - 14:35
ScruffyDuck Software and the ADE Development Team are delighted to announce the release of Airport Design Editor Version 1.40. This is a significant new release with a number of bug fixes, enhancements and new features. The major new function is the Visual Approach Designer. In the past creating approaches has meant writing xml code and repeatedly checking it in FS. With Version 1.40 we have introduced a graphical interface for approach design that mimics the FSX GPS Display. In addition ILS approach code can be automatically added when adding a user specified ILS. It is now possible to randomize parking order, or drag the order of parking spots to suit your needs . Users can now import information from a bgl or xml files into an existing project. We have enhanced a number of areas including the range of co-ordinate formats that can be used when entering locations; runway length of greater than 20,000ft are now allowed; inclusion of no crash and no autogen suppression of objects; locking of objects groups such as runways or aprons is now specific to each project. We have fixed many bugs including the one that caused ADE project files to grow in size and the one that caused objects to move after setting their position manually. For full details please visit the ADE Home Page .

OZx 2.2 Released

Posted: Thursday, April 30, 2009 - 14:32
OZx is proud to announce OZX 2.2, a further update to our Australian scenery project. Let AussieX take you further into your journey of discovery of our ancient land, from the lush greens of eastern Australia with tiny aerodromes such as Berendorff Road and Nobbies; through the fiery red outback with airfields that service the many remote communities such as Harts Range, Hermannsburg and Ampilatwatja. Adventure into strips that are seldom used except by the likes of the Australian Royal Flying Doctor Services' iconic Kingairs and PC12s - remote strips like Tilmouth Well. You can then continue your journey over the gold of the great western wheatbelts with wheat silos now dotting the landscape from Esperance to Perth. Fly into the beautiful south western pastoral country around Margaret River where you can enjoy some of the great wines and cheeses produced in this amazing area. Then let your wings soar over the azure blue of the Indian Ocean and the great North West Shelf searching for Legendre, Griffin Venture or some of the other huge oil rigs that harvest this black gold from beneath the ocean floor. You will find the Australian landscape coming to life beneath you with mines like Broken Hill and Moura, huge salt plants and not forgetting the agricultural industries contribution with mighty wheat storage depots and terminals. You will find Kingfisher, Snapper, Cobia and many more lonely oil rigs toughing it out in Bass Straight; where the frigid winds of the antarctic scream their torturous way northward, searching for victims to flay with their icy, storm wracked tentacles as they blast the wind farms on the western coast of Tasmania with a freezing fury. Turn north again and you can fly at a more leisurely pace as you search for the numerous farm strips around the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney. Travel again through this vast land and experience the beauty and remote majesty of our harsh continent of extremes.

Widetraffic 1.3 for FSX Available

Posted: Thursday, April 30, 2009 - 14:27
Widetraffic 1.3 is useful when you wish to synchronise AI and multi-player aircraft when wideview is used to create panoramic views via a LAN computer. Widetraffic 1.3 offers improved synchronization of landing gear, flaps, speed brakes and running engines status, allowing all the AI aircraft to appear identical throughout the networked FS sessions.

Download section and bargain bin at the Avsim store

Posted: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - 16:39
The download section of the Avsim store keeps expanding. It now includes scenery from SimGiants, FS2crew titles and best sellers such as the Wilco 777 and Tower Simulator.
The Avsim store also features a bargain bin section where you can find several titles for less than $10. Hurry up, these products won't stay in stock very long.

Visit the Avsim store today.

Wellington from First Class Simulations

Posted: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - 1:35
Staff reviewer Laurie Aston takes a look at a venerable, historic WWII aircraft, the Vickers Wellington as presented by First Class Simulations. "The Vickers Wellington was a British twin-engine, long range medium bomber designed in the mid-1930s. It was widely used as a night-time bomber in the early years of World War II."

"The external views of the Vickers Wellington are very nicely produced with colour schemes and details neatly finished and detailed to the extent that after my recent viewing the Wellington in the museum at RAF Hendon in the UK, I was able to confirm the authenticity of the simulated aircraft. Four versions of the Vickers Wellington are available and a total of six beautifully painted and finished aircraft are waiting to be flown."

"The instrumentation is very accurately reproduced in the simulation as can be verified by the Pilots Notes for the Wellington, and it all works very well indeed. The sound team at First Class Simulations has done a great job on the Bristol Hercules sound set, and having heard a lot of Hercules engines over a period of time, in my opinion they have the sounds copied perfectly."

"There are two missions are titled as follows: Coastal command, and Winter Warrior. Before embarking on the missions it is necessary to install the “RAF Driffield” scenery, only available for FSX and after that you can start a mission."

"The First Class Simulations Wellington really is a first class product.This simulation is rich in content and detail. It has superb paint jobs and the addition of RAF Driffield is an added bonus, although only for FSX users. I have to recommend this simulation as one of the best I have reviewed and is a good quality product with a good choice of planes."

1958 Cessna 172 for FSX Released

Posted: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 - 0:51
SimFlight3D launches its first model, the 1958 Cessna 172 (straight tail) for Flight Simulator X, complete with real manual flaps, fully operational cockpit and panels. Other features include: chart for map screen use, mike button for ATC window, animated pilot, oil check door and dipstick. Now available in four paint schemes.

With over 15 years of 3D modeling, graphic design/conceptualization and animation in the video game industry plus actual flying experience, SimFlight3D was created to promote sophisticated, accurate aircraft models. For more information and to view the newly designed model and updated fact sheet, change heading to the SimFlight3D website.

New Organization Formed for Flight Simulation

Posted: Monday, April 27, 2009 - 17:39
In a meeting today in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, a new organization was formed to be an advocate of flight simulation, the community and organizations in support of our hobby - The International Flight Simulation Consortium. Attended by some 25 developers, community members and publishers, the nascent organization has created an interim board of directors. The IFSC has been launched with the intent to represent and promote our hobby world-wide. We will be publishing more news in the coming weeks on the goals and membership requirements of IFSC.

Boeing Model 40 Released

Posted: Sunday, April 26, 2009 - 17:39
The Boeing Model 40 was a United States mail plane that became the first aircraft built by the Boeing Company to carry passengers. Golden Age Simulations is proud to present this great plane for Flight Simulator (FSX or FS9). Their package presents both the Model 40 C and B-4. The model C is presented in the livery of Pacific Air Transport matching that of the restored aircraft 5339, powered by the Pratt and Whitney Wasp with a constant speed propeller. The B-4 is dressed out in both the livery of United Airlines and Western Air Express and is powered by the Pratt and Whitney Hornet.

Death Valley + HolgerMESH Freeware Released

Posted: Sunday, April 26, 2009 - 17:30
Photoreal scenery for FSX SP2 created at a resolution of 2m/pixel (some interesting areas has been made at 1m/pixel, like Trona), with autogen and enhanced nightlights. Summer Season Only. There are some very nice lakes with animated water. You will see that this area presents so many interesting things to see, it's not only the desert.

There are fantastic farms and rural environments, very cute cities, industrial areas and the scenery changes a lot during the day. You will see fantastic colour nuances depending on the time you fly. It's also beautiful in the night, OZx has experimented with a new method to realize the nightlights that they will apply also to their future sceneries. The HolerMESH is included in the zipfile you download but has it's own installer, so you can use it if you desire but you do not have to. Vist the OZx website for complete details.

AVSIM Announces System Redesign is Underway

Posted: Sunday, April 26, 2009 - 12:26
The management of AVSIM is pleased to announce that a total system redesign is underway. Our first priority is to do a complete remake of the file library system. That will be followed with a front page, and major functions redesign. Our goals are simple; clean up the library, add functionality and increase reliability. As we are sure that most users have noticed, the reliability of the library and the speed at which is serves our users are decreasing. We know that this is a function of outdated architecture and a reliance on backend systems that are much more hardware intensive than they can be by updating to today's latest technologies. We plan to implement similar changes within the AVSIM web site as well. Modern, fast, and reliable are our goals. Another significant goal is to converge user ID's and passwords. We want to have a user database that allows access to all functions, library and forums as the two most prominent examples, with one User ID and Password. Most importantly is reliability and speed. We know that of late things have been a bit "flakey", and our intent is to solve those issues and bring AVSIM into the 21st century in terms of design and ease of use. We will be keeping you up to date on these improvements over the coming weeks and will most likely announce the opening of wide area BETA Testing in some areas soon. Stay tuned for more news on this effort.

Real Air Duke For FSX

Posted: Saturday, April 25, 2009 - 23:49
Real Air Simulations release the Beechcraft Duke B60 for FSX, their first twin piston prop. The Duke comes in several liveries, all with very high resolution graphics, dynamic shine, bump mapped surfaces, 3d cockpits with both panning and fixed views, full stereo enhanced sounds, detailed flight dynamics and custom lighting and special effects. Included in the package comes a suite of documents, pilot's operating manual and a fully illustrated flying guide. Other features include a full set of IFR true-3d gauges, an interior with very high levels of detail, with every switch and control in the virtual cockpit fully functional, smooth gauge animations and options for either conventional steering or castoring nosewheel and differential braking. For a full feature list, detailed high resolution screenshots and further information, please visit Real Air Simulations Homepage