Mentor Network Helps Aspiring Pilots

Posted: Wednesday, August 6, 2003 - 17:32
In an email to Avsim today Alex Feher, founder of the Pilot Mentor Network, passed along the following information of interest to simmers who are also aspiring real world pilots.

"The Pilot Mentor Network has now been open for just over one year, and has expanded rapidly since it's opening date on August 1, 2002. The Pilot Mentor Network now offers features that are unavailable anywhere else on the internet-all for FREE. No sign ups. No fees.No memberships.

"If you are a flight-simmer that is a also an aspiring professional pilot, this is the place to come for guidance, support, and reliable information. Start your career as a professional pilot now by visiting the Pilot Mentor Network".

Final Demolition of Meigs in Progress

Posted: Wednesday, August 6, 2003 - 13:40
Chicago's waterfront Meigs Field, virtual home to MSFS simmers for many years, is apparently in the final stages of demolition after being suddenly closed in a surprise move by the City of Chicago earlier this year. You can read the sad story from AOPA here.

Slapping Forehead - Yes, We Forgot!

Posted: Wednesday, August 6, 2003 - 0:30
We were sent an email the other day that reminded us how things can get lost in the hustle and bustle of preparing for a big event. Yes, we forgot the smallest and youngest of the flight sim enthusiasts when we issued our announcements regarding the upcoming Exhibition and Conference. So, here is our announcement.... If accompanied by an adult, flight simmers 13 years and younger are allowed into the Exhibitions at the Museum for free! The Friday night social and the Saturday night Awards Banquets are strictly adult doings, but access to the exhibition and vendors, the great historical aircraft on display, and all the other doings on Friday and Saturday are free to the youngest of our community. To sign up and to bring your aspiring pilot along, go here!

Fsfreeforall.net (Round The World Challenges) Returns

Posted: Tuesday, August 5, 2003 - 21:38
Jeff Wrobel (Xplane) reports that Fsfreeforall.net (best known for their Round The World Challenges) has returned after a short hiatus. Jeff comments, "The site has been completely redesigned and redeveloped. After extensive testing and behind the scenes busy work the site has been opened to the public. There are many things currently in the works. We will be bringing back the “Round The World Challenge” or RTWC back FS2004 style. Many of you have requested that we bring it back so we have already begun the work of putting it all together.

"We are planning on 2 concurrent RTWC’s one of which will be a free for all style journey, and another more structured, more traditional RTWC with predetermined flight plans and aircraft types. We are also looking for suggestions for additional features. Let us know what you think. We have always strived to be a small tight knit community of flight sim enthusiasts and pride ourselves on our ability to help whenever it is needed. We would love to have you as a part of our community, and we hope that you will have a chance to stop by and see what our community has to offer. I would like to thank those of you who helped us get off the ground over a year ago, and thank our diehard members for making the site what it is today. Thank you all for your support. A special thanks to Geoff (Capn. Sonic), Mark (Tinman), Aaron (Tompen), Mike (Mikecweb), Mike (Trvlr767) and Shawn (Shwncplnd)."

FS Falcon 2004 Public Beta Released

Posted: Monday, August 4, 2003 - 19:13
Lago Online has just released their public beta for their upcoming product FS Falcon 2004. This new version includes three new Belgium liveries, complete FS2004 compatiblity, a new clickable virtual cockpit, new folder structure, and the ATC Military Combat class assigned to them. For more info, and to download your beta copy, click here.

SBRelay Now Available

Posted: Monday, August 4, 2003 - 18:58
SBRelay is a program to enable FS2004 with SquawkBox 2 and the various networks it supports (VATSIM, IVAO, etc.). It does this by creating an FS2002 session and an FS2004 session internally, and then translating and forwarding all SB players from the FS2002 session to the FS2004 session. By connecting both SB and FS2004 to SBRelay, you can fly in FS2004 and be connected to the network, just as you did with FS2002. SBRelay is a multi-threaded C++ Windows application built for high performance, and uses very little CPU or system resources. The interesting point about SBRelay is that it is "chocolateware". What is it you ask? Well, click here to find out and download your copy.

Icarus Releases Junkers 287 v2

Posted: Monday, August 4, 2003 - 18:52
Designed by Hans Wocke who after extensive wind tunnel testing, elected for a forward swept wing design to improve the sub sonic performance, the V1 was made to test out this new layout in real life. The aircraft was constructed from different types of aircraft. The undercarriage came from a B-24 Liberator, the forward and rear fuselage came from an He177, and the tail from a Ju 188. The only new parts were the wings and center fuselage. The aircraft was powered by four Junkers Jumo 004 engines. It made its first flight on the 16/8/1944 and after 17 test flights proved the concept to have excellent handling at all speeds. The second prototype, V2, had a new fuselage, cockpit and undercarriage. And now, you have your chance to fly this piece of history in both CFS2 and FS2002. The version comes with 2 skins, multiresolution, a virtual cockpit with working gauges, cockpit animations, Icarus weapons bombs, Luftwaffe pilot textures, fully animated retractable gear, shock absorber movement, wheel rotation, dynamic VC gauges, moving rudder pedals, multiple animation sequence yoke, and open canopy animation. You can purchase your copy as well as view screenshots at the Icarus website, available here.

HJG Previews v5.2 Stretch DC-8s

Posted: Monday, August 4, 2003 - 17:39
Continuing with the recent series of updates to their very popular line of Douglas DC-8 classic jetliners to version 5.2 Michael Verlin from the Historic Jetliners Group (HJG) has posted some preview shots of the upcoming "Stretch 8" versions. You can check them out here on the Avsim Screenshots Forum.

PSS Announces Airbus A330, A340 Professional

Posted: Sunday, August 3, 2003 - 19:48
Phoenix Simulation Software announced today that their next releases will be the PSS Airbus A330 Professional and PSS Airbus A340 Professional, finally ending the months of anticipation of simmers on their forum.

The A330 package will include A330-200 and A330-300 aircraft with Rolls Royce, Pratt & Whitney and General Electric engine varients, in approximately 70 liveries. Likewise, the A340 package includes A340-200 and A340-300 aircraft, all with CFM engines and 50 available liveries.

Both packages are scheduled to be released "around the end of this month".

For more information on the A330 and A340, please view the announcement in the AVSIM Forums here. You can find Phoenix Simulation Software's website here.

FS Dream Factory Release Helsinki Airports

Posted: Sunday, August 3, 2003 - 11:43
FS Dream Factory contacted us announcing the availability of their scenery for Helsinki Vantaa and Helsinki Malmi airports, featuring high detail and landclass information for the Helsinki region.

For more information and to purchase, you can find the FS Dream Factory website here.

AI Aardvark Boeing 767-400ER Rolls Out

Posted: Sunday, August 3, 2003 - 11:41
AI Aardvark announce the release of their Boeing 767-400ER in Continental and Delta liveries, compatible with FS2002 and FS2004. Features of the new release include 12 LOD models, animated flaps, gear, fans, slats and spoilers, and optimization for frame rate.

The group also announces that the next several weeks will see the release of 767-300 and 767-200 series aircraft featuring General Electric, Pratt & Whitney and Rolls Royce engines.

For more information, visit AI Aardvark.

Abacus Releases Military Aircraft Collector's Edition

Posted: Sunday, August 3, 2003 - 11:34
Abacus have released the Military Aircraft Collector's Edition, a collection of 13 contemporary military aircraft for FS2002 and FS2004. Featured aircraft include the F/A-18 Blue Angel, the B-2 Spirit, the P-61 Black Widow, and the Harrier.

For more information, please visit Abacus' Catalogue by clicking here.

Flight1 Aviation Announced

Posted: Sunday, August 3, 2003 - 10:41
Flight 1 sent us the following press announcement regarding some changes in their organization. Here's a quick summary of the announcement: "Back in 1997, Flight One Software started with just a few projects for Microsoft Flight Simulator. With the company being primarily built by those who have the love of aviation and computing, Flight One has grown to cover a wide spectrum of aviation applications.

Starting a few years ago, a few things happened. Flight One started getting inquiries from various real-world aviation entities regarding our knowledge of aviation, and integrating this knowledge into real-world training and safety applications. At the same time, many of those at Flight One Software became very excited about entering areas of software development in the real aviation sector.

On the outside, not much will change. We still enjoy creating Flight Simulator add-ons, and we will keep providing these. At the same time we would like to announce a new sister entity called "Flight1 Aviation Technologies", that only works on real-world aviation training and safety applications and technologies." Full press release is available here.

FS2004 Review – Special Feature: Add-on Aircraft

Posted: Sunday, August 3, 2003 - 1:19
Here's a surprise special feature! Because the majority of those that are reading this review are very likely to be the type that are interested in Flight Simulator for more than just the out-of-box edition, the availability of freeware aircraft to fill the gaps is probably of great interest. So Steve (Bear) Cartwright compiled this list of 21 add-ons for FS2002 he's checked out in FS2004 for you. Click here to see Steve's illustrated list! You can read the complete FS2004: A Century of Flight review here.

SFP1 Patch Progress Comments by TK

Posted: Saturday, August 2, 2003 - 17:29
Combat simmers will be interested in a forum posting by 60's era jet fighter sim StrikeFighters:Project1 (SFP1) lead developer Tsuyoshi "TK" Kawahito with some comments on the current status of the much anticipated second patch to the sim. You can read TK's post here

Simmer Featured in International News Article

Posted: Saturday, August 2, 2003 - 14:46
Well known FS designer and sim community member Melvin Rafi has been featured in an in depth profile article in the online edition of "The Straits Times", a Singapore newspaper. You can read the complete story about this well known member of the flight sim community here.

Active Camera 2004 Goes Shareware

Posted: Saturday, August 2, 2003 - 14:33
The very popular view utility Active Camera has just been updated to work with FS2004. Along with this update comes a change in the distribution. The utility features full functionality but it is now limited to the Seattle region unless registered as shareware. You can download the latest and greatest Active Camera version here.

Important Note for Avsim Forum Users

Posted: Saturday, August 2, 2003 - 14:01
In an attempt to reduce the slowness experienced recently when accessing our forums, due to the great volume of FS2004 traffic, we have made a configuration change which we are testing today. Please note that Forum users will need to log in again, and you may also have to allow cookies from forums.avsim.net if you do not do so already. We regret any inconvenience to readers.

The AVSIM Technical Staff

Don't Miss the Avsim FS2004 Review

Posted: Saturday, August 2, 2003 - 13:49
If you haven't read it yet don't miss AVSIM Online's 3 part in-depth review of Microsoft's Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight by Avsim's crack team of experienced reviewers. The review "covers the waterfront" of new features in this latest edition of the MSFS series. Included is AVSIM Online's overall product rating. Start with Parts 1 & 2 here and finish up with Part 3 here.

LAGO Releases The AMX

Posted: Friday, August 1, 2003 - 17:44
LAGO today released their latest FS2004/2002 military package, the AMX. Here are more details on this product as announced: "The AMX fighter Jet was conceived as a joint program between Italy and Brazil undertaken by Alenia, Aermacchi and Embraer, is a surface attack aircraft for battlefield interdiction, close air support and reconnaissance missions.

Our AMX includes 9 different liveries and various operative configurations, created with the help of real Italian Airforce pilots, which radically change the way you fly the plane." Some of the features include gmax built model with full external animations, animated pilot and several arm configurations you can choose. For full details, screenshots and more, click here.