Bell 206 Jetranger For FSX

Posted: Sunday, May 10, 2009 - 18:01
Dodosim has replaced the default FSX hover and flight behaviour with their own dynamics, engine and systems management, complete with optional damage, repair and maintenance features. All this realism isn't easy to master for a novice pilot so they have introduced several modes including auto-start and tutorial mode. The helicopter can speed through the start up and shut down sequences on its own or the pilot can follow on-screen prompts through the start up/shut down sequences as the helicopter highlights each function on the 2D panels as they are required.

Aircraft systems will fail according to misuse. This may take several flights to occur as wear information is accrued and recorded. The pilot is able to clear persistent wear and damage using a virtual �Service Workshop� or switch off wear and damage completely. Your aircraft can be equipped with low skids, high skids or floats and there is also a high skid utility version with a working cargo hook. Each version can be selected with or without doors too but remember that this will significantly affect the aircraft's performance. Complete details on this and the FS9 model can be found at the Dodosim website.

Tahiti X from Aerosoft

Posted: Saturday, May 9, 2009 - 21:26
Contributing senior reviewer Alexis Esguerra goes on a trip to paradise with Aerosoft's Tahiti X. "Tahiti X makes alterations and enhancements to fourteen different islands, as well as the nine airports that service the majority of them."

"On the more heavily populated islands, marinas, docks, resorts and the occasional beach side umbrella are found everywhere. Quieter islands that are still visited by tourists may have them as well, just on a smaller scale, and have the bonus of some rather interesting items (like an airport-side campground, for example). And let me not forget about the cabanas strung out over the water from the shore."

"If there is one thing I found interesting about the airports in and around Tahiti, it�s that they�re different from the standard norm. NTAA, the largest of the group contained within, is at least traditional in its size and scope. Just as it should beings its the primary gateway in to and out of the region. It nonetheless has a certain tropical flair about it, evident at the terminal�s entrance and the scenery that surrounds it. Those factors well set the stage for the other eight airfields that it services."

"People are also present at the airfields, sometimes with movements that work out (example, someone chatting on their cell phone), and sometimes not (walking in place, really to nowhere in particular). An extremely nice bonus to the standard FSX movement realm that I�ve slowly become accustomed to, has to be dolphins."

"So who would I recommend this package to? Those with Tahiti on their mind? Fledgling bush pilots? Island hoppers? Yes, yes, and yes. Tahiti X has a lot of appealing elements that break up the routine - interesting landscapes and sceneries, charming atmosphere, and unique airfields that can provide a challenge."

PMDG FS2004 MD-11 Released

Posted: Saturday, May 9, 2009 - 13:59
MD-11 & MD-11F COMBO for FSX/FS2004 now available from PMDG. The product features Dynamic Virtual Cockpit - Designed and animated using the same proprietary techniques developed for PMDG's award-winning 747-400 product line, Virtual Cockpit users will truly enjoy the sensation of "being there" when flying this simulator from the fully animated 3D virtual cockpit.Having emerged as one of the most popular large freighters, an additional model representing the cargo version is also included complete with animated main deck cargo door. FS2004 Pilots are invited down to the PMDG Hanger for a closer inspection.

FS2Crew Airbus Updates

Posted: Saturday, May 9, 2009 - 13:36
FS2Crew has released two significant updates for its two Airbus products: The Airbus Special Edition and the A320 Edition. Based on real Airbus SOPs, FS2Crew adds a full flight, cabin and ground crew to the Wilco feelThere Airbus. The Updates include bug fixes, and add new functionality to the FS2Crew Airbus products. Users can now put FS2Crew Airbus into a "Circuits/Pattern Work" mode, which allows the user to do touch and go landings for training flights. Airbus drivers are cleared via direct to the FS2Crew Homepage for details and download

Malpensa To Schiphol Mission

Posted: Friday, May 8, 2009 - 13:22
Perfect Flight releases a new addition to its "Flight Service" series of missions with Malpensa to Schiphol, you will experience a real gate-to-gate sceduled flight from Milan Malpensa, located in Italy, to Amsterdam Schiphol, the Netherlands. A classical daily real life flight covered by KLM on a Boeing 737-800. The "Flight Service" missions have been created to give you more realistic flight experience recreating a real word ambience with complete AI/ATC interaction, speed restriction, cabin announcement, check lists procedures (pre-start, taxi, before t/o, after t/o, descend, landing, parking), speeds call, 80 Knt,V1, Vr, V2, flaps, gear, GP WS, radar altimeter. So, feel free to test your flying skills!. Visit Perfect Flight for complete details.

GMap Chart Manager 1.1

Posted: Friday, May 8, 2009 - 13:12
FSWidgets has updated their free calibration utility for making GMap-compatible charts. The new version adds Vista UAC compatibility, improved memory handling and a new step-by-step, easy-to-follow tutorial on how to create a calibrated chart. The Chart Manager has built-in tools to view and overlay charts onto Google Maps in real time from within the application, easing the process of calibration. This utility is included in all editions of the freeware moving map system GMap for FSX. To download GMap for FSX please visit their Homepage.

Sky Blue Radio 2nd Birthday Party

Posted: Friday, May 8, 2009 - 13:10
Sky Blue Radio is 2 years old , live shows back to back starting at 17.00z on Friday May 8th continue until Monday morning at 07.00z. A truly marathon session totaling 62 hours of live content and prizes to be won from companies such as Captain Sim, CH Products, Flight 1, Just Flight, Topgunsim.com, Vroute and World Flight Scotland. Join them in the cockpit or online, full details can be found at their Website.

A2A Simulations P-47 with Accu-Sim

Posted: Friday, May 8, 2009 - 1:01
Senior staff reviewer David Wilson-Okamura looks at a WWII warbird with A2A Simulations' P-47 with a feature called Accu-Sim. "This is the second time that A2A has modeled a P-47 Thunderbolt. Stocky, a slow climber, and with limited range, the �Jug� seems like an also-ran compared with the sleeker and more glamorous P-51 Mustang."

"The ovoid shape of the noise is well captured, and there are three different propeller types. In addition to the usual animations, there are several cooler flaps (which, if you fly with Accu-Sim, you will actually need to open and close). But what gets and holds our attention, I think, is not the lines of the model so much as the textures, which are tack-sharp, and hold their sharpness even up close."

"The quality of the best virtual cockpits (VCs) is now very high indeed. The Thunderbolt�s VC is in the same class. A 2D mini-panel is available but, like most newer models, the Thunderbolt is meant to be flown from the VC. There are, however, several 2D panels that make flying easier and, if you purchase Accu-Sim, enable you to perform engine maintenance."

"In flight, the Thunderbolt feels as a heavy as it looks. Like many fighters from this era, it has a long engine cowling that obscures the pilot�s forward vision in climbs and on final. You can roll the Thunderbolt, but it�s a slow climber, so I wouldn�t want to loop it. With one notch of flaps, drag is high enough that you have to worry about keeping the engine cool -- and that, in my book, is really cool."

"A2A Simulations' P-47 is what the jewelers call a diamond of the first water. Without Accu-Sim, it�s cheaper but still not cheap; and while you still have exquisite textures, bump mapping, and a good-looking virtual cockpit, you don�t get in-depth engine and drag modeling, or the extra sounds that go with them. In my view, these are what set this product apart from all of the prop fighter models that have come before."

C172N Skyhawk II SKI For FSX.

Posted: Thursday, May 7, 2009 - 14:33
Carenado has released a standalone C172N package (This isn't an extension pack for their previously released C172N. This product was developed only for FSX taking advantages of all the FSX and DX10 features like cast shadows on VC, external dynamic cast shadows, normal mapping, specular mapping and bloom lights, resulting in a high quality aircraft. More information visit the Carenado website.

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.