Attention Simmers, London Calling

Posted: Saturday, September 15, 2007 - 0:38
Aerosoft announced today the release of London-Heathrow 2008. This latest FS2004 scenery (customers will get a free copy of the soon to be released FSX version) covers one of the world’s busiest airports in detail. Designed with accuracy, with the help of the authorities who govern the airport, and developed by Simwings, this is one scenery title you cannot miss. Aerosoft also upgraded Airport Enhancement Services to include this airport. Get it all at Aerosoft.com.

Starship Enterprise Docked In FSX

Posted: Thursday, September 13, 2007 - 3:09
Boldly go over to Benchmark Avionics and download their freeware replica of the Starship Enterprise from the sixties series Star Trek. This FSX addon scenery is a highly accurate reproduction based on measurements and photos of the actual studio model on and off the set. The scenery is outside the gift shop of the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C., a short helicopter flight from Ronald Regan National, where the actual studio model is currently on display. Be sure to check out the view at night, and notify the FAA and Secret Service before you enter the restricted airspace over the nation's capital.

Flight 1's Ultimate Traffic 2007

Posted: Thursday, September 13, 2007 - 1:48
Flight 1 is pleased to announce that one of their best loved titles is back and now flying in the Flight Simulator X and Vista skies! Ultimate Traffic was one of the first “AI” upgrades to Flight Simulator and has been widely regarded as the best, with 10,000s of satisfied flight simmers around the globe. What set’s Ultimate Traffic from any other similar program, is that it is still the only AI traffic expansion to provide realistic traffic in Flight Simulator, based on actual airline schedules!

Ultimate Traffic 2007 is a culmination of over a year of research and development, and takes advantage of the latest AI technology, in cooperation from our friends at Project AI. The goal of this project is to provide FSX users with the most complete and realistic real-world airline movements worldwide and offer new levels in AI Traffic design. This version ships with a new schedule that is current for the Spring/Summer 2007 period, bringing up to date traffic for both Flight Simulator 2004 and Flight Simulator X whether running in Windows XP or Vista.

Super 80 Available From Flight 1

Posted: Thursday, September 13, 2007 - 1:45
Flight 1 are pleased to announce that their classic airliner is back and now flying in the Flight Simulator X and Vista skies! Done in partnership with CoolSky, "Ultimate Airliners - The Super 80" brings back the classic modes of flying in the era where glass was just starting to appear. This rendition is based on the original Super 80, circa 1979. So with the combination of classic analogue and early electronic navigation, you have a product that requires a lot of attention, but also rewards proper cockpit management. For the uninitiated the Super 80 comes complete with the unique Integrated Cockpit Training System to guide you through the steps required in order to have a successful and accurate flight.

The training system will lead you though each checklist procedure and switch - live in the cockpit. You'll see just which switch you need to press, the relevant panels will open along with explanations on screen in Flight Simulator.
And for those who just want to jump in and fly, a configuration manager will automatically prepare the aircraft and panels for any stage of flight - all at the click of a button. A printed manual and a massive fold-out, double sided panel guide ensure you'll never get lost flying this airliner! There are so many details that make this Super 80 a next generation airliner expansion for the world's favourite flight sim - so visit the dedicated Super 80 website.

Listen to ATIS

Posted: Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - 2:26
OnCourse Software are pleased to announce the arrival of their fully integrated ATIS in PFE. Version 1.8 (just released) lets you listen to ATIS for any of the ATIS equipped airports in FS9 and FSX, simply by tuning to the correct frequency. In addition, by downloading and installing the optional Extended ATIS Voice Packs, you will hear the full airport name announced in the ATIS message for each of the 1200+ airports.

Project Open Sky Releases ERJ

Posted: Monday, September 10, 2007 - 1:46
Today, Project Open Sky proudly releases the beginning of the Embraer ERJ Family, with the introduction of the ERJ145LR and ERJ145XR. The model includes highly detailed and modeled exterior, exterior loading stairs on selected models; custom XML animation including wingflex, nose gear high-speed locking, thrust reversers that fully open on any reverser setting, high resolution textures, and accurate animation on all control surfaces and gear. This will be just the beginning of the ERJ Family series, with the ERJ140, ERJ135 and the Legacy 600 soon to follow. A highly detailed virtual cockpit is also nearing completion and will be available soon, as will a paint kit for the entire series. For more information and to download the aircraft, please visit Project Open Sky

Flight Enhancer from Cielosim

Posted: Sunday, September 9, 2007 - 19:00
Staff reviewer Josh Szkoda looks at Cielosim's Flight Enhancer for FS9. "Cielosim’s package contains replacement texture sets for water, skies and runway lights; each set of textures has been duplicated two more times to create the textures for day, dusk and night."

"Cielosim have produced 2,700 custom textures for this program, comprising of 30 day sets, 12 dawn sets, 11 dusk sets and six night sets. This is then combined with the “Extras”, comprising of 6 water sets, 4 cloud sets, 4 sun sets, 5 light sets and 3 environment sets. All these can easily be previewed and applied to the simulator with little or no fuss, as the fairly attractive looking user interface will do all the hard work."

"Choosing the sets can be a bit tricky. Some of them look fairly similar and the two little preview images that you’ll get to see are by no means sufficient, as all it displays is a picture of what the sky will look like depending on the position of the sun. But I suppose half of the fun is sorting through all the different sets and getting a feel for each. Flight Enhancer also has built-in weather from the Weather Channel website for nearly every continent on the planet."

Josh sums up Flight Enhancer by simply saying, "I think Flight Enhancer is a very useful and high-quality FS-tool. I like using it, as it makes my simulation more realistic."

Complete Australia - One Download

Posted: Sunday, September 9, 2007 - 15:39
The VOZ Team is pleased to announce that VOZ 1.5 Complete is now available for free download. For the first time since its launch two years ago, a single download is now available to provide for a simple and quick install of the entire VOZ series of scenery for Australia. The download weighs in at 400MB and installs to about 1.5GB on your hard drive. Included is a completely revised user manual covering all versions of VOZ and provides comprehensive installation instructions. Now there's just one installer to completely VOZ the entire country.

FS2Crew For The Airbus from Wilco/feelThere

Posted: Saturday, September 8, 2007 - 22:39
Senior staff reviewer Paul Middleton continues his reviews of the Wilco/feelThere FS2Crew series. This time it's the Airbus A320. "For those still unfamiliar with this product series, it meets the need of virtual pilots who want to simulate the professional routine of life in that office at the front of the plane. So not only is there that important paperwork to deal with, and those little passenger emergencies that keep cropping up, but you have someone in the right-hand seat to share the workload and checklists with. So it's more "real as it gets" than flying a passenger jet in solitary splendour."

"FS2Crew simulates all those people that a real-life pilot normally interacts with. There's the Ground Crew, who do such things as bring you paperwork and push you back. There are the flight attendants who do such things as tell you when the cabin is ready and report on passengers needing assistance. And last but not least, there is your Flying Officer, who works many of the switches, runs through the checklists with you, and points out when you do something wrong. He does reduce your workload so that you, as the pilot, can do all the Captain's stuff, like hold the controls, set the autopilot, plan your descent, or just look out of the window."

Paul explains in detail what happens inside the cockpit while sitting at the gate, during the pushback, start and taxi phases, takeoff, clinb and cruise, and finally the approach and landing. "I have never noticed any additional performance overhead from using FS2Crew. I also find it to be completely reliable. As long as you know the Airbus and its systems, so you know what's going on and what your FO is up to; and as long as you work through the Tutorial Flight a couple of times to become familiar with it, it'll become your tried and trusted friend in the cockpit."

In summary Paul comments, "This is the fourth FS2Crew review I have done, and once again Bryan York has produced a little masterpiece. FS2Crew for the Wilco Feelthere Airbus is the latest in a series of excellent products from this stable. If you are a 'bus flyer, you shouldn't be without it!"

RATS Gets An Upgrade

Posted: Saturday, September 8, 2007 - 20:16
The Russian AI Traffic System has released a new package that includes 2 different versions of textures (full and optimized) and also flightplans. All regular and charter flights for Summer-07 season and more than 40 excellent repaints. Also, their Forum has 2 languages: Russian and English, so now you can join their discussions, create your own or ask questions. Check out the RATS website for the details.

SimFlyer Releases Series X SR2

Posted: Friday, September 7, 2007 - 16:04
SimFlyer has just announced that Service Release 2 of their new Series X product line is now available! This release includes a free TCAS update on all 3 packages. Current customers can update to this latest service release free of charge by simply downloading and re-installing the latest product version. See the SimFlyer website for more information.

The Pyrenees from FranceVFR

Posted: Friday, September 7, 2007 - 3:00
Staff reviewer Angelique van Campen takes us on a scenic tour of the Pyrenees mountain area as presented by FranceVFR. "The Pyrenees are a range of mountains in southwest Europe that form a natural border between France and Spain. They separate the Iberian peninsula from France and extend for about 430 kilometers from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea."

"It is indeed very, very photorealistic. It doesn’t make any difference if it's daylight, sunrise or sunset. Some screenshots look so unbelievably real, it’s scary! As with every photorealistic scenery, it shows you what is possible and with the additional autogen package, it makes it even more compatible with the real world."

Angelique taks you on a VFR tour of the area included in this add-on and words cannot describe the screenshots along the way. Although, Angelique does a very good job with her descriptive flight route. How does this add-on perform? "No frame drop at all. At least it was not noticeable by me if I had any frame rate drops."

Summing up FranceVFR's Pyrenees, Angelique says, "For this photorealistic scenery I can say, it is and it stays impressive. I think it’s mainly because of the reality. If France is your favorite country and you want to spend a little more money, I can recommend you to buy the Mediterranean Base and Autogen package and the Riviera packages as well. Based on these flight experiences, I can conclude that this package is definite a worthwhile investment."

Dispatch Planner 3.2 Update Released

Posted: Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - 16:45
Dispatch Planner have announced Update 3.2 to their product, with new features such as an interactive Dispatch Report, alternate capability, more accurate fuel calculation, improved weather retrieve engine, FSX and FS9 dual compatibilty, more aircraft profiles and many more tweaks, fixes and improvements.

Visit the Dispatch Planner website to find out more.

Attention Developers

Posted: Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - 2:31
Do you like to develop your own scenery, add-on or AI aircraft? Have you posted your work to the AVSIM Library and watched hundreds of fellow simmers download your efforts? Well, Microsoft is holding their Developer's Conference 7-9 Nov in conjunction with AVSIM's Fan Conference 9-11 Nov, and it may be just the thing for you.

If you are interested in learning new skills, advancing what you know to the next level and networking with the big boys of the simulation software world, then you may be interested in attending the 2007 Microsoft Developers Conference at the Bellevue Hilton (Seattle, Washington). When you combine this event with AVSIM's conference, you have a full 5 days of informational activities, events and invaluable one-on-one time with the Aces development team. Topics will range from Flight to Train to “other” simulation genres and opportunities.

If interested, please send a one-paragraph description of who you are, what your interests are in the Flight Simulator or Train Simulator Development Communities, and what you hope to get out of the conference, to the Conference Manager (please mark the subject “DevCon Request"). Once approved, you will be sent an official invitation and information on how to register. Please note that signing of a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) and Technical Preview Agreement (TPA) will be required before entrance to the DevCon is allowed. This means that anything you learn at the DevCon portion of the event is confidential and cannot be discussed in any public fashion, as well as providing for any technical feedback to be potentially implemented in future Aces offerings.

Seats are limited, and it’s a first-come, first-served offering. If you've been sitting on the fence about attending, now you have 2 reasons for being there. Don’t delay – and we hope to see you there!

FlightSim Google Group

Posted: Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - 2:12
FSAdventureSky (Gera Godoy C), developer and editor of Freeware Adventure Flights(FS9/FSX) has opened a Google Group for all pilots flying his adventures as well as bush pilots that like to fly into very dangerous skies surrounded by mountains, jungles, rivers, lakes and all kinds of hard to get places. His adventures span the globe from Alaska to Nepal giving the rugged bush pilot very dangerous flights in his Sim. By joining the group you will be able to participate in flights full of danger "before" they are published as well as a friendly FBO to meet fellow pilots, ask questions about the adventures, place photos and just chat about our wonderful hobby.

Attention European Simmers

Posted: Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - 1:45
SimWare Simulations organises its SimWare Simulations Show ‘08 on November 2nd, 3rd and 4th 2007 at the Cinquantenaire down in the centre of Brussels. This exhibition provides everyone with a good opportunity to see, test and buy all latest developments and new software in the simulation field.

Among others, some important titles are:
- Microsoft to present their Flight Simulator X - Acceleration Pack, the latest addition to their Flight Simulator X.
- Electronic Arts/Kuju to present their Rail Simulator - New railroad simulation !
- VStep to present their Ship Simulator 2008 - Ship simulation published by VStep.
- Eagle Dynamics/Ubisoft to present their Black Shark - Long awaited Combat Helicopter simulation !
- Cimflightdeck to demonstrate their full motion platform.
- Saitek to present their brand new flight controls products "Pro Flight"

This event is co-organized with the Automobile Museum in Autoworld’s premises at the Cinquantenaire along with their "Icarus’s Dream" focusing on light and micro-light aviation. Entrance to the museum grants free access to the SimWare Simulations Show as well as to the “Icarus’s Dream” exhibition. Free parking available throughout the whole exhibition duration.

Boeing 737 Flight Simulator Video

Posted: Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - 1:14
AviaFilms Production has announced the release of their new Boeing 737 Full Flight Simulator video. The film gives you a chance to witness what it is like to fly a full motion simulator of a 60 ton airline. The video is packed with both interesting and at the same time educational footage which was filmed from all kinds of view perspectives. In order to diversify the film they fly from several different airports and perform various traffic circuits. Explanatory subtitles have been added in order to explain the viewer the flying procedures and warnings which occur throughout the whole flying session. This should bring back some memories for those that attended the AVSIM conference in Denver.

XGraphics from HiFi Simulations Software

Posted: Monday, September 3, 2007 - 20:20
Staff reviewer Allen Lavigne completes his look at the second of 2 releases by HiFi Simulations Software, X Graphics. "You can buy Active Sky X and XGraphics separately, or as a bundle. Not that they are in any way uncomplimentary. Nor are they inseparable. You can completely enjoy one without the other."

"X Graphics is an application that is only used before launching FSX in order to pre-install appropriate weather-influenced or a user’s desired set of textures, and is no longer used once FSX has begun to load, it can then be closed. If you also have Active Sky X installed, the simplest way to use XG is to use its weather-influenced choice of textures."

"There are 52 themes in XG. Not every theme will alter each and every texture option from your previous theme selection. You may go from one theme to another without changing certain textures. However, quite a few are altered. You can tell just how many by fast switching between two selections of themes while observing one of the four sub-page categories of Cloud/Sky/Sun, Water, Airports/Roads, and Lights/Sounds. Surprisingly, frame rates using the highest quality were fine on my system. Personally, I always try for the best quality to the detriment of high fps."

Allen's review contains many screenshots to show examples of what is acheivable within XGraphics. Products of this nature are best seen with descriptive captions. In his summary he says, "there are two ways I like using X Graphics. First and best liked is the weather influenced selection available only through Active Sky X, which I find relevant and easy to use. Second, without ASX installed, the use of themes is very easy and most sets produce excellent results without much fuss. This is not just a bunch of textures made to look nice, it is a massive texture installation engine."

The Final Mike Ray Article

Posted: Monday, September 3, 2007 - 17:00
The 8th article is the final one in this series and in this article Mike is comparing the Boeing and Airbus cockpits. The articles are all available from the FSVisions website. The articles are free for download, thanks to a cooperation between Computer Pilot, Captain Mike Ray and FSVisions.

Google Earth Easter Egg: Flight Simulator

Posted: Sunday, September 2, 2007 - 18:54
Apparently, the latest version of Google Earth has an easter egg: a flight simulator. It's not quite like Microsoft Flight Simulator, but it's a promising start.