Airport Enhancement Services from Aerosoft

Posted: Tuesday, May 15, 2007 - 2:01
Staff reviewer Michael "DocW' Wehner looks at all of the "extras" that are included with Aerosoft's Airport Enhancement Services. "AES is a tool that offers detailed adjustable and aircraft tailored ground services for certain, mainly Aerosoft distributed airports. It provides you with a fully automated pushback service, a follow me vehicle, an animated 3D marshaller, a visual docking guidance system, moving and well aligned jetways, stairways, catering vehicles and luggage-belt or container vehicles serving your plane."

"The level of detail looks adequate for me and doesn't leave a lot to desire. Let’s imagine you came to a stop in LEPA and gate 18 was assigned to you. You would open the AES-User-Interface, which is similar to the ATC window, with CRTL-SHFT-W, adjust the Gate number with the function keys and then call the Follow Me van. the van will appear suddenly if watched from an outside view, but if you stay in the cockpit, the van will create a realistic visual impression by driving from your peripheral field of vision into the center. You can now follow the VW to the gate."

"Arriving at your gate, the automatic guidance system will direct you into the parking position. Arriving at a stand; the 3D marshaller waves you into position. When he is happy with your alignment, you will be asked to apply parking brakes and soon after be informed that the blocks are now in position and finally the jetways or stairways come into play. I am really impressed by finding out that the little extendable pads of the service trucks indeed extend when they moved themselves into position."

DocW asked several questions directly to the developers and received some detail feedback. In his summation of Aerosoft's AES, Michael comments, "Simming is a lot about immersion. Immersion is a very personal matter, if ground handling is on your list, then AES helps a lot. I had no serious issues with the package whatsoever, everything worked as advertised. AES impressed me as an elaborate, genuine and substantial contribution to FS9 with still lots of promising perspectives."

New From AlphaSim The CH-46 Sea Knight

Posted: Monday, May 14, 2007 - 13:15
AlphaSim has just released their latest product for FS9 & FSX the CH-46 Sea Knight. The famous US Navy workhorse is recreated in three variations, The HH-46D SAR bird of NAS Pt.Mugu painted a stunning red/gray and a pair of NAS North Island Sea Knights - a UH-46D and a CH-46D, the latter in modern lo-vis colors. AlphaSim goes on to mention that detailing is high throughout - the pin-sharp textures come to life in FSX with bump mapping and self-shadowing, the VC has every switch and knob duplicated with its associated text thanks to the real CH-46 manual being used in development. The VC also includes the whole rear cabin which can be viewed in-flight by using the rear view function in 2D panel mode. The submission goes on to mention the animations include rear ramp, side door and steps, winch and cable (FS9 only) and togglable pilot figures (FS9 only), further the custom sounds have been given the thumbs-up from a real CH-46 pilot who also commented favorably on the flight dynamics, the highly accurate and stable flight model comes with a useful checklist and reference card and can be flown comfortably at all difficulty levels and in conclusion a repaint kit is included . For FS2004/FSX only Filesize 18MB (FS9) 23MB (FSX). Price approx.$29.95USD, £14.80, 22EUR. Further details on this product are available Here.

IFC Radio Coming To An End

Posted: Sunday, May 13, 2007 - 14:34
Independent Flightsim Community (also known as IFC Radio) will be coming to an end today (May 13th 2007) at 0800zulu. But don't worry, in-flight entertainment does not stop there because IFC Radio is being replaced by a brand new station - Sky Blue Radio. Presenting FS News, call in’s, chat shows, competitions and interviews. Sim pilots will still be able to tune in to Sky Blue Radio via the com2 radio on 123.45. To celebrate the launch of the new station, Sky Blue radio have announced a ‘LIVE DJ’ day starting at 0800z TODAY! (13th May 2007). Check them out at The Sky Blue Radio Website

OZ FANCON Forum Now Open

Posted: Sunday, May 13, 2007 - 14:10
The Australian (OZ) Flight Simulation Fan Convention support forum is now open on AVSIM! The OZFANCON will take place in late October this year on the Gold Coast of Australia, and will immediately precede the AVSIM FAN CON to take place in Bellevue (Seattle), Washington that follows in November. The two events have teamed up to bring you FAN coverage from around the world. The OZFANCON forum will keep you up to date on the news regarding the event, provide a venue for you to ask questions and seek out friends and fellow community members who may be attending. Log into today and get your up to the minute news on the OZFANCON!

FSInsider Delivers AVSIM News to the Community

Posted: Sunday, May 13, 2007 - 13:35
The AVSIM Team is pleased to announce that its 24 hour a day coverage of the flight simulation community can now also be read on the Microsoft FSInsider site. The FSInsider portal is Microsoft's main entry point for all new and experienced flight sim fans. Providing dynamic news content on the FSInsider portal now gives new users of the flight simulator immediate access to current news and events in our ever expanding community. Check out FSInsider today!

XCity Rome from Cloud 9

Posted: Sunday, May 13, 2007 - 2:13
Staff reviewer Allen Lavigne takes us on a tour of Roma with Cloud9's XCity Rome. "Rome, an entire city with widely varying complex buildings rendered in 3D, covering an area of 100 square miles."

"My first impressions are that Xcity Rome meshes well without a drop in fps at all. Although it is quite visible and in its entirety, it does not clash with its surroundings, which to me is a very important requirement for quality. Approaching outlying neighborhoods of XCity Rome for the first time, entire blocks are wrapped around with one wall touching the outside of streets. What makes the illusion work is that the rooftops are actually cutouts from the underlying area of the matching satellite photo for that rooftop. They’ve made for a fairly good resemblance in my opinion."

"Placement accuracy in the city center is remarkable.Most roofs are simply the section of a satellite photo of what should be underneath that block of buildings. When the building actually does occupy the entire block, this works rather nicely. LIRA, the old Ciampino airport southeast of Rome, has little to offer the candy hunter. With simple generic buildings and an ILS approach for runway 15, its only attribute being that XCity Rome is within sight as soon as you depart from 33."

"There are two customized heliports included in the package, with nice night lighting added. Many bridges along the Tiber river were reproduced, with a couple near the Vatican made in very nice detail, even underneath, and at night are quite pretty. The others are still similar to their counterparts in the real world."

Closing out this tour of Cloud9's XCity Rome Allen notes, "I would strongly recommend getting Xclass for Europe from Cloud9 first, and then if you want to visit Italy, get XCity Rome. Especially if this is a regular stop of yours with enough visits to merit a purchase. The overly generic facades and rooftops could use some work, but that might raise the price of development and affect fps performance which I found to be on par with what FSX default was giving."

Scottish Sim Gathering Announced

Posted: Saturday, May 12, 2007 - 16:03
World Flight Scotland has announced the 2007 Scottish Charity Flightsim Show on Sunday the 28Th of October 2007 in support of ORBIS and the Flying Eye Hospital.

The event is unique with all proceeds going directly to ORBIS. Entry to the event is free of charge and all we ask is that you consider making a donation to ORBIS, an international development organisation that works to eliminate avoidable blindness in developing countries.

The flightsim community have been incredibly supportive of world flight events in recent years. So join them on Sunday the 28th October 2007 - make this event a huge success and support the ORBIS Flying Eye Hospital.

The Event is sponsored by AVSIM, Angle of Attack and the Holiday Inn Glasgow Airport. For more information check out the Scottish Charity Flightsim Show website.

Airbus Vol 1 from Wilco/FeelThere

Posted: Saturday, May 12, 2007 - 3:43
Senior staff reviewer Paul Middleton takes Wilco/FeelThere's Airbus Volume 1 for a test fly.

"From the outside, the aircraft looks good. For the amount of time that most people will spend on the outside looking in, it's a very convincing representation of that Airbus characteristic shape, with good detail and the right amount of reflection. Without being excessive, all the necessary animations are there, from reverse thrust on the engine to all the passenger doors opening. There is a number of liveries available at the Wilco site, and currently 74 more in the AVSIM library."

"The 2D panel manages to fit the most important instruments and controls on the main panel. The overall appearance of the panel is both realistic and usable, so on a screen with a decent resolution there should be no problems in reading captions and finding what you are looking for. The VC is very good to sit in, it's a realistic representation and very readable. However it doesn't work as well as the 2D panel and if, like me, you like to spend all your time in the VC, you're going to need to flip back to the 2D to do certain things."

"Cleared for takeoff, we push the throttles forward, hearing the "click" as they go through the detentes, until we have takeoff thrust set. Feelthere have developed an excellent version of "Fly-by-wire", something not easy to do in an MSFS built around direct connections between pilot controls and flying surfaces. So in the climb, we use our joystick to move the little dot on the screen to where the Flight Director is indicating. No trimming, no maintaining the pressure on the controls to hold the bank angle, it just sticks more or less where you point it."

Summarizing the Wilco/Feelthere Airbus Volume 1 release, Paul says, "The Airbus is a very different aircraft in its avionics, throttle system and particularly "fly-by-wire", so it was a challenging task to build, and this is an extremely convincing simulation that they have produced. It is certainly flyable, and enjoyable, and I've already spent many happy hours in it. However, it may not be a sufficiently complete product to tempt across pilots flying some of the excellent Boeing and McDonnell Douglas aircraft out there."

Aerosoft Releases Cologne/Bonn

Posted: Saturday, May 12, 2007 - 2:28
Currently in download version only, Aerosoft has released Cologne/Bonn Konrad Adenauer Airport for FS2004. This is yet another section of German Airports 2 and done with the style and level of detail well known from the award winning German Airports team. As with other German Airports, additional traffic is added using AES Light so you will see realistic traffic on and near the airport.

The AVSIM FANCON 2007 Forum Now Open!

Posted: Friday, May 11, 2007 - 21:31
The AVSIM Flight Simulation Fan Convention (AVSIM FANCON) Forum is now open! In the lead up to the excellent FANCON that we will hold this year in Bellevue (Redmond), Washington, we have opened a forum for all interested readers and attendees to use as an information source, a place to set up side meetings and tours with your friends, and to ask us questions of the event. You are not going to want to miss out on the 2007 AVSIM FANCON! Join the forum, and don't miss out on the action and lead up to FANCON 2007!

SimFlyer's GLX Series EFIS Released

Posted: Friday, May 11, 2007 - 14:33
The SimFlyer GLX Series EFIS has been released and includes the Collins EADI and Sandel SN3308 and can be found at the SimFlyer Website.

FriendlyPanels Announce 2D Panels Pack 4.0

Posted: Friday, May 11, 2007 - 7:16
FriendlyPanels announced it has released 2D Panels Pack version 4.0 for Microsoft FSX and FS9. This 2D panel pack includes three new panels for the default Beech Baron and King Air 350. Two panels replace the default Baron 58 and the King Air panel features just one window which shows all gauges and information you need for flying, FMC-GPS included.

According to FriendlyPanels' Daniel Lopez, the Baron 58 panels feature a realistic set of gauges, including the Bendix KLN 94 GPS, Garmin GNS530 GPS, Bendix KX 165A NAV/COM radio, Bendix KR 87 ADF, Bendix KT 76C transponders, Garmin GTX 330 transponder, Altitude Selector/Vertical Speed Selector/Alerter S-TEC ST360, S-TEC Fifty Five X Autopilot and different realistic audio panels.

For more information and to view some screenshots, please fly direct to the FriendlyPanels website.

SeriesX GPX-SX by SimFlyer

Posted: Friday, May 11, 2007 - 3:44
The all-new “Bendix Line” for both FS2004 and FSX includes 5 GPS units, a full Bendix radio stack with autopilot and replacement VOR Heads. Over a dozen gauges are included in this package. For more information please visit the SimFlyer website

CIM Flight Decks Overhead Panel

Posted: Friday, May 11, 2007 - 3:42
Boeing 737NG CIM Flight Decks, part of the Dutch company Cockpit in Motion, is proud to present its first product in the Boeing 737-panels basic series, the overhead panel. This overhead panel enables the Flight Simulator hobbyist to start building a cockpit for Microsoft Flight Simulator®. The CIM Flight Decks overhead panel is “as real as it gets” and makes it possible to simulate the real life procedures true to reality in the simulator.

The overhead panel, being the first of a series of panels to build an almost complete Boeing 737NG cockpit, is made of durable quality material, yet purchased competitively. This means the overhead panels can be sold at very reasonable prices to the Flight Simulator hobbyist. In the near future CIM Flight Decks will also offer a luxury series of overhead panels for the more demanding Flight Simulator hobbyist.

High quality and durable materials in combination with the most realistic flat paint will be used for these overhead panels. Ideal for the advanced Flight Simulator hobbyist, or the Flight Simulator hobbyist with a larger budget. The basic overhead panel can be bought at the CIM Flight Decks web shop. New products will be added to the product line in the near future.

Aerosoft Releases Cape Canaveral X

Posted: Friday, May 11, 2007 - 3:36
Currently as a download version only, Aerosoft has released Cape Canaveral X. This scenery covers Cape Canaveral, three airports and includes all the major structures build by NASA. Designed carefully for FSX it has excellent frame rates on most machines and with the expanded area covered, there is a lot to discover.

This release features: Detailed representation of airports and close surroundings; Photo realistic ground textures (4m/pxl); Includes all navigation beacons (ILS, VOR/DME, NDB, ATIS); Impressive night effects; Manual with all charts for the regions; and many effects. Complete details are available at the Aerosoft website.

Helgoland from Aerosoft

Posted: Thursday, May 10, 2007 - 3:29
Staff reviewer Allen Lavigne flies around a "chunk" of land off the coast of Germany with Aerosoft's Helgoland. "The island’s ownership, simplified, has gone back and forth from Denmark to England to Germany over the past 250 years. It was heavily fortified during both wars, and has even been used as target practice by the British."

"There are 3 small runways, of concrete surface: 15/33 (the longest), 03/21, and 06/24 (way too small), without lights, no FSS, no working tower although there is one on top of the terminal building, not even a local traffic advisory frequency. There is a VOR, with the ICAO code DHE (116.3), but no NDB nor ILS. Doing a complete circuit around the islands, there was never the slightest blinking of any object or building. Very well done and quite smooth. The level of detail was beyond my expectations, with numerous detailed buildings, structures, and sailboats."

"One way Aerosoft helps you tour the island is using the supplied mission called “Helgoland Tour”. In this mission an accompanying tour guide talks you around the island, pointing out the various highlights just like a tour operator would do. Very helpful in getting to know the various aspects of this island: the frigate, the piers, the heliport, the lighthouse, and that popular rock extrusion known as “Lange Anna”. The second mission, called “Helgoland SAR Oilrig” is a harder challenge where you are sent to rescue an injured worker on the oilrig Mittelplate (EM08) using a Bell 206 under difficult weather conditions."

"If this product is any indication as to the quality we can expect from Aerosoft’s upcoming small but detailed scenery packages for Monaco, Aspen, and others, they will be indeed worth looking into. I will continue using Heligoland for my own amusement. Its visual isolation from any adjacent bland default land textures in FSX allows you to totally immerse yourself in the illusion of realism. Aerosoft has done a magnificent job on this small island, and I dare say they achieved the highest level of realism available to date in FSX. If you like a half hour flight of distraction once in a while, Aerosoft's Helgoland is ideal for you."

Radio Range System V4.0 Available

Posted: Thursday, May 10, 2007 - 1:13
DC-3 Airways is pleased to announce the release of version 4 of their Radio Range System add-on for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 (Century of Flight) which has been in development for over a year. This version, set in the year 1944, expands the Eastern USA Adcock Range system to include all of the United States and Canada, Alaska and Hawaiian territories and selected stations over the North Atlantic and within the China/Burma/India WWII theatre of operations (The Hump).

It also includes color charts, station data and Colored Airways definition tables, new scenery, over two-hundred hand tailored Radio Range Instrument Approach Procedure plates, three DC-3 aircraft with new panels and flight dynamics, full documentation, access to the Radio Range Web Forum and much more.

If you have any interest in radio navigation the way it was done in the 30s and 40s, you owe it to yourself to check out this freeware download.

VOZ 1.4 Now Available

Posted: Wednesday, May 9, 2007 - 1:05
The VOZ Team is pleased to announce the release of version 1.4 of Vista Australis (VOZ), the eagerly anticipated next installment of the globally successful VOZ freeware FS2004 project for Australia which enjoys over 300,000 users worldwide.

VOZ 1.4 now includes 175 airports, 75 scenery areas, unique textures for the entire country with seasonal variations, and updates all the major capital city international airports. It also includes many large areas in stunning photoreal 4.8m terrain, including 2,500km sq. of photoreal terrain around Tamworth.

VOZ 1.4 is freeware (via. email validation) and is now available to download.

BeaverX from Aerosoft

Posted: Tuesday, May 8, 2007 - 4:04
Staff reviewer Jeff Shyluk takes a venerable old bird out for a spin in FS-X, Aerosoft's DHC-2 Beaver. "The DHC-2 Beaver was the first bush plane to come out of the deHavilland (Canada) factory, following on the success of the DHC-1 Chipmunk, a post-war pilot training aircraft. A bush plane is intended to operate in remote locations, such as the African savannah, the Australian outback, and of course, northern Canada and Alaska. Aerosoft proudly displays the slogan "Half A Ton, Anytime, Anywhere" on the front page of the Beaver manual."

"Overall, though, the BeaverX experience is positive. The deHavilland Beaver is renowned for its rugged simplicity in terms of flight and maintenance, and this FSX version copies that design faithfully. Aerosoft's BeaverX 2.30 comes with an incredible 47 different airframes from which to choose. Basic characteristics of the real-world deHavilland Beaver hold true for the BeaverX."

"The Aerosoft BeaverX comes with basically one cockpit, and it has many features that you would not find in a DHC-2 fresh from the deHavilland factory. Given that real-world DHC-2 Beavers tend to be heavily modernized and modified, the BeaverX represents the type of plane you would find in today's air and marine ports. It does not replicate any one particular Beaver model, but rather represents a range of the better options you could reasonably afford if you were a bush pilot."

"Warts and all, Aerosoft does an excellent job of the visual models for the BeaverX. Every rivet is lovingly bump-mapped into a realistic, shiny fuselage. The BeaverX takes good advantage of the visual advancements that FSX has to offer: 3DsMax modeling, self-shadowing, reflective paint, and bump-mapped textures. Animations in BeaverX display some high quality in their design. The deHavilland Beaver is intended to be a solid, simple aircraft to fly, so there aren't many complicated pieces that move around a lot."

"With its single radial engine as a power plant, the deHavilland Beaver trades off technical finesse for simple brute force. Even from the ground, it is a distinctively noisy aircraft. It makes sense that the Aerosoft BeaverX should come equipped with a thunderous sound set. An interesting feature that comes with the BeaverX is a new interactive audio checklist. It comes in the form of a note taped to the edge of the dashboard. If you want a reminder of a phase of your checklist, you click on that item on the note paper, and a voice will read out your checklist items."

Jeff sums up his flights in Aerosoft's BeaverX with, "Flying the BeaverX is fun, simple, and above all, loud. The visual models are excellent, and take full advantage of the graphical advancements available in FSX. The BeaverX, I think, represents an excellent effort to re-create the classic style of adventure one finds when flying in a real DHC-2 Beaver."

Screen Shot Art Video Contest

Posted: Monday, May 7, 2007 - 17:00
In a news submission sent to Avsim today, Neil Carroll of ScreenShotArt.com let us know that third installment of their Video contest has begun and closes on 6th September 2007 with great prizes from Sony to entice participants with the theme this time "The Dambusters Raid", so break out your Avro Lancaster and get your sights set on the prize, you can get the contest rules along with further info HERE, and look over the raid in detail at DAMBUSTERS.ORG.UK