Bear's Cave The world of Flight Simulators short reviews by Steve "Bear" Cartwright 02-Jan-01 Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-134a by Victor Stolpyansky tu134.zip uploaded 25-Dec-00 528Kb FS2000 It seems we have some very dedicated flightsim developers in one of my favorite and one of the most beautiful countries in the World, and that of course is Russia! Though I must admit, I'm somewhat biased because that's where my girlfriend/fiancée lives (just outside of Moscow)! Victor Stolpyansky has provided us with another example of his very fine work, the Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-134a and this is quickly becoming my preferred medium jetliner to fly! Not only did Victor handle designing the aircraft model, but he also applied the excellent exterior paint work as well. Some of the landing gear textures were taken from their earlier release of the Antonov AN-24RV. Handling flight dynamics was Dmitry Kolenik, one our hobby's finest airfile developers, bar none! Dmitry's airfile for the extraordinary Antonov AN-24RV made that one of my top 5 aircraft that I fly on a regular basis and now he's applied his magic to the Tupolev Tu-134a. I've no doubt that Dmitry is pushing the limits of FS2K to get his FS aircraft airfiles to near perfection, but his efforts are well worth a look see, trust me. This FS aircraft is smooth, responsive without being overly sensitive; yaw/roll response is positive and smooth. It's simply a joy to fly—it really is! The exterior views are really nice and this aircraft looks as authentic as is most likely possible without using photorealistic texturing—excellent work guys—spaseebo (thank you)! ...Bear! 02-Jan-01 Kodiak Island Alaska by Dennis Waggoner padq.zip uploaded 27-Dec-00 129Kb FS2000 02-Jan-01 Scenery Update for Kodiak Island Alaska Airport PADQ by Dennis Waggoner padq_b.zip uploaded 29-Dec-00 214Kb FS2000 According to Dennis's readme file, this is his first attempt at developing scenery using Abacus' ASD2.1! No matter if it is his first attempt, he's come up with some excellent scenery for PADQ or the USCG Air Station on the Alaska island of Kodiak! Approaching this, the largest US CoastGuard Air Station in North America, is very realistic. There are abundant trees, taxiways, buildings, hangers, static aircraft, and even a helicopter or two sprinkled about! Dennis also explained (readme file again) that he feels that until he becomes more adept at using ASD2.1, he's going to stop with any addons (with this scenery) for now. He felt that he was starting to notice that he was beginning to take a hit on frame rate with this scenery installed. Installation is typical for FS scenery addons and you must install a rather long list of exclude and flatten switches; but it really is simple, straight-forward, and typical for FS Scenery, so if you've installed scenery before you certainly won't have any problems with this. Dennis gave credit to Dave and Wendy Gillespie for suppying him with several photographs of PADQ and the surrounding area, which went a long way assisting Dennis at maintaining accuracy with this scenery package. If you downloaded and have installed the Premier Aircraft Design USCG HC-130 from last week, then this is the perfect scenery package to also install to make your patrol and rescue flights out of Kodiak even that much more realistic! Keep up the excellent work Dennis! ...Bear! 02-Jan-01 Antarctica Scenery Enhancement by Ted Kessel & James Kier ant20_v1.zip uploaded 30-Dec-00 481Kb FS2000 South of... well... south of everywhere is the continent of Antarctica and on Antarctica are several working scientific stations from several countries around the world, that is in the real world. Ted Kessal and James Kier have taken their scenery package from FS98 and updated it for FS2000 so that we can now fly from McMurdo to Halley Bay or to any one of a total 30 real-world and 5 fictional locations on this most southern of continents. Flying in this area with Roy Chaffin's R4D-6 (like in the original movie "The Thing", which was really suppose to be in Alaska, but the feeling is the same here too) or with the RD5 (DC-4) from "Operation Deep Freeze" (like in my screenshots here) which took part in flying supplies from New Zealand to many of the scientific stations located in Antarctica many, many years ago is interesting and a bit taxing! This land is cold and forbidding looking, but now flying here with the addition of Ted and James's very authentic appearing station scenery add-on, kinda fun too! Even at a distance of 10 or 15 miles you can see one of the included stations due to the unusually flat terrain in the outer fringes of Antarctica, but in the interior, which out! There are some rather large mountains down here and visibility is normally quite poor! So, where you go down in an emergency on this continent can be the difference between life or death, as help can often times be days or maybe even weeks away! If flying to locations to get a way from it all is your bag, then Ted and James's scenery package download is your next scenery add-on that I recommend! ...Bear! 02-Jan-01 MAXVIEW Cessna 310R by Cas Stephans maxview310r.zip uploaded 30-Dec-00 10,001Kb FS2000 I know that many may have missed or passed over this real gem of an FS aircraft upload on first glance, but I'm here to point out that of the many uploads this week, being Christimas or not, don't bypass this one! Cas has applied photorealistic textures to all points of view, including your choice of a full screen IFR panel, or a clipped minimum gauge panel. By depressing your right-forward view hot key, you will have all the necessary engine gauges in one quick glance too! Now this may take some getting use to by most FS users, but a very realistic, eye-candy approach to all your view positions awaits you! Cas points out, in his readme file, that he doesn't wish to hear any complaints about the color of the curtains in this extraordinary example of Cessna's light twin, he had nothing to do with choosing them (the curtains that is)! A complete checklist from Cessna is available in a PDF format printable file or simply by clicking on the kneeboard! The sounds are a combination sound.cfg of both the default Mooney and the default Cessna 182; Cas suggests that you can probably download replacement light twin engine sounds from the internet, but my question would be why? You might consider using these engine sounds to replace other sound files in other light twins you have loaded, but I don't think you'll be replacing these, they're that good! All of your outward views will reveal ultra-detailed photorealistic interior/exterior views that are as good as I've ever seen; I particularly like the left-side over the port wing view—it's terrific! Sharp, clear, photographic views in all positions... wow, this is great! Spot position views are the same; photorealistic texturing to the exterior has a very sharp and clear paint of a Cessna 310R. I do expect to see a lot of screenshots of this aircraft in the screenshot forum over the next few days! By shutting down the engines, tie-downs, nose-wheel chocks, and pitot tube covers appear—and they will again disappear upon starting no. 1 or the port-side engine! Nice touch Cas! Now, with all this eyecandy approach to the aircraft's appearance—well it would all be lost if it weren't for Cas's excellent airfile. Yes, this aircraft flys as realisticly as it looks! When I first took-off with this FS aircraft, I was greated with silky smooth yaw-roll-pitch reactions to my control inputs, as silky smooth as one could expect within the limitations of a PC based flight sim. All around, this is the best light twin aircraft I now have on my harddrive, equal to or exceeding the quality of any of my payware light twin aircraft I have installed! Another... must have FS2000 aircraft download! ...Bear! 02-Jan-01 Yosemite National Park by Misho Katulic yosval.zip uploaded 31-Dec-00 5,249Kb FS2000 Several scenery authors have been treating all of us FS users with mesh scenery downloads for the last year or so, and most of these freeware downloads have been a vast improvement over the default scenery. These mesh scenery downloads have given us an improvement in the elevation points, but getting real-world accuracy in the ground texturing has not necessarily been available for FS2000, except in some very isolated cases. Generally those few areas that have had photorealistic ground texturing applied have covered a very limited area (10km x 10km being the norm) and even with the very small coverage, the file size has been, unfortunately, quite large though! Misho, using a scenery program called TerrabuilderLite (Misho is also the author of this really neat scenery generating program), has made available a photorealistic mesh scenery of the entire Yosemite Valley area of this very popular California located National Park! Now you can choose the aircraft of your bidding to fly up or down one of the most pictureque locations in North America and it's all there; Half-Dome, El Capitan, Yosemite Falls... WOW... this is great! Misho has somehow gotten the file size down to a reasonable size, thus also rendering a scenery area that has little or no impact on frame rates, but revealing a near real-world experience while flying in this area! There are other scenery developers – using Misho's TerrabuilderLite program – that are developing similar sceneries for many of America's other National Parks as I write this. For starters though, I highly recommend you try Misho's "Yosemite National Park" scenery package... excellent... excellent work Misho, thank you! ...Bear! Tell A Friend About these Reviews!   Standard Disclaimer These reviews above are a subjective assessment of the work of the authors. There is no connection between the product author and the reviewer, and we feel this review is unbiased and truly reflects the performance of the product in the simming environment. 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