Bear's Cave The world of Flight Simulators short reviews by Steve "Bear" Cartwright 22-July-2001 Kodiak Municipal & Lilly Lake by Tom Fica lil_lk.zip uploaded 8-July-2001 2,540Kb FS2000 Scenery Tom Fica has recently uploaded a number of sceneries for the State of Alaska and in my opinion this is one of his best so far. This is a non-fictional location, the Kodiak Municipal Airport on the Island of Kodiak (about 100 miles Southwest of the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska). This is Tom's 4th in a series of floatplane bases and this one is also the Hub for the new Alaskan Winds Kodiak air group (Don Moser or Alaska by Don). Though the Kodiak Muni airport is a default location, Tom has greatly enhanced it with a heliport and nearby linked lake for all seaplane operations. Using photorealistic textures this scenery is very life-like and is a worth while addition to your harddrive. Nice work Tom and I'm looking forward to your future releases! ...Bear!     22-July-2001 Vigo Airport (LEVX) Spain Version 1.0 by Ricky Blanco/Neus vigo.zip uploaded 9-July-2001 2,900Kb FS2000 Scenery This is not Ricky and Neus's first scenery design work in FS2000 (Innsbruck, Austria is at least one that comes to mind) and as before, Ricky & Neus keep things simple and very accurate at the same time. Unlike before though, this time they used real-world photos to develop their building textures (they claim that 95% of this airport's buildings are made by using photo textures). I basically liked this scenery, with its static aircraft, emergency equipment, an airport bus parked out by the main control tower, and even some rather interesting night-lighting effects; overall a very interesting and worth while airport scenery for you all to check out. ...Bear!     22-July-2001 Boeing MD-87 EFIS by Paul Golding/Project Freeware pgmd87v1.zip uploaded 11-July-2001 8,210Kb FS2000 Panel Well, Paul Golding is no stranger to us all that do enjoy quality FS2000 add-ons and he finally released his long awaited panel for the Boeing MD-87! Like his prior release (MD-80), Paul has also included a couple of aircraft (converted Project Freeware DC-9s) as well as an FS2K airfile for Esa's MD-90 aircraft. Installation is made simple by a self-extracting file that Paul has provided with his latest panel in the McDonnell-Douglas series of panel releases. As usual, Paul has included a working windshield wiper, working overhead panel with start-up procedures, multi-level lighting, GPWS, and a switchable HUD that is aligned dead-center in your line-of-vision—so I found it to be very useful. Another winner from Paul and well deserving of my "Bear Approved" award! ...Bear! 22-July-2001 Trondheim Vaernes Airport by Kjell Arild enva2000.zip uploaded 12-July-2001 3,465Kb FS2000 Scenery This is a total re-design of the Trondheim Vaernes Airport scenery (FS98) by Kjell Arild and is a non-fictional airport in North-Central Norway. In this version Kjell has taken real-world photographs to develop the custom textures along with his own special runway/taxiway additions. The overall effect is a very realistic appearing airport and airport out-buildings. I personally spend very little time flying in the Norweigen Countries, but I do know that there are a large group of aviation enthusiasts from Northern Europe, Finland and Norway that frequent AVSIM/online and I'm sure that none of them would want to miss Kjell's very fine scenery add-on. ...Bear!     22-July-2001 Dublin, Ireland. V3.00 by Terry Gaff dublin.zip uploaded 12-July-2001 5,150Kb FS2000 Scenery Lookout everyone, there's a new name in freeware scenery add-ons, that's Terry Gaff (at least I'm not familiar with any of Terry's prior work)! This is actually a 3-for-1 airport scenery add-on, as Terry has also included the nearby airports of Casement Aerodrome and Weston Airfield as well—overall a very nice scenery package add-on. Terry's work is very professional appearing and his runway, taxiway, ramp textures, along with his night-lighting effects are all first rate. The only shortage was in the lack of any static or dynamic aircraft, but like many before, I assume this was to preserve frame-rates. I would imagine that those that install this scenery will simply use FSTraffic to add some appropriate or suitable aircraft. Another European airport scenery package that is worth the download and installation effort on your part. ...Bear! 23-July-2001 North American F-86E Sabre ver. 1.00 by Hayden Scott-Williams f86ev01.zip uploaded 12-July-2001 210Kb FS2000 Aircraft Well, Hayden Scott-Williams claims that this is his first attempt at FS aircraft design and I would say that if this is his first, then we are in for a treat with any of his future work. Hayden gives credit to FSDSPro for this FS aircraft design work and as with others before him that have used FSDS, the end result is an FS aircraft that is outstanding. Hayden's panel design, though simple, is quite satisfactory; but his virtual cockpit I found to be the one I used the most—and most certainly made flying this FS aircraft a lot of fun! Hayden included fully moving and animated parts, delay timing gear doors, and even rolling wheels/tires; overall a really nice package, modeling one of America's most successful jet fighters (achieved an enemy kill ratio of 10 to 1 during the Korean War against the MiG-15 Fagot). I liked flying Hayden's aircraft as the flight dynamics are not generic, but do exhibit some of the characteristics of the original F-86 (my experience here is limited to the Discovery Channel "Wings" and from the print media). The only thing Hayden did not include were "custom" sound files, but a search around the internet should reveal adequate or more appropriate sounds. ...Bear! 23-July-2001 St. Barthelemy Island by Jorge C Pagano sbarts01.zip uploaded 13-July-2001 2,350Kb FS2000 Scenery This is a really gorgeous scenery download and Jorge has done a really outstanding job (using Misha's Terrabuilder by the way). St. Barthelemy Island is a part of the French West Indies (Caribbean) —my favorite look at this scenery add-on is by flying from across the Caribbean waters and approaching this Island from a distance. Interestingly enough, this Island scenery doesn't just pop up, when you're finally within 5 miles of it (like the default Hawaiian Islands do), but it's quite visible and fully rendered at some distance from it. There are all kinds of objects (boats, sailboats, cruise ships, and small nearby islands as well) located in the area and scattered along it's beaches, but the real icing on the cake is the small airport located here. It's one of those small strips that has a small hill directly on one end, making an approach to landing a real challenge, even in the default Cessna 182S! The island's night-lighting is also quite good and very realistic appearing, so I think you can tell I really like this scenery of Jorge's—and it most definitely is staying on my harddrive. ...Bear! 23-July-2001 AXP-38N Version 3.0 by David C. Copley xp38n30f.zip uploaded 14-July-2001 5,628Kb FS2000 Aircraft This is David C. Copley's 3rd revision of this aircraft—with this version he has pretty much updated everything—but it's the FS2000 airfile and the really outstanding sound files that made this aircraft stand out in my testing. I could latterly spend all day listening to the sound of the twin V-12 Allison engines, duplicated quite well, thank you, with David's sound files included with this FS aircraft. This aircraft has all the usual items, fully animated parts, good exterior textures, pilot figure, and an included panel (not an outstanding panel mind you, but one that is quite appropriate for this aircraft). If any one thing is missing, it would have to be the lack of a virtual cockpit; but besides that one little thing I liked this aircraft, as it flies very stable and very smooth, but it's the sound of those twin V-12s that will cause me to go back to this aircraft every once in awhile. ...Bear! 23-July-2001 LHBP-Budapest, Hungary by Tamas Biro/Gabor Rucz lhbp20.zip uploaded 15-July-2001 970Kb FS2000 Scenery Overall I liked this scenery add-on very much (Ferihegy Airport)—excellent appearing buildings, terminal, and an almost Boston Logan-like appearing control tower as well. The runway, ramp, and taxiway textures are outstanding and all of the jetways are installed as well. The night-lighting is very well done—and I did notice that the taxiway lights are very pleasant (read realistic here, as often times I've noticed that the taxiway-runway lights on some scenery to be over-bright from the cockpit, but not Tamas and Gabor's scenery). The only missing thing from this scenery are any static or dynamic aircraft, but Tamas explains that this was for reasons of maintaining good frame-rates, though I noticed no impact over the default scenery with their work here! I do spend a bit of time flying in this part of the world, so this is one scenery package that will remain on my harddrive. On top of all that, I experienced an engine failure on take-off (Boeing 767 from Project Opensky) while testing this scenery, but that's another story! If you're into collecting European airport sceneries, then take a serious look at Tamas & Gabor's work here! ...Bear! 23-July-2001 Former Military Airports in East Germany by M. Spengler ddr_mil3.zip uploaded 16-July-2001 6,740Kb FS2000 Scenery Late last year, Mr Spengler released his former East German military airport scenery package and it included 27 separate airports. Now he not only has updated those airports from his prior release, but he has bumped those airport numbers (most of which are closed today after the re-unification of Germany) up to a total of 58 airports rendered! His (M. Spengler's) airport objects are all quite interesting and very realistic appearing. Open hangers, hardened aircraft bunkers, dark-red brick crew barracks, control towers, and even cold-war era night-lighting. One of the more interesting items that he included are an ingenious method of having a large area of densely wooded forests. These forests are simply large area blocks covered in a thick appearing tree pattern, that even from a few feet away look very much like a thick wooded area. Very nice indeed. Besides, I needed the correct place to fly my collection of old Soviet military aircraft! ...Bear! Tell A Friend About these Reviews!   Standard Disclaimer These mini-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 these reviews are unbiased and truly reflects the performance of the product in the simming environment. This disclaimer is posted here in order provide you with background information on the reviewer and connections that may exist between him/her and the contributing party. © 2001 - AVSIM Online All Rights Reserved