Anyone who tells me Flight Simulator is just a stupid game deserves a slap in the face. Cruising along on my flight from Phoenix to Amsterdam I suddenly spot Aurora Borealis dancing across my view. Haha, marvellous ! I put in two pics of it. I couldn't beleive it !Any of you guys noticed this before?Xanderhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/133736.jpg

I've never seen it but would like to. Does anyone know how consistent the aurora's presence is? Is it always there or does it appear randomly?

FS is just a stupid game. ;) Sorry, coulnd't resist. Nice pictures. :)Mark, I believe it's just random.

it happens during the winter in higher altitudes. Fly around alaska and you will probably see it

Had it happen one time while flying through Alaska.Very cool stuffGoran

Xander, What a great shot. Is this an amazing sim, or what? Now if we could get a little "Elmos Fire" going . . . Hey, a question. Let

>. . but I could never get there! Did you have any better luck?Correct. No one is able to fly over the Poles in FS9. This is a byproduct of the terrain engine in FS - they simply can't lay those tiles properly there so they prevent you from getting there. I don't think they will fix it anytime soon. Frankly this is probably not a big deal for most of us. There are other things "wrong" with FS that I think would be of much higher priority.Michael J.http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/pmdg_744F.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/images/asv_beta_member.jpg

It's a shame though that we can't do it. Never tried polar routes before though. This flight took me from Phoenix, over Denver then on to Chicago, passing over Ottowa and Gander before joining Track X for today which established the route at 55N. Then came in over Belfast for the LAMSO arrival for runway 06 at EHAM. Landed 15 minutes ago. Shame because just after I landed the fog started rolling in with OVC at 300 and 2500m vis. It was a nice flight. Everything went according to plan.Not knowing too much about the 744 systems, but do you mean that your LNAV quit working after losing VOR and GPS? I tried that once over the atlantic by pressing GPS inhibit and it went on fine on the IRU's alone.Xander

Xander, Thanks for hanging in there. You know more about this than you admit. Maybe you can help me untangle this. Ok. Here we go. Get yourself established on an Lnav route. A nice long one. Notice the ND displays GPS/IRS(3) indicating normal FMS present position updating. Notice that the triangle at the bottom of the ND represents your present position. Keep this in mind because this relationship will change shortly. Click on the VOR switches on the EFIS/MCP so you can verify that both VORs have auto-tuned. The VOR info will come up at the bottom left and right of the ND. All is well. Then heading select off the Lnav route by bit. Just get yourself off the track by a little, but not more than 2.5 miles (as we just learned!) Then pull up the FMC/CDU. Go to the Prog page, then to

The funny thing is that if you fly frequently in an area where FS shows them, you'll soon want to get rid of them :-) There is a fix for this and it is to relocate all the relevant fx files from the Effects folder.Ok, I understand that it's nice to seem them once a year at high altitudes but when they hang close to the treetops on every second flight... come on!! :-lol

Yep, I get them almost every single trans atlantic crossing...I do KEWR- all over the UK and Europe and always get them heading East...-Paul

When I get back from work I'll check it out. It doesn't seem logical though because even early FMS's didn't have GPS updates. It has now been incorporated into the 747 and 777's and such. This looks like a program error. Otherwise why put 3 ring laser gyro's in there. Might as well fly only on GPS. I'll post my results later. Meanwhile PMDG can also check this thread.Xander

1)FS Polar Routes: I thought MSFS saw the world as a cylinder, not a ball or sphere.2)Aurora Borealis: Got a good look at the AB twice over southern Canada, and never seen anything in FS that resembled it.louross.

That's what I heard about the pole situation too. The FS models the world like a tube, not a ball.But hey, you long haul drivers. See if you can duplicate the nav story. There's a book about it a couple of posts back. The only diffecence is that you won't have to shut down the radios. You'll be way out there enjoying those beautiful ABs and completely out of nav radio range anyway. Time to play around with buttons. Something to do, anyway. BTW. Speaking of those long hauls, what about the HF radios? How are we communicating positions reports way out there? VHF isn't going to do it. VHF autotransfer to SatCom? HUmm?

Aurora Borealis existed in FS2002 already, met them quite oftenover north 60 degrees and higher.Some people even says MS had put some other easter eggs like UFOs,but I never came across those!Sam, about polar flights, I had tried it as well in FS2002 and had the same results: no way to pass over north pole (by that time I used the PSS 744).Look here:http://forums.ai-aardvark.com/showthread.p...=polar+deliriumWatch out the contrails!This is a post I thread I started in december 2003, with the default 744 in FS9. I also wanted to see if MS had fixed that north pole wall, but not.I wanted to do it because I was myself preparing real flights for a major airlines, and those flights actually flew over the Pole(747-200 and 747-400)