Fs9 seems to be the best sim yet for practicing pilotage skills, but there are still a few frustrations. I've purposely commented out the GPS gauge on my Ford Tri-motor and Piper Cub, because I really want to practice navigating as it was done before the days of navaids.After I got the sim, I spent a few days trying to reconcile the roads and power pylons, for example, to my current real-world charts. Sometimes the sim is quite accurate, sometimes detail is just missed completely, making navigation at times quite difficult. The narrow rivers also seem to be often misplaced. Not a complaint as such, that's just the way it is with consumer software that in my view still does a darned good job of trying recreate the entire globe.So I got to thinking how I can make it easier without adding frame-eating high detailed mesh, landclass or vector data (even if such add-ons were available for where I fly which they aren't). For one, it isn't hard to add some basic landmarks that appear on my maps, such as masts, water towers, lighthouses, power substations, etc, etc. Then there is Abacus EZ-Landmark, but I reckon this needs to be used very sparingly indeed - otherwise it makes the job far too easy.Anyone else currently trying to fly FS9 just using a stopwatch, map and compass? There is something highly attractive about this new version of the sim that really makes me want to fly everywhere by looking out the window. I can't really say that for other versions, even FS2002.

Yes, I do :-)But I have to say that being in the UK I use the VFR Photographic scenery of the UK. This means that annoyances such as missing bridges, roads not in the right place etc just does not happen. Every city, town and village are there, right where they should be. And you don't have any missing landmarks either.This does not mean that it is easy to go VFR flying. It's not, but it's certainly the most realistic scenery available for FS. It's also expensive. There are four modules you have to buy in order to cover just England and Wales, not including Scotland, and they cost

I'm too,I fly in Germany with the great Landclass files from Frank Barth (http://hometown.aol.de/FrankBarFri/OllisFsDesign.htm). They look very good and build the towns and cities at the right place. For the missing Landmarks I hope that the Lago company do a new version of there Scenery Enhancer utility, which you can build very easy Landmarks like Masts, Radiotowers etc.I guess a good photographic scenery for the whole US is far away. I remember Flight Unlimited 2 and 3 which have one CD only for the San Francisco and Seattle part. And this are only scenery for the Summer season. If they made them for all four seasons thats four CD for this small part of the US. So I guess that the whole US would be more than 50 CD's.Currently there are the MegaScenery project, which covers small parts of the US, but still only one season and they are expensive too.So keep the clock counting ByeMarkus

As for masts and radio towers, I'm hoping MS will bring out the SDK that specifies the GUIDs of the library objects. If they do, then placing them in your own scenery is pretty simple, especially if you have a spreadsheet program that can quickly create multiple row csv files. I was thinking of getting the Lago Enhancer (I had the one for FS2002), but by the time that is out, MS might have released the SDK. I guess it will boil down to whoose objects are better - the Lago ones or those that ship with MS.As for the UK scenery, yes, I think it's great, and that type of scenery would solve all the issues with inaccurate terrain. I actually sent the company an email soon after it came out asking them if they were going to do other parts of the world. I was disappointed they did not respond, as I consider that poor customer relations, even if the answer was going to be "no". Actually there is more than one payware developer I have run into who doesn't answer emails.

I fly a lot of old planes... stuff tha dosnet have GPS or or autopilot what i do in FS9 is before a flight look at the MS map note down any rivers there and other map landmarks... But sometimes that can be hard so I just point the direction I need to go and tune the ADF if the plane does not have a ADF well I just got to guess :) I get there eventually.. sometimes i go the wrong way and have to beg some fuel of a virtual farmer :)But What the heck its fun to fly that way for me... none of this fancy stuff for me..My 2c

Hi Ben,Well I guess that's the point, though, isn't it? None of this stuff was invented back when these early aircraft were flying. If I had mentioned the term "GPS" to a Tri-motor pilot, he probably thought it was an abbreviation for "Great Plane, Sonny!".