Hello all, as Monty Python suggested, I would love to see some of the major scenery developers come up with something a little different. It may not appeal to the hardcore simmers but because I've got, at least, a tiny bit of gaming in me, I think this idea would be lots of fun.

Remeber the old Groom Lake mission from the FSX days? Imagine an Orbx- or Flightbeam-quality rendition of Area 51? Whereas the FSX version used a fixed script that would trigger the sole UFO sighting (at least I think it did - I'm certainly not a programmer), this version would have a control panel where the user could enter certain parameters to change the way things play out. 

Example - 0% to 100% probability of encountering anything alien but whatever the parameter, it would be completely random: something may show up entering the airspace, upon landing, parking - whenever. Of course, it would be just eye-candy (no actual shooting-down aircraft or anything of the like; just random glimpses.

Who knows - maybe another parameter where the user clicks if he or she is authorized to land and this would trigger other random events.

Also important, whereas the FSX version had these goofy, almost-cartoony-looking aircraft when taxiing to Area 51, this version would be more realistic, subtle but still eerily different. I suppose (and assume) that with 64-bit capabilities, the possibilities are endless.

As I say, it's not hard-core simming and nowhere near to gaming but could certainly be a nice little diversion and adds a bit of suspense to our little aesthetic sim-world.

Any thoughts?

A Flightbeam quality Aera 51 would be near impossible to make as Mir needs on site access for photographs. Not to mention that almost everything about that airport, apart from its very existence, is classified.

1 hour ago, Milton Waddams said:

A Flightbeam quality Aera 51 would be near impossible to make as Mir needs on site access for photographs. Not to mention that almost everything about that airport, apart from its very existence, is classified.

Ah... I can dream can't I (but point taken).

It is a cool idea, though!

What about random meteors crashing into the airport? Lol

I think we might start to see more "missions" and other new features that P3D V4.x offers ... moving to a 64bit address space along with many SDK changes and new features has opened the doors, but it takes time for 3rd party to understand and explore those new features and leverage them.  You also have to consider that some developers are still coding for FSX and may not add/explore the benefits of P3D V4.x because they aren't available and will not work in FSX.

So give it time to settle in, and I'm sure we'll start to see more creative ideas coming from the content provider community.

Cheers, Rob.

17 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

So give it time to settle in, and I'm sure we'll start to see more creative ideas coming from the content provider community.

Good to hear from an "insider".