I have seen people do this on a small scale, where they get together and fly someplace online (for instance, there's a cool thread over at FS-Freeflow of some warbird guys who fly around to different places).So I started thinking about doing this on a larger scale, similar to Osh Kosh, Sun'n'Fun, etc.. We'd pick an airport with some scenery and some space, have some organizers split up areas on and surrounding the airport for different types of planes, and everyone could fly in. We'd get some controllers for the event to keep the traffic flowing, and maybe even have some shows, acrobatics, fly by's etc.. People would come, park their planes, and then wander around the space checking things out and stuff. All online.Is this possible in FS? I'm thinking for it to work, everyone would have to have a livery of everybody else's planes in order to see them? So we'd have to have freeware and payware sections, and it would really be a lot of work for each person, which is probably why it's not done? Or am I wrong? Maybe this is something that FSX addresses, since it seems to be more online aware. Maybe it allows you to see somebody else's plane even though you don't have the livery on your own system (lots of bandwidth I imagine, or maybe not?). And, of course, everyone would need active camera or something similar.Whaddya think?I'm thinking in the future you could get some really wild stuff going with this.Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)

Everything you ask for can be done on VATSIM using squawkbox 3 (freeware).Gary

Well, I know that VATSIM is a piece of it, but what about dealing with people's individual aircraft? How would that be done? I know that Squawkbox gives a library of aircraft and repaints, but I assume that is standard airlines and GA aircraft. I'm thinking here we would have a much greater variety of aircraft with individual markings. Does Squawkbox handle that directly? IOW, when you log into VATSIM through Squawkbox, is your aircraft geometry and paint automatically disseminated to everyone else who is logged in? I was not aware of that feature. That would be cool. I assumed Squawkbox chose the closest aircraft it could find in its library.How many aircraft can be handled at once in a given 5 mi radius?I know this has been handled before in RTW Race, so I know it can be done. I was wondering if it is possible on the scale of 100 or even 1000 aircraft participating at once? I was also wondering if people would be interested in participating?I'm sure it is too late for this year to organize such a thing, but it would be an interesting thing to do for the AVSIM conference. I'm imagining that those of us who can't attend could fly into some location, and some events would be scheduled throughout the day. I believe there are some groups of people who do aerobatics online, virtual Blue Angels(?), things like that. Gatherings of warbirds and homebuilts and anybody else could do flybys. And of course different types would be grouped together so you could "walk" by them. And then there is the challenge of actually flying in, getting a spot and parking there. And all this would be displayed on a bigscreen TV(s) at the conference.If it is spread over several days, how do you handle management of the parking? I'm assuming dial up people would disappear when they logoff (if they could even participate at all given the scale of people logged in)?Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)

OK, perhaps I should have said most of what you want can be done on VATSIM. Yes, VATSIM / squawkbox choses the closest aircraft it can find to what each online flyer has told it they are flying (doesn't have to be the same as what you are actually flying BTW).If you've ever done much online flying, VATSIM or otherwise, you will find that anything more than 10-20 aircraft in your immediate visual vicinity starts to bring FPS into single digits, even on the most powerful rigs. 100 aircraft would kill it outright, let alone 1000.Also, the reason that VATSIM uses a common shape library is that using accurate representations of others aircraft also kills performance, and it is much better to use low polygon but representative aircraft and paints for that reason. Back in the days before I found VATSIM I used to fly multiplayer, sometimes on the MS Zone (uggggghhhh), and if we all traded freeware repaints beforehand we could see exactly what each others aircraft looked like (multiplayer too picks the closest representation it can find on YOUR system), but again it was a frame rate killer with only a couple of quality aircraft like that. Nowadays, there many people have payware aircraft which significantly complicates, if not excludes, the idea of trading aircraft paints for this purpose.So in short, a fly-in on a scale and quality level that you ask for is not possible in the current iteration of FS, and I doubt for FSX either. VATSIM is the best "lite" alternative IMO.Gary