Don't you admit it was a little misleading that they made it appear that there were birds in such in regular flight? My first thought was well geez, zebras , elephants and giraffes......thats it in the world? Then I thought well if you're flying around, you really won't see a pack of bears or mountain lions...but how bout wolves or deer? The biggest disapointment is the birds which are everywhere in the world, not just in certain spots. Perhaps 3rd party?

The birds are there just look for them.

If you switch updrafts to "natural" you will see birds soaring in them. I see them from time to time, typically where I would expect them such as around statues and waterways... but it isn't incredibly often.

Not sure why you'd want to see birds, as fast as you're going and as far away as they'd be, they'd be just a pixel or 2, right? Unless they splat on your windscreen ;) For that matter, maybe they ARE there, just too small to notice. I flew that Hawaii mission with the humpback whales and I had to get pretty d*mn low to see that 60 foot long beast! At any rate, why waste CPU clocks on something barely noticable, in a prog that already overtaxes my more-than-capable system?Now it would be cool if when in the sailplane, there were some condors around to show you where the thermals were. They'd be big enough, and you'd be slow enough so that they could provide some useful input just like they do for real glider pilots.Just my 2 cents worth!DH

Valkyrie, thanks, I'll give that a try. Haven't used the "natural" thermals yet while soaring!

I remember reading this ...I am paraphrasing here. 'When Oppenheimer and his men exploded one in Las Alamos'..the real secret was out to the world. The real secret being that it CAN be done'.All we need to figure out is.... how to put birds in places we need them.:)Manny

So... we NEED birds when flying? Unless you are looking for thermals, which is admittedly hard because the birds are so small... I don't see a real benefit besides immersion factor. Do we really want to simulate bird strikes? Yikes.

Only place i have yet to see birds is around the statue of liberty. They looked great though and the effect was definitely cool!

Hehe.My only real life experience of birdlife whilst in flight was one nearly going through the prop on a takeoff roll in the trusty 152! It scared the crap out of me and unnerved my instructor too. Where I did regularly see birds on the ground was in the grassland around the airfield when taxying. I have seen birds in FS once, when in the ultralite doing a circuit of Maui so they are there.. I think not seeing them often is pretty realistic to be honest.CheersJames

Download lworld11.zip here at Avsim. Ron has a way to see elephants, whales, etc. outside of the missions. Regards, Bob.

>So... we NEED birds when flying? Unless you are looking for>thermals, which is admittedly hard because the birds are so>small... I don't see a real benefit besides immersion factor.>Do we really want to simulate bird strikes? Yikes.I was landing at Elstree in the UK when a flock of gulls crossed the final approach path. I left it until almost on top of them until I decided to go around. Another occasion I saw a couple of large gulls crossing my path just after takeoff - I had to turn to avoid them.I have yet to see any birds in FSX, but it would be good to see them during landing or take-off.Ray Keattch

>you really won't see a pack of bears or mountain lions>...but how bout wolves or deer? I have seen bears in FSX, it could have been a grizzly.

I saw Bigfoot while flying through the mountains...

Here is the Grizzly bear I came across in the mountains of FSX. I zoomed in with the camera and snapped a shot.It was just strolling along causally, probably looking for food. (Good thing I was safe inside the airplane!! :-boom )

We were misled by many things!! -fileplanet beta testing!-better landclass!-cloud shadows!-backwards compatibility!-better piracy protection!-blurries "night and day fix" that wasn't!-fake dx10 paintings!-minium HW requirements!-demo!-multi-core!