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Name: SteveRosenow
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1. Your name: SteveRosenow
2. Your Email Address: [email protected]
3. Link to URL: https://loowitimaging.wixsite.com/loowit-sceneries
4. News Category: Product Release
5. News Item:

   Upcoming Mount St. Helens based scenery packages for Flight Simulator X!
   
   Newly-launched Loowit Sceneries is announcing the upcoming release of three scenery packages devoted to Mount St. Helens. 
   
   A "time capsule" experience, if you will, flight simulator enthusiasts will finally be able to see in amazement what it was like flying around Mount St. Helens prior to its devastating May 18, 1980 eruption.
   
   The first of the three scenery packages, and the base package of all three, recreates life in the area prior to 1980 in general. The pre-eruption elevation of Spirit Lake and the  North Fork Toutle River valley has been meticulously restored using geospatial data processing software to restore pre-1980 contour elevation data. Additionally, the pre-1980 cone is meticulously modeled in the SIM using archive aerials sourced from the USGS and a 30-meter mesh DEM of the pre-eruption peak. Additionally, custom-landclass and reshaping the land has been accomplished, to recreate hundreds of square miles of Weyerhaeuser logging clearcuts in the immediate vicinity of Mount St. Helens.
   
   Most importantly, the pre-eruption alignment of Washington State Highway 504 - a.k.a. the Spirit Lake Highway - has been restored based on 1979 topographic map data. 
   
   The package doesn't end with reshaping the terrain! In addition, dozens of landmark structures have been meticulously modeled in 3D, including the famous Mount St. Helens Lodge owned by Harry Truman, as well as various other lodges and camps at, and around, Spirit Lake just north of the volcano. To round out the scenery objects, Weyerhaeuser logging camps in the area, as well as Weyerhaeuser transfer yards closer to the volcano, have also been faithfully reproduced in the SIM to provide full immersion into the "Pre-1980 Experience."
   
   The second package, called "The Warm-Up Act," recreates Mount St. Helens in mid-spring, 1980. Each pre-May 18, 1980 steam and ash venting has been meticulously reproduced to fire off at exactly the same time via special effects BGL files, and for the exact length of time, as the original eruption. To round off this package, a custom-modified early-May 1980 aerial of the peak serves as a custom aerial terrain overlay. The most important aspect of this package is a custom, in-house produced digital terrain model of the Mount St. Helens peak as it appeared with the bulge and summit crater on the north flank of the volcano. 
   
   The third, and most incredible, of the packages is a special recreation of Mount St. Helens, called "Minutes to Disaster." This package takes flight sim enthusiasts on a frozen trip in time to 8:27 a.m. on the morning of May 18, 1980. It is five minutes to cataclysmic disaster, and you're taking flight over Mount St. Helens in its final minutes before oblivion would be unleashed. Fly over the crater in awe below you as a gaping maw graces what was once Mount St. Helens' perfect peak. Take in the sight as the north flank of the mountain appears blistered and bruised by a cryptodome of magma, which has been intruding into the north flank since mid-March, 1980. You'll see sights familiar to volcano watchers such as the 850-foot-wide, 1,200-foot high debris avalanche scar on the northeast flank, the same scar visible in Gary Rosenquist's world-famous sequence of the beginning of the eruption. This avalanche scar was created a week prior when a 5.1 magnitude quake shook the peak on May 12, 1980. It would be a teaser of "impending doom." As in the Warm-Up Act, the most important aspect of this package is a custom, in-house produced digital terrain model of the Mount St. Helens peak as it appeared with the bulge and summit crater on the north flank of the volcano. The contours of this custom terrain model were adjusted to reflect the bulge profile as it looked on May 14, 1980.
   
   As a special treat, you can also recreate in your own simulator, the real-life flight of geologists Keith and Dorothy Stoffel, who were flying directly above Mount St. Helens when it erupted on May 18, 1980, in a Cessna 182 piloted by Bruce Judson out of Yakima. Their experiences, and harrowing photos of the moment the eruption began, were used as reference for this package. Their flight began out of Yakima at 7:50 a.m. and they arrived at Mount St. Helens ten minutes before the eruption began on May 18, 1980. 
   
   Estimated release date: December, 2021/January 2022. 
   
   
   The Pre-1980 Experience
   
   
   The Warm-Up Act
   
   
   Minutes to Disaster