June 2006 VOLUME 10 - ISSUE 6 - This is the full magazine in digital form!
Flying the Memories
Recreate some of the most daring cargo flights of World War II as an American pilot flying over enemy territories to supply the Chinese army in a Japanese controlled war zone. These pilots were the “Heroes of the Hump”.
VATUSA Convention Report
Roger Curtiss attended this year’s VATSIM USA convention, a gathering of members that form part of the world’s most popular real time, online air traffic control network for flight simulator users. Find out all about the event and where the future is heading for this popular technology and network of users.
Alternative Control Methods in X-Plane
Weight shifting, wing tilting, and variable incidence in X-Plane. In this article Chuck Bodeen explores several aircraft and three separate ways of controlling them without the use of ordinary ailerons, elevators, and rudders.
In Search of the Perfect Screenshot
New contributor and screenshot taking fanatic, Harold Zimmer, explores the art of producing gallery-like screenshots from Flight Simulator. You will be amazed at just what can be produced. Screenshots that look just like real photographs and others with incredible artistic flare!
Cockpit Building Series
While instruments are the most important way for pilots to receive information, another vital way is lights in the cockpit. Lights are used to convey the status of many systems like landing gear positions and engine health. One method home cockpit builders can use to add lights to their flight decks is the Phidgets™ LED64 board.
Keeping it Real
One of the attributes, and perhaps also a curse of flight simulation, is the flexibility it offers a pilot to tailor the flight experience. There are many variables you can control… Find out which help keep your flight sim session “As Real As It Gets!”
An Interview with Peter Wilding
Peter Wilding is well known in the Flight Simulator community for his innovative replacement textures, Flight Environment and Ground Environment. In this interview with Computer Pilot Magazine, he talks about the lessons he’s learned, his goals as a developer, and his plans for future projects.
Tally Ho! The Fighter Ace Story
Find out all about this popular online flight combat sim that puts you up against other talented human combat simmers from around the globe in intense WWII scenarios!
From the EDITOR..
Welcome to the June issue. Well, I have just finished watching some clips online from the new version of Flight Simulator that appear to have come from the recent display of FSX at the E3 convention in the USA. In the short 30 second clip we can see some nice new terrain being rendered, with more accurate lines, specifically around water edges. There are some new aircraft including a floatplane, powered glider and others as well as what looks like a new mission/scenario type feature where you can fly air races, just like the Red Bull Air racing series currently in progress around the world!
On another video I found by trawling the web shows a helicopter skimming over some great new water textures on its way to an oil rig to save workers from a burning inferno! Perhaps another “mission” to be included in the final store release? This particular mission looked a little like an arcade game, unlike other scenes which looked much more familiar to the seasoned simmer, however, the graphics and effects displayed were interesting nonetheless.
The show stopper came when viewing a scene of a powered glider crossing a multi-lane highway. Yep, just as we have wanted to see for many years, down below were many cars cruising along the road in full motion! Another scene showed elephants roaming across a more barren landscape with similar motion, although a little slower of course!
If this is just a taste of what we can expect to find in the new FSX, I envisage that Flight Simulator 2004 will not be remaining on my hard drive for long after the release of FSX! It looks incredible and certainly made the jaw drop rapidly, even after the first 20 or so frames. I think we are in for a real treat. The biggest question however will be whether the sim will run fluidly on your average system, or will all these new features be available only to those with the fastest of PCs currently on the market. I guess we will have to wait and see!
If you want to check these videos out of yourself, just do a web search for “FSX video” and you will come up with many links to the new video.