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NOVEMBER 2007 VOLUME 11 - ISSUE 11 - This is the full magazine in digital form!
Flying Green with Farmboyzim - Greenland
Here we go, off on another of “Farmboyzim’s Green Flights”. These are flights in areas around this big blue marble of ours we live on which deserve attention, in both the real world and the simulated world. This time around, we are going to head over to Greenland, and see for ourselves (virtually of course), just what is going on with the North Polar Ice Pack and the Ice Sheet that covers Greenland.
Making it Real: Real ATC – The Next Big Thing
“If you’ve been flying MS flight simulator for as long as I have, there’s no doubt you already take real weather for granted. Now you can uncover the boundless possibilities of integrating real ATC into you flight sim experience…”
Meet Your Makers - Burkhard Renk
"When I say ‘MyTraffic’ I am sure many of you will have the ‘aha’ experience. Of course you know MyTraffic (and perhaps the MyWorld mesh and landclass series?). And after reading this interview, you’ll also know its creator, Burkhard Renk."
Bringing Out FSX
While Microsoft Flight Simulator X (FSX) is a magnificent advance over prior versions in many respects, it’s also an enormous burden on typical home computers. For it to work properly, most users must upgrade their systems at costs exceeding the basic program’s retail value by several times. And it still has many shortcomings carried over from prior versions.
Customizing Airport Facilities Data
For many users, recent versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator have been more than flight simulators; they’ve been “world of aviation” simulators! Particularly with the addition of animated jetways and moving airport service vehicles in FSX, users can visualize more realistic airport operations in Flight Simulator than ever before. This article discusses commercial and freeware tools now available for customizing airports.
Dr Betzy Wong, Flight Sim Therapist – Session II
I was awestruck! Never in my life had I been in the same room as a real life uniformed airline pilot. And she was right there in the waiting room of Dr Wong’s office. Although she looked pretty old to me (about 40) I still thought that she looked quite beautiful. Suddenly, all of my suspicions about Dr Wong’s bona fides simply melted away.
Flight Simulator X vs Quad Core
How does FSX run on a Quad Core machine? David Smith finds out!
VFR Flying in the Water Wonderland – Part II
“In Part 1 I said I would fly the default FSX Beaver. I changed my mind because it is not an amphibian. When you fly in the upper peninsula of Michigan you really need an amphibian aircraft.”
From the EDITOR..
Hi! And welcome to the November issue.
I would like to welcome all our new subscribers who have joined us over the last few months. It is great to have you onboard. And don’t forget that as a current subscriber, you are automatically entered into our monthly subscriber draw to win great flight sim products. Check the subscriber draw page this month to see what is up for grabs. Also, check to see if you are a winner from our previous draws!
This month I have something for you to ponder over…
Suppose your flight sim world was so good and so realistic that it mimicked real world flying pretty much perfectly (all but actually transporting you from one physical place to another). Suppose everything else was exactly the same, including the forces felt in the flight deck. Could you still call it a “simulation” if everything was identical to a real word flight? Would you be able to please those airline enthusiasts who book travel on airliners just to ride in a particular aircraft model or type, regardless of where the flight is actually taking them? I suspect you would get most of the comparable experience from such a sim… well perhaps except for the airport experience at the other end… walking through the terminals, and checking in for your boarding pass one hour later for the flight back (yes, some people do this in real life!). Of course, our sims have not reached this stage as yet, and there is no telling for sure if they ever will, but we are definitely making progress toward this “ultimate goal”. Thent here is the social aspect, i.e. interacting with others onboard, including the airline staff and fellow passengers. This is something that perhaps will take the longest time to simulate, if it ever can be simulated well.
Needless to say, if this did become a reality, i.e. simulations so realistic that they mimick everything but actually physically moving you from one location to another, would we then require student pilots to undertake actual physical flying lessons before they gained their license to physically transport people in “real” aircraft in the “real world”? It would be an interesting time in the future and an interesting discussion where the meaning of the word “real” is challenged in regard to flight simulation. And then there is the question of whether pilots would actually need to pilot an aircraft from the aircraft’s flight deck, or could they, like current UAVs, pilot them from a remote location? While this sounds a little more science fiction, it will probably occur in time BEFORE those lines of simulated vs real become a little blurred! A scary but fascinating thought indeed!
Well, now that I have put your mind in a spin, you can take a break before you make the trek into the rest of this issue. Or just head straight for this month’s lesson on Spin and Stall recovery, and you might untangle that mess a little quicker! Enjoy…
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