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SEPTEMBER 2007 VOLUME 11 - ISSUE 9 - This is the full magazine in digital form!
Cayman Island Honeymoon
“First Officer John “Scotty” Walker of Tradewind Caribbean Airlines couldn’t wait to get into the air-conditioned comfort of the 737-800WL cockpit. It was an exceptionally hot day at Curacao’s Willemstad Hato International Airport. As he brushed past Janice Adler, the Senior Flight Attendant, she called after him, “What’s the rush Scotty?”
Flying Green with Farmboyzim
Flying Green with Farmboyzim” is something new, offering a bit of an insight into regions around the globe that you may not have visited yet within MSFS. If you have visited these areas already, maybe you’ll see something that you missed.
Using Tower View in Flight Sim to Practise Flying Model Helicopters
In a recent article I explored the possibility of learning to fly “model” aircraft by using Tower View in Flight Sim. This time I wanted to tackle an even more difficult challenge using helicopters instead.
Pizzazz for FSX
If you’re bored with watching aircraft taxi, take off, fly, land and even crash, relief is available. Files available on the Internet for free downloading can enhance your enjoyment of Flight Simulator X far beyond the runway end identifier lights.
X-Ploring Mars with X-Plane
Flying on Mars is not quite like flying on Earth. There are numerous factors that must be taken into consideration, all of which will help you stay airborne in the hostile environment. In fact, flying on Mars is like flying on an Alien planet, yet there are no aliens found to date on the red planet!
Creating a Glass Cockpit Display for the Homebuilt Simulator with PMDG
The building of a cockpit simulator is by no means an easy task. It consumes an enormous amount of time, patience and money to create that sacred space where no wives dare to venture! Time seems irrelevant when you are happily head down making the next part at the work bench avoiding real issues in the overgrown garden.
Winning in the Air – How to Gain the Advantage
This is the first of two combat articles where John Achor discusses the fundamentals of aerial combat in flight simulators to help you gain the advantage over computer or human players!
Round Robin Adventures – Back to Basics
My purpose for writing this article was to take a trip back in time and re-visit the original Airports, VORs and NDBs from BAO’s (Bruce Artwick) Flight Sim and Microsoft Flight Simulator 3. It is my aim to take those of you, who started in this hobby in the last 10 years, back to an original flight sim experience. As for the “old timers” it will be a trip back in time.
From the EDITOR..
By taking a look at various flight sim forums around the net, I have discovered a slowly increasing trend in simmers questioning (or complaining) about the price of some add-on software packages. Indeed there are numerous add-ons for Microsoft Flight Simulator out now that cost as much as, or even more than the original sim software package! Are we paying too much for our sim add-on software?
If you look at it in the sense of how much time goes into some of these complex add-ons, and the fact that all of them will never sell anywhere near as many copies as the Flight Simulator software itself, then the price does seem to be reasonable. The cost of obtaining some data used in the add-ons too is often hidden to the consumer. For example, there might be an initial large cost to purchase high resolution satellite or aerial photographic data to produce photorealistic scenery titles, and this data is definitely not cheap. Then factor in the developers’ time (many who work on these add-ons full-time), outsourcing of some project work, plus a myriad of other hidden costs and time consuming work and the price suddenly seems very reasonable! Of course, this does not mean you should be paying top dollar for sub-standard work. And indeed the evolution of flight simulation, and the sim technology we now enjoy has come about due to some tough competition between rival add-on developers, so rewarding those that produce the higher quality evolutionary or revolutionary titles, or even just titles that simply “work” is a good investment of your hard earned money. When you think about it, for the cost of one hour of real world airplane rental, you get a whole virtual world with aircraft that would otherwise cost not millions, but billions! For another hour’s worth you can have terrain mesh (mountain) improvements added to your virtual world to improve the visual realism, and for another hour, you can add not one, but in some cases, two high quality aircraft add-ons that even impress real world pilots.
So why are we complaining about the price of sim add-ons? In some cases, sure the price may seem high for low quality work, but as a consumer, you have the power and the choice to choose not to purchase it. You can protest by keeping your wallet closed or purse strings drawn tight! But without supporting our “good” sim developers, we are inevitably slowing the progress of the hobby we all love to indulge in!
Enjoy the September issue of Computer Pilot magazine. And as always, your comments are valued.
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