OAHU for AFS2 in development - Share our excitement!

  • Last week was the quietest week since we started this journey, but, we still managed to check a few more boxes and to reach a few higher rungs on the ladder. In addition to the scene above, an animated daily ferry boat running between Lahaina and Lanai reached final beta. The only kicker remaining to get the correct water level on the boat from start to finish.

    This is still whale season in the islands and we are seeing more and more whales in the Maui County area. Of course, it is full summer so we have an abundance of sailboats in practically every bay.

    This 2nd release will include the horseshoe shaped snorkeling and diving area of Molokini crater. Snorkeling with the large sea turtles at Molokini was one of the highlights of our 7-day cruise around the island last July.

    I have just completed the download of the alpha version of orthos for this newest area. I am eager to load them up and checkout some of my favorite sites. I will try to post some in-sim screen shots this week for you to see what is coming.

    Until then.

  • Molokai island. Known for the tallest sea cliffs in the world and the lack of commercial development. Only one hotel on the entire island, no traffic lights at all, but, some breathtaking mountains and valleys. Great flying in the Cub.

  • The nerve of those guys. We were talking about setting a soft target date for release of our Hawaii scenery and were using the airways, so I guess Google intercepted our Private Messages and let MS know what we were thinking. Next thing you know, they announce their flight sim will be released on August 18th. Yea, I know, it still has lots of holes in it and it is still in Alpha, not even beta yet. That is going to be a busy 5 weeks for them to get their ducks lined up.

    Neither of us have a working ICON A5, but ours is designed for VR in a helicopter.

    Meanwhile, we are considering taking pre-orders for our freeware, VR certified scenery, designed with helicopter flights in mind, Hawaiian scenery pack.

    We all know it is not practical to shoot for August 17th, but, we can probably have Maui County and the Big Island complete by then. Who knows ? ( . . . my grandson always says "the Shadow knows" when I say that) 8o

    All this is totally off the wall and in jest.

  • DANKE - aber habt ihr nicht irgendwie den Rest von Hawai vergessen?!!

    THANK YOU - but haven't you somehow forgotten the rest of Hawaii?!!

    No. We are only preparing scenery for the 8 major islands. The other 129 small islands, islets, and atolls will not be included because none of those are occupied and naturally none have any sort of airport suitable for flight simulators. Some are up to 1,500 miles from Honolulu.

  • Hello everyone, nothing major but a small fix to Hawaiian Islands: Kauai & Niihau

    Link: https://flight-sim.org/filebase/index…s-kauai-niihau/

    Update: "Kauai_places_v2"
    Small Fix: Animation rework, Fixed Runway numbers, Added/Fixed Airport lights.

    Update Installation:

    There is no need to re-download the complete package. Only download "Kauai_places_v2"

    Make sure to delete the previous folder \places from C:\Users\InsertYourUserName\Documents\Aerofly FS 2\addons\scenery\US_HI_kauai\.


    Now copy the unpacked places folder to the the above directory.


    Example:

  • It could work with a winch launch if the carrier is going fast enough.

    Bye, Michael (🍅🚁)

    Tschüss, Michael (🍎🚁)

    Configurations:

    - MacBook Pro (16", 2021); Chip: Apple M1 Max; actual macOS || Thrustmaster TCA AIRBUS EDITION: 1x Sidestick, 2x Quadrant, 2x Quadrant Add-On || Pro-Flight-Trainer PUMA X

    - iPad (12,9", 4th Generation, RAM: 6 GB); actual iOS || nimbus steelseries

  • Here is a short article that I found in one of the magazines last last. If it has the words Aloha and Cessna in the title then it is a keeper for me.

    aloha - island hopping in a Cessna2.pdf

  • Yesterday, we got our first look at some animated cars on the island of Molokai. Interestingly, I had just finished reading a few travel related stories about short visits or side visits to Molokai. Although promoted as the Friendly Isle, it is in fact the least visited of the main Hawaiian islands even though it sits directly in the middle of the chain. There are several recent articles, primary written by travelers that had their expenses paid to come to Molokai and write favorable reviews. A Smithsonian Magazine article caught my eye, well, a single photo in the article caught my eye. How about a Sikorsky S-43 flying over Molokai in the mid 30s.

    Given enough time, I could find this exact spot and make a screenshot of our scenery 90 years later. The S-43 would be a Dash-8 or a Cessna 208 this year. You notice the geography is so severe that it probably has not changed at all since this photo was taken in 1935.

    Back to my opening statement. In this article that I had just read, it was explaining how few cars were on the island, and in fact, almost no cars at all - more like pickups and SUVs. The only cars might be a few convertibles that you can rent for about 25% of the going rate on Maui. First, there are practically no improved roads, mostly red dirt and not many and not very long. Even though the island is 38 miles wide or long and 10 miles across, you can't drive on most of it.

    Here is the actual paragraph:

    On Molokai, there is not a single traffic light, and the only things that might be called traffic are a few pickup trucks waiting for a parking spot along the three-block-long main street of the island’s single sizable town, Kaunakakai, population roughly 3,000. Somewhat more than 7,000 people live on the island—about 0.5 percent of the state of Hawai‘i’s population of 1.4 million. There is just one hotel, and only a handful of restaurants more ambitious than burger shacks, spread over the island’s 38-mile length.

    I fired off a message to Jake, about the possibly of using pickups in lieu of cars for Molokai. By yesterday evening, he had scratched his first cut, and replaced the cars with higher grade pickups and SUVs. Neat.

    Here is a screenshot taken about 5 minutes ago along the NE coast of the island.

    For most Hawaii residents, Molokai is called the “outer island". Yet Molokai isn’t remote. It sits dead center of the main Hawaiian chain, only 25 miles from Oahu, with its population of nearly 1 million, and just 8.5 miles from bustling Maui. On most days it is visible from both, as well as from Lanai, and, on a clear day, even the Big Island of Hawaii.

    On most nights, the bright lights of the capital city Honolulu stain Molokai’s sky yellow to the west, while those of Maui’s Kaanapali coast do so to the east. Nor is it especially small: 38 miles long and 10 miles wide at its widest point, it is the fifth largest of Hawaii’s islands. It is nearly twice the size of Lanai, with more than double the population, but shares with it many characteristics, including having long been mostly controlled by outsiders. Nearly 85 percent of Molokai is controlled by seven owners, all but one of them headquartered off-island.

    Molokai boasts the longest fringing coral reef and the longest white sand beach in the state, and the tallest sea cliffs in the world. It has all of the things the other islands have that can be turned to profit: well-watered valleys good for traditional Polynesian agriculture, flat land suitable for modern farming, shorelines protected from waves (in the Polynesian period, the south shore sheltered 50 or more fishponds, the largest aquaculture complex in the Pacific), and all the lovely beaches, swaying palms, towering waterfalls, and rainforests to attract tourists.

    Even though Molokai may not be developed and may not attract the mainline tourist trade, I suspect it will be very popular with the low and slow pilots in our flight sim. We have three airports on the island and each is as different from the other as Molokai is from the neighboring islands. One with multiple runways, one a single runway and one a very nice grass strip.

    Gotta get back to work on the scenery. More later.

  • Seems like our repainter is too busy to check in for a progress report. Let's all hope he is doing well. Here is a catchy livery that would look good on our B737-500 - a Bluebird Cargo. It seems they are all cargo models. hmm.