OAHU for AFS2 in development - Share our excitement!

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    Quote from psionmark

    Almost 24 hours now without an update - should we be worried? :)

    Only if you want to be worried. The team tries to work 25 hours a day to complete the scenery, but, occasionally we have a conflict with other things like life and summer and weekend camping trips, but, usually one or more members are at it at any given time of day or night.

    We are wrapping up the documentation for the first release, which takes a bit of time to make sure we have all the proper credits and we have made good choices for dividing up the large files so the users will have easy decisions when it is time to install it and start up.

    On Thursday we added a significant amount of animations for our first release and we have been working on performance levels and such. The day before I noticed a small glitch in the orthos that had waves running up the side of the mountain. This was where 4 different grids all came together and created a nightmare for the ortho builders. For the most part the blend of the blue water, shallow emerald colored water, white foam waves, sandy beaches and the natural mountains looks very natural. Hawaii does not look like that in the images from space.

    I spent the last two days adding more animated sailboats near most of the bays and larger coves. Yep, everyone of those that you see in this screen shot is moving under sail power.

    Quote from higgy

    why only 25h a day ? are you getting tired? :D8)8|

    We had planned to order those 30 hours/day clocks for this final stretch, but, this damn Covid-19 has interfered with everything.

    I just hate to be working on a Saturday with such nice weather, so I grabbed the Yellow Cub and took off for Princeville. Two new things are quite obvious, but I don't know which one is getting the most attention. There is that Red Ferrari and the two black dogs blocking the door and the coke machine, but, there is a hot spanking new Phenom 300 in the old man's Learjet spot. Feathers are gonna fly when he shows up later today. woah.

    I couldn't get past the dogs to get a coke so I taxied over to the gas tank to get my 4 gallons of gas. I just love that sign. I get a good chuckle every time I fill up here. It is soooo true.

    Ouch, 4 gallon of 100LL was almost $30.00. I'm sure glad I ain't buying a tank of jet fuel for the Learjet.

    Quote from Patsam37

    It would be awesome to have those Coast Guard Helicopters flyable.

    If you can fly Larrylynx's Mk 7 then you can fly all of them 5 maybe 6 liveries, they all look the same from the cockpit. I guess you could say that is awesome. 8o

    Switching gears, for you Navy and Military fans you will be glad to hear both the USS Scott, DDG 995, and the USNS Patuxtent will both be assigned to the Pacific Missile Range Facility Barking Sands. The USS Scott is already making trial runs along a fixed animation path just offshore from the base. Due to the proximity of the neighboring military bases you might see either or both of these ships docked in Pearl Harbor and Kaneohe Bay MCBH.

    The Patuxtent only arrived about an hour ago after ending a Middle East and African theater deployment with the Military Sealift Command. Patuxent is a Combat logistics Force ship and is U. S. government owned so she will fit in nicely at PMRF.

    As part of the most recent upgrade for Pacific deployment, the helideck has been totally rebuilt and strengthened to allow landings and takeoffs with the Navy version (skids) of the Larrylynx Mk 7. Of course, the IPACS R-22 looks rather small when on the helideck, but, makes a great practice chopper.


    I was out flying around in my cub looking for a free hot dog on Father's Day and found this almost secluded beach in the na pali area of Kauai. It doesn't take much flat sand to make a landing area for the cub. You just have to make sure it is level because you can't even find duct tape out here so you don't want to bend it.

    Gotta go, I just got a text that said, get back home and upload my last minute updates. I wonder what they have in mind for next week? hmmmm.

    This morning I started my first flight directly over the lookout at Waimea Canyon at 6,000 feet. This is one of the most scenic spots on the islands when viewed from a single-seat sailplane. Looking west the large cluster of big white dome stand out with the deep blue water background. This is the Navy's Makaha Ridge Tracking Satellite station. There are other groups of satellite antennas on the island but this is the largest.

    (web photo)

    Otherwise, you can almost see the waters edge all the way around Kauai, but not quite. At places the bright white foam and the emerald colored shallow water along the beach stand out as the waves break on the shore. But, mostly you see the dark green flora and red or orange earth exposed in the canyon walls.

    It seems you could say up here all day long but the flight sim is not known for thermal activity. My choice of sailplane today is the excellent Schleicher ASG-29. The -29 really is at the upper end of the performance scale with a maximum glide ratio greater than 50. The instrumentation in the IPACS model is not one of the better layouts with the primary or center instrument covered up with a huge sticker. What could have been there would be an oversized airspeed indicator that is popular in many of these models or better yet, a GPS unit with map display.

    Not a big deal for me though, I have the fsWidget's GMap HD add on with all the maps and charts handy for every flight.

    With no suitable landing area this high up the mountain I slowly drifted to the Southwest toward the neighboring island of Niihau, the forbidden, and privately owned island.

    As I approached Barking Sands Missile Range, I was especially alert for any light signals pointed in my direction or god forbid any wisps of black telltale smoke from the afterburners of an interceptor on its way to check me out. Nope, just your normal Tuesday morning in beautiful Hawaii.

    I still had more than 2,000 feet of altitude as I slowly curved around the control tower with those extra long and slender wings. A friendly wave from the lady in the tower gave me a good feeling that all was well from their view.

    Seeing the Guided Missile Frigate, USS Scott, slowly making its way north just offshore in the calm blue water immediately brought me back to simulated reality. I made a large sweeping turn to the south so I could fly over the Scott at about 1,500 feet. There must have been two dozen sets of eyeball staring directly at me, mostly in wonder of what the heck I thought I was doing. Several of those eyeballs were looking through binoculars. Those big diameter ones that they use for, well, whatever they use them for.

    I completed my turn back to the north with the intention of landing along side the big runway 16/34 black runway, but, I just floated and floated and floated some more until I was back almost in front of the control tower. There just happens to be a large patch of smooth grass right there waiting for me to place the one wheel firmly on the ground and hit the spoiler key. I made a greaser landing, came to a quick stop and the plane made a half turn so I was back looking in the direction of our friendly ATC lady.

    I was too far away to actually see her in the tower, but no doubt she also has a set of those huge navy binoculars. Before I got the canopy open I could see two security Humvees splashing water and headed straight for me. I was smart enough to stay seated in the cockpit and wait for their arrival.

    I actually didn't expect to hear, "Welcome to Barking Sands, Sir, our Commander is about to have breakfast and asked that you join him. Our Guard Dog, Enduring Freedom, will stand guard on your aircraft."

    Wow. I really don't know how many Navy bases have Kona Coffee, but this one does and it is outstanding. I didn't remember that folks ate poached eggs anymore. Oh well.

    I'm off to another busy day of helping the team get this ready for you folks.

    Hey, just in case you are wondering if the "copilot" will fly a single-place sailplane, the answer is yes, and quite well in fact. The coPilot feature locks on to the best glide speed, in this case 62 knots and holds it, and I mean holds it - no deviation. You can really stay up a lot longer than when us humans wander up and down and around while trying to hold the best glide speed. This also give you a lot more freedom to look around and take in the scenery. 8o

    The background hum is at a much higher level this morning. There is talk about how soon we can get it all together to release to you users.

    We made tremendous progress in the last 24 hours. During some final testing multiple VR users comparing performance rates around the island isolated 3 FPS killers and all have now been replaced with performance friendly versions.


    We have tested an ingenious user friendly method of controlling how much or how many animations we can stuff into the box before everything grinds to a halt. The user can select None or All with 25% and 50% choices. This is all accomplished with one click prior to starting the sim.


    So those users with marginal PC Systems or older graphic cards or minimum memory can still enjoy the scenery, with less pizazz and motion than those with higher end systems.


    The VR users are in for the treat of their life.


    We received a huge shipment of high end static gliders and sailplanes from around the world. These do not have any country markings or national flags as we requested.

    Dillingham airport, known as the Glider Capital of Hawaii now has a full complement on the ramps. An unexpected bonus is that Princeville on Kauai now has sailplanes.

    Keep checking in, we are moving at warp speed to complete this first release.