No rest for the weary - Maui progress

Folks, I am not sure anyone even had time for a cup of coffee before charging ahead with Part 3 of the Hawaiian Islands. This team never ceases to amaze me with their talents and tireless dedication.

I am up high on AMOS this morning checking the punch list. This is truly knock your socks off original work. The views are even more stunning than the images show. Maui is so diverse in views. All four islands are in work and much further along than I thought was possible. Continue to enjoy Oahu while we bring Maui to life.

More to come.

Ray

Some drive a rental car, some take the bus tour, and others take the EC-135. I recommend the chopper.

The team is making great progress on Maui. Good day for sailplanes.

A short update on our Hawaii Scenery project. Part 3 - Maui County is progressing quite well and could possibly have even more animations than our Part 2 - Oahu released earlier this month.

While we are finalizing Maui and the surrounding islands, we have resumed our work on Hawaii - the Big Island. This is one huge playground and the file sizes will be enormous. The Big Island is the most diverse with something for everyone, as they say. Would you believe snow on the mountains was the weather forecast for this week? Amazing. This is the one that made the news a couple of years ago with those huge lava flows just South of Hilo.

An internet search will return tons of images and downloadable pdf files intended to restart the tourist trade after the Covid-19 shutdown. Every airport in the islands have been custom built by the team along with many of the attractions and exotic resorts.

For those that might not be familiar with Hawaii, I suggest you start getting acquainted with the geology, geography and distances. Here is a link to a pdf for an overview. Hawaii-Guide_Travel-Packet-2016.pdf (hawaii-guide.com). For those of you that refuse to look at things in print, you can find a trove of videos instead. I tend to mute the sound and just watch the movies.

I don't have an estimate for the release of Part 3 or Part 4, but, I feel we are ahead of schedule with both of them. The big bumps in progress has been the Herculean efforts of ZoSoChile rebuilding and editing the tangle of competing orthos, the continuous flow of new and innovative animations from brunnobellic, the sorting out of the ships and marine features by ApfelFlieger, and the never ending melding of all the work by TomSimMuc.

Hang in there, the best is yet to come.

I was reading some of the history of Hawaii and near the end of one of the books I found a page about volcanos. I found it interesting enough to share with you. We continue to make good progress with Part 3, Maui County and Part 4, the Big Island of Hawaii in parallel. We have spent a concentrated effort on the island of Lanai and specific areas on the Big Island since I last posted here.

We now have animated dolphins and whales that will be included in all areas of our Hawaiian Islands scenery.

Another tidbit that I came across is that the Hawaii Islands are the most isolated island chain in the world - 2,400 miles to the nearest continent.

From one of the history books: Hawaii’s Volcanoes

The Hawaiian Islands are volcanic in origin. The Hawaiian hot spot has created 82 volcanoes that stretch for more than 1,500 miles to form the Hawaiian Islands. Source of this heat could lie as deep as 2000 miles underground. This "hot spot" is formed by magma (molten lava) punching through the tectonic plate and erupting continuously for at least some 70 million years to create the islands. As the plate moves away (at 5-10 cm/yr) the volcanoes stop erupting.

The Hawaiian Islands are moving across the Pacific Ocean at about the same speed that your fingernails are growing. The life of a Hawaiian volcano before it sinks back under the sea floor is between 5 and 10 million years. The Big Island of Hawaii is constructed of 5 shield volcanoes: Kilauea, Mauna Loa, Mauna Kea, Hualalai, and Kohala. Mauna Loa is the largest active volcano and most massive mountain on earth, occupying an area of 10,000 cubic miles. Mauna Kea, at 13,796 feet, is the highest. Kilauea (4,093 feet) is the youngest and one of the world's most active with its satellite vent Pu'u O'o the source of the current lava flows.

The Kilauea caldera is about two miles wide and more than three miles long. Most of the Kilauea caldera formed shortly before and during the eruption of 1790. Calderas are large collapsed craters that are formed by magma draining away along the rift zones within the volcano. A caldera is the actual caving in of the top of the mountain.

As you move from the islands of Hawaii to Kauai, the volcanoes become older and older. Oahu's volcanoes have not erupted for a million years. There are three volcanoes that are active in Hawaii: Kilauea that has been active since 1983, Mauna Loa which last erupted in 1984 and Loihi, the submerged volcano that lies about thirty miles off the southern coast of Hawaii, 3,000 feet under the sea surface and is expected to emerge in a thousand centuries.

There are two types of lava flow: 'a 'a and pahoehoe. 'A 'a is rough and clinkery with sharp, jagged rocks. Pahoehoe flows are fluid with less gas content so the surface appears smooth and sometimes ropy. Lava tubes are formed in pahoehoe lava flows when the surface flows harden while the lava in the interior is still molten. The lava then drains out of the flow from below, leaving a tunnel or tube. Some tubes can be as large as a subway tunnel. Hawaiian eruptions are generally non-explosive be- cause the magma's high temperatures (1,200C) as it reaches the surface make it very liquid. They erupt not only at their summits but also along rift zones, which are fractured zones of weakness within the volcano. Kilauea has two rift zones.

This is from the National Park Service.

The good news is these volcanoes make a great location for large telescopes high up on the mountains and scenic locations for flight sim airports and golf courses along the beaches.