Posts by Armitage

    A historical flight (route) awaits at https://flight-sim.org/filebase/index…san-francisco/:

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    Starting at Reno you follow the old Transcontinental Airway System of 1924 to San Francisco. Your waypoints are placed on historical U.S. Airmail Beacons. Some of these are still visible today, consisting of a tower and a giant concrete arrow.

    See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcontinental_Airway_System and http://www.dreamsmithphotos.com/arrow/airmail_….html#oakairbcn

    The beacons are mostly gone, but in some places you will see radio antennas which will guide you along. As usual you may want to change the plane before departing.

    You know, it would be great if IPACS setup a system like Laminar Research has (The X-Plane Scenery Gateway) where users can create and upload airports onto an official IPACS server which serves two purposes: a) allows the general public to locate and download and immediately use those airports and b) eventually IPACS can incorporate those airports (automatic license agreement as part of upload account registration for the server) into the official Aerofly FS 4 product's airport simulation database for the next software update release.

    IPACS - Check it out for yourself and hopefully do something like it:

    https://gateway.x-plane.com

    Actually I like the idea of donating our airport creations to the official core of Aerofly. Like Wikipedia we could collaborate and create as well as fix content. IPacs would curate our changes and transfer these to the main simulator or appropriate DLCs. (As I understand the actual disk size of an airport is negligible compared to ortho images.)

    Ah, and think of gamification: what about becoming editor of the month or editor of the year? :D

    Ladies and gentlemen, world-wide airport coverage is in our reach!

    Next stop: placement of VORs and NDBs. :D

    Saturday, you know the drill: A new mission is ready for you at https://flight-sim.org/filebase/index…n-norway-rocks/

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    It is late in the afternoon, but the famous Preikestolen and Kjerag formations await. Keeping clear of the dangerous drafts around the mountain edges, you make your way through the fjords of Norway.

    Because there is no Stavanger Airport, I chose a different airport nearby. If you happen to have Stavanger Airport you may change your start destination by starting the mission and than changing the settings via main menu.

    Not to disappoint anybody, but the terrain mesh around these strange mountain formations has some difficulties; also the lack of water reflections make some terrain features hard to see. But nevertheless it is a beautiful flight.

    It's saturday again, and Mount Teide awaits. Download the mission file at https://flight-sim.org/filebase/index…t-teide-awaits/.

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    Make your way up to the top of the Mount Teide on the Canary island of Tenerife. Starting at the desert side of the island at sea level, you will climb up to meet the 12,000ft high mountain before climbing back down on the arid side. You will land at the famous Tenerife Norte airport.

    Sadly the northern part of the island has broken elevation data, and the ortho images are somewhat fuzzy, but it still is a sight to see.

    Maybe there are some surplus F18-MFDs? ^^

    But for me steam is king. A nice six pack is all I need, maybe a nice HSI like in the Baron. There is always the moving map tablet to summon if I get in dire straits.

    Building a complete G1000 would be beneficial for many GA planes in AFS4, but I have no clue what would be required to build one. My last expeditions into DLL country where rather sad affairs.

    (Too bad the navigational unit from Just Flight's Turbo Arrow cannot be salvaged. This alone would be very helpful.)

    Here we go again: A new custom mission file has surfaced. This time it is a list of story missions, taking a Pitts S-2 from Hamburg (Germany) to Åland (Finnland). Weather and flight conditions are the real deal from the days the missions were flown back in autumn 2022, and I tried to put up a flight plan which takes real restrictions and procedures into account. Well, mostly, but I had to do a sightseeing trip to Øresund Bridge and Karlsborg (Sweden). ;)

    The mission file tells the story of Carl, a former engineer with Saab & Airbus (which may be somewhat cheesy, and you can ignore completely). Your task is a ferry flight with multiple stops. And if you want to honour Carl's wishes you do not activate the moving map and try to fly your flight plan (e.g. from Hamburg to Ærø) with a paper map, a compass and a stop watch. I am sorry, but I love this "eyes out of the cockpit" flying (German article, but it has an English YouTube video embedded).

    Have fun with this one, I sure learned to fly the temperamental Pitts S-2 along the way.

    I would love to see this baby on Aerofly FS 4:

    OMG! The most beautiful livery on the most beautiful prop plane out there. The Piaggio Avanti sure is an iconic plane.

    Whenever I think of new planes I am more down the line of aircraft types yet underrepresented in AFS4. Light sport aircraft, bush planes, contemporary GA planes, cargo planes (civilian as well as military), coaxial or tandem helicopters, tilt-rotors, or STOVL jets.

    But all this wishful thinking aside: I am quite happy with the currently available aircraft. I have my Pitts, MB339, Learjet, the outstanding R22 and EC135. If a SR22 or Quickie comes my way I won't object, but for me there are more than enough toys to spend my time.

    The presumed requirement for expensive 3D graphics software to adjust Aerofly saddens me, I’d like go play with the instruments and clouds which I don’t think are even available in the FS2 developer packs?

    I had vastly changed the appearance of a very rare twin add on for MS Flight Simulator 98 to make it resemble the big Piper Aztec I was then training on, I was very pleased with (non functioning) ‘chromed’ cowl flap knobs! Sadly I lost it later in a Windows/hard disk? crash. I got an Aztec in an inexpensive Steam Combi with FSX a couple of weeks ago and it is great fun.

    My first flight sim fiddling was in the early Eighties with the 256 x 192 pixels Sinclair ZX81’s 16 kilobyte cassette tape loaded flight simulator. A half of the listing was in BASIC so I could turn down the alien speed and climb rate of its ‘high performance piston twin’ to match my experience with a struggling 90 mph (not knots!) flying school Cessna 150. It was a great help with the radio navigation element of the PPL course which was compensation for the 15 minutes loading time at 300 baud. No one knows what that means today!

    My first flight sim? "Solo Flight" from Sid Meier & Bill Stealey! In many aspects revolutionary, because it required you to use VORs (which I am very fond of even today) because you could not see elevation changes. Oh, and it had changing weather, random malfunctions, running out of fuel, auto-generated missions and a flight debriefing with scoring. My brothers and I would team up, one having the task of keeping track where we were because there was no GPS to tell us - these flights were sometimes nerve-wracking when you were forced to fly through dense fog.

    So this is Aerofly FS 4 to me: easy to get into, quick to start, immersive in VR and just about enough realism to keep me coming back for another round. And enough VORs and planes without GPS to keep me guessing we're I am. :P

    Keyboard and all other controllers still work in VR. It is important that your Aerofly window does not loose focus - otherwise keyboard and mouse will not work anymore.

    I for one use a stick, throttle and mouse - the mouse interaction in VR works really well, and for me a real dedicated throttle and stick are more easy to interact with.

    It definitely about speed. It is the fastest loading simulator on my PC (main menu as well as simulator). And in VR even on my old machine it is blazingly fast, which no other SIM manages.

    So it is about jumping in, doing your thing, and being back before dinner. ;) Even after all this years flying other simulators, AFS is still my Number 1 civilian sim.

    (Happy customer since Aerofly FS 1)

    Sidewinder Training Course

    It is time for the Sidewinder Low Level Course at Edwards Air Force Base, USA. Grab the mission file at https://fboes.github.io/aerofly-missions/docs/mach_loop/ - the mission is now part of multiple low-level fast jet missions.

    Actually it pays to read the mission briefing and have a look on CGAVIATOR's attempt on the Sidewinder course. There is a lot to learn.

    Actually the mission has some "Top Gun: Maverick" vibes. So if you own the F-18, start the mission and change your aircraft from F-15 to F-18 before rolling out into the dessert heat. ;)

    (It is still early morning in Europe, the answer rate over here might be somewhat slow. ;) )

    I for one shy away from extra drivers. Windows has all the software on board to make all regular peripherals work, and most often the drivers supplied by the manufacturer only add clutter I don't really need.

    So all my CH and Saitek stuff runs on regular Windows-supplied drivers, and as of yet I didn't have any issues with any simulator (DCS, ASF2/4, XP, Battle of Bodenplatte) or other game.

    So: if every buttons and axis on your peripheral works, you might not need the extra driver.