US CITIES Cleveland !

Feb, 17/20h UTC / American designer LimeSim is launching a new project ; US CITIES Cleveland with Aerosoft reseller. LimeSim announced 33 880 objects (does that mean really something ?), four heliports and 640 majors buildings. One brillant idea is to choose Cleveland, which is not too far from US Cities Buffalo... There is also this mythic Lakefront airport. LimeStudios is also supposed to release a patch for US CITIES Las Vegas, in order to add night textures on Vegas buildings.
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Fight over Corsica island

With its montains and coastline, Corsica island has becomen a first choice for visual flights in France and Mediterranean sea. Its not astonishing if three french designers are developing sceneries of the so-called "french beauty". France VFR, the forerunner, launched a Corsica VFR for FS9 with a LOD10 mesh in 2005. This scenery was completed by several personal works, like Tony Agramont's autogen.

Back in 2011, three different products are about to be available AT the same time. France Touristique Scenery completely overturned this market last year with its Corsica North, designed from a 50 cm/pixel resolution (maximum resolution offered by IGN french cartographer). Then came SceneryBox with a full range of departments sceneries. Now, the commercial fight is to reach its height with two imminent release : France VFR new generation Corsica and France Touristique scenery South. In the upper right of this post, a table shows and compare these products. I will just add two things : first, mind the weight of the files (the higher the quality, the heaviest the file) and second, we must ask ourself ; what is my style ? VFR or IFR ? Scenery beauty or detailed airports ?

nb : France Touristique Scenery will release Corsica South between mi-february and march. France VFR is preparing several regions. Rhone-alpes shall come first, folllowed by Corsica in spring.
SIRX project was also about to release photoreal "tiles" of Corsica but they dont communicate any more.

The V-tail V35B Bonanza

I am going over the Bonanza V35B again because this Carenado aircraft was barely noticed by flightsim medias. The V35B was the last version of the Bonanza 35, with the V-tail profil inherited from polish engineer Jerzy Rudlicki works. In two words, the V-tail lighten the aircraft weight and reduce the drag but need finest adjustments on pitch and yaw. The higher mechanical stress also requires structural strenghten. But i am not going any further, a lot of real pilots can explain that better. I dont know if the V-tail gives a better flyability but at least, i made really nice shorts turns. In the opposite, i did not feel the famous waggle effect on landing. Did Carenado really improve the flight model in this version, that's the question.

On graphics side, its all about high defintion textures except on the exhaust. The propeller can be animated, antennas are vibrating under the wind and there are the same navigation modules than in the previous version : the intuitive alt and vertical speed selector and the Garmin GNS430. I regret that its always the same guy on the yoke and the same basic fade liveries. I would have liked 1 or 2 real paintings and frankly, its time to add passengers. Also great would be the tool to auto-convert our face and put it on the animated pilot...Cars makers want to personnalize our futur cars, maybe its time...

Updated, By the way, Flightsim international developers team (http://www.fsd-international.com/), designed their own B35 with nice liveries and inside cast shadows. (nice price too).

VFR Appalachia

After the excellent Ingalls field, we had some expectations from Pacific Island Simulation's next project. Their first draw was about making a single airport, Eastern West Virginia Martinsburg (KMRB), but fortunately, they decided on the way to add some airfields.
VFRAppalachia.exe is a 580 mb file which includes seven airfields plus the Ingalls field bonus in FSX\webshop\. P.I.S. also made a special retail for those who previously bought KHSP. The installation process works nice and auto-set the scenery in the libray. I was mean last time when i compared Pacific island team with "cow-boys" but as a matter of fact, that's it, these people really like to add meadows, horses and harvesters.. EVERYWHERE. I suppose that they'are just trying to give a realistic depiction of Appalachias. Technically, ground textures and buildings photoreal-near textures are really astonishing and i got an average 25-40 FPS all along with my quadcore 2,33 Ghz.. Airfields are not too far from each others and are completed with country sounds and a lot of eye-candies and resort hotels. In Cheat River, i would have chosen Elkins county though, rather that an old decommissioned terrain. In Brief, VFR Appalachia is a great work and its a great opportunity : "majors" designers (FS Dreamteam for instance), are usually not interested in these small size VFR terrains.

Just two pictures here to show high quality textures but P.I.S. gave webshops a hundred of screenshots, so its really no use to add some more...

Mountain air : a zest of disappointment

Dangerous airport vol.1 just released, i wanted to test one of the most famous american airfield : 2NC0, Mountain air in North Carolina.

The private airfield has been kindly reproduced with the sloped runway, the golf and the home blocks overhanging the runway. Okay, it's nice, it's Aerosoft quality garanteed but we would have like something more here.

First, if there are cars and people, there is no traffic at all in the surroundings ways, unlike in Saint-Martin scenery from Fly Tampa where motorcycles are driving around. Second, when taking-off or landing, there is a light blurry effect on the runway despite all the configurations i tried. Third, there is no rain effect on the ground texture of the runway.

Despite this zest of disappointment, Mountain air VFR is a perfect complement to Ingalls field in Virginia (Pacific Island Simulation) and it will be 220 nm from the upcoming VFR Appalachia.
I will talk later on of Barra in Scotland but i think that to reunite in the same package airfields from Scotland, USA and Lesotho is a bit odd.

Pacific Islands Simulation announces VFR Appalachia

I told you about Pacific Islands Simulation (PIS) a couple of weeks ago. It was to give some news about their Eastern West Virginia airport (KMRB). Well, it appears the team got a hole new idea in the interval. They are going to launch a VFR Appalachia, including KMRB of course, plus at least (updated today 12/13) five more airports in the vicinity. Unfortunately, i cannot insert any of their screenshots as they locked and protected them like gold or somethin'.
The thing is they work nice and i might compare their work with Drzewiecki design team. Graphics are all polished and neat. The only difference comes from their immovable routine consisting of adding horses and cowboys everywhere. So let's say they are the cow boys of the international Flight sim market. hip hip ! (and by the way, I would like a release date this time).

France VFR Alsace ready for release

France VFR decided two years ago to dispatch new generation photosatellites sceneries of France. Areas are splitted in administration official regions. Britain was released first, followed by Nord-Pas-de-Calais (the northest region of France, south of Belgium). Now, the designer is releasing Alsace, that will support its home-made airports Strasbourg LFST and Bale-Mulhouse (LFSB). Alsace region has a 4,75m (LOD13) mesh, a specific autogen and 16 airports/airfields have been polished to fit with the scenery. I tested this new generation photorealistic sceneries and like them as there are no blurries at all. (should be released on Simmarket in a couple of hours). FSX and FS9. If you are not familiar with France regions, you might wait for the incoming Rhone-Alpes VFR (a must have with Alps and Mont-Blanc).

www.francevfr.com/

Orbx FTX Pacific North west released

FTX just released its PNW scenery. The region covered can be watch on Google Earth with a .kmz file, downloadable from FTX website. The scenery covers parts of Oregon from Roseburg to Chilko lake in British Columbia (Canada). Watching their video trailer, i am wondering what are framerates performance, as they are stressing on bush flying and small airplanes. I am also concerned about UTX Ultimate terrain. Of course, UTX is fully compatible (they say "seamlessly" compatible) but Orbx scenery add up a lot of textures and autogen. If so, why keeping on with UTX ?