West Palm Beach

Link: www.flighsim.com

William Morgan has produced this scenery fro West Palm Beach airport in Florida. The scenery is very nice, it has a lot of buildings consisting of among other things a nice terminal. It works really nice, the frame rates wasn't affected at all on my system. It is actually claimed to be a frame rate friendly version in the readme file. It makes me wonder if there is a non-frame rate friendly version around and how that might look on my system. If you know of that version please drop me a line in the comments section of this post.

If you would like to know more about the real world airport there is a link to their website in the readme file. Also click into this page to view a video about the airport.

Maxair/Astflight Drifter 503

Link: www.flightsim.com

This is Carlos Iñaki O. Sievert's first fs9 aircraft model but it is a very nice one. For some reason the ultralight scene in fs9 has been way underdeveloped. I guess the reason for that might be that there are few that wants to fly these slow aircrafts around.

But I believe that will change as we see a slow move over to more GA type aircraft with nicer scenery to fly around. Low and slow will definitely let you enjoy the complexed vfr sceneries around these days.

Included in the package are to models, one rigid one and one with a lot of wires. Also worth mentioning is the 2d panel which is very nice.

The only small problem I have with the model is that it bounces when it sits still on the tarmac/runway. But once you get it into the air it is very enjoyable.

Koenigsdorf

Link: www.avsim.com

Andreas Jennerwein has created this scenery of Koenigsdorf airport that mostly holds gliders but also some GA aircraft. It is a nice little scenery package for fs9 and it works nicely.

I might have screwed up the installation by not installing the landclass file which might be the reason why all the treas are green in the middle of the winter.

Frame rates are good even though the scenery is clamped full of static aircrafts.

Aviator 90

Link: Aviator 90

Angle of attack has released their free lesson series for us flightsimmers, explaining the principles behind basic flight. I don't know exactly what all the lessons will contain but the first ones were very nice and explained the basics in an easy to understand way.

I actually heard about this when listening to fsbreak podcast the other week where Chris Palmer from Angle of Attack was telling us about the idea behind the lessons, a more give-back-to-the-community type of deal which I for one truly appreciate.

So if you want to learn more on flying check these out. Lesson 1 and 2 has been released.

OpenVFR for FSX

Link: http://openvfr.freyt.de/

This looks to be a really nice thing if you are into vfr flying and need more things to navigate by then the default scenery lets you use. As they put it on the website: "The goal of this project was to enhance the world in MS flightsimulator and bring a completely new level of realism to VFR pilots, who mainly navigate visually. As the standard scenery doesn’t fullfill their needs we have taken a lot of different information from the open streetmap project".

Now if there only was the same thing around for FS9.

Vatsim updates its website

Link: www.vatsim.net

Vatsim has redesigned and updated its website. This is a well needed update as the old one looked its age. They also promises new features to the site over the next couple of weeks and I await these ones with a high level of anticipation.

Also a good feature are a section containing member stories. I think this is a good thing as it lets us read about other fellow simmers and their experience.

Antalya Gazipasa airport

Link: www.flightsim.com

Mutlu Cetýnkaya has produced this nice little scenery for Antalya Gazipasa airport. The interesting thing about this scenery is the large mountains in in close proximity to the airport which means that safety is a real concern, especially for missed approaches from the seaside. The scenery itself is nice, nothing spectacular but a significant improvement over the default one.

Caticlan a tropical paradise

Link: www.flightsim.com

I saw this scenery in the new files section at flightsim and I got interested in it from the screenshots. I downloaded it and gave a a try.

Caticlan airport is located in the Philippines. It is according to the readme file one of the smallest airports but also one of the busiest. It is nearby the Borocay airports which is one of the best known tourist resorts in the Philippines.

I really like this scenery by Gerd J. Winterfeld because it is very extensive, you will find lots of small boats, a very nice terminal and a large number of tropical trees scattered around the scenery. And best of all, it had absolutely no impact on my frame rates.