FSX VFR flight over some beautiful landscapes

 

A short flight with a C172 over the beautiful mountain areas of Romania. The photoreal scenery is Prahova Valley VFR by Romanian Scenery Design Team.

Now this is what I call a mountain landing

Prepar3d V2 Cross country winter flight

Here are some screenshots I took last week during a short cross country VFR flight at sunset with very nice winter weather in the Carenado A36.

Unfortunately I forgot to turn on HDR for better lightning, but still I really like the new rendering engine.

Free VFR planning tool with maps covering entire world - Plan-G

I found very difficult in the past to find good VFR maps for my FSX flights, or a good planning tool with worldwide coverage. When I was flying in the US I usually used Skyvector, but as most of my flights are in Europe, and couldn't afford the price of proper VFR maps for all the countries I needed, I was mostly relying on the FSX flight planner to track my course.

Short time ago I came across this free VFR flight planner which will help you plan your flights, and obtain a very good VFR map no matter where in the world you are located.

Installation:

Installation is quite easy, although first you need to register on the forums to access the download page. Creating an account on the forums is easy and it takes only a few minutes to receive the activation email. After this you can login and download a 7 MB zip file containing the program. There is no installation required besides extracting the archive and copying the files in a directory of your choice, which I find good because it spares your system of different registry entries and not so necessary files.

At first run you will have to generate a database for the program, which is generated by going to Data tab and choosing Generate FSX or FS9 database, from the FSX or FS2004 scenery files. Process takes around 5 minutes. This way Plan-G will have a complete list of navigation points, airports, airways.

Interface:

Interface is very intuitive, with a tabbed like look similar to the Office suit. The map is based on Google Maps with the flight plan and navaids superimposed based on the FSX database. You can control how many elements are visible on the map using the Map settings tab.

Creating a flight plan:

Creation of a flight planner is done on the actual map, by clicking on the different waypoints. You will see informations about the flight plan in the right side of the application. When done you may save the flight plan in FSX or FS2004 format using the Save button.

Other notable features:

The program has the ability to connect to FSX/FS2004 and display real time the position on the map, as well as showing different info like winds, weather. You can also benefit from an elevation profile by downloading some external files and placing them in the program folder.

Official website.

X-Plane 9 Mobile for iPhone review

How would it be to be able to have a flight simulator in your pocket every day? Dream no more! The team at Laminar Research managed to move simulation to your pocket with the release of the X-Plane app for iPhone, which is a miniature copy of the very realistic simulator that is available on the desktop computers, guaranteed to keep you busy and entertained during breaks or while getting bored waiting.

I recently played it on the iPhone of a friend and decided to write this short review about it. 

The X-Plane 9 Mobile app includes the following aircraft:

    * Cessna 172
    * Columbia 400
    * Piper Malibu
    * Cirrus Vision
    * Piaggio Avanti
    * Beechcraft King Air

and the following regions:

    * Innsbruck, Austria
    * Hawaii
    * Boswell Bay, Alaska
    * Southern California
    * San Francisco, California
    * Desert Sky, California

While this application is not designed to be a simulator, but more a game to play, it still keeps quite a few options from original X-Plane which can customize your flight experience. You can set the region, select the aircraft, weather, weight and many others. You even have a small map of the area containing the navaids.
And yes, you can even do instrument flights with it!

After starting the application from the iPhone menu you are already in the game on the runway which is good as you can start flying in a couple of second. To change location, aircraft and option you need to click one of the icons at the top of the screen. From the same place you can pause the simulation or change the views. For IFR fans a instrument panel is also included, but it will be full screen giving you no possibility to see the scenery.

To start flying just click on the brakes icon to disable the brakes and on the area in the right side of the screen to set the flaps. When good to go just set the throttle from the left side of the screen. The plane will start to roll on the runway. Make sure you keep the  iPhone horizontal as any tilt will cause the plane to turn as well.

When ready to take off just tilt the iPhone towards you and soon you will find yourself floating between the clouds ;)
It takes some time to get used with the controls but I managed to do a landing correctly form the first try so I would say it is pretty easy to use.

You have also the option to customize the controls and flight dynamics of the aircraft to make it easier or harder.

There are different views you can choose from (outside and inside) but the one I used most of the time was the fighter hood like below which displays most of the parameters you need.

Scenery itself is ok, considering we are talking about a phone application, and it ran very smoothly on the iPhone 3Gs that I used for testing. Same applies to the instrument panel and 3d model of the aircrafts.

I would recommend reading the article about Flying X-Plane mobile that is posted on the X-Plane.com website if you would like to find out more about how to play it.
All being said I would consider this one of the best aviation related mobile games available on the market.
Wish you  many hours of iPhone simming and take great care with the controls not to end up like me below:

Latin VFR Sao Paulo (SBGR) scenery

Latin VFR released the Sao Paulo scenery for FSX and FS2004. It also includes 400 km of photo scenery and mesh for Sao Paulo region.

More informations