VoxATC - Replacement for FSX default ATC with voice control

When talking about aviation, one of the key persons besides the pilot, that helps ensure a safe flight, is the air traffic controller. Therefore having a realistic ATC is important for an overall realistic simulated experience. Unfortunately many flight simmers are not really happy about the ATC that comes built in Flight Simulator X, especially when flying state of the art  planes with FMC that supports SID/STAR. Also especially on mountain airports like LOWI default ATC keeps vectoring the pilot straight into mountains.

One option  for a better air traffic control experience is joining one of the online communities like IVAO or VATSIM. Even there there are not always ATC connected and if you are living in some areas of the world with less coverage you might end up doing the flight alone.

Luckily there are a few ad-dons that successfully manage to replace the built in ATC of flight simulator and improve the overall experience.

How to completly uninstall and reinstall FSX

If you are installing add-on on a daily basis to your FSX, you probably got in the situation of ending up with a non working sim or one that crashes to desktop (ctd) in the middle of a flight due to broken or incompatible software.
This just happened to me and if I don't manage to fix it, then I most probably have to uninstall and reinstall the sim.

Ifly 737 NG FSX weather radar

Many of the latest FSX airplanes are lacking a weather radar. I know because of  the way FSX weather is programed it is difficult to make  a  realistic weather radar, still my own view is that it will still be good to have one no matter how accurate it is, just to add to the  overall realism of the simulation.
If you are missing a  weather radar in your Ifly 737 NG for FSX and you own WX500 package from Reality XP it is  possible  to add that one in the place of the lower DU. Not the most realistical place in the cockpit, but  there isn't much room  to place it in another position. If you are using the MAP/EFIS combination of  displays, the lower DU is seldomly used anyways.

The instalation is easy.

PMDG 737 NGX has been released

One of the most anticipated FSX aircraft has been finally released and looks stunningly!

More details

New teaser video from Microsoft Flight!

A new Webisode was posted on Micrsoft Flight Official site. This time we can also see an interior scene from the virtual cockpit of an Microsoft Flight aircraft. We can note the dynamic shadows similar with the ones in the FSX DX10 cockpits. Also the lighting in the video looks to be similar to HDR.

5 ground textures for scenery creation

A collection of 5 high resolution ground textures useful for flight simulator scenery creation. They and many more are provided for free by 4 Free Textures. You can download each texture in full resolution on each of the pages bellow using the download button.

Concrete wall texture

Cement with cracks texture

Gravel

Grass

Wood floor

Easy place library scenery objects in FSX

While trying to create some search and rescue scenery for Flight Simulator X, I came across this great tool for placing library scenery objects in FSX.

The free open source program is called Whisplacer and allows you to place library objects in FSX using a live preview mode (the program connects to FSX, reads the plane position and places the object visually in the sim). After user is happy with the scenery objects position the program can save a .bgl file. At the next FSX restart the scenery will appear.

I have placed for example a couple of the fsx stock oil rigs on the sea next to CYPR.

Whisplacer is a fairly small download and installation is also easy (it just needs to be extracted in a folder). My opinion is that this program  is overall easier to use than the Object placer that comes with the FSX SDK.