Yeah, I’ve been lured into Youtube again. The F-14 is one of my favorite jets, coming just after the Phantom, and whenever I see it mentioned in a news blurb I check in on it. Here’s a great little video by ‘privateMartin’ of some carrier operations involving the F-14. I stood on such a deck a few months ago and I can tell you; it is just awesome!

We just learned that the very promising looking X-Plane project CRF-200 by Anton Volkov and announced on the X-Pilot.com forums by the Spanish publisher J. Rollon more than a year ago, has been shelved because the programmer is ill. Very sad news for the man of course, and also for the fans awaiting a beautiful looking X-Plane aircraft. Read the official announcement on the forum here.

If you are a simmer like me, then you probably are also looking for aviation websites with some regularity. Here’s one with tons of information, called FlightGlobal.

This weekend I received the Aerosoft Bell UH-1 Huey (X), courtesy of Mathijs Kok, and I am currently working on a review of it. That will take awhile. Not only because it is a very realistic and complete model,  or because I am working on a dozen other things as well, but also because flying it around is so much fun that it takes a real effort to pull myself away from it and write things down !

So far, so good, an excellent model. Stay tuned for more.

I promised you ‘opinions’ every once in awhile. Well, here”s something to ponder on. Recently I noticed that simMarket started selling ‘Scenerybox’ products. They provide photoreal/mesh files for FSX of France. I looked at the site and it shows ALL of France, department by department, apparently covered by aerial photo scenery bought from the IGN (the one source for French aerial photography and mapping).

The site looks very professionally done, and having all of France suddenly on the radar screen of FSX is no small feat. So how could this be done? After consulting with some other French developers I think that it is because they are NOT using autogen and just drape the readily bought photos over the equally readily bought (IGN) mesh files. That means that the entire process to build it in FSX is much faster than the more elaborate work of correcting mesh, correcting colors, manually correcting and placing autogen and objects etc.

So, although it looks good, you MUST ask yourself if the price (some 1500 – 2000 Euros for all of France) is worth it, having a ‘flat’ photo to fly over, as opposed to some of the very detailed other products for France already available for some time. The Scenerybox author(s) mentions he is working on a replacement for ‘autogen’ now, as a separate product.

Personally, I’d wait to see that before putting down any of my expensive Euros right now.
Of course, your mileage may vary.

When you’re a member of the Boeing World Design Team you’ll get frequent updates on what they are working on. One such project is the new Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental. The venerable 747 ‘Jumbo’ is not dead yet and on these pages you can see what they’re building in Seattle! There’s a live webcast on Feb 13th at 19:00 GMT about the developments.

Captain Sim continues to release free liveries for their paying customers. The latest is the USAF, MATS C-137A livery that has been added to Free Liveries Catalogue at www.captainsim.com (only accessible if you’re a registered customer).

Like most of your FS companies nowadays you can also follow Captain Sim on Twitter and on Facebook.

Justin writes that “….. We continue with more new releases of the new product line based on 30m ASTER data. Moving back to the Mideast with Saudi Arabia for FS2004 & FSX. Expect Egypt tomorrow, after which we must cease further uploads until our new box is set up later this week due to running out of disk space. Turkey is finished and merely awaiting enough available disk space to upload….”. Available from his shop here.

The new Flightsim Daily is published again, CLICK HERE.

One of my Facebook friends posted THIS LINK to an interesting video showing a new airship developed by Lockheed Martin. This particular design is totally autonomous and doesn’t need mooring masts and other ground support to take off and land. It also features hovercraft technology and really is a hybrid between airship and aircraft. Hey, this also might be an interesting flightsim model for someone !?

VFR France, well known for his landscapes and airfields of France and French territories, has started a new series of scenery, called French Landmarks and Obstacles. Laurent has opened a new website for it here, where you can also buy the first release of his ‘objects scenery’. The series is to include all the major landmarks in France as separate objects. The picture shows the new Milau viaduct on one of the ‘autoroutes’ to the south of France.

As an ‘experiment’ we’re also running the ‘Flightsim Daily’. No doubt you also noticed the graphic on the side that leads to the same news site. This is an experiment, running on ‘paper.li’ from Switzerland. The technology behind it picks Tweets from some of my Twitter accounts and the accounts followed on them and collects them in a newspaper style website.

It is not perfect yet and often you get ‘funny’ articles included that not really have to do with the subject at hand, but that’s because of how paper.li finds my keywords in other tweets. It DOES come up with a nice overview and sometimes with some funny surprises. I browse through it now every morning.

I also run the Francois Daily here with a set of different keywords and more general interest articles, and you can make your OWN daily newspaper by logging in to the paper.li site here. Have fun!

Ron Zambrano, aka Razbam, has published his latest military jet, the Vought A-7 Corsair II, Vol 2.

“…..The Vought A-7 Corsair II is a carrier-based subsonic light attack aircraft introduced to replace the United States Navy’s A-4 Skyhawk, initially entering service during the Vietnam War.

The Corsair was later adopted by the United States Air Force, to include the Air National Guard, to replace the A-1 Skyraider, F-100 Super Sabre and F-105 Thunderchief. The aircraft was also exported to Greece in the 1970s, and Portugal and Thailand in the late 1980s.

The A-7 airframe design was based on the successful supersonic F-8 Crusader produced by Chance Vought. It was one of the first combat aircraft to feature a head-up display (HUD), an inertial navigation system (INS), and a turbofan engine….”.

Ron’s jet is available from his own webshop right here.

My all-time favorite helicopter is the Bell UH-1 ‘Huey’ that made it on our 1960′s tv screens every night during the Vietnam war. Aerosoft has now released yet another excellent looking model of this famous chopper. I haven’t seen ‘my’ livery yet, that of the US Army 1st Air Cavalry, but other than that it looks great. Available here at the Aerosoft shop.

Since my dear wife hails from Romania, I couldn’t let this message from Justin pass, now could I? “…..Terrain mesh production at FSG cranks it up another notch with two more new releases based on 30m ASTER data continuing into eastern Europe with Bulgaria and Romania for FS2004 & FSX. Saudi Arabia is currently compiling and should be available tomorrow, followed by Turkey on Sunday or Monday. Meanwhile, expect a new freeware release for the Balkans very soon, while we await access to the Intermap 5m Western European source data, and the new 19m NextMap product line for FS2004, also coming very soon….”. Get more info here!

Obviously I cannot run SimNews just by my little own self, so now that the site is more or less stable and running, I have started looking for Editors. Already the first one has signed on after seeing the picture on the right and I hope more will follow.

We’re not looking for the ‘run of the mill’ news, and hence neither for run of the mill editors. Rather we like to bring you some ‘different’ news items with an eye on flight simming but also on real aviation and even other ‘simulators’.

As with a real ‘glossy’ there is a distinct target in the mind of the managing editor, but lots of room for changes and expansion.

Click on the picture for more info…….

I have recently heard from several developers and publishers in the FS industry that sales are pretty bad. Maybe that is the reason we see all kind of crap pop up on simMarket these days? I mean, compared to flying a 747 in FSX shooting animals in a computer game is fun!? They don’t shoot back ! Most of them also don’t fly.
Seriously, sales ARE down for many products, although not all. Partly that can be attributed to MS leaving the ‘scene’, partly to general saturation of the market, partly to having too many bad products flood the FSX market and partly to the changing ‘competition’ for younger people’s attention. FSX is no Wii or PSP game. Maybe Flight will be?

But having said all that, there WILL be new and exciting products and there WILL be a market for proper FSX add-ons in the future, I am sure. But there may also be a shake-out and we’ll lose quite a number of add-on makers over the next few years. Hopefully we’ll not be faced with one or the other group or company having a monopoly after that, because that would REALLY kill the hobby.

Personally I am not too worried, although the demise of freeware offerings is a negative factor IMHO, because there are still individuals with a strong drive and passion for FSX developments, coming up with novel technologies and ideas. And, judging from the sales of our recent Ben Gurion X, there will always be a reasonable market for very specific titles and areas of the sim.

‘Demise of freeware’? Well, yes. Lets face it, there’s a lot less being offered these days and in the ‘good ol’ days’ of FS2000-FS2004. Reasons aside, this IS a bad thing for the industry as a whole, because it means there’s less ‘fresh blood’ in the developer pool. And like it or not, THAT is what we all need in this little niche business. A few ‘professional’ people have tried there hand at designing FS(X) stuff WITHOUT being experienced simmers. Even fewer have succeeded. You need to have experience, passion, lots of time and patience and low expectations in terms of earning money, in order to succeed at commercial FS development.

So if there’s one thing that I believe the remaining ‘payware’ companies should work on, it would be getting the word ‘hobby’ back into the mix, be closer to the customers and support freeware development more actively.

I, for one, will certainly try to do so.

Tim Arnott, the maker of Plan-G, reports to have published another update to his excellent program. “…..Plan-G v2.0.3 Out Now! This version is for Microsoft Windows 7, Vista and XP, FSX SP2 and FS9. Plan-G can be downloaded from the forum. The program is free, but donations towards expenses are welcome. …”.

Justin Tyme of FSGenesis announced another extension to his product range. “…… We continue the new releases of the new product line based on 30m ASTER data with Oman for FS2004 & FSX. Saudi Arabia is currently in pre-production and should be available before the end of the week. Meanwhile, expect Yemen and Greece in the interim, while we await access to the Intermap 5m European source data, and the new 19m NextMap product line for FS2004, coming very soon. …”. All of Justin’s products can be bought from his own webshop here.

Mahindra, the Indian company that many of us know for building a Jeep Wrangler ‘clone’ is in fact a huge company, now aiming to shoot down Cessna and its world dominance by providing an alternative to the venerable 172′s. The alternative will at least be 20% cheaper, according to sources. Not sure if 20% would have lured (potential) aircraft owners in the past, but in the current economic climate, it might well do so !
Mahindra is also building a new prop commuter based on the Nomad. More info on their own website here.

According to various sources on the Internet Moscow’s main airport Domodedovo was rocked by a major explosion in the international terminal, killing at least 23 people and wounding many more. The BBC speaks of a suicide bombing, other sources have not confirmed this yet, but it sounds probable. More info on the BBC here.

The Personal Air Vehicle of aircraft designer Carter, is actually flying. As a tweet by the Dutch aviation news blog ‘luchtvaartnieuws’ shows it is based on a small craft called the CarterCopter. Interesting design for sure!
More information on Carter Aviation Technologies can be found here.

SimNews is now actively growing and you’ll see many more steps in this process over the next weeks and months. Today I added some ‘social network’ buttons, so you can ‘Tweet’ and ‘FB’ your friends on every post you find interesting. It will help us grow, it will help spread the word on the subject of our articles, and it will help YOU grow your network too.
I’ll also build an extra FB page for the news service. Stay tuned!

Rise of Flight, the Russian developer group co-operating with 777 Studios, announces that “….. A new year has begun and that means our team would like an opportunity to further understand our new and existing customers and better appreciate your opinions. There were quite a few new members added to the ROF community in 2010 and your opinions are helpful as we develop our future plans. So we would like to ask you few questions to help us to guide our development in 2011 and beyond. It takes only few minutes to complete, but gives us the extra-useful info for the future of our company and Rise of Flight.
We appreciate your participation in this survey and continued support of ROF and 777 Studios!

Aerosoft in Germany has people working on TWO of some of my favorite aircraft of yesteryear. One is the OV-10 Bronco, a model that was one of my favorites when I still built plastic kits and dioramas. Get a load of some early screenshots here!
And the other model is the venerable Bell 204 Huey II, which seems to be in the making ever since 2008 (!). Hopefully we see it finished soon… can’t have enough Huey’s !!!

Here’s some stunning footage made by some chaps in Italy: the very region where Nina and I ride our motorcycle in many Summers! The Italian Dolomiti mountains just south of the Austrian border are some awesome peaks sticking out of the land below and Real Earth shows them very much as they are!

Real Earth X from Daniele Tona on Vimeo.

A Dutch Air Force F-16 was used to inspect some of the river dikes in the south of the country. Because of increasing high water in the main rivers, coming from France, Switzerland and Germany, there is a critical situation in many parts of the country. The F-16 used an advanced Infrared Camera Pod (also used in Afghanistan to search for roadside bombs) to check on the situation of the dikes.

Well, this is a ‘first’ in our line of business. The owners of SimFly are trying to sell their website, lock stock and barrel. As I understand the auction site (check it out here) they are asking at the minimum a price of US $ 6350. We wish them luck. For now, SimNews and most other related sites are just being funded out of own pockets, profits from other activities or donations.

It is almost that time again when Aerosoft GmbH from Germany organize their flightsim day at the Paderborn Airport in the northern part of Germany. This time it is scheduled for May 14th and it will be the 9th edition already. How time flies… I still remember being at the first one! And so yes, I’ll be there. Will you !? All information in German here and in English here.

Discovery Channel has made a series of flying in Alaska, called ‘Flying Wild Alaska’ that is all about the sort of flying many of us simpilots here love so much. Getting in and out of vast expanses of dangerous nature, taking in its beauty and battling its perils. The 10-part series starts being broadcast-ed TODAY. Read all about it HERE!