Scenery

Microsoft official trailer for their free scenery upgrade to Australia.

I couldn't resist recording some of the fab landscape as I returned from a camera calibration test flight.

Blue Lagoon Iceland: Popular spa destination featuring an outdoor lagoon with mineral-rich waters in a lava field, and next to Svartsengi Geothermal Power Plant.

Take the same flight plan and change one or two variables (time of day, altitude) and you get a whole different experience!

Michael Woodley reported: ""In 1984, I was hired as the 4th engineer at subLOGIC Bruce Artwick, Dave Denhart, Charles Guy and myself were the entire engineering department there. I was hired specifically to develop scenery for all the Flight Simulators. | READ ON

Fun in the Hurricane.
--/o\-- Finally managed a reasonable take-off
--/o\-- To formate or not to formate, that is the question!
--/o\-- Tally Ho!
--/o\-- The cliffs of Dover
--/o\-- St. Margaret's Cathedral
--/o\-- Landing... they can buff that out!

Scenery so real that it's scary!

The combination of high density elevation data (120m) with the auto generated trees and buildings, plus shadows from the clouds and shadows calculated on from the interaction of terrain and the sun... all these factors combine to create the most convincing effect of flying over real terrain I've yet experienced.

Having spent some time flying Su-27 Flanker 2.0 recently I thought I'd see how Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 rendered the Crimean peninsula.

"The Update will include over 160 bridge models created after authentic landmarks to replace missing autogen bridges. These new bridges will appear for all scenery settings of normal and higher."

The Comet carried all of its fuel in the fuselage ahead of the cockpit. This allowed for very thin, dagger-like wings...and very limited forward visibility.

A video from 2005 showing a British Airways VC-10 in Microsoft Flight Sim 2004 with some beautiful tropical scenery.

A look behind the scenes at how artists and programmers create the clouds in the world of flight sim.

Demonstrating just two of the many thousands of free 3rd party add-ons available for the Microsoft flight sims.

Compare this to the same flight in Microsoft Flight Sim 2002.

One of my wobbly test flights!
In the default Bell 205B helicopter, taking a sedate flight over the strip in Vegas. Landmark areas of scenery such as this received particular attention by the developers and they pushed the software and hardware of the day to the limits to achieve this amount of detail. Compare this to the same flight in FS2002

Unbelievable atmospherics and lightinng from Asobo's engine make this Canberra sunrise jaw-dropping!

I ran a quick photo-recce over Sydney harbour twice. Once with the stock Prepar3D scenery and then again with ORBX Australia v.2 scenery.

Promo video supplied by Ubisoft.

Due to help from staff at the ORBX forums, the Canberra scenery revealed it's full glory!