Orbx Extends “May Madness” Sale to PNW Products

In case you aren’t on the Flight Sim Store’s email list, here’s a little surprise: Orbx just extended their May Madness sale to include all downloadable products. That means that for this month, you can get NA Blue, Stark’s Twin Oaks, and Darrington Municipal for 30% off the normal list price. Already got these three? Tell your friends! More info at the FSS website.

FS Utilities: the Unseen & Unsung Heroes – Part 2

If you read last week’s Part 1 installment, you know that I’m having a look at my favorite behind-the-scenes utilities for flight simulator. These are the workhorses of ‘simming; programs that work their magic in the background and make every flight you take just a little bit better. This week, two more that I consider indispensable:

Sim Saturday!

Work from home, they said. Be your own boss! Set your own hours! Sounds good, doesn’t it? Only I’ve been doing the freelance thing full-time for six years now, and the promise of freedom is a whole lot sweeter than the reality. On a typical day, I’m up early, racing around from project to project, working way harder than I ever did as a salaried employee. Sometimes, when I’m feeling burned out, I have to remind myself that one of the supposed benefits of being self-employed is not having a jackass for a boss. So, I let myself punch the alarm, roll over, and go back to sleep yesterday. All of which is a long way of saying that Fanboy Friday has become Sim Saturday for one week only.

So what’s being going on in the FS universe this week?

Fanboy Friday: the Slick, the Smoky, and the Bizarre

Usually, I try to organize these Friday posts around a central theme. Today you get a grab-bag of random stuff that’s floating around my desk (and my brain). Prepare yourself.

Fanboy Friday: Small Airports Rule!

The AOPA is fond of saying it: of all the flights logged each day in the USA, the vast majority are small GA aircraft. And I’d be willing to bet good money that the bulk of those flights begin and end at small airports. So what do you know about your local aerodromes?

Fanboy Friday: Getting the Itch

I’m getting it bad, people. Maybe it’s the recent spate of good weather we’ve been having, or the release of a beautiful patch of FSX scenery that covers my own back yard. Hell, maybe I just have a perverse need to spend thousands of dollars on something fun but relatively useless. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?

Introducing Stark’s Twin Oaks Airpark for FSX!

Okay, maybe “introducing” is a smidge of hyperbole since I’ve been yakking about this scenery for a while now. What I’ve been waiting to say for ages is finally true, however…

Simply Stunning Scenery

Does the work week have you stressed already? Doctor Bill has just the prescription: four and a half minutes of pure scenic bliss. Enjoy. (For best effect, by the way, see it in HD)

FTX Is Better Than Sliced Bread And I Can Prove It.

What is FTX NA Blue? Aside from being a mouthful to say, Orbx’s latest scenery is a big patch of the Pacific Northwest, stretching from the California/Oregon border in the south, up into British Columbia to the north, and from the Cascade mountain range in the east to the Pacific Ocean. That’s a lot of ground, people. Flying in a GA craft, it’d take you many hours to go from top to bottom. Even in a fast jet, you could have a nice long flight without ever leaving the NA Blue boundaries.

Yesterday, pre-paying customers got the first crack at downloading the scenery. Were there problems? You betcha. By the way, who didn’t see that coming? I’ve seen virtually no releases of this massive size whose download has been flawless from the get-go. It’s just the nature of the internet. One of these days, we’ll have fat enough pipes to dump huge files into the world with ease (yeah, right), but for now it’s often a challenge. The good news is that things are going much, much better now. In fact, I was able to download the whole 4-gig-plus package mid-day today in about an hour, which I thought was pretty great.

But I digress…

Fanboy Friday Gets Real

As real as it gets… that’s the simmer’s nirvana. We all have our varying ideas on what constitutes “real”, and often it’s hard to articulate what draws us into a simulated environment to the point where we forget that we’re watching a screen. All we know is, when that rare magic strikes, it puts a grin on our faces that lasts for days. Well, I’m still grinning from an experience I had last weekend that was just the opposite of that.