On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 17:47:10 GMT, "Ezra Bavly" wrote:

I sent by mistake a personal reply to Dave, so I will try again:
After Dave pointed out correctly that I am really looking for more accurate
landmarks to superimpose on that program, I
will rephrase my request : I will appreciate any information on products
that include both elevation mesh data and
photo-based visuals (e.g. Megascenery).
Thanks Ezra

Some notes:

1. another poster (actually perhaps it was two fellas) pronounced FS2004
to be unworthy as a helicopter sim. I've argued this point many times
before in various forums, and am loathe to type all of that in again,
but in a nutshell - I think it is useful for certain things. In
particular, "approaches to a pinnacle" (e.g. top of a building) is a
fairly challenging thing to do in FS, but I believe it is a useful
exercise in terms of energy management w.r.t. the real world. I've been
doing it for quite a while (in the sim) and it's still hard to arrive at
the point I want with zero airspeed.

My biggest beef is (as noted by another poster) the poor modeling of
required pedal input, but in most other aspects it feels more or less
correct, at least given that I'm looking at a 17.5" monitor with no
peripheral cues.

2. The R22 flight model is completely porked in the autorotation regime
- don't even go there. The JetRanger can be auto'd but you have to pull
a little bit of collective to keep RRPM up, which is totally wrong. This
was not the case in FS2002... Also, both versions give the '206 way too
much rotor inertia - I have to admit I haven't flown a real '206 but I
cannot imagine that any helicopter has that much inertia left after the
donkey has given it up.

2. I bought MegaScenery Northern California recently (at the Avsim
conference in Denver). It looks good "at altitude" (say, 5000 feet) but
it falls apart at helicopter altitudes. I am not aware of any add-on
that improves the visuals adequately for the helicopter pilot. The best
advice I can offer is to download some freeware mesh to increase the
accuracy of the elevation data, but that doesn't help the landmarks
aspect. I think we are waiting for the "next generation" in scenery
representation, and the amount of data that would be required to do this
well is HUGE. A very very fast PC will be required to render that data.

3. You mentioned hardware control of aircraft systems in another post.
There are several companies offering products in this field, and I own
three or four companies' toys. The most economical brand can be found at
http://www.goflightinc.com. I have several GoFlight products and in
general they work well. There's nothing like flipping a toggle switch to
control something that is controlled by a toggle switch in a real
aircraft 8^) .

4. I am a licensed user of X-Plane. In My Opinion the helicopter flight
model has been broken for over a year - maybe two. I keep on trying out
the new versions (and they come out almost weekly) but the helicopter
stuff just doesn't get fixed. I haven't tried any new X-Plane updates in
about two months given Real Life Commitments but given the history I
have with it, I'm not holding my breath. (for example: the R22 in
X-Plane is waaay harder to fly than the real thing, and the real thing
is a fair challenge to fly well.)

As another poster said, there really isn't a good or great PC-based
helicopter sim out there. That said - I have been "doing this" for
several years, and I keep coming back to Microsoft Flight Simulator for
my simming needs. I always hope and pray that they'll make the
helicopter side of things better - but we are a much smaller audience
than either the folks that want to fly airliners, and/or crash stuff
into prominent landmarks. So send those requests for better helicopter
modeling to Microsoft - believe it or not they DO listen.

Dave Blevins