NZFF

When I built the Aoraki mission for 'Southern Lakes Adventure', I looked at the mission tools for showing points of interest. If you have done all the FSX missions, then you have probably seen the big arrows everywhere, pointing out the interesting bits. I did consider putting these pointers all over the Southern Alps, but in the end I decided to leave the landscape pretty untouched -- after all, this is one of the last unspoilt areas in the country. But it did get me thinking about the educational value of FSX, something I come back to from time to time.
XPOI, Points of Interest for FSX, by FSDreamTeam, takes this concept all the way, with over 8 million Points of Interest throughout the world, plus links to Wikipedia to get all the info we need for a complete geography lesson.

The publishers talk about 'Attractive 3D Icons in FSX, to display POI names and class', but I'm not too sure about the attractive part -- some of the icons are bit cheesy. Still, if you showed this to your Geography teacher, you'd have a pretty good chance of getting FSX introduced into the curriculum:)

Like their very nice airports, FSDreamTeam offer a free trial of this, giving 30 minutes to explore a handful of locations in the world. I'd consider buying this, but I'd have to have a few more scenery sales this week to afford it. I'm looking forward to seeing what it offers for NZ, though.

toprob wrote:

QUOTE (toprob @ Oct 20 2008, 05:03 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

... I'd consider buying this, but I'd have to have a few more scenery sales this week to afford it.

May be the wrong place for this ... but .. seeing as your cash flow may be a bit "vulnerable" - and you need (sorry, WE need) to keep working on these sceneries ... have you considered doing "pre-release" sales? For instance, I'm Auckland based and am looking forward to the AKL City revamp. There's *no way I'm NOT going to be buying this* ... so if it's relatively imminent (ie. this decade) then I wouldn't mind coughing up. I wonder what the take-up might be.

Adamski wrote:

QUOTE (Adamski @ Oct 20 2008, 09:36 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

May be the wrong place for this ... but .. seeing as your cash flow may be a bit "vulnerable" - and you need (sorry, WE need) to keep working on these sceneries ... have you considered doing "pre-release" sales? For instance, I'm Auckland based and am looking forward to the AKL City revamp. There's *no way I'm NOT going to be buying this* ... so if it's relatively imminent (ie. this decade) then I wouldn't mind coughing up. I wonder what the take-up might be.

I've pre-sold scenery before, when I first started out full-time I sold the initial subscriptions to raise some capital. However I'd prefer not to pre-sell, I'm pretty simple, and pre-selling can get a bit complicated. Actually, it's great to be able to get by on my existing products, even if sales are patchy at times. This sort of business is very susceptible to the current economic worries, and I can certainly see how this works -- when things get tight, I just have to put a stop to all non-essential purchases (like FS addons:) -- since FS is a fairly non-essential hobby, this would be the first area where people cut back on. The trick is to see it coming, and not go crazy on little extras.

At this time of the year, I normally do extra non-fs work so that I have a little extra for Christmas. It still astounds me that I can earn enough to cover a month's worth of FS sales in 3 or 4 days, just doing a bit of graphic design. Plus, although it breaks one of my rules, I agreed to go back to my old job for a few weeks, part-time, in the run-up to Christmas.

But over the last year, I've made the decision that I'm here for the long-term. This is just too much fun to give up for mere money.