World Tour

[JonARNZ]

For my 700th Post, which coincidentally comes about on the day we completed our World tour of New Zealand, I thought it would be cool to repost my fave shot from the tour...

[Naki]

Nice! Had to say something with the forum name of Naki!

[ardypilot]

Congrats on the big #700! Very good capture too

[ZK-TJL]

Great shot Jon..........It now displays as my computer desktop. Well done on finishing the tour!!!!!!!!!

Here's a few of my shots of our final leg southbound.




Tim (Zoltuger) has become the formation flying master








This one below is my favorite









Once we'd shut down in Dunedin it was off to CHCH to do some screenshot work on Tim Clark's (Zoltuger) new 747-400 skins



So with the World Tour of New Zealand over whats next for the World tour Team?????





"Today Astronauts Jon Murchison, Nik Beattie, Tim Clark, David Walsh and David Hall launched from the Helen Clark space centre in Dunedin.......God speed the Crew of 'World Tour 1'"

[ZK-Brock]

Nicely done Nik...BTW ZK-TJL is just joining at Nelson, heard it on my scannner

[Charl]

Well done, you tourists.
So to the debrief:
What's your impression of the sim: strengths, weaknesses, and which bits of NZ are rendered best?

[ZK-TJL]

Nicely done Nik...BTW ZK-TJL is just joining at Nelson, heard it on my scannner

Did you get any pics of TJL??? would be great if I could get a copy.

[ZK-Brock]

Nah I wasn't at the airport, I listened from my room I was at the airport once taking photos, but I couldn't get close enough from ANY location around the drome

[Zöltuger]

haha, how reckless was that!!

If you haven't seen them already, here are some of my screenshots from the final leg:


NAC and ZOL in formation


TJL, DFC and ZOL form up


Watch your attitude! TJL manages to maintain altitude with this little stunt.


"NAC, this is ZOL, I do not have visual confirmation of your position"

All in all, a fantastic journey- once again, my thanks to Jon for generously providing hosting of this epic World Tour of NZ.

[Jimmy]

Well done guys, a shame I never managed to get back for anothor flight, would have loved to do formation flying.....

now I think my favorite shot there is that 744 heading down 02 rather low

James

[ZK-TJL]

Nah I wasn't at the airport, I listened from my room I was at the airport once taking photos, but I couldn't get close enough from ANY location around the drome

Copy that................If you do see TJL some time grab me a few shots

[ZK-TJL]

Well done, you tourists.
So to the debrief:
What's your impression of the sim: strengths, weaknesses, and which bits of NZ are rendered best?

Good question........

Firstly, I cannot compare it to FS9 as I never did buy FS2004, I've made the jump from FS2002 straight to FSX, So with this in mind I can only give my impressions of the sim unrelated to FS9

The flat sections of New Zealand are rather inaccurate, very dry and dusty. It is my understanding that this is a world wide problem with FSX and that microsoft are working on an update to fix this (so I read).



The Hills, valleys mountains are quite well done, the southern Alps were very well done.


Much of the roads and railroads are accurate, This is great for VFR flying, Jon and I tracked these roads at times from city to city.



The water is real!!!!!!!! full stop, end sentence. the 'glint' seen in the water just 'sells' it so well.........so real. The rotor wash, the way boats bob up and down, the reflections......so cool




The clouds are also impressive.


Some of the weather effects are spot on


On Jon's polling thread regarding what 'the best feature is' many people have voted for the virtual cockpits.



I think Jon is better qualified to answer your quetions better than I.......But I hope this helped.

[ardypilot]

Great summary Nik!

[Charl]

On the button, thanks Nik.
FS9 at first look had beautiful clouds and weather.
But the most terrible water, looked like goo.
And landclass/topo was so-so.
Looks like FSX has aced the water issue, and left plenty of scope for landclass and texture addons.
Ah well 3rd party providers must eat, too.
Did you have any definite impressions of default NZ airport scenery?

[ZK-TJL]

Looks like FSX has aced the water issue, and left plenty of scope for landclass and texture addons.

Did you have any definite impressions of default NZ airport scenery?

Well..........I'm gonna go out on a limb here............

The airports are good. Before any one kills me, let me explain. We can't expect photo real default airports, perfect in every way. Of course all default airports look like pure crap when compared to the Work of Ian Warren, Robin Corn etc... that aside the default airports were much better than I'd thought they would have been for default. Again before someone cuts my head off I must make it known that I've got the scenery complexity slider all the way to the right which helps greatly. The default airports suffer greatly as this slider is decreased. The ground traffic at the airports is a nice touch, the docking jetways, fuel trucks and baggage trucks etc... The bigger airports feel alive with these busy little helpers.

The point you made about 'plenty of scope for landclass and texture addons' is on the money. The same is true for all aspects of FSX. Some early birds have already started putting land class addons togeather, Jon has done some for queenstown, as well as the ports of Nelson, Napier and Wellington. David Hall has done a sharp job of 'the Naki'.

As Jon has said "FSX is the sim of the future" it will be exciting to see what the developers come up with for FSX..............I can't wait.

[JonARNZ]

I think Nik sums things up nicely, and is equally qualified as anyone flying FSX to comment.

I never flew this type of tour in 9, so can't really add more. As I have said in other FSX posts, I find the overall experience in X to be superior than 9, the water and the weather (I find the weather to be smoother and less taxing on the computer, especially in dense cloud) in particular. The autogen is better, and more of it which makes things look great if you can mange it. The landclass lets it down, its absolutely crap, but the better mesh is an improvement and balances that.

SP1 wont address landclass, Aces have acknowledged that problem is bigger than ben hur so don't expect anything just yet. The good news is they acknowledge its a problem.

As for NZ default airports, mostly the same as FS9, just enhanced visually as I have found FSX default textures to be better. Most have fences around them, fuel etc, so nothing new. Overall nothing special, lots of potential for people to replace or add to them as per 9. In general everything is where I have seen it throughout my real world travels.