Simviation Forums

Guess this is a good place to stick this ??

New FREEWARE Add On,, just came out thru Payware Developer Aerosoft.

It is FREE too, I just downloaded it, took almost 50 minutes, on a high speed DSL connextion too .

More Details : Fully functional FREE demo scenery of Catalina Island including its stunning "Airport in the Sky" and heliport/seaplane base (as included in our popular "US Cities X - Los Angeles" product).

Features:
•Detailed scenery of Catalina’s “Airport in the Sky” with sloped runway!
•Full rendering of Catalina Island with detailed coastline, aerial imagery, elevation data and countless autogen objects
•Detailed Pebbly Beach Helipad / former Seaplane base with ramp that can be used for amphibian aircraft
•AI ship traffic
•Animated gulls and sounds

Freeware Link : http://www.aerosoft.com/cgi-local/us/iboshop.cgi?showd,,D00005

Catalina Island is located off the West Coast of California USA, just west of Los Angeles, for those that don't know.

Thanks for the heads up. Downloaded.

800 mb in 50 minutes? Even Simviation is faster than that. Your high speed DSL connection is probably broken. I downloaded it on a 30mb DSL connection in less then 5 minutes...

I don't have that problem anywhere else tho, it could be their Servers are slow too,,, not peoples internet,, been seeing a lot of web sites with problems lately,,, including this one, unfortunately.

Avscam and even another web site, well it popped up the other nite, as Error 404 not found, and I've logged into it for years. without a problem,, till the other nite.

think all the Scammers and SPAMMERS are hard at work,,, bogging down web sites with their needless BS !!

Thank you, Jet
(8 min/20mb)

One bug!
In outside view, when moving down, the plane is going into "the air".



Nice details tho...

Bass, I got that too.

1 thing I realized, after installing the freeware from Aerosoft, was that I had previously bout' a year ago, installed Lands End Sea Planes scenery, and this area had sum stuff.

Tho this scenery installed right on top of it with no problem,,, I ended up with even more scenery such as Marinas with docks and Neon Signs !

don't know if you'd get the same result by installing LESP, over the top of this scenery,, but Idid it the other way around, 1st the LESP scenery then this scenery, tho I do have a barn roof sticking thru the ground just a tad bit,,,,

BUT, I believe thats because of all the "Earth-Quakes" they have out there,,, that must be what it is,,, Ya .

still decent scenery for Freeware.

of course while I was on their site, I picked up a little cheapy scenery for under 20 us dollars,,, Sonderborg, its really nice !!!

more on that in a bit !

Jet.

Bass wrote:One bug!
In outside view, when moving down, the plane is going into "the air".



Nice details tho...

I think that there are 2 surfaces, the demo surface that you land on, and the old FSX surface.

Thanks for the find, Jetranger.

I always wanted to go to Santa Catalina island. I guess that this is the closest I'll ever get.


For those that haven't downloaded & installed it, let me start the music while you look at the island.




Sun up - Santa Catalina Island



Dawn comes to Avalon - Santa Catalina Island




You do have to be careful about moving the scenery up or down in the scenery list.

At the top of the list



And moved down about 10 or 12 spaces down the list.


If you drag and drop the 2 pictures to your desktop you can open one, and use the left/right arrow keys to switch the pictures back & forth.



A flight from KHHR to KAVX It's worth watching


If you have real Opus FX, or (probably) REX turned on you may have a great time landing at the Catalina airport. VERY entertaining.



Thanks again, Jetranger. Made my day. The standard FSX Santa Catalina island is horrible.

One last shot

Sunset. Good by Santa Catalina.

OldAirmail wrote:

Bass wrote:One bug!
In outside view, when moving down, the plane is going into "the air".

........

Nice details tho...

I think that there are 2 surfaces, the demo surface that you land on, and the old FSX surface.

Ok, i'll have a look at my scenery files.

Bass,

That 'issue' is explained in the demo's Manual.pdf, faq section:

-Q: How come the spot plane viewpoint is sometimes below ground at Catalina Airport?
-A: To make the sloped runway possible we had to create landable 3D model of the airport’s terrain that is slightly above the actual terrain. Although you can land there, FSX’s viewpoint engine doesn’t see this as “actual” ground, so you will be able to watch your aircraft from below.

Had they built the airport surface into the terrain mesh, rather than a landable object model, this wouldn't happen. (you see the same thing if you place you aircraft on the roof of a landable building.)

Thanks, Dave.

I never thought of reading the manual!


That landing strip being at an incline does make a significant, and fun, difference in landing a plane!

And not being in the lee of any mountains does make a difference if you have real weather. At times it made for a very interesting landing.

If you have Accu-Feel with the turbulence sliders moved far to the right (but never set to 100%) , the view from inside the cockpit is great on a windy day.

Assistance needed. I really don't like to have the addons, either aircraft or scenery or whatever, installed by the installer. I'll install to a separate folder and then place or replace the files myself so I know exactly what is being done and what I have to do to uninstall and get back to my original systems. Fact is, besides the default FSX Catalina, which is sad, I have three other Catalina addons. The one I use now is by Roy and is quite extensive. It's pretty easy to temporarily deactivate sceneries in the FSX Addon Scenery and try a new one to determine which one you want to keep or delete. Apparently, the Aerosoft Catalina won't let one do this. Sorry to ramble, but my question is then how can I solve this. For example, is there a listing of all of the new "placed or replaced" files so that the originals could be backed up for safety?.....or is there another way to allay my fears.....?

Thanks ahead for any help to satisfy my paranoia.

Tyle

Tyle,

I installed the Demo to the default location. I searched and did not find any other FSX files that were affected. I have no other Aerosoft scenery installed.

Scenery files and textures are installed to it's own folder ....Flight Simulator X\Aerosoft\USCitiesX_LosAngles_Demo\....

It installs 1 file, AF2_L11_alt.bgl, (altitude adjustment file for Pebbly Beach Helipad) to Scenery\World\Scenery

It makes the appropriate addition to the Scenery Library.

Thank you, Dave.
We are just too lazy reading manuals.

Strange tho, they need to make that to get the slooped runway working! I have no problems with my French airports and my Lukla! (Maybe its the 3d)

After reading the manual i'll try to mess with settings, but my ships need to be 100% due to aicarrier. (I'm too lazy to shift anything before loading fsx).

Thanks again