FSWeekend 2011
Once a year the flight simulator community is meeting in Lelystad Aviodrome. The National Aviation theme park Aviodrome is unique in its kind in the world. It is combining both a covered area as an open-air area of the museum, with aviation buildings and historical aircrafts. This is the perfect environment for a meeting like this: historical aviation as background to the latest flight simulation technology and software. But also a large group of people which take their private flight simulation equipment to the Aviodrome and demonstrate their professionalism in this area are making the event highly interesting.
The entrance to the Lelystad AVIODROME, Sunday morning at 9:30h. 30 minutes later a long queue of people were waiting here up to 30min to get their tickets for the show
New this year are the presentations about different aspect of flight simulation brought to the visitors by well known speakers. Austin Meyers was there and held a presentation about the new X-Plane 10. Due to my
itinerary on Sunday afternoon I could participate on this talk, which is certainly a pitty.
Breaking News and Highlights
Revolution Simproducts and ProSim737 building Partnership
Revolution Simproducts announced a strategically partnership with ProSim737. They claim that the partnership will help to develop much better products for home cockpit, entertainment and professional flight simulation by closing the gaps of missing and expected integration.
The ProSim737 suite is a complete set of software to build an accurate B737 Simulator with the FS9 and FSX flight simulation software. According to their news flyer a X-Plane* version is on the way.
ifly737Pro for Cockpit Builder
Another surprise was the announcement of the ifly737NG Pro version for Cockpit Builder. Spontaneous customers benefit from the introductory offer for EUR 330, - at FLIGHT1 Software. The current version of the software package seems already be very complete with deep system functionality. However, updates of the software are currently under development. According to Steve Masson from FLIGHT1, 2 PC are sufficient for a complete dual seat B737 cockpit installation, this includes the PC with the FSX installation. I'm very curious to verify this by an own test installation. Beside the expected functionality I have seen a several features which I miss at my simulator. These are for example: correct functionality of the DU (Display Unit) selectors, functional N1 Set and SPD REF selectors, and some other fine distinctions which certainly making the difference. Furthermore Steve mentioned that with the ifly737 Pro the keyboard gets obsolete in the cockpit, the CDU can be used for that purpose instead.
The ifly737NG Pro demonstration at the FLIGHT1 booth. A very promising software package for cockpit builders. The pricing is very competitive.
According to FLIGHT1 the software is compatible to a wide range of simulator interface hardware and modules.
The ifly737NG flight model seems to be very realistic. It was a pleasure for me to fly the ifly737 during a short demonstration in Lelystad. You can feel the aircraft its inertia of masses in movement. The feeling and the behavior of the ifly737NG is very close to the experience I gained in a professional flight simulator.
Links:
FLIGHT1: http://www.flight1.com/
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