Where is the Helicopter Simulator Industry going...? Is it moving forward at all??

Where is the Helicopter Simulator Industry going...?

Intro

In the beginning of year 2010 it seemed like nothing much was going on. No new news on any cool helicopter collectives, or pedals, cyclic's, complete helicopter cockpits, instruments.... No new software. A few new / updates on the add-on helicopters. And "helicopter simmers" was busy building their home made cockpits as usual. But other than that, nothing. I was waiting for the BIG news that Simcontrol was coming back. Not on it's regular website, but the famous controls, just in a new rapping! But that didn't seem to come either. What was going on? If anything at all...?? A bit confused and over-worked on my regular J.O.B (building up the new IT department at a 36,000 square meter new retail store) - it seemed I was waiting for something that was not going to happen..

It took it's time, then everything started to come together!
Stay tuned, more on this update on it's way.....................

Part 1 - the future of helicopter simulator.. 

-coming.....

The all new Microsoft Flight

Techflash about Cascade Game Foundry and their up coming sim, if there will be one...

Home page of Cascade and their FS developer ideas

Part 2 - helicopter flight controls - what's up?
-coming

Simcontrol is back, at a price! A big one!!

"After a long break, am back with some updates on the helicopter flight simulator industry. Stay tuned, its just around the corner..."

Not a post about Helicopter Simulator Hardware?

Nope, no hardware for simulator this time! Instead I decided to write about the SIRX2009 project. What is SIRX2009, you ask? I will get to that...

For all simulators, after you tweaked what you can out of your physical controls and flight gear, we are left with the flight sim program. Be that Flight Simulator FSX, X-Plane, DCS: Black Shark, SimCopter, Search and rescue or any other sim operation system you are running. And when it comes to helicopters, the scenery plays a bigger part than for any other aircraft. Since planes operates at 3000 or so and upwards. Helis has a tendency to fly VFR below 3000 feet. Very often I fly between 500 and 1500 feet. In that altitude your standard scenery won't do you any good. There is a bunch of good stuff in the fligthsim community. Both pay ware and free ware. Just have a look at: VFR Photographic Scenery, Dream Scenery, MegaScenery, FS Dreamscapes, local scenery for your country, and many more... But back to SIRX2009:

What blows me away with SIRX2009 is:

• The quality. It is created to the 1mt/pixel, with some areas even down to 0.50mt/pixel. It is a graphic reconstruction from real photos. The mountain parts are absolutely stunning! Just take a look at the Alpine ridges.
• The landscape. SIRX2009 covers Italy, Austria, Switzerland and parts of Slovenia. Some really cool part of the mountain ridges of Europe.
• It is free. You can download at the SIRX 2009 Flight Simulation Centers web page - see link at the end of the post.
• Support. SIRX2009 is sponsored by the Ministry of the Environment, for the aerial mapping of the CPN (National Cartographic Portal).

For the time being it is a FSX only add-on. But X-Plane add is in progr

ess for a release in 2010.

Enjoy the pics (all pictures from the FSC's webpage):

Link to the homepage:
SIRX2009 at Flight Simulator Center

Thats it. I'll be back to hardware simulator stuff next time, happy simming! ;)

PS! They deserve some "link love" so check them out here: Helicopter Simulator Scenery!!


Update: Here is Frank's blog about Alpine scenery and SIRX software. It is in Italian, but you can click on the middle left side under "Translate and it will be translated to English by choosing the english flag. (Translation via Google Web Translating). There is some nice SIRX scenery videos with a helicopter. The videos has focus on the scenery, not the heli flying, but great to look at and enjoyable!!

SIRX videos

Always enjoy your helicopter simulator hobby!

Bye for now..