News

Openskies 2010: Have you ever thought about flying in a busy airspace?

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 17:07:26 +0000

Well, at Sunday 26th September you'll have the possiblity to test your navigational and communication skills in the virtual britain airspace - in a line with hundreds of other pilots.

The following airports will be covered: Bristol (EGGD), Birmingham (EGBB), Edinburgh (EGPH) and Manchester (EGCC), London Gatwick (EGKK), London Heathrow (EGLL), London Stansted (EGSS), and if you fancy the welsh landscape in Visual flight, we have added Cardiff (EGFF). Charts and other useful information can be found here: http://www.vatsim-uk.org/openskies/bookings.php

Departure and arrival Slots will be available for just a peak of two hours, starting at 1635z until 1900z. ATC coverage will be provided between 1600z - 2000z throughout European skies, to ensure that aircraft are fully provided a service right from arrival into the UK airspace up until the point you request clearance.

See all details at VATSIM-UK:
http://www.vatsim-uk.org/openskies/

Requirements on your knowledge:
You should have some knowledge about navigation (either VFR or IFR). As you'll fly online you'll also need some some general knowledge about flying on VATSIM. Furthermore you should be familiar with traffic control procedures.

Requirements on your flightsimulator, FSX:
To enjoy this flight you should consider to install the following addons.

Mesh Scenery:
As the standard elevation model of flightsimulator X is not such precise, we advise to install openVFR mesh (75) which represents a significant improvement from previous SRTM3 meshes, you might have used before. This mesh is available for most European countries already. It allows a 75m grid resolution with a vertical error of less than 16m for Europe! Its new base data was created by use of new interpolation algorithms and better data auxiliary DEMs of CGIAR Consortium for Spatial Information. It is reprocessed from voids and spikes and optimized for FSX. We are confident that this data is already one of the highest quality SRTM dataset available:
http://openvfr.freyt.de/magento/index.php/downloads/openvfr-mesh-75.html

Landclass Scenery:
Especially for VFR flights it is essential to identfy landmarks on the ground. openVFR Terrain UK/Ireland will improove the presentation of forests, cities, highways, roads, railways, lakes, rocks, and many more based on selected data of OpenStreetmap! Due to the highly realistic terrain information openVFR Terrain sets new standards for flight navigation in Microsoft FSX. This is what we call: Enjoy flying over the real landscape! Of course, we advise to install newest version always, but an older freeware version is available, too:
http://openvfr.freyt.de/magento/index.php/downloads/openvfr-terrain.html

Objects Scenery:
The FSX addon "openVFR Objects" will add hundreds of 3D objects on the ground. So, enjoy tons of 3D landmarks like windmils, wind generators, churches, castles and ruins,... as they are located in real world. Again the location of these objects are taken from Openstreetmap.
http://openvfr.freyt.de/magento/index.php/downloads/openvfr-objects.html

Don't waste your time and enjoy your flight! Your openVFR crew

openVFR starts to sell worldwide

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:45:29 +0000

From September 2010 the openVFR crew will start selling its VFR scenery addons for Microsoft Flightsimulator X (*) worldwide.

"We are looking forward to open our scenery products for a wider public from now on. In the last months we have got so much positive and encouraging feedback from the European community regarding openVFR, that we decided lately to develop openVFR sceneries also for countries outer Europe." Markus Freyt states without indicating yet which countries will be implemented and when. "Of course, we do have our own roadmap, but since the early beginnings of openVFR we have been community-driven. Therefore we would like to let it open to them, which countries to come first finally."

So, if your favorite country is not yet covered by openVFR or you would like to get a newer version of an existing country, you simply could suggest one for free for the next development cycle:
http://openvfr.freyt.de/magento/index.php/missing_country

About openVFR:

In difference to other terrain sceneries openVFR is based on real geodata taken from Openstreetmap (**). Due to the highly realistic terrain information openVFR sets new standards for VFR flight navigation in Microsoft FSX. Furthermore the user can improve the quality of the upcoming openVFR versions by registering as a editor at Openstreetmap.

Additionally the openVFR mesh represents a significant improvement from previous SRTM3 meshes. It allows a 75m grid resolution with a vertical error of less than 16m for Europe. Its new base data was created by use of new interpolation algorithms and better data auxiliary DEMs of CGIAR Consortium for Spatial Information (***). It is reprocessed from voids and spikes and optimized for FSX. We are confident that this data is one of the highest quality SRTM dataset available.

Learn more: www.openVFR.de

Youtube: www.openVFR.freyt.de/youtube/
Facebook: www.openVFR.freyt.de/facebook/
Twitter: www.openVFR.freyt.de/twitter/

Trademarks:

* Microsoft Flight Simulator (sometimes abbreviated to MSFS or FS) is a flight simulator program for Microsoft Windows, marketed and often seen as a video game.

** OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world. The maps are created using data from portable GPS devices, aerial photography and other free sources. Both rendered images and the vector dataset are available for download under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 licence. But OpenStreetMap is much more, than just a map to drive your car from A to B. It also contains geographical information about landuse areas, streets, railways or waterway and also the exact GPS positions of hundreds of thousands objects like churches, high tension towers, lighthouses, watertowers, wind generators and many more. Spread all over the world submitted by people like you.

***The data of CGIAR is based on SRTM 90m Digital Elevation Data for the entire world. The SRTM digital elevation data, produced by NASA originally, is a major breakthrough in digital mapping of the world, and provides a major advance in the accessibility of high quality elevation data for large portions of the tropics and other areas of the developing world. Unfortunately it doesn't cover Scandinivia. With kind permission of CGIAR Consortium for Spatial Information: http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/

Alpine VFR GroupFlight in Switzerland

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 09:33:28 +0000

At Monday, August 16th 2010, vACC Switzerland is organising an alpine VFR groupflight on VATSIM. This groupflight will start at Bern, Belp (LSZP) to Locarno (LSZL). During your flight you'll enjoy one of the most amazing areas of the alps. You will enjoy the panaramic of Berner Obeland, the impressive Vierstätter See. Furthermore you navigate over beautiful cities like Bad Ragaz and Chur. After crossing the stunning Rheinschlucht you finally pass the alpine Lukmanierpass and Arbedo to approach at Loarno. For some parts of the standard route even more sophisticated alternatives are available....

More Details about the tour you'll find here:
http://www.vacc.ch/uploads/Events/Swiss-Events/alpine-groupflight/SWISS-VFR-1,0100808.zip Official Announcement(in german): http://board.vacc-sag.org/65/43620/#post528229

Requirements on your knowledge:
All in all this tour is a quite challenging flight which will improove all your aviation skills. So, some knowledge about navigation in mountainous terrain would be very helpful. As you'll fly online you'll need some some general knowledge about VFR flying on VATSIM. Furthermore you should be familiar with VFR traffic control procedures. Here you can find a short introduction (in german/english).

Requirements on your flightsimulator, FSX:
To enjoy this flight you should consider to install the following addons.

Mesh Scenery:
To enjoy flying in the mountain it is required to install a adequate digital elevation model (mesh) to your FSX. As the standard elevation model of flightsimulator X is not such precise, we advise to install a HQ Mesh like the free FSX Digital Elevation Model for Alps region (LOD11), which can be found here: http://c30s.alpes.gratisim.fr/ Alternatively you could install the openVFR mesh (75) which represents a significant improvement from previous SRTM3 meshes, you might have used before. This mesh is available for most European countries already. It allows a 75m grid resolution with a vertical error of less than 16m for Europe! Its new base data was created by use of new interpolation algorithms and better data auxiliary DEMs of CGIAR Consortium for Spatial Information. It is reprocessed from voids and spikes and optimized for FSX. We are confident that this data is already one of the highest quality SRTM dataset available:
http://openvfr.freyt.de/magento/index.php/downloads/openvfr-mesh-75.html

Landclass Scenery:
For every VFR flight it is essential to identfy landmarks on the ground. openVFR Terrain Switzerland will improove the presentation of forests, cities, highways, roads, railways, lakes, rocks, and many more based on selected data of OpenStreetmap! Due to the highly realistic terrain information openVFR Terrain sets new standards for VFR flight navigation in Microsoft FSX. This is what we call: Enjoy flying over the real landscape! Of course, we advise to install newest version always, but an older freeware version is available, too:
http://openvfr.freyt.de/magento/index.php/downloads/openvfr-terrain.html

Objects Scenery:
The FSX addon "openVFR Objects" will add hundreds of 3D objects on the ground. So, enjoy tons of 3D landmarks like windmils, wind generators, churches, castles and ruins,... as they are located in real world. Again the location of these objects are taken from Openstreetmap.
http://openvfr.freyt.de/magento/index.php/downloads/openvfr-objects.html

Don't waste your time and enjoy your flight! Your openVFR crew

Learning to fly

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 23:46:28 +0000

As we started with our project "openVFR" we had a vison, a goal to make flight simulation more realistic - esp. when flying VFR. Fortunately we also had a good idea in how to get real-world-data into the flight simulator to gain your (and also our own) flight experience. So, finally we are sure, that the actual version of openVFR is already very sophisticated to help you out.

But, here at openVFR we are passionate about flying. And we think the best scenery won't help you, if your own personal knowledge about flying isn't sophisticated enough. So, wouldn't it be great to get some lessons? To learn easy without studying thousands of books? To have a teacher? Hopefully somebody from the real flying world?

Well - here are some answers:

1. We made very good experience with the Pilots Trainings Department of VACC-GER, the vACC of Germany within the VATSIM network. Of course these trainings are given by real persons in german language, but we guess there are other languages available in your VATSIM country as well. Just try it out, and register yourself. You will get a bunch of training lessons explained by real teachers via online sessions covering theoretical and practical issues with outstanding training flight lessons, which will be for sure in your mind over the next time. Also we have to say that we meet a lot of very sympathic and experienced flight teachers and pilots there. By the way: openVFR wouldn't exist, if the training department of VATSIM Gemany wouldn't exists. Thank you for this. Learn more

2. But, sometimes it's hard to find a day in week to be available. So, what to do? We have noticed a very useful sequence of free flight lessons at "Angle of Attack". You start with the very basics. What makes an aircraft fly? What controls to use to fly an aircraft? And many more. The core of the video tutorial is the lessons covering actual flying situations. In total there are 45 videos to watch. It seems that a lot of situations in which a VFR pilot would be required to act is covered. Each situation is explained in detail in its own video article so you can choose on the subject you need. This is ideal for a beginner going out to fly a new situation or for a licensed pilot needing to train for an upcoming flight. Furthermore it makes a lot of fun to listen to the teacher, which seems to be a real world pilot. Learn more

So, throttle On! ;-]

openVFR Mesh: new elevation model for Microsoft Flightsimulator X

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 11:30:56 +0000

The openVFR team has launched their own elevation model for Europe now. The openVFR mesh represents a significant improvement from previous SRTM3 meshes, you might have used before. It allows a 75m grid resolution with a vertical error of less than 16m for Europe. Its new base data was created by use of new interpolation algorithms and better data auxiliary DEMs of CGIAR Consortium for Spatial Information*. It is reprocessed from voids and spikes and optimized for FSX. We are confident that this data is one of the highest quality SRTM dataset available.

The data of CGIAR is based on SRTM 90m Digital Elevation Data for the entire world. The SRTM digital elevation data, produced by NASA originally, is a major breakthrough in digital mapping of the world, and provides a major advance in the accessibility of high quality elevation data for large portions of the tropics and other areas of the developing world. Unfortunately it doesn't cover Scandinivia.

*With kind permission of CGIAR Consortium for Spatial Information, http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/

openVFR - new version out!

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 08:35:37 +0000

openVFR - new version out!!

So, after the amazing success of the first version of openVFR* we have been highly encouraged to improove its quality very much. Meanwhile we have restructered our internal working processes to make use of a totally new technology based on several databases, which makes it possible to produce one of the best representation of the terrain possible in FSX ever. We think, that the new openVFR scenery is the ultimate experience for visual flights in FSX!

Also we have to confess another news, because openVFR is no more for free.
But, don't worry. There is a great deal. Let us explain a bit on this first:

In order to improove our idea of openVFR and develop a real professional scenery design software it was simply necessary to bring the project to a commercial state. As you might imagine for creating more and more countries we are currently faced in working with quite a huge amount of data hosted on very powerful servers.

Nevertheless, as we are flightsim enthusiastics ourselves, we didn't forget about you, the community. So, whats the deal?

Actual versions with MODERATE PRICING
We have carefully choosen moderate pricings (3-8 EUR) for the actual versions of openVFR. Anyway, don't hesitate to give us your feedback on this.
Older versions FOR FREE
As the world is changing, therefore we also will update openVFR regulary in the future. If you think, you don't need the most actual version (and improovements) you might download an older version of your country FOR FREE!

SO WHATS NEW IN OPENVFR 2010/04?

So, for the new version we have improoved the data of the existing countries very much and also added a lot of new EU countries. Don't worry, if your favorite place is not yet available. We will add them all! Right now we are already preparing even more countries. So, pls SUBSCRIBE AGAIN TO OUR NEW NEWSLETTER, if you wish to be informed also in the future. We still have some great new ideas...

In detail, the new version 2010/04 of openVFR brings the following features:

Updated data for Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Netherlands
New countries like Belgium, Luxembourg, UK, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Denmark, and many more
Quality impoovements, esp. regarding the presentation of water and coastlines
Quality impoovments regarding highways, streets and railways
POI Addon for most countries with each thousands of 3D Objects per country (also balanced in FSX performance now!)

We would like to thank you for your encouraging comments in the past.
Pls, don't forget to subscribe to our new newsletter.

Hope to see U soon.

Many thanks again...

Your crew of openVFR

*openVFR is a VFR scenery for the Microsoft Flightsimulator X (FSX) based on data taken from OpenStreetMap (OSM).

new performance tweaks for FSX found

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

We have got some news about a new tool which can assist you in setting some new brilliant performance tweaks for FSX. It seems that these new settings in fsx.cfg will improove the frame rates of your flightsimulator very much; especially if you are using such powerful addons like openVFR POI. Anyway, we hope that we can launch a frame optimized version of our addon in the near future as well. So things becoming better soon. ;-]

http://forums.flightsimlabs.com/index.php?/files/file/66-fsl-texturefix-v10zip/

Wow, thank you very much!

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

yep, this are good news!! We are proud to let you know that openVFR was downloaded now more than 10.000 times(!) in less than a week. We never expected such high interest into our project before and hope that you feel comfortable with our free VFR scenery as we do.

So, thank you very much – also for the encouraging comments and donations you gave us.

But, we also would like to let you know, that we are currently working on the upcoming new version. The next version will contain the following milestones:

fix of some bugs (see Issues known)
update of the data for the current countries
two more countries…pls stay tuned to get more information
adding more complex, but also high performant POI objects, which will not decrease your fps anymore

So, many, many thanks again.

Peter & Markus

Enter a complete new world

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

We are glad to supply you with the first version of openVFR, the new free scenery for Microsoft Flightsimulator X. In this version the project covers Germany, Austria, Switzerland and also Netherlands. But we are already investigating to add even more countries. So pls stay tuned and leave your email right now!

Many thanks for visiting us in the last days…..