As always, there's a lot going on across the VATSIM network. Upcoming events include (click for details):

The International Virtual Aviation Organisation (IVAO) recently published the second issue of "Virtual Sky," their new magazine for the online flight simulation community.

The first issue had over 26,000 downloads, and it's no wonder: this is one well-produced little magazine! Whether you fly on IVAO or not, do yourself a favor and take a look. The current issue features some great content that any simmer will find interesting:

• An essay by Gareth Richardson, a real-world air traffic controller in the U.K. who got his start via Flight Simulator and IVAO.
• A must-read article on TOGA by everyone's favorite jet jockey Mike Ray!
• The latest news about IVAO, and an interview with the President.

Issue 2 is available as both high and low resolution .pdf files in English, French, and German. The best part? It's free!

Download the latest issue today!

http://www.ivao.aero/newsletter/newsmirror.asp

IVAO is an independent, free of charge organization that provides the Flight Simulation community with a highly realistic online aviation environment. You can learn more about IVAO at www.ivao.aero.

Flight simmers are a notoriously opinionated bunch. So, when our Lead Game Designer Paul Lange mentioned he wants to know what types of missions users think the next version of Flight Simulator should include, I told him to be careful what he wished for....

I can walk down the hall and tell Paul what *I* think any time I want. In fact, I frequently do! While I admittedly have an unfair advantage, my ideas aren't necessarily any better than anyone else's. So here's your chance! Head on over to Paul's blog (April 21st post) and submit your comments:

http://paul-flightsimguy.spaces.live.com/default.aspx

Lukla Air Bridge - April 19, 2008

From IVAO:

IVAO and Aerosoft present an exhilarating event, "Lukla Air Bridge," on April 19, 2008. This event promises to put every pilot’s skills to the ultimate test among the ranges of the Himalayas.

The Mission is to transport as much cargo as possible from Kathmandu to Lukla within the six hour window provided. Air Traffic Control services will be provided at Kathmandu and at Lukla. Also, aircraft types will be limited, and your weight/balance sheet will be checked at Lukla to ensure accuracy.

The team or individual who transports the greatest amount of cargo to Lukla will receive 10 FREE DOWNLOAD PRODUCTS courtesy of Aerosoft. The second place team will receive nine download products, etc, all the way to 10th place who will receive one product.

Complete details are available in the rules. Visit http://www.ivao.aero/events/lukla/ for more information.

IVAO is an independent, free of charge organization that provides the Flight Simulation community with a highly realistic online aviation environment. You can learn more about IVAO at www.ivao.aero.

Upcoming events on FS-MP.com:

"Ken's IFR Tuesdays" - Every Tuesday at 1900 EDT (Midnight Zulu)

Retired real-world controller KenATC provides highly realistic ATC services every Tuesday night.

Magical Mystery Tour 3 - Sunday April 13th at 1900 Z/2000 BST/1500 EDT

An IFR extravaganza featuring airways flying between KORF and KPHL.

More events...

Looks like FS-MP is hosting smaller events of one kind or another almost every night. Become a certified member today so you can participate!

You can learn more about FS-MP, an FSX multiplayer-based community of aviation enthusiasts, at FS-MP.com. 

If you've been enjoying flying the missions in Flight Simulator X and Acceleration, you may have had the thought, "I'd like to create some of these myself!"

If so, I encourage you to take the plunge. We're seeing more and more missions out there, both payware and freeware, and there's a big demand for more.

What do you need to get started?

• Ideas. (Can't help you with that one....)
• The "Mission Creation Software Development Kit," available on Disk 1 of Flight Simulator X Deluxe.
• The Software Development Kit Update SP1A.
• The Software Development Kit Update SP2. (Not neccessary if you have already installed the Flight Simulator X: Acceleration expansion pack.)
• Lead Game Designer Paul Lange's helpful Mission Building Tips articles.

Also be sure to check out the new "FSX Mission Editor" tool created by Jim Keir. It includes lots of features that make developing missions a much more pleasant experience. You can read all about it in Developer's Corner.

Two Web sites with great information for mission developers are FSXMission.com and FSDeveloper.com. You'll find forums filled with useful information, and fellow mission builders willing to answer your questions, help build custom content, and beta test your missions.

We're really proud of the missions we created for Flight Simulator X and Acceleration, but we always viewed the missions we shipped as just the beginning. Dazzle us!

Way back at the beginning of the year, Puzant Yacoubian and woutboeing, the heads of Toronto Pearson ATC, asked me to promote their organization here on FSInsider. I just came across their email again (so many emails, so little time...) and wanted to get this up ASAP to let you know about yet another Flight Simulator X-based multiplayer community.

(Still using FS2004? Communities like this are a good reason to get up and running with FSX!)

Toronto Pearson ATC is an exclusively FSX-based multiplayer community. They just celebrated their one-year anniversary, and they now have almost 250 members. They feature a dedicated FSX multiplayer server that runs 24/7, as well as Teamspeak chat and a nice Web site.

"We're anything but ordinary & we pride ourselves on the quality of our community," they write on their site.

"We're the most professional place to fly, the top destination for quality ATC, an ideal environment to learn more about aviation, and an opportunity to meet and discuss aviation with other enthusiasts around the globe."

Their site features some cool Flash content, a forum, and downloads (including more than 45 custom paint jobs for aircraft, including their own "Toronto Pearson Airlines" fleet).

Head to Canada and take a look for yourself at www.torontopearsonatc.com.

The International Virtual Aviation Organisation (IVAO) recently published the first issue of "Virtual Sky," their new magazine for the online flight simulation community.

In his first editorial, Chief Editor Vybhava Srinivasan explains that the magazine is filled with articles that will "help kick start your career in virtual flying and controlling. We have peppered it with some mind blowing training material created by some of our most experienced virtual pilots/controllers."

This first issue is indeed pretty impressive, and is available as both high and low resolution pdf files. You can check "Virtual Sky" out for yourself on the IVAO Web site.

IVAO is an independent, free of charge organization that provides the Flight Simulation community with a highly realistic online aviation environment. You can learn more about IVAO at www.ivao.aero.

I recently received an email from Lee at DetroitVirtual.com asking if I could add them to my list of FSX-based multiplayer organizations to promote. Certainly! Here's what their site has to say:

"Detroit Virtual Air Traffic Control: created for enthusiasts around the world to get together in a realistic online environment and experience what a real world pilot or air traffic controller would go through during the course of a flight or an entire day of ATC operations.

"This site was also created in conjunction with the sessions which run on the Gamespy server for Flight Simulator X, and to attempt to get people of all ages interested in a "Real flight environment" rather then just flying around the airfield crashing into buildings and other aircraft. Here at KDTW ATC you can choose to fly as a pilot under ATC conditions or learn to become a virtual Air Traffic Controller for KDTW or any other airport in the world and control up to 40 aircraft in the session at any given point. The objective is to make the Flight Simulator X experience 'As Real As It Gets!'"

Detroit Virtual features certification for both pilot and controllers. Looking at their screenshot gallery, it's clear that something fun is going on in Detroit!

Check it all out for yourself at www.detroitvirtual.com.

If you find perusing real-world flight tracking sites like www.flightaware.com as amusing as I do, then you'll love this: Tim Krajcar has created a similar tool for VATSIM called "vataware."

As VATSIM explains it, vataware is "a sophisticated traffic analysis & history tool for VATSIM data. It can be used to look at trends in traffic by country, airport, airline, or pilot. It also tracks a 'radar plot' of a flight (with datapoints taken every two minutes) so a pilot can see what route s/he ended up flying."

This tool is nothing short of amazing. It tracks every IFR and VFR flight that has a flight plan filed in the VATSIM system. You can search by country, airport, airline, callsign, citypair, or pilot. Data is provided via gorgeous charts, graphs, and lists that tell you more than you ever wanted to know about what's happening on VATSIM at any given moment...or earlier today...or a few hours from now.

Click on an individual flight and you'll find information about that flight: status, operator, pilot, aircraft, origin, destination, route, remarks, altitude, speed, distance/time to go and more--as well the aircraft's flight-planned route (and progress along it) plotted on a map.

As a VATSIM controller, I'm finding vataware to be incredibly useful: the virtual equivalent of the air traffic management tools real-world controllers have access to. Whether you're a controller, a pilot, or just curious about what's happening on VATSIM, I highly encourage you to take a look at vataware: www.vataware.com.

Well, after a lifetime of dreaming, I finally did it: I flew myself to Oshkosh. A few hours ago I hopped into my Piper J-3C-65 Cub for the last leg of the trip: 63 miles northeast from Dane County Regional Airport (KMSN) in Madison, Wisconsin to Wittman Regional (KOSH) in Oshkosh. The reason for my journey? To attend EAA's annual AirVenture extravaganza.

The flight took about an hour from takeoff to touchdown. Along the way I did a little sightseeing, but mostly I keep my eyes and ears open. In the days leading up to the show--which starts tomorrow--the skies above Wisconsin are abuzz with small aircraft like nowhere else on earth. Indeed, I found myself in the middle of a long line of aircraft, and flying under Visual Flight Rules (VFR), it was my responsibility to see and avoid them. Which I did.

Following the official FISK VFR arrival procedures as explained in the NOTAM, I monitored the event approach control frequency. As per the procedure, I approached the town of Ripon level at 1,800 feet and 90 knots (well, not quite 90 knots, but as fast as the little Cub would go). From Ripon, I followed the railroad tracks to FISK intersection. Approaching FISK, the approach controller told me to switch to and monitor the tower frequency for arrivals to runway 09. The crazy busy tower controller told me to "follow the King Air ahead," and to land partway down the runway, "on the arrow." No worries, I thought. Piece of cake....

So there I was, maneuvering for final approach, the King Air in sight on short final, pretty proud of myself for my flawless aviating into what for a few days is the busiest airport in the world...when all of a sudden I got a migraine.

Now, it wasn't an ACTUAL migraine, but it was a fantastic simulation of what a migraine headache does to your ability to see clearly. This migraine was not caused by dehydration, or by a food allergy, but by technology. The Cub did just fine in the summer heat (I topped off the oil before I left Madison), I did just fine (I left the top half of the door open which let in a nice breeze), but...I think my video card overheated.

You see (if you haven't guessed already), this flight to Oshkosh wasn't a real one, but a simulated one--made possible by FSX and the hard working (and hard playing) guys over at FS-MP.com. For three hours today, the FS-MP multiplayer server was filled with virtual pilots mirroring the pilgrimage our real-world counterparts were making to the real KOSH. It was pretty realistic, too. Having cleared it with the brass at EAA, FS-MP republished some of the real-world procedures and charts on their forum. It seemed that most of the pilots had actually studied them too. While I heard a little chaos on the radio (some lost pilots, some pilots who didn't know how to navigate), it was nothing compared to what sometimes transpires during the real fly-in!

So, back to my video card-induced migraine on short final. For some reason the tower controller couldn't see me anymore ("Cub 186, are you having a problem?") but I was damned if I was going to let ANYTHING mess up my landing after flying all that way to virtually fulfill a lifetime dream. In spite of the amorphous blobs of color and pixilated geometrical patterns my video card decided to splat onto the windscreen, I somehow managed to get the Cub down. Right on the arrow too, just as instructed.

I touched down, slowed down, and turned off the runway into the grass. I called the ground controller (who apparently couldn't see me either), and followed his instructions to taxi to parking.

Shutting down the engine I took a deep breath and thought, "one of these years I have to do this for real!" Thanks to everyone at FS-MP.com who let me do the next best thing. I had a blast, and I look forward to participating in more events in the future.

If you're unfamiliar with FS-MP, they're a community of flight simulation enthusiasts who are pushing the native FSX multiplayer system to its limits, both on the pilot and the controller side. With a dedicated server and weekly events like "String of Pearls" and "Red Bull" air races, they're making those of us who designed the FSX multiplayer system proud. In fact, they're going way beyond what we provide out of the box.

I've been doing so much travelling lately I decided to stay home for a month and let Hal and Brett handle our booth at this year's real AirVenture without me. Today though, I'm confused. Because part of me thinks I just landed a Cub at Wittman Regional Airport.

I'd better unpack and set up my tent. First though, I think I'll go try to find some aspirin to get rid of this "headache." Or maybe I'll just hitch a ride into town and buy a new video card....

Learn more about FS-MP.com

Learn more about the Piper Cub

In my description of this section of FSInsider I promised that:

• Regarding missions, "I'll be scouring the Web for the best stuff, and when I find it, I'll share it with you here."
• Regarding multiplayer, "I'll hunt for the best of what the community's doing, and I'll let you know about it."

Well, things have finally slowed down enough around here for me to start making good on that promise. In the weeks to come, you can expect to find more frequent posts here.

To get things rolling, I contacted the brass at VATSIM, and got permission to promote their upcoming events. Look for those and more postings on fun things to do with Flight Simulator soon!

If you're aware of something newsworthy regarding missions or multiplayer, please let me know. To send me an email: just click the "Send us your Feedback" link at the bottom of this page, and change the subject line to something like "News for Missions and Multiplayer."

Thanks!

The community is raving about the performance gains and other benefits of SP1. If you downloaded a European language version of SP1 though, there's a bug you may have encountered. If you choose "Air Traffic Controller" as your Role in a multiplayer session, you'll be faced with an "Aircraft Initialization Error" message and will be unable to use the Tower Controller feature in multiplayer.

We translate Flight Simulator into many languages, and in this case, part of a file got translated that shouldn't have. We apologize, and a fix is on the way! (Note that this error does not affect the English or Japanese versions of SP1.)

New non-English SP1 downloads should be posted early next week (hopefully on Monday). All you'll need to do to remedy the problem is uninstall the SP1 you installed and download and install the new one.