FS2002 Reno Air Racing Package

By Phil Colvin (5 August 2002)

The shape of doom for the Third Reich

Cloud Dancer over Reno

I believe the best Mustang download in many ways for FS2000 is Roger Dial's, Mike Hambly's and Bruce Thorson's version of Chuck Yeagers "Glamorous Glen III", although Alain L'Homme's and Arnoud ten Haaft's "Petie 2nd" is better in some ways. And I was grateful that those planes also flew in FS2002, because they had still beaten anything up till now. But this time around Mr. Dial, teaming up with Mike Hambly, Steve Small, and Bill Browning, have given us a Mustang for FS2002 that nothing else so far can even come close to touching. And other contributors are making it even better!

The beautiful Miss America

Miss Kimberly - check out the Flight One Software decal!

I've always been in love with the looks of the P-51. Its appearance embodies the grace of a Spitfire, the deadly competence of a Bearcat and the futurism of a Fighting Falcon, all in one design. And this download's visual model does it justice - it is nothing short of superb. I grew up collecting books, art and photos and drawing pictues of WW2 fighters, and can tell instantly when any little detail isn't just right - and this one is just dead-bang on target. Mr. Dial's FS2000 version also had the overall shape extremely well done, but this time it's even better in many subtle ways like the smoother animation of the landing gear, the canopy, the engine exhausts, the scale of the pilot figure and the cockpit interior as viewed from outside the aircraft. The only fault I see worth correcting is with the propeller. When you view the spinning disk of the prop from the front it isn't quite a perfect circle, which is accentuated by the yellow band of the propeller tips.

The 2D cockpit is well done and includes a close-up "race panel" mode you can select to enlarge the windshield area.

The glory of polished aluminum

Marv Howell's and David Green's Miss Nebraska texture

The textures are very nice indeed. Almost every overlap, indentation and countersunk rivet is in place, and with just the right amount of impact to give more realism. Too much emphasis on such details makes many downloads look like die-cast metal toys that had been stamped a little too hard by the machinery that made them. Mr. Dial got it just right. And all four paint jobs are excellent. The package comes with "Cloud Dancer", "Miss Kimberly" and "Moonbeam McSwine" paint jobs, and special kudos in particular to Bill Browning for those beautiful "Miss America" textures. All of them take advantage of FS2002's ability to show reflective surfaces, so all the versions look like they've been freshly waxed (in WW2 ground crews used to do this to real Mustangs - it added 10 mph or more to the top speed). It's very nice to do aerobatics and see the reflections play across the airplanes' skin.

Also, numerous extra textures have been appearing for this Reno package from David Green and Bill Browning. I've got most of them - I count fourteen at the time of this article's submission - and my two favorites thus far are "Miss Nebraska" and the updated "Duck" file. Great job, Mr's. Green and Browning! By the way, two other add-ons for this package include Bill Browning's new prop for the "Miss America" texture and Michael C. Heyer's lights and switches package.

Is it real (left) or is it Roger Dial (right)?

Another big plus about all of this plane's textures is that they don't smear and blur with mip mapping activated on your 3D card, the way virtually all other planes' paint jobs do. I would love to know how they managed that!

The flight model by Steve Small is well tuned for use with FS2002 - a big plus. For example, the plane is trimmed perfectly for takeoff right off the bat. As I'm sure many of you have noticed, many downloads for FS2002 require an awful lot of nose up trim to get them to behave anything like the real aircraft. Not this time! If your system is like mine, you can just retract the wheels and let her accelerate into a gradual climb - not only without touching the trim but without even touching the stick. And accelerate she does! the readme file tells us that this musclebird is equipped with a souped-up, 3600 horsepower Merlin engine; the Merlins manufactured under license by Packard for the WW2 Mustangs had only 1490 horsepower available for takeoff, with a "war emergency" availability of 1720. Consequently you can do well over 400 mph at low altitude. But watch out! Accelerate too fast in a dive and the only way you can pull out of it is to add a notch of flaps. Otherwise you're going to purchase some real estate - and get a look at the damage modeling, which is pretty cool.

The sound is good - you get a nice throaty growl on advancing the throttle, and it certainly doesn't sound like another Cessna Skyhawk taking off! In short, this is a wonderful, wonderful download. I've said it before regarding other downloads: it never ceases to amaze me that so many talented people put so much labor into such great stuff and then give it away!

The only thing left that I'd add to this package to make it total nirvana would be a good virtual cockpit - and I've heard one may be coming!

David Green's updated Don Emerson texture for the package

Gorgeous detail!

In real life, there are fewer than 300 of the 15,486 Mustangs built by North American Aviation still in existence, and of those only around 145 are currently flying. Of those the most pampered, modified and well maintained are for the most part those that participate in the Reno Air Races. Although this is a prolific number compared to other great warbirds, it's still sad to see thier numbers decline. I hope Mr. Dial and company's wonderful contribution to the simming community will help to stave off that attrition by raising interest in these magnificent airplanes. Thanks, guys, for an absolutely terrific piece of freeware.

Phil Colvin
gimpyfoot1@yahoo.com

Download the Reno Air Racing Package.