Visual Flight/Getmapping VFR Photographic Scenery for England and Wales

By Andrew Herd (8 October 2002)

esterday, we were letting down from FL40 over the Forth (yep, in the UK, flight levels begin at 3000 feet - but then our mountains end at 4409 feet) when RAF Leuchars asked if we wanted to free call Perth, our destination. My friend replied that we had good Victor Mike and with that we looked out the window and grinned. Because we surely had, as I am sure you will agree if you check out the photo here. The field is on your right just level with the top of the strut on the near side of the plantation in the middle distance. I guess we were about five miles out and the shot doesn't really do it justice, because this is was one of the most beautiful views I have ever seen from a plane, with those rolling fields in the foreground and the foothills farther away and the sunlight dappling the stubble through the clouds and all in all it was just completely breathtaking.

You can imagine the view in Flight Simulator. Not quite the same wow factor. One of the few remaining problems with the sim is that it can't hope to provide super-realistic VFR flight without some kind of a miracle happening. I particularly noticed this on Saturday. We had come up to Perth from Teesside via a small parachuting field at Brunton, routing along the coast at 1500 feet, climbing at North Berwick and coasting out with flight information service from Leuchars, coasting in over the two finger like peninsulae at Earlsferry and then descending as we routed cross-country to pick up the Tay and then, finally, Perth itself. Perth is the most fantastic little field if you ever get a chance to go there, full of really friendly people, which was fortunate for us, as it turned out. On the way, as I gawped out the window, I thought about why it is you can't quite duplicate this kind of flight in FS; the problem being that you can't map read off the sectionals to what you see in the sim, unless there are some really major landmarks to go by. Most of the roads are missing, forests are in the wrong place (unless you use FSLandClass) and even lakes go AWOL.

I had a good opportunity to think some more about VFR in FS, because the 172 we hired for the day went tech in Perth and we had to return by train. Ironically, the railroad took almost exactly the same route back we flew out, which gave us plenty of time to reflect on how much faster planes are than trains, even thirty year old 172s.

With the default FS2002 install, VFR flight is possible, but it isn't easy, but with a revolutionary new product from Visual Flight and Getmapping, that is going to change, in the UK at least. This unique partnership is based on Getmapping's photographic survey of the UK, and the product displays textures derived from Getmapping's aerial photographs exactly where they should be in reality. So, when you take a flight from Humberside airport and go south-east, as I did here, you see every road, railway, village, abandoned airfield, wood, village, junkyard and harbor exactly where it should be. Can you go VFR? You bet.

This is a preview of a beta and I am not going to say much more, except that I will be extremely interested in seeing the finished product. Getmapping have a huge database of aerial photographs that covers much of Europe, as far as I am aware, and the possibilities are theoretically limitless. This is the sort of add-on that could make Flight Simulator a "must-have" for PPLs, because it is possible to recce routes in FS before you fly them in real life. It has already caused huge excitement in the simming world and deservedly so, because as you can see, it offers a pretty good idea of what the UK looks like from the air.

The beta presently covers a wedge of eastern and southern England, the apex being at Humberside. I get down there very rarely and I only belatedly got a digital camera, but I can assure you that the airfield shown in the top left of the four FS2002 screen shots - North Coates - looks exactly like that, because I flew over it about six weeks back. When I saw it in the add-on, I nearly choked. Yep, sure, the colors aren't exactly right, but this is more an effect of Flight Simulator's restricted palette than anything else and it isn't difficult to adjust to it. Given that the textures are derived from photographs, the colors are about as good as they are going to get, though studying them, I would have said that Getmapping haven't used their absolutely best quality photos.

Another issue is that the shots were taken at a fixed height and the textures get blurry when you get down too close, so don't expect to see every single blade of grass and mice dodging between them, but the effect is fine from a couple of thousand feet and impressive from five or ten thousand. Right now, there isn't any AutoGen either because of the way the textures work, but strangely enough, I didn't really miss it because even as a beta, the product so transforms FS so completely. An unexpected benefit is that there is an almost magically 3D effect to some of the textures, which must be a lighting effect.

So I'll leave you with the last shot - Brunton, the parachute field. This doesn't figure in the beta, being well north of Humberside. If it hadn't been for the railway line that runs alongside it (yeah, the one we came back home on, don't rub it in), we would have had a bit of trouble finding it. But if we had been able to check it out on this add-on first, it would have been an old friend before our wheels touched.

I'll keep you posted, but check out the Visual Flight web site (www.visualflight.co.uk) for news and information. This site has actively updated news, FAQs, alternative ordering information (including Getmapping offers), mailing list information and screenshots. It will soon have downloadable videos, forums, up-to-date compatibility information and much more.

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