The PA31T Cheyenne II is a bigger and more powerful plane than most of the GA aircraft in the Carenado hangar. For pilots who are ready for the challenge, reviewer Shawn Weigelt found that they will get a plane that is gorgeous to look at both in and out, with just the right amount of wear to make it look authentic. It flies accurately according to the book values too, letting you travel with the speed and power that only a twin turboprop can provide.

Since flying involves travel through an ever changing sky, making that sky more realistic has long been a goal for flightsimmers. HiFi Technologies specializes in this area and in this review Meng Yu looks at their Active Sky Cloud Art, which provides a variety of amazing visual sky themes not otherwise available. It's best combined with the separately available Active Sky weather engine, which gives you a much more realistic overall weather experience with lots of options.

Trevor Guest (aka "TDG") has created a wide range of popular freeware scenery for X-Plane, mostly of nicely detailed airports. In our interview learn how he first got interested in flight simulator through FSX and then moved to X-Plane. His life-long interest in aviation shows in his creations which he is glad to share with the community.

Madrid Barajas Airport makes for a great destination for Prepar3D v4 pilots wishing to visit Spain. Thanks to Sim-Wings some great scenery is awaiting you there in Mega Airport Madrid Professional. This series, published by Aerosoft, brings highly detailed airports to your flight simulator. Our reviewer MrYorkiesWorld, enjoyed his visit and shares what he found in text, pictures and video.

For pilots who want to be fast but agile, a small bizjet is the ideal ride. Carenado provides a great choice for X-Plane pilots with their S550 Citation II. Reviewer Rohan Nair takes up the duties of a corporate pilot and finds the visual fidelity and quality downright excellent. He does find some issues with a few things but overall is pleased with the aircraft.

Manchester Airport is one of the busiest in England, and a great destination for X-Plane pilots. Reviewer Paul Mort takes a look at the version created by Aerosoft and likes what he sees. As a local to the real airport, he has a good chance to compare how well it has been recreated for flight simulator use.

If you've learned to use Plane Maker, you know how to create and add aircraft of your own design to X-Plane. But Plane Maker's built-in abilities limit the shapes you can use. To create truly realistic aircraft you need to go beyond Plane Maker and use a 3D CAD program like SketchUp to create the parts you need. In this tutorial Ray Hill goes over the basics of how such parts are created and then integrated into Plane Maker aircraft.

It has now been a year since Flight Sim World shut down. In this Op-Ed, Michael Hayward looks back at the history of the flight simulator, how it came about, what was good and bad about it, and what ultimately went wrong that lead to its failure.

Aerosoft offers quite a collection of major world airports as part of their "Mega Airport" scenery series. Today reviewer MrYorkiesWorld tries Mega Airport Rome, which is designed for FSX and Prepar3D. Though not one of the new airports in the series he still rated it highly, finding it was a very good replica of the real world airport. His video and review will tell you all about it.

If you've learned to use Plane Maker, you know how to create and add aircraft of your own design to X-Plane. But Plane Maker's built-in abilities limit the shapes you can use. To create truly realistic aircraft you need to go beyond Plane Maker and use a 3D CAD program like SketchUp to create the parts you need. In this tutorial Ray Hill goes over the basics of how such parts are created and then integrated into Plane Maker aircraft.