Sidney Schwartz is a long time flightsimmer who early in his career found that he enjoyed creating objects and scenery to enhance his flight simulator. Since that time he's created many scenery objects free for others to use as well as hundreds of airport sceneries to fly into. Learn more about how he got started and how he creates all this scenery by reading our interview.

The North America P-51D Mustang is one of the great airplanes of WWII and thanks to A2A Simulations Prepar3D pilots can fly a very realistic version in the Accu-Sim P-51D Military. Reviewer Raymond Andersen found it to be extraordinarily well modeled and termed it a "must have". Based on his findings we've given it our Award Of Excellence.

Those looking to move up to a modern 64-bit flight simulator for training and education will certainly be interested in Prepar3D v4 from Lockheed Martin. Having been built on the same base as Microsoft Flight Simulator (FSX) it will be familiar to many but has been updated in ways that take advantage of new hardware. Michael Hayward takes an overview of the sim to give you and idea of its strengths and weaknesses and help you decide if it's something for you.

Every copy of X-Plane comes with the utility Plane Maker that lets you create and fly your own aircraft. The creative process is quite rewarding and enjoyable but may seem daunting at first. In this tutorial Ray Hill shows that it's not as hard as you might imagine, as he walks you through the basic design steps. In this 4th and final part, he goes over creating the cockpit, paint scheme, tuning and adding weapons.

The Where In The World series challenge from Ron Blehm continues as readers have stepped up with a bunch of new destinations. Last month's location seems to have been difficult for people, though it was not in an exotic location. This month's location is pretty exotic, with some very unusual terrain. Can you figure out where it is?

The Piper Cherokee line is a classic, having been built with a variety of engines over many years and still in production today. Reviewer Shawn Weigelt takes a look at one of the current models, the Archer III for X-Plane by Just Flight. He finds the visuals and audio to be "great", the flight model is "outstanding" and that Just Flight has included an excellent set of documentation, making a great choice for the GA fan.

Being that the Spectr-Aero SP-30 is not the prettiest plane on the field, you might be tempted to not give it a look. But that would be a big mistake. Designer Mad Flight Studio has created what may well be the most detailed light aircraft ever made by X-Plane. It has the accurate flight model and 3D details you'd expect, but goes way beyond that with features that include aircraft maintenance, walk-around inspection, optional crop-dusting equipment and much more. You'll need to read Stuart McGregor's review to the end to learn about it all.

Sound is a part of flight experience that is sometimes overlooked, but it adds an important extra dimension to the realisim that we all seek. For nearly twenty years Aaron Swindle (Skysong Soundworks) has been supplying the flight simulator community with improved sounds. In this article he discusses various aspects of audio and how it applies to flight simulation, from the early days of basic loops to the complex sounds cones of today.

EGSG Stapleford Aerodrome is a busy general airfield not far from London. Orbx has recreated it for X-Plane with their usual high level of detail. Reviewer Bruno Esperanca was pleased with the results and says he would easily recommend this scenery.

After trying, over the years, all the flight simulators from FS2000 to Prepar3D, Robin Meyerowitz found that immersion is more important than realism and that FS2004 suited that need for him. To aid that, he discovered the Ford Tri-Motor Project put together by Garry J. Smith and Edward C. Moore. As he describes, the project is even more than just the history of the famous Tri-Motor but provides a variety of period resources to aid in that flightsim immersion.