In response to demand from the flight sim community, Thrustmaster is pleased to announce that it will now offer a standalone version of its A-10C attack aircraft flight stick replica specially designed for flight simmers.

With the release of the HOTAS Warthog™ Flight Stick, owners of the HOTAS Cougar™ stick and flight sim fans in general will be able to get a taste of the incredibly specific sensations provided by the stick of the A-10C, the U.S. Air Force’s famous attack aircraft. A replica of the plane’s control stick designed by Thrustmaster – creator of the original “Hands On Throttle And Stick” concept – and officially licensed by the U.S. government’s Department of the Air Force, the HOTAS Warthog™ Flight Stick is composed of a detachable metal handle which is also compatible with the base of the HOTAS Cougar™ stick (and vice versa), plus a base and a support plate.

Very comprehensive controls:

Thanks to a metal plate which can be detached from its base, the HOTAS Warthog™ Flight Stick can be used either on a desk or mounted in a cockpit. The activation pressure on the stick’s buttons and trigger is completely realistic. It features 19 action buttons in total, plus one 8-way “point of view” hat: 1 x 8-way “point of view” hat, 2 x 8-way hats, 1 x 4-way hat with push button, 1 x metal dual trigger, 2 x push buttons, 2 x pinkie push buttons. The stick includes a USB connector and also features upgradable firmware; what’s more, it’s ultra-stable (weighing in at more than 6.6 lbs/3 kg).

Featuring H.E.A.R.T. HallEffect AccuRate Technology™*, the stick provides surgical precision that won’t decrease over time! The 3D (Hall effect) magnetic sensors provide 16-bit resolution (65,536 x 65,536 values). A unique resistance system incorporating 5 springs ensures firm tension, perfectly smooth movements with no sticking points and no dead zone around the neutral position.

The HOTAS Warthog™ Flight Stick is also compatible with the T.A.R.G.E.T Thrustmaster Advanced pRogramming Graphical EdiTor™ software suite, available free for download. This innovative application lets you test, configure and program Thrustmaster® controllers including the HOTAS Warthog™, MFD Cougar, HOTAS Cougar™, T.16000M and HOTAS Warthog™ Flight Stick. The software is based on the drag-and-drop principle for total ease of use, and features different programming levels (Basic, Advanced and Script) – making it perfect for all users from newbies to the most diehard flight sim fans.

The HOTAS Warthog™ Flight Stick will be available from May 2013 at a suggested retail price of £229.99.

HOTAS™ is a trademark of Guillemot Corporation S.A.
(*) Patent pending.

ASN are excited and a little proud too, to offer you Aerosoft Sim News X-Plane or in short ASN XP.

Their goal is to offer different kind of X-Plane news items in addition to weekly columns, interviews, articles about how things work and much more. They also plan to create the ultimate X-Plane Gateway. A knowledge centre to source all X-Plane developers, publishers, freeware sites etc.

ASN XP also offers software and hardware reviews of the many products, freeware and payware!

You can view the new site here.

Ground Environment X World Edition

The NEW easy-to-use interface makes installing the new textures even easier, and is designed with Flight1′s “keep-it-simple yet powerful” philosophy.

•     Automated detection of GEX regions as they are added as well as UTX regional products.
•     Automated one click/browse move of backup directory with free space verification.
•     Refined update system which checks for updates of all products at once.
•     Automated install order of GEX regions as they are added or removed.
•     Single interface readout and control for all GEX region products.
•     NO INSTALL orders or specific install directories to deal with.
•     Install different GEX regions to any location on your system.
•     Direct product links from the interface to add new regions.
•     Real time region status interface readout.
•     Universal user manual for all products.

Regions have had major changes and new features added too. For example, Europe now comes to life with brighter colours, unique autogen, and so much more.

New in GEX World Edition Europe:

•     75% of primary northern Europe textures replaced with new source data.
•     25% of secondary rough terrain textures replaced with new source data.
•     Improvements in colour and tone to southern Europe texture sets.
•     Upgrades to forest and tree tile sets for colour and tone.
•     Upgrades to GEX replacement tiles for UTX Europe.

To see the updates and further information, view the appropriate product pages here:

Ground Environment X World Edition – Europe

Ground Environment X World Edition – North America

Ground Environment X World Edition – Atlantic & Pacific Tropics

Ground Environment X World Edition – Africa & Middle East

And the BEST NEWS!

If you already own any Ground Environment X region as boxed or download, you can upgrade that region ABSOLUTELY FREE by visiting the Ground Environment X support forum here.

Boxed edition owners can convert to a ‘download’ version containing the update free of charge by following the instructions provided. Be aware the downloads for each region are around 2 Gb each.

Flight1 have now released boxed versions of the new ‘Ground Environment X World edition’ for Europe, North America, Atlantic & Pacific Tropics and the Africa & Middle East regions, with Asia & South America to follow in boxed format very soon. The Australia & Antarctica region is in production for download initially followed by a boxed edition later.

The videos take a flight from Gatwick to Amsterdam Schipol in the DC-9 and not only give a great overview of the Cooslsky DC-9 aircraft features but also instructs you on how to fly SIDs and STARs using basic radio navigation techniques.

If you haven’t seen any Frooglesim videos before, check these videos out and subcribe to his channel. The range of videos on the channel  present a fantastic overview of many aircraft and are also very entertaining in style.

Part One covers the basics, part two is flying a SID from Gatwick and part three covers the STAR and approach into Amsterdam.

Both of these models are FREE to existing owners of the FSX Virtavia B-24 Liberator package, just log in to your SimStop Store account and visit the B-24 boxed or B-24 download product page. The download link is at the very bottom of the page.

The Virtavia B-24 for FSX MUST be installed already for the expansion aircraft to work.

These are external model expansions only. The default B-24 VC is still used, in very slightly modified form.

For those wishing to modify the textures, the paintkit files used to create the new models’ textures are available in the Paint Kits section in the Virtavia Freeware area.

“MEBAR 2013″ is an event in the Great Air Rallies Grand Prix series conceived by Bluegrass Airlines.

The rally will be held over the Easter holiday period (Hence its name!) commencing on the 23^rd of March 2013 and finishing on the 7^th April 2013. A dedicated web site opens on the 1^st March for Pilot registrations.

MEBAR will provide an event for flight simulation pilots of all skill levels, from the novice to the more experienced pilots, to test their flight and navigation skills.  The flights involve either and / or a combination of VOR, NDB and “dead reckoning” navigating under day Visual Flight Rule (VFR) and / or Instrument Flight Rule (IFR) conditions. Variable departure times and weather conditions will also exist for each flight.

MEBAR consists of 5 Legs around the UK taking in England and Wales, starting and finishing at our spiritual home of Southampton EGHI or “Mutley Field” as it is known to locals!  There’s a test flight to be completed prior to registration to establish your aircraft type and cruising speed; We’ll be keeping it simple by asking you to select either a single or twin prop aircraft.

Further details of the test flight, rally route, rules, PIREPs, etc., can be found by clicking on the navigation tabs at the top of the MEBAR 2013 website pages. A dedicated forum section is open now for Q&A’s, chat and screenshots etc.

We are delighted to announce that our sponsors again for this year’s event is SimStop.com powered by Flight1 who have generously donated 5  of their published flight sim titles for a prize draw.

We’ve all had such an enjoyable time in our last two events that we couldn’t wait to get this year’s event under way! So, fire up your sim (FS9 or FSX) and get cracking on the Test Flight! MEBAR 2013, the fun starts here!

Find out more about MEBAR 2013 here.

Joe Lawford
Mutley’s Hangar

The article makes many interesting statements and comparisons such as:

“To be honest, if you compare the default FSX with default X-Plane 10, X-Plane is much further ahead. That’s not so strange if you consider that X-Plane 10 is pretty new and FSX is already many years old.”

You can read the full article here.

You can try X-Plane 10 free by downloading a demo, so if you haven’t tried it yet, why not take a look. It has quite a steep learning curve as it works very differently to FSX and FSX users want to scream in exasperation as they try to learn a completely different set of keyboard commands, but with commercial expansions such as the ATR 72-500 and the various Airport sceneries like Airport Toulouse (the home of ATR) for X-Plane coming onto the market, the balance could be starting to turn in X-Plane’s favour. After all, FSX was released in 2006 with many complaints from users and never did get all of the bugs fixed. FSX certainly doesn’t take advantage of all the hardware developments and graphics card improvements we have today whereas X-Plane is a continuously evolving simulation bang up to date with the latest technology and will only get better.

So putting my crystal ball into the X-Plane wind tunnel and seeing how the air shapes… 2013 will see major changes to the balance of power held by FSX.

New products are being added daily, so check out the New Products tab in the SimStop store for the latest additions. The first few products are already live, so why not download the Airbus X Extended and experience the high standard Aerosoft have set.

Keep an eye on the New Products tab and watch the range grow.

Ground Environment X has received a massive overhaul with amazing new textures and a new interface that synchronises all products in the range and even notifies you of any future updates as they become available. As the product downloads are very large files measured in Gigabytes rather than megabytes, Flight1 will be releasing new boxed editions of the products in the GEX range.

Also due for release in the next few weeks is a boxed edition of the DC-9 classic. This aircraft is not just an airliner simulator, it is a complete training package that teaches you how to operate the systems, how to navigate using radio navaids and even displays schematics showing the effects of operating a switch… all live in the cockpit as you fly.

The radio navigation trainer is worth its weight in gold no matter what aircraft you fly and we recommend this as a must have product for 2013. The aircraft itself is a pleasure to fly and will certainly hone your piloting skills. You will not input your flight into a flight management computer then sit back while it flies the route for you. With an incredibly ‘basic’ autopilot, the entire flight is in your hands. Thrust management… manual. Navigation… manual. Lateral and vertical control… even the autopilot requires manual control to get the aircraft to do what you want.

This aircraft takes you back to being a pilot instead of a button pushing bus driver.

QualityWings will have the update to provide the 100, 200 and 300 models available towards the end of the first quarter completing the QualityWings Ultimate 146 Collection. This is a free update for existing owners of the previously released Avro RJ models for FS9 and FSX.

If you are not sure where you want to fly your new aircraft, try Ideal Flight to create your flight plan and generate weather. A new update is getting very close to release which promises some very nice new features and additions.

And of course the long awaited Airbus X Extended from Aerosoft will be available in boxed edition in the SimStop store very soon.

All in all, an exciting start to the new year! We just wish it was the Christmas holiday again so we had some spare time to fly.

Orders cannot be processed between those dates, so please get your order in quick to avoid tears on Christmas day!

On behalf of all at Flight1 and SimStop, we wish you a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.