Countries I know NOTHING about.

[flaminghotsauce]

There are places on this planet that are really not in my daily thoughts, and I would never thing to go flying there. This is one of the really cool things about flight simulators, learning geography.

While messing with settings, (I enabled DX10 Preview to check it out) I was checking out Gibraltar last week, and from that decided to fly on up the coast of Spain. I crossed over to the west coast and headed north. I landed somewhere, saved my flight and left.

Today I reopened that flight and continued on. I didn't notice when I'd crossed into Portugal, but I carried on until I found Lisbon. I saw a large building and a bridge, so I headed over that way. It turned out to be the Pestana palace, I think. There is a suspension bridge that turns out to be a sister bridge to the Golden Gate bridge. Same seismic considerations in the construction. Then there is the castle! Castelo de Sao Jorge is there in very nice detail!
There is the Catholic statue, the Christo-Rei, on the south end of the Tagus river suspension bridge depicting Christ the King.
Soccer fields! One I noticed had the grass torn up in front of the goals.

I've set off on Yahoo and Wikipedia searches since landing at the Lisbon Portella airport (LPPT). History and Geography. I am back in school!

What an unexpected jewel out there in the world that I'd never considered flying before!

[Ed Burke]

Spot on Flame, I've learned more geography since taking up flight sim than I had gleaned in the preceding 50 years.

Right now a couple of my neighbors have gone on a tour, I am tagging along. Brisbane, Singapore, Beijing by air. Then train through Mongolia to join up with the Trans-Siberian to Moscow. More train to St Petersburg and Helsinki before flying home. I am doing the train travel by Luscombe Silvaire, low and slow as Grannie said to do it.

Of course the web is such a great scource of info and there is all this detail about the places I fly by. Shortly to tackle the Gobi Desert on the way to Ulaan Baatar, the Mongolian capital.

Go get 'em, Ed

[Joe]

One of my favorites was re-flying the route for "The Hump" of WWII. It was a supply route from India to Burma.

Others have been Tasmania and New Zealand.

[flaminghotsauce]

I've been meaning to do a low and slow tour of New Zealand. It's where the Lord of the Rings was filmed, and our family are big fans of that epic. It's Middle Earth.

[Ed Burke]

Make sure you get some really good NZ mesh as the country, especially the South Island, is spectacular and the default mesh is a trifle underdone. But then I fancy you had a look recently.

Ed

[flaminghotsauce]

some folks on my route at work are going to be moving away for three years. They are going to do missionary work in Micronesia. I'm going to have to do a little exploration. I wonder if they have any Cessna 172s on the island?

[flaminghotsauce]

Tasmania! I never knew it was a state of Australia. I was just poking around on google maps and scrolled down there, having never looked at it before. About all I ever knew about Tassie is that Tasmanian Devil creature. I read it's population is declining badly due to some disease they share when they fight over carrion by scratching up each other's faces, thus spreading whatever infection.

It seems there are lots of British there, duh. I should have figured that, I just never thought about it. There is MUCH much much emphasis on nature and preservation of their parks and natural beauty-scape. Power generation there is apparently quite a political struggle. There was a massacre where someone went nuts and killed 35 people, so they now have the strictest gun laws in Australia. There are bus tours one can avail themselves of, one was a 15 day bus tour. That sounds like a blast. The weather looks pretty accommodating, too. on the 42 degree latitude, that's pretty much where I am, only with oceans all around to moderate the temps.

I've got a Tasmania Tour set up in FSX starting toward the top of the island, I forgot the airport name, and I'm going to make a trip around the beaches, all the way around first. Then, I plan on touring the interior, checking out all the lakes and mountains.

The colors, or should I say colours, are very lush and green on FSX, moreso than my local area, and so much so that I started wondering whether my freshly installed Acceleration Pack changed the colours. Or maybe it's just the colour that it is down there, I don't know.

After this, I still haven't been east to New Zealand and it's calling my name too.

[flaminghotsauce]

Just an update on Tasmania: ORBX is now giving away Tasmania as a demo.

[proptwister]

Yes and it is quite good. Used in the GAAR. I'm using Google Earth while flying Canada's BC clicking on the photos in the map, what an education.CYLW-CYKA IS OUTSTANDING.