Aerial view of the Florida Keys

[Les]

Every Winter many of you go crazy until warm weather comes, here are some aerial views of the Florida Keys to think about.

http://www.edtruthan.com/tileproxy/keys/floridakeys.htm




 

[mrb]

And a great big thank you for that adventure

mrb

[Craig Weis]

Thank you: So cool, so inviting, good graphics on a wonderful subject.
The pics are from a 'flying on the computer' program? Good program better then the El Cheapo I have. But that was just a DVD for $10, but still fun.

skip.

[Brian 1851]

     Great pictures.  Makes you want to take up flying.  Thank you for the pictures

[Nicolina]

I've been flying small planes for 10 years. It is true one can often get a beautiful view from above, taking pictures is hard (vibration, plexiglass, etc). The pictures in this serious have clearly been doctored. I suspect the plane was superimposed on digitally enhanced aerial shots. Some of the shots would be impossible without expensive modifications to the airframe. Also, the plane carries a UK registration. I doubt someone would bring a UK-registered Cessna Skyhawk to the US to fly the Keys.

Nice pictures nonetheless - makes me want to sail the Keys!

[tmorgan]

That was just a great show.  thanks

[rwdsr]

LOL - thjose aren't real pictures.  They're screen shots taken from Flight Simulator 10.  I've got it on my computer right here and can "fly" that route anytime I want to.  The reason that plane has UK markings is that it's probably the particular model plane that person likes to fly, with those markings.  I've got an Italian plane and a Canadian jet in my stable of planes I can fly.  It sure looks real though doesn't it?

[Nicolina]

Flight simulators have come a long way apparently! I never used them, but the pictures are incredibly real.

[Salty19]

Flight sim Ten has pretty good graphics for a $20 program.  However the quality of your video card, memory and monitor play a big role in terms of how the picture looks.  As does the cable type you choose for the monitor (HDMI is the best, then DVI).

I've flown over they keys in the Grumman seaplane on Flight Sim Ten.  Fun to do flybys and follow A1A. Other nice place to fly on that program is in western africa, Madagascar and Columbia.

[rwdsr]

I have been following the young couple that saile to the Bahamas in a CP 23, and as I was looking at Bimini, I saw an airstip!  Aha! Next time I get on Flight Sim, I'm gonna fly from Miami to the Bahamas.

[Salty19]

Well I went ahead and installed the Tile Proxy program to work with Flight Simulator X.  After hours of fiddling with it to make it work, it's really quite incredible to see nearly life-like images of the terrain go by as you fly.   The only problem I see with it is if you're flying a fast plane, the scenery cannot keep up with the plane movement.  The barron 350 is about the quickest plane that works well, but you can't climb to 20,000 feet and run 200knots...well you can but the scenery won't update as quickly as you want it to. 

A very good computer, video card, monitor and fast internet connection is required to make the experience be a good one. You also need a lot of free hard drive space as the images are constantly being downloaded in flight.   I have an E8700 Intel procesor (3.14 ghz, dual core),  high end gigabyte motherboard (P45 based), 8 gbs of 1066mhz ram running in dual channel mode, two 1Tb SATA II based harddrives running RAID 5, an ATi based video card (HD7890, I think) with 1Gb onboard memory, dual LCD monitors and enough cooling (5 case fans, 1 power supply fan, 1 CPU fan) to keep it running under any situation.  Motherboard is not overclocked for reliability reasons.   You can get by with less me thinks, but a multi-core processor and at least 2gb of ram should be considered a minimum.

Some basic tips to make it work (I'm using Windows 7 Professional, 64-bit)
-Turn off all firewalls
-Turn off internet gatekeepers
-Boot up after the bios screen using the F8 key..select allow unsigned drivers (or something like that)
-Install program. 
-Set tile proxy to run as administrator and in WinXP 32 bit compatibility mode.
-Run Tile Proxy Program. If running correctly, it will say ready for flight.  If not, it will not work.
-Run Flight simulator.


It will be slower to bring up your flight but I can still run about 50 frames per second (varies on the terrain).

Give it a try if you meet the requirements on their website and want to experience it.  Think you'll like it.