One of the annoyances I’ve had so far is the lack of broadcast towers in the sim. They are about the best VFR reference we could have.
I went to where I knew one was today and found the squished guyed tower lines on the ground but it looked as if it were purposefully erased from the Bing images. They are there in actual Bing. The annoying in sim POIs weren’t even there for them. I feel like I remember flying sims 20 years ago that had towers.
Are there any community mods for this?
In the US, there is a wealth of tower data from both the FAA and FCC. This includes AGL, paining and lighting info. All enough to build out a good model.
I also have worked in the tower industry, so even more an annoyance for me. 
This is exactly what you’re looking for, if they’ve already created coverage for your region (from what I remember, so far they’ve done Europe/Africa and North/South America.
It really is amazing how much the inclusion of towers, smokestacks, powerlines etc. makes pilotage so much more accurate.
https://flightsim.to/file/16674/we-love-vfr-region-2
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Thanks, will give it a try!
Even on land, I get a good idea where I am given those some of those 1,000+ foot towers.
That was a nice addition! The tower lighting types seem to be a bit generic, one of HID lighted towers seems to have the traditional red lights.
But it really helps me get my bearings.
Speaking of broadcast towers… I really wish we could pick up the medium-wave signals from 540 khz to 1600 khz for use as an NDB. As it is, the ADF is pretty much useless except for the occasional low frequency NDB transmitter, fast becoming scarce in the real world.
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That would be cool. If you tune in a radio station you could hear a ultra low quality version of the menu music, or you could put audio files into the community folder that would get played on radio.
Wouldn’t that be fun? Just like the “old days”…
Agreed; I found and installed it when I wanted to do some pure-pilotage flights in the Stearman model. I was actually surprised at how much they enhanced the Immersion. Not just radio towers too. Following high-tension power lines to where they cross the highway etc… good stuff.
I loaded up at the little airport in the IL town I grew up in, KJOT. It’s very flat there, and the skyline as soon as you get airborne (and often on the ground) is dominated by the tall dual smokestacks of the Commonwealth Edison coal-fired power plant to the southeast. It really looked strange with those missing, and it was surprisingly cool to get them back ;).
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The “we love vfr” guys are incredible
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*guy. @PuffinFlight is a single dev as far as I know. Makes the work that much more incredible
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I know nothing of developing the models but I’ve worked with tower databases enough. Left a message with the dev to see if tower lighting types could get added. I’ll probably drop a donation too. Many people don’t appreciate how much work something like that takes. The FCC database, probably where it’s sourced for US, can be a mess.
I was thinking of developing a model as a try. There is a local water tower that looks really bad in the sim.
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Yeah, I’m a single person developer with supporting and helpful wife 
Ah, the glorious FAA data. With all the details and masts still in the database despite being demolished 10 years ago, or coordinates off by 700 meters 
Joking aside my add-on includes both OpenStreetMaps and FAA data so the coverage in USA is quite good.
In case of lights it is a bit complicated. For now we have very limited options in case of lights outside of airports. We can’t use those nice orbs visible from long distance. We can’t set up blinking lights to be visible only at day or night because of a bug. Etc. Some of these could be fixed by using simobjects instead of scenery objects but those are more taxing on performance and have serious issues with setting AGL height, so they are useless for masts or chimneys.
There is a talk about opening more complex lightning options for sceneries outside the airports. We just need to wait and see.
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Thanks so much for your work, it really enhances the sim! Happy new year!
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Haven’t had time to read through all the details but this looks good. Is there any impact on fps and does the smoke blow according to the wind strength and direction?
no performance impact that I’ve noticed, and yes, the smoke blows according to the winds.
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LOL, I’ve worked with the the data for both aviation and telecom projects. I remember the flat files often had corrupted records that made loading a real pain.
They still have issues. And combining it with OSM made it extra tricky. That’s why I’ve settled with FAA data and didn’t add another mess in form of FCC data to it all.
Just sent a little donation through. Every time I see a landmark now I’m happy you made this!
FAA data is probably better and focused for air aviation anyway.
FCC has so many proposals and takedowns with many of the statuses just being bad. I had a process that were constantly crashing as the FCC CSV files had rows with different numbers of columns.
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Small update is coming hopefully this month that will add very unique obstacle for Region 2. Only 8 places, but veeeery “tall”.
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Yes, Agree and a NDB Approach while under the hood was always a good test of situational awareness. I had a great flight instructor, although he really stressed me out from time to time. Smile
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