To begin with, I absolutely love the Tante Ju and the fact that you’re going to produce historic aircraft from the various regions, however…
…I couldn’t help but wonder if this process might be made better if it included a historic/period authentic airport associated with each aircraft.
Taking off from the modern Tempelhof (with it’s modern runways, trees and very basic terminal building kind of kills the thrill of the “historic” theme.
I’m new to the community and don’t know if this is the correct place to make such a suggestion, but I do think it would be a major improvement to the historic aircraft series if they included an associated period airport.
I feel this is fertile ground for the sim. Getting some golden age airports that are no more sounds like something that the community would love to make. Might be kind of tough to do super-accurately.
I remember fsx having a couple.
I would like this for the Isle of Man as it had two RAF bases and the historic Hall Caine airport, all of them no longer operational except a glider school at Andreas. The Jurby bomber command still has a couple of (barely) usable runways although you wont find it marked on the sim’s World map.
This was done in FS9 with the Golden Wings and Silver Wings packages. They were a large set of airports reworked back to vintage times, along with some other mods that I can’t remember. They basically reverted the sim backwards. I don’t think this would be practical with MSFS.
Yes, we need Jurassic airports.
Le Bourget as Lindbergh saw it in 1927, Tempelhof as in 1948/49 during Berlin’s blocus, Biggin Hill during WWII, and so much more.
It’s a great idea.
I’d love to see some more vintage-state fields for the sim. I doubt if we can get to Golden Wings standard (which had a whole new set of ground textures and turned off modern roads as well as replaciing airports) but there are great opportuinities for the add-on community here. Maybe we need an “MSFS Golden Age” initiative to bring together those interested? There’s already a reproduction of the old radio-range navigtion aid that was used in the States & Canada in the 40’s and 50’s available at Flightsim.to (https://flightsim.to/file/21201/radio-range-navigation).
Very good idea! I think some kind of historic mode would really live up to my imagination. I wonder however how to properly work this out as all the surroundings are of course very differently from say the late '40s. I think a creative team can probably think out some nice expansion pack with historic airports and scenery.
Practical no but fun yes. Obviously only the airports could be redone properly but there are still plenty of rural locations where architecture has changed little (including the Isle of Man which by nature is a pretty sandboxed environment and the not too distant Mac loop in North Wales)
Actually, there is a payware airport that does exactly this. It has a current version and a historic version. When you set the date before the remodel, you get the older version of the airport. I can’t recall which airport that was off the top of my head though.
I was a great fan of the Golden and Silver age projects, however, I don’t believe it would even be close to possible in MSFS give how scenery is generated.
I’m not even suggesting there be multiple period airports, just one specific to the historic aircraft. In this case I do suggest Tempelhof because of it’s connection to the Ju-52 but also because it’s closed.
Just like if they (or anyone) were to do a DC3, LaGuardia isn’t closed by Floyd Bennett is and could be the site of a period airport suitable to the DC3.
I know someone is working on the Boeing 314. That would be even easier; either restore the original PanAm terminal in Miami or put a replica of it in a suitable, nearby location.
Catch is that a lot of these airfields, golden as they were, are now residential or industrial areas or now have motorways running through them and that would need the whole surroundings altered. Think Croydon, Heston, or from slightly more recent times, Burtonwood, Moreton Valence or Brockworth. It is a great idea though.
The old Golden/Silver Wings and Ford Tri Motor projects had some really great sceneries for the time. Golden Age Simulations also had a few period airfields included in some of their FSX releases as well as a nice Old Rhinebeck which is one of those ‘living museums’ which hark back to an early age which I quite enjoyed. I vaguely recall some old WW2 RAF airfields for either FS9 or FSX too. There are some Pacific WW2 airfields over on flightsim.to but most of them look rather basic so I’ve not given them a go.
On the other hand there’s an old airfield near me that’s included in the sim as fully active by default despite being closed for almost ten years now and the runway mostly torn up. That kinda counts right? lol.
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