Silent Wings Simulator 1.06 review

Silent Wings Simulator game is a highly realistic flight simulator, designed to give high training value for soaring pilots as well a

License: Shareware File size: 30588K Developer: Silent Wings AS

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Silent Wings Simulator game is a highly realistic flight simulator, designed to give high training value for soaring pilots as well as great fun for everyone interested in flight simulation.

The dynamic behavior is based on accurate models from computational aerodynamics, and new techniques for terrain modeling support sceneries of virtually unlimited size and detail.

Learn how to keep control during extreme maneuvers or climb the thermals into the fully volumetric cumulus clouds. Experience the excitement of low altitude hang-flying along spectacular mountain ridges, or simply load a GPS log to replay your own or your fellow pilot’s real life flight.

Aerodynamics

The aerodynamics in the simulator is governed by true physical principles in that the force field acting on the glider is computed from local air flow over the wing profiles as well as position and movement of the control surfaces (elevator, aileron, rudder). The force field is represented by a multitude of local force vectors giving rise to correct behavior, even in “asymmetric situations” like for example side-slip, stall, aero towing and entrance into thermals.

Sceneries

The sceneries in Silent Wings are based on a breakthrough in level-of-detail (LOD) technology that integrates triangulated topographic models, terrain textures, linear features and physical objects in a unified framework geared towards real time visualization. This technology scales almost perfectly with data sizes and allows in principle any resolution for real time rendering.

Weather

The weather model is constructed through realistic simulation of the physical systems for thermals and wind layers. Thermals are based on ground heat capacity models deduced from spectral analysis of certain satellite images. With this as a basis the complete thermal cycle, including rise of warm air, build-up of cumulus clouds, inflow of cool air, and evaporation of the cumulus clouds, is simulated to give high visual and physical realism.

In fact, the user can judge ground, wind and cloud characteristics in the same way as he does during real physical soaring, and find that the atmospheric properties behave as he would expect.

Aircraft

Silent Wings contains 4 flyable aircraft ranging from the sturdy G-103 Twin II trainer to the open class Antares self-launcher. All aircraft have animated moving parts and fully functional 3D cockpits. The wings are flexing naturally in respons to the aerodynamic situation.

The current library of aircraft is planned to be extended, not only with sailplanes, but also other types of flying vehichles.

Requirements:
Operating System: Linux (2.4 or higher)
3D Graphics card required (min. 32Mb graphics memory)
800MHz Processor
256Mb RAM
2.5Gb Available HD space

For Linux systems, we recommend NVIDIA graphics hardware.

Limitations:
Free evaluation in a 2 week period

What's New in This Release:
multiplayer added
a couple of new aircraft
more scenery
new UI
lots of bugfixes and new functionalities