USA EAST by Jim Ross 71333,1071 The first installment of SubLOGIC's long-awaited USA scenery has finally arrived, some time after the original promised release date, but when you see it, you'll understand why. . . . So far we have USA EAST, and USA WEST is due out later this year (the dividing point is approximately the Mississippi river). EAST, like the earlier Instrument Pilot's Scenery (also by SubLOGIC), claims to have all the paved public access airports in the continental US, and all VORs and other appropriate navaids (ILS systems, NDBs, LOMs, etc.). Indeed my experience is that it has even more than IPS: several military bases, for example. But the main thing is that this is IPS *plus scenery* (IPS only has airports and navaids, not even coastlines, let alone rivers and roads). And that scenery is as good as the best in the SD series, such as SD-12 (New York, Montreal, Halifax). Not as detailed as the California Collection or Great Britain, but still pretty dense. As a matter of fact it is sufficiently large that USA EAST must be run with a special driver, which, like CALFIX.DRV (for the California Collection), enables a larger scenery buffer (at least that's what I think it does). As for frame rate, it appears to me to be quite similar to that which one gets in SD-12. Anyway here we have detailed and accurate coastlines, *lots* of roads, rivers (many of the larger ones are real rivers, not just blue lines), a good many railroads, and buildings scattered hither and yon. Often just generic skyscrapers in major cities, but sometimes the real thing, as in easily-identified places like NYC and Washington. Furthermore out in the country you don't have just plain green grass. There are typical geographic features, such as limestone ridges, swamps, and the like: these are generic, but appropriate for the area. Bridges seem to be emulated with a line of transmission towers. Lots of water towers, occasional grain elevators, cooling towers (the ones I've seen are really in the right place), radio towers, and the so forth. I have *never* found any completely blank areas (but we're in the east; I don't know about my home state, Nebraska!). Mountains are quite nice: all green, grey, and blank. And interesting at night: black with grey lines outlining the ridges. Speaking of night (and dusk). Here is where USA shines, so to speak. City polygons in contrasting colors (right shape, too), and lines of city lights. These lights are not just the usual yellow dots, which we can do with ASD and SEE, but multi-colored. In an area which has several cities in a row, such as Miami to Jacksonville, the effect is extremely striking (this is what brought forth the "oohs" and "aahs" at a preliminary showing in Ithaca). A lot of the day/dusk/night effects which we associate with SEE are built in, including blue lights lining taxiways at the major airports. Airports are quite detailed, with *real* (not generic) taxiways and tarmac, proper night lighting approaches, and at least a tower and terminal building, if not all outlying structures. For the larger places, anyway: often just a strip elsewhere. No windsocks, though . Along with USA EAST you get a completely new NFL (New Facilities Locator). This is a great improvement on its predecessors. ILS frequencies by runway are listed right under the main airport entry, and can easily be clicked and tuned. When you click on the main entry for an airport, you get, in addition to the usual runway orientations (as well as dimensions), information on radio frequencies (ATIS, clearance, departure, ground, etc.), and field elevation. This is no doubt information used by ATP (see below), but it's nice to have with FS, too. For ILS approaches, you can specify which you want to use if it is a case of two identical frequencies for parallel runways, or a case where the reciprocals have the same frequency. Other features, which will seem a bit strange to some, are that by hitting ALT-F1 (in ATP: CTRL-1 in FS) you see a huge blue and white upside-down cones marking the geographic position of all VORs in range; ALT-F2 is NDB's; ALT-F3, F4, and F5 markers for runways; and ALT-F6 (CTRL-#s for FS) the glideslope for ILS- equipped runways. And, within the NFL, you can specify that you would like to see an approach pattern: a set of red arrows with recommended slope, turn for base, final, etc., somewhat like EFIS but better. As I say, a little strange: not exactly real life, but no doubt a help at least for beginners. After installing USA EAST, you will find still another item under Menu 5, namely USA Flight Assignments. This is obviously for ATP (again more below), but when used with FS, at least you are put at a takeoff runway for the assignment in question. A Flight Assignment for Pittsburgh to Champaign supplied with the program, but you can make your own. You do the latter by getting into your NFL subdirectory and hitting "FA" which runs the FA.EXE program; just follow directions, and you'll have a new Flight Assignment. And the charts. These are up to and even exceed the excellence of the charts for the California Collection and Great Britain. There are six charts (front/back for north/south) for USA EAST, printed five colors, giving a very nice impression of land masses, water, mountains, roads, railroads, runways, navaids, state lines, lines of equal magnetic variation, etc. The scale is 1:1,000,000. However, there is no documentation, other than the charts themselves and the NFL; no list of airports, navaids, etc. I'm glad I still have my IPS lists. Now finally: USA and ATP. All of this scenery can also be used with ATP, of course, and the NFL material as well. The big difference here is that Flight Assignments which are included (PIT->CMI) or which you create can, in ATP, either be flown free- hand, like previous ATP assignments, or flown automatically. In the first case you are judged by your faithfulness to the flight plan, deviations, efficient use of fuel, etc.; Roger knows and will give you a score. In the latter case, you get audible and visible ATC instructions, and Jack takes you right up to final approach. In other words, you are no longer confined to the 26 major airports provided by ATP, but can fly anywhere to anywhere. In this respect I suspect USA EAST with ATP is emulating the kind of thing which, I understand, can be done with Simon Hradecky's great utilities, now up in library 3/Air Transport of the FSFORUM. USA EAST and its drivers take up a lot of memory, and I find that I can't run FS at high resolution (800 x 600 for me), and that even at somewhat more normal resolution, I have to cut down a bit on the amount of static memory allowed for ASD scenery. I'm still experimenting a bit here, but I find that 50000 static and minimal dynamic ASD is about as far up as I can go. I will be discussing these matters in an article on ASD and USA which will appear in MicroWINGS. No matter. USA EAST already has so much that ASD files, even enhanced in SEE, will need to be a good deal smaller. A few more buildings at airports (you already have the taxiways, tarmac, tower, and terminal buildings), an occasional mountain (here USA is already very good in, for example, West Virginia, the Adirondacks, NH, and Maine), a somewhat wider river: that's it. You can use lots of your old stuff (more on this in MicroWINGS), and the base in USA, which includes material not previously available (that which would have been covered by SD-8 in the southeast), will no doubt inspire a great deal of creative ASD work. On USA and Flight Planner. There is, at the moment, no USA Flight Planner database (.FPD). But there is an IPS database, by John McBride (IPSFPD.ZIP in library 2/General Aviation). With some tweaking (lots of runway lengths have to be added, and the cant values, if any, are not so good), IPSFPD can be used for EAST (and WEST): the coordinates and airport parameters are almost exactly the same. I used it to prepare the JFK->ALB->DTW-ORD adventures which I created with PPT, to be uploaded to library 5/Aircraft/Adventure shortly. No, I don't know whether USA EAST (or WEST) will work with FS5 or not. I will be pleasantly -- most pleasantly -- surprised if it does. At the moment I will have to say that the release of USA EAST is an extremely good reason to keep FS4 on your hard drive. Heartiest congratulations to the SubLOGIC crew, and especially to our own Chris Manrique. I don't think Chris will mind if I say that this project was put on his desk well over a year ago, with the remark that "this shouldn't take you over a couple of months." I strongly suspect that the excellence of this material is due largely to the creative imagination of Chris himself. And his considerable programming ability. So, clean up your hard drive, folks. USA EAST for FS4 needs 4 megs, for ATP, 5 megs, and for both, 8 megs (I know it doesn't add up; probably means NFL is shared by both). I find that you've got extra left over after installation: must be some temporary stuff going up there. WEST will no doubt be the same or larger. And then there's FS5 waiting in the wings. On second thought, get a new hard drive. I've got this little deal especially for my FSFORUM friends. . . . USA EAST comes with a separate dik containing "stick/flight equations enhancement software." I would suppose this provides slightly better stick response than that in FS and ATP, but there is no documentation, and I haven't tried it yet. The list price for USA EAST is $69.95. Owners of IPS EAST can send in one of their disks to SubLOGIC and get USA EAST for $5 shipping and handling. No doubt there will be a similar arrangement for USA WEST, which, as of this writing, is scheduled for release in October, 1993. A new feature is that one free update is guaranteed for registered users, and there is a promise that there will be regular revisions. SubLOGIC 501 Kenyon Road Champaign, IL 61820 (217) 359-8482; (800) 637-44983 for orders