My first flight was from NZCH, over Lyttelton, and back -- it does make it worth your while to actually finish a flight, which is kinda annoying for someone with my OCD...
It is obviously a FSX derivative, controls work the same, so it's easy to get into. The first trip was visually quite bland, though, so no shots. Christchurch looked quite strange for this day and age, no Hagley Park, but hey, that's what addons are for.
My next flight was the 'standard' test flight at the moment, Mount Cook. Default scenery on my low-spec machine is not going to sell this sim, that's for sure. But the aircraft are nice. Accufeel(?) is a welcome addition.
I then dumped my Taieri scenery into the Addon Scenery folder, and gave it a go. By this time is was quite late, so I didn't even take off, I just taxied round the airfield for a look. Most things work as expected, lots of z-buffer issues on my buildings etc, but that's to be expected, and hopefully easily fixed. And yet to add the VLC libraries, so some trees etc missing:
As I've stated before, FSW will probably be the last sim which gets a 'Real NZ' scenery, as there is still nothing settled on how this would work, and no SDK. But at least I know that it is possible. If it survives early release, and if it has a reasonable SDK, and if it allows for third parties to sell addons, and if it actually gains traction in the market... lots of ifs.
It does play music, which is nice and cheery. And the interface is good-looking. I did get it for free, as a Flight School owner. All positive stuff so far.
