'BRIEFING TIME'
CD-ROM
THE MID-ATLANTIC AIR MUSEUM ANNOUNCES THE RELEASE OF THE FS2004 / FS2002 CD
The award winning MAAM B-25J Mitchell, 'Briefing Time', add-on aircraft and multi-media package for FS2002 has now been updated for Flight Simulator 2004 "A Century of Flight" and upgraded with some great new features.
For the first time, a MAAM-SIM CD will include additional models. The bare-metal version of 'Briefing Time' as she looked soon after delivery to the 489th Bombardment Squadron, 340th Bombardment Group in Corsica, before she got her coat of olive and gray paint, as shown in the wartime photo below.
But the "R4D Team" has gone beyond these two versions of the museum's prize winning restored Mitchell to depict yet another model of the B-25J...
The "strafer" version of the J-model was widely used in the Pacific theater where it's 14 forward-firing .50 caliber machine guns proved devastating to Japanese shipping and ground targets. This ship flew with the 489th Bombardment Squadron "Falcons", 345th Bombardment Group "Air Apaches".
If you look closely at the shot above, you'll get a hint of one of the improvements to the aircraft. A screen-shot can't really do it justice, but the exhaust flashes from each of the bomber's 28 exhaust stacks, is just one of the new effects. Others include...
Realistic B-25 Engine Start-up Smoke
New Tire Touchdown Marks and Smoke
Bill Rambow, Jan Visser, Fred Banting, Rob Young, Bill Womack, Howard Sodja, and Jan Rosenberg have given the package a complete revamp to make the aircraft fully compatible with FS2004. Perhaps the most time-consuming and critical was a rebuild of the flight model. Renowned for it's fidelity to the real 'Briefing Time's' flight characteristics, the flight dynamics needed a thorough rebuild to maintain the ability to fly it by the book.
Speaking of the book - or books - there are a new interactive checklists that give you a choice between a standard and tutorial versions, both of which allow you to check off completed items, choose fonts, and even print directly from Flight Simulator...
An extensively illustrated User's Manual will guide you through every panel, pop-up, and phase of flight operations...
Supplementing the manual are 11 instructional, digital videos filmed on board 'BT' and at air shows around the region covering all phases of flight. Several of these feature instructions by MAAM President Russ Strine, demonstrating engine-starting, engine shut-down, takeoff, and more...
If you prefer your reference materials to be vintage, you won't be disappointed. A twenty-minute WW-II B-25 Training Film will take you through a complete short-course on flying the Mitchell...
... and a complete, 170-page, Pilot Training Manual for the B-25, clearly scanned in high resolution jpegs will go into even more detail...
Because these references were used to create Briefing Time's accurate simulation, you can use them to fly her, as realistically as you could wish.
The aircraft's exterior and interior feature "extreme photo-realistic textures derived from thousands of digital photographs. The sounds of the mighty Wright Double-Cyclones were recorded in the real plane, of course. 'BT's flight performance has been painstakingly reproduced in the simulation's flight model.
There are an even dozen 2D panels and pop-ups, including both the pilot's and copilot's perspectives, with enlarged, IFR panels for both. All of the gauges and controls on the real aircraft have been duplicated exactly and programmed to operate like their real-world counterparts...
'Briefing Time' features a 3-D "Virtual Cockpit" of exceptional clarity and detail with numerous animated controls and features...
But it does not stop there. You can move into the Upper Turret Compartment, to the rear of the cockpit...
...then "slide" through the tunnel beneath the flight deck...
Seven photo-real views allow you to take up other crew positions, such as the waist gunner's...
...and the top turret gunner's...
A CHOICE OF COMPLEXITY LEVELS
Both self-installing aircraft packages include three different complexity levels of virtual cockpit and cabin to accommodate slower systems, or just boost your frame rate when you want top performance. Easy menu selections allow you to fly the complete aircraft, or to opt for the Medium version which has the virtual cockpit, but not the other compartments; or the Light which dispenses with the 3D virtual cockpit altogether. Switching between versions can be done at any time by accessing the aircraft menu and, because the three versions are identical in every other way, you won't even disturb your flight path.
FREE UPGRADES FOR PREVIOUS BT VERSIONS
We have not forgotten you down-loaders and FS2002 BT CD owners, either. You can download a free upgrade for your BT, "bt_fs9.zip" by following the "FREE STUFF" link, below. While you are there, you can grab the free add-on upgrades to install the Bare-Metal 'Briefing Time', "bt_bm_9.zip" and the Falcon gunship, "b25j_fal.zip", to your hangar. You must have either the full CD or download version of BT to use any of these upgrades, or the numerous free BT repaints that are also available.
The CD can be purchased directly from MAAM, either in the museum store, or on-line. Just follow this On-Line Store link.
