Godzone Virtual Flight

Sometime time ago I stopped selling Real NZ/Godzone scenery in my own store, and more recently SimMarket. This site will remain until 31 December 2023 for support and redownloads of existing products.

The site will remain until the end of 2023, for support queries and to allow customers to redownload previously purchased scenery. I am now in retirement, which is a few years ahead of schedule, but there are a few reasons why this makes sense now. I've covered these reasons previously, so I won't elaborate here.

SimMarket will continue to carry my scenery for the next month or two, but that too will cease shortly.

Retirement has meant more time to take care of my grandson while his parents are working, and beginning a new hobby, model railway:) I do have a flightsim scenery project in the works, which may be released if it gets to completion. This will be freeware, firstly for MSFS but hopefully a port to Prepar3d if I can find some way to distribute it -- for a while now my airport projects have exceeded the file size for most trustworthy freeware hosts, which also means that I have no plans to release any current payware as freeware, something I've done in the past for older scenery projects when file sizes were smaller.

I may keep up with scenery development, as I can't imagine giving this up. I hope to develop for MSFS, as this is the one sim which continues to amaze me with its features and ongoing development. I may continue to support P3D, but I'm not sure yet whether this will be worthwhile, or will interest me enough.

I am hoping to purchase Prepar3d v6 when it is released this week (funded by the last-minute going-out-of-business sale!), and I will look at updating the current scenery installers for existing owners. I'm not sure how much work will be involved until I test the scenery in the new version, so this will determine whether or not I manage an update.

It may be that the scenery works as-is in v6, in which case existing owners would be able to just copy the v5 library XML file to v6 without the need to download any new installer. I'll report back on this when I figure it out.

From when covid hit New Zealand, access to airports required to build a realistic model has been very difficult to obtain. A feature of Godzone/Real New Zealand airports has always been the realism, which means I need to visit an airport, sometimes on many occasions, and take my own photographs. I have no interest in moving to a more generic, 3D-painted process.

To add to this issue, I was expecting to be able to release any future projects through the Microsoft Marketplace, but it's now been 3 years since I applied for access, with no result. Although in the past I've had a lot of success with my own Store, plus SimMarket for the European market, my one release for MSFS has not performed anywhere near as well as any previous release for FSX/Prepar3d.

At the end of June, 2023, I will close my own online store, although the site will remain for support. Already-purchased downloads will remain available until the end of 2023, at least, but at some point I will need to pull the plug once Godzone is not able to cover the cost of maintaining the site. I have no timetable to remove scenery from SimMarket yet, but I will review this at the end of the year.

I am now of retirement age, with a couple of health issues, although nothing which would stop me from continuing making scenery if it was possible. If Microsoft rang next week and offered access to the Marketplace, I would certainly go ahead with currently unfinished projects, and I'd be happy to continue nagging airport management for access. But this is not likely. I do hope that Microsoft finally offer a system which allows all small developers to contribute, but I think this is a few years off at the moment.

I would like to say how much fun the last twenty years have been, up until covid anyway. I have met so many local -- and overseas -- simmers, mostly online, and a lot of characters in person. The support for this one lone developer has been amazing.

Thanks to everyone who supported me, some of you go right back to the early beginning, when I posted scenery on CD! I have always felt that I must be doing something of value to simmers, and the fact that I can't continue is my one regret.

This update to 1.1 includes some tidying up to make the airfield fully compatible with the new World Update, plus adds native helipad support for the trolleys.

The trolley shown below is reserved for the HPG H145, which is the actual rescue heli model used by Otago Helicopters. As the H145 doesn't quite sit on the same spot as the default helis, this one has been tweaked so it doesn't fall off. However default helis starting on this trolley may not sit correctly.

Note that you can land on any of the trolleys using either default or addon helicopters, it's just the start location which can cause issues.

There are two ways to start on the trolleys, by choosing a Parking spot your heli will start off cold and dark, as previously with version 1.0 of Taieri, while choosing a HELIPAD your heli will be ready for flight. See the new manual for further details!

Existing owners can redownload for the updated installer, while new customers will receive the update. To redownload, login via 'My Account', and click on 'Downloads'.

Those who purchased through SimMarket should receive an email with update details.