Roads & Rivers of New Zealand

Product Features

• Discover jaw-droppingly beautiful coastal areas like the Marlbourough Sounds, Milford Sound and Banks Peninsula recreated by high definition coastlines that cover the whole of New Zealand.
• Explore picturesque and mesmerizing mountain lakes like Lake Tekapo, Lake Tikitapu and Lake Te Anau captured by high definition lakes & rivers that cover the whole of New Zealand.
• Fly above the complete transport system of New Zealand recreated by high definition roads & rails which allows for realistic VFR navigation.
• Try exiting take-offs and landings on over 3500 private airstrips some of which are located at the most obscure and dangerous places.

Product Images & Screenshots

Product Details

Developer/Publisher: Sim Pilot Experience

Compatible with: FS2004 FSX

Release Date: Thursday, 01 September 2005

Average Customer Rating: No customer reviews yet. Be the first!

Product Description

Fly for Real in World Famous Scenery

Now you can experience the Anduin River – as seen in Peter Jackson's Middle Earth in The Fellowship of the Ring! Imagine yourself flying over this stunning landscape that has been chosen by Hollywood's directors for several recent blockbusters. Join simmers worldwide who are in absolute awe of what this scenery offers.

Our Promise

Whether you get lost in the jaw-dropping mazes formed by the mountains of Fiordland, visit the panoramic mountain backdrops framing the idyllic southern lakes, race up the dramatic glaciers that twist their ways into the icy snow fields of the Southern Alps, or visit the amazing landscapes of the North Island that have been shaped by active volcanoes, every single flight in New Zealand is spectacular and as close to the real thing as possible - that is our promise!

Visit World Heritage Nature

New Zealand is a country about the size of 268,000 sq km, which is a bit bigger than the UK and the same size as Colorado. It is world famous for its scenic landscape which changes dramatically from one area to another, and attracts over two million tourists per year - an amazing number considering the whole population of New Zealand is less than four million! A whopping one-third of New Zealand's total area is protected, and the country boasts 14 national parks, five of which have world heritage status. If you want to experience scenery at its finest, look no further. This scenery add-on delivers.

Explore Stunning Coastlines

New Zealand has a coastline of 15,000 km and features a total of 28 marine reserves. New Zealand offers some of the most attractive coasts in the world, and lots of them. The two most famous are probably the Marlbourough and Fiordland Sounds. Both areas feature twisted and spectacular water inlets, of which the Fiorldland Sounds are the more dramatic ones, because they are true Fiords. But New Zealand has much more attractive coast to offer, be it the beaches of the Golden Bay, Banks Peninsula which is an ancient volcano, or the numerous inlets of Northland, there is plenty to explore.

Fly Above Spectacular Lakes and Rivers

New Zealand offers a wide palette of lakes to explore, from the enormous Lake Taupo, which is one of the biggest volcanoes on the planet to the many other volcanic lakes of the North Island to the scenic mountain lakes of the South Island which all have their own individual character. There is the turquoise blue Lake Pukaki which is fed by the 29 km long Tasman Glacier and has an almost unreal colour. There is the quaint Lake Tikutapu to which the jaw-dropping Remarkables provide a most scenic backdrop, and there is the beautiful Lake Te Anau which serves as a gateway to the wild Fiordland country - to name just a few of the very many beautiful spots in New Zealand. In total, 10 lakes (of significant size) are located in these national parks. New Zealand also features many impressive rivers, perhaps the most famous being the untamed Wanganui River which borders its very own national park.

Follow the Real Road Network

This scenery add-on rounds up the 20 m mesh to give you an unbelievably realistic representation of New Zealand's natural landscapes. However, it also brings you an unbelievably realistic representation of New Zealand's manmade infrastructure. This add-on includes the complete road network from the highways to little ancillary urban roads. This completely changes your experience as you fly over built up areas. Suddenly the road network looks much more natural as the roads follow the terrain. All roads are classified as sealed or dirt roads and look appropriate. We incorporated tunnels and bridges, so that our scenery roads don't run over mountains where real life tunnels are. Aside from roads, we added the current rail network including tunnels and bridges. All of the roads, railway tracks, tunnels and bridges that you'll see in our scenery are what you would really see if you were exploring New Zealand yourself – for real.

Land Your Plane on 3500 Airstrips!

Of course, there's even more scenery. Imagine you could land on tiny airstrips that are only accessible to local farmers and private operators. This package includes over 3,500 of these tiny airstrips! Some of these will challenge every one of your flying skills – like Quintin which is located amidst the steep narrow valleys of Fiordland and where there is no place for a go-around. You can even land on the active volcano Mt Tarawera!

Experience a VFR Paradise

To top it off, we included other manmade structures like power lines, golf courses, race tracks, sports fields, TV and radio masts, and wind farms. The golf courses and race tracks add further character to the built-up areas and help you navigate on cross country flights. The power pylons, TV and radio masts add to the flying challenge because now you have to deal with obstructions that exist in real life - just like pilots do.

Essential for Your Real VFR Flight

Roads & Rivers of New Zealand is a topography product. Topographical vector data defines the water bodies and transport networks in Flight Simulator. Good quality topography can turn the generic default landscape of Flight Simulator, which only includes a few and heavily simplified roads and rivers that cut across the landscape without regard to the terrain into a much more realistic representation of the local roads and rivers. Now the rivers won't run uphill but will instead follow the mountain gorges to the dot; rivers in open planes will wind their way back and forth and are part of a much more realistic landscape. The roads won't simply cut across mountains anymore, they wind their way up and down just like in the real world. In built up areas, there are real road networks that include every single mapped road. Coastlines look like real coastlines with complex island systems and mazes of little inlets. Every single mapped lake and island is included many of these are just a few square metres big. All in all, this add-on makes the landscape look real and flying in it gives you the impression of really being there.

Enjoy a Bug-Free Terrain in FSX

There is no doubt that our topography blows away what FS2004 offers by default. There simply is no comparison. But what sort of differences can you expect from the FSX default? For FSX, something amazing happened. Microsoft included the very same data that we are using and helped to make New Zealand the most realistic country in FSX - well, almost. The new FSX technology has a feature to fix rivers to a specific mesh. Microsoft has done this for the SRTM mesh. Unfortunately, this means if you are using any of our meshes, rivers will hang in the air or cut into the terrain where they shouldn't. To make matters worse, the scenic area of Milford Sound is destroyed in the SRTM, which means it's utterly unusable in FSX. Another drawback is that all roads are treated the same, which means that the urban roads are too wide, New Zealand's cities basically consist of roads and nothing else. Our add-on fixes all of these shortcomings. Additionally, you get the 3,500 airstrips and wind farms which aren't available in FSX.

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