Questions: Golden Wings and Silver Wings

[T Square]

Ok multipe installs of FS9 I understand but got some questions about these two:

Golden Wings:
What time frame does it cover?

Silver Wings:
What time frame does it cover?
Is CalClassic scenery compatable with it.

For both: I have a complete set of FSGenesis Mesh and Landclass is it compatable with both?
Are they both compatable with Ultimate Terrain as well?

[pfflyers]

Golden Wings attempts to back date the sim to 1930's (Golden Age) by removing a few default airports and altering the autogen. It also takes out the taxiway textures so your aprons and taxiways are mostly grass. It also changes most ground and road textures.

Silver Wings doesn't really try to change the sim as much, it changes the autogen to a sort of 1950s look but it leaves most airports alone.

I think that they are compatible with any mesh.

I think landclass updates might defeat the purpose of Golden Wings, probably OK with Silver Wings.

edit: I have both installed and I've added a lot of add-on sceneries to both. Never had any issues adding anything to Silver Wings, sometimes Golden Wings has issues with airport sceneries when there is a conflict over apron and taxiway textures. A lot of add ons are tailored for GW.

On Golden Wings the landclass is modified to reflect a less urban landscape, not sure how that works so I don't know what would happen if you overwrote the Golden Wings textures with your other ones.

[Willy]

From the way I understood what Bill Lyons told me was that Golden Wings covers pre WW II (1930s). Silver Wings is post war and is basically Golden Wings with the default airports left alone. I use Silver Wings as the basis for FS 1954 and the California Classics retro scenery. They work quite well together. Where I split off from CalClassics is that I use a custom AI set that I did instead of their Propliner AI. But if I had to redo it all, I'd use their Propliner AI instead.

As I use the Raimondo Taburet (sp?) mesh and the Silver Wings landclass. Any mesh should work with it. I'd think that the FS Genesis landclass would clash with the Silver Wings landclass so you'd have to decide which one you want to use.

Hope this helps.

[mgchrist5]

I don't have Silverwings installed, but I'll echo both the responses above about Goldenwings. I only recently installed GW; wish I'd done so years sooner. No problems whatsoever doing a dual install with the regular FS9 that already existed on my machine.

GW does a commendable job providing a 1930s vibe...and as a bonus, many users are able to crank up the AI and autogen substantially over regular FS9 settings, all without any significant frame rate penalties.

If you decide to install GW, be sure to check out the Old Hangar for a lot of era-specific downloads. Good luck.

http://theoldhangar.adventureasylum.com/

[AndyG43]

They both work fine with FSGenesis; I have setups similar to Willy, although my GW3 is augmented with airfields by Cees (and others) and Lionheart's Op Valkyrie package to takke it into thee early 40's.

[SSI01]

I use SW for my FS1950s and FS1960s aircraft and sceneries. I've downloaded and installed all vintage airports available at CalClassics in SW without any hiccups. If you find Obio's guide to making FS look great free, I used that as the basis for locating and installing all the add-on sceneries he recommends plus a few more in both my SW installations. Again, no hiccups. GW3 I use for everything that flies from the Wright Brothers to 1949. No problems at all. The sceneries are decidedly more "rural" than what you see in FS9 or SW. I seem to recall something coming out in the recent past that changes the sceneries in GW3 to have more churches in Europe, and more Buddhist and Shinto temples in Japan and the Far East. All meshes listed in Obio's guide work fine in the SW installations.

[modelr]

I have both GW and SW installed, using FSGenesis mesh with no problems. But Utimate terrain is not recommended, as the roads are from a much more modern time frame, and do not line up well with the earlier time periods covered by both GW & SW. I also have an install I call 1980's, that I actually use to cover the period from around 1975-1999, +/-. basically when the F-14/15/16/18 and related modern aircraft came into service. I use Ultimate terrain in it, as well as in my main FS9 install used to cover the 2000's, as well as most vintage aircraft flown by the flying museums and other private owners. This one also uses all my photo-real sceneries, both the MegaScenery pacs and the Blue Sky sceneries, installed over FSGenesis payware and freeware meshes. Also have most of MAIW, WoAI, and many other AI packs installed.

I install my sceneries and mesh in an outside folder and point my scenery cfgs from each install to the ones I want to use for each. Works better than having each scenery installed multiple times. Same goes for object libraries.

I have less than 10% of my downloaded aircraft, scenery, and textures installed, and it takes nearly 45 minutes for a flight to load the first time. But it all runs smoothly on my machine.

[Ralf Roggeveen]

I'd go along with the Experten above. GW3 is set around 1933/4/5, depends what AI you put in really. Personally, I reserve it for everything 'Prewar' (DC-3s get in on both sides of WW2 of course). There is a lot of nice 1920s/30s stuff (airfields & aircraft) already out there which fits perfectly into GW3, especially USA scenery.

CalClassic scenery may fit into Golden Wings, but since it's more realistic for about 1955-68, better kept separate. This is easy to do since, once installed, GW3 is a standalone and you can give it its own shortcut on your PC screen. This postwar period rule also applies to the Cal Classic AI which you can easily switch between being all propliner or having early jets (Comets, 707s, Caravelles) appear. You can then recreate many of the world's air routes from the late 50s/early 60s seeing and flying beautiful aeroplanes in interesting liveries at exotic, architectually attractive airports (by contrast with air travel today).

In a nutshell: GW3 for a low & slow spin around the Jazz Age - Cal Classics for leaving on a jetplane into the Swinging '60s...

Bill Lyons and Tom Gibson - and all their teams - have been incredibly imaginative and generous in making so much high quality freeware available to historic flightsimmers. Can't really thank them enough! :salute:

[Volker Böhme]

Hi,

I haven't tried Silver Wings yet, but Golden Wings does change a lot about the default textures, in particular, it makes runway markings disappear, has some extra scenery now long gone and removes some airports etc. I would not want to use CalClassic with GW, but rather along with SW for a '50s/'60s install.

For Golden Wings, it might be interesting to search for John McKeon (Vintage London Airfields), Alexander Belov (lots of '20s scenery, some of it in the Soviet Union, but also Trans-Atlantic and -Sahara scenery) and the Poland '30s scenery.

Best regards,
Volker