Silent Wings Simulator

Silent Wings brings a new level of soaring realism to your PC. Practice your flight techniques, fly online with your buddies, replay your real-flight GPS logs, or simply enjoy long distance soaring over detailed and magnificent sceneries.

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Features

Physics

The aerodynamics in the simulator is calculated by simulating the wing flow over each part of the wings and tail . This enables us to accurately simulate “asymmetric situations” like for example spins and side-slips.
  • Very sophisticated flight model with accurate simulation of extreme maneuvers such as spins, inverted flight, sideslipping etc.
  • Fully dynamical simulation of aerotows where the glider even affects the towplane!
  • Advanced ground physics where you can simulate landing in steep terrains.
  • Highly accurate performance profiles for all aircraft, including water ballast.
  • Winch launching with full physics simulation and intelligent winch operator. Practice wire-breaks at low altitude!
  • Aircraft stress simulation, including high speed flutter and G overload.

Scenery

The sceneries in Silent Wings are based on a breakthrough in level-of-detail (LOD) technology that integrates elevation models, digital maps, aerial photos and satellite images in a unified framework ideal for real time visualization. This technology scales almost perfectly with data sizes and allows in principle any resolution for real time rendering.
  • Fly over almost 800 000 sq km of detailed scenery from some of the most famous soaring sites in the world, including the complete European alps!
  • State of the art scenery rendering software gives an accurate representation of the area you're flying in.
  • Navigate after real landmarks and features such as roads, rivers and lakes.
  • Highly detailed 3D buildings and trees in selected areas
  • Familiarize yourself with a new soaring region before going there in real life!
  • High resolution ground textures based on aerial photos, satellite images and highly detailed digital maps.
  • Use the "Google Earth(TM)"-like navigation tools to roam freely in the 3D map and get a unique overview the landscape.
  • In-flight 2D map with plots of all aircraft, flown tracks, task, turnpoints, etc.

Atmosphere

  • Dynamic thermal model simulating the full cycle of a thermal from release through condensation and buildup to evaporation and decay.
  • Thermals depend on the sun radiation as well as the local topography of the terrain. Thermals will follow ridge lines and release near the tops as in real life.
  • Ridge lift and lee turbulence
  • Wind layers with wind shear and turbulence
  • Beautiful, volumetric 3D clouds
  • Accurate simulation of the sun position during the day affecting the occurence of thermals, as well as giving beautiful daylight effects.
  • Accurate simulation pressure and temperature distribution of the atmosphere, including its effect on instruments etc. (Watch that Vne at high altitudes!)

Aircraft

  • Incredibly detailed 3D models with dynamic shadows and animations.
  • Fully immersive 3D cockpit with clickable instruments and moving flight controls.
  • Cool, physics-based wing flex animations shows wings bending under high G loads and bouncing on hard landings.
  • A wide selection of aircraft from the Open-class Antares, through 18m- and standard class to the club class Grob Twin II and oldtimers such as Ka8 and SG-38.
  • Full set of instruments including a flight computer with averager, speed to fly, task navigation, etc.
  • Metric or Imperial units selectable for all instruments.
  • Custom registration and competition numbers.

Online Multiplayer

  • Fly with up to 32 players online on a selection of several available servers
  • Advanced physics-based algorithms for accurately simulating other player's aircraft movements, even on poor internet connections.
  • Real-time scoring of competition flights.
  • Join the "Silent Wings League" online competition
  • On-line chat
  • Built-in list of all active servers.
  • Web pages with list of active server, players and task progression

Competition flying

  • Compete online or against AI pilots!
  • Various task types such as Racing task, AAT, etc
  • Different turning point types: FAI sector, beercan or lines
  • Includes official turn point lists for all the areas covered
  • Log book keeping track of your results, including IGC logs of all flights
  • 3D plotting of flights and tasks giving an invaluable overview of the current situation
  • Real-time plot of altitude vs task distance giving increased understanding of the current task standings

Real Soaring Tools

  • Practice using your PDA soaring software by connecting it to the computer while flying Silent Wings.
  • Play back your IGC logs inside the simulator and try competing against your own flights.

Other Features

  • Multi-platform support! Linux, Windows and Mac.
  • Flight analysis with barogram and track of all flights.
  • Create movies of your flights in MPEG or DivX format and share with your friends.
  • TrackIR support with 6 degrees of freedom. Move your head naturally inside the virtual cockpit for a fully immersive experience!
  • Open architecture with a very flexible system for making add-ons.

System Requirements

  • Operating System: Windows XP or newer, Linux (kernel 2.4 or higher) or Mac OSX 10.4 or higher.
  • 3D Graphics card required with a minimum of 32Mb graphics memory. 64 Mb or higher recommended.
  • 800MHz Processor
  • 256Mb RAM
  • 0.5-4Gb available HD space, depending on how much scenery you choose to install
For Linux systems, we recommend NVIDIA graphics hardware.