Fun with FS geology

PRB

PRB

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Was watching this show on the TV about geology. They were talking about the Canadian Shield, and mentioned the various impact sites that we know about up in Canada. One, Lake Manicouagan in Quebec, is especially interesting since it's so “obviously” (now) an impact crater, and a freakin big one. About 200 million years ago this one happened, best we can tell. Since I like checking out geologic features in FS, I jumped in my Aerosoft PBY, took off from the airport at Lat Ste Anne (TK3), which is about 100 miles south of the big round lake. It looks pretty cool in FS.
 
While we're talking impact craters, check out Lake Bosumtwi in Ghana - it's about 60 miles or so south of Kumasi in Ghana - and even in the default vector terrain, it's incredibly obvious it's a crater...
FS isn't so good for strata, but with a nice mesh, it's really good for geomorphology, with things like deltas, alluvial fans, and the like well represented. The San Andreas Fault is super awesome to fly over in real life - and spectacular in FS as well... and have you really seen Oahu with good mesh? The headward-eroding streams and mountain-coring effect is really awesome to behold...
 
If you have Megascenery Earth or Blue Sky Scenery California, the western boundaries of Death Valley are awesome sights to behold... The Panamint Mountains and areas around them are loaded with evidence of volcanic activity. Huge red and black rock formations, lava flows...

In early April I went up there for the first time on a real world spotting trip, photographing military aircraft low level in Death Valley, and it was like another world. Strikingly beautiful and yet desolate.

In FSX, with photoreal scenery it is very immersive since there is no need for autogen -- it looks just like the real deal. Worth a flight to take a look, if this stuff interests you.
 
Not Oahu, but Maui:

WWyUzPe.jpg


I'll see if I can dig up a few others as well. :)
 
I'm always on the lookout for FS geology, especially volcanoes which are my favourite as I'm an armchair volcanologist as well as a simmer. Someone did a very nice Mt. Etna for FS9 which featured lava flows with lobate flow fronts and several accurate looking cinder cones on the slopes. I've not tried the FSX version. ORBX FTX rendered the Tongariro/Ngauruhoe/Ruapehu Volcanic Complex very well, along with Terawara and Mt. Taranaki in their New Zealand North Island scenery package, but I've not gone for their Iceland offering yet. Other volcanoes I'd like to see tackled are Mts. Nyiragongo and Nyamuragira in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ol Doinyo Lengai in Tanzania, Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho, Haleakala Crater on Maui, and Paricutin in the Michocan Volcanic Field of Western Mexico. The Aleutian Islands and Kamchatka peninsula are also spectacularly volcanic.

You mentioned the Manicouagan Crater in Quebec; I wonder if FSX shows the near perfect Pingaluit (New Quebec) crater much further north in Ungava? (I haven't looked yet)

N.
 
Wolfe Creek impact crater in NW Oz looks really nice in the Orbx world, and the Grand Canyon scenery from OZx isn't bad.
Being a geologist, I am usually disappointed by the way geology looks in FSX, but there are lots of exceptions of course, and (nearly) all of them work with photoscenery.
I am leaving on a field trip to the south of France (with 80 students...) this weekend, and I use FSX with France VFR scenery occasionally to show them the geology that they are working with on the ground from a bird's eye perspective. Works really well. A bit like this:


You can do large scale geologic mapping with scenery like this. Alternatively, we sometimes hire an aircraft and fly round in real life, usually from La Motte Chalancon altiport (LFJE):

 
there's one next to my favourite place... Nisyros, right next to Kos...

nisyros.jpg

she's categorised as 'Dormant', but at least 7 times i have walked on the main crater's surface inside the caldera, even tours are ran these days down into it. smells lovely down there... sulfuric... if it's quiet (rare with the birds during the day and cicadas at night) you can sometimes hear a nice unsettling (to some) 'bloop' kind of sound as the magma underneath churns around... veeeery cool indeed! the sim does a reasonable job with it too, if you take off from LGKO and head south you'll see 2 very close neighbouring islands, like in the image, those are Giali (worlds second largest exporter of pumace for your stonewashed jeans etc...) and Nisyros. largest crater inside the caldera at Nisyros is called 'Stefanos'
 
Talk about dormant, this pic was taken along the Laacher See, a large caldera in Germany. Last eruption about 12.000 years ago, but there are still gas bubbles coming to the surface...



...which explains all the 'sprudelwasser' plants in the neighbourhood...it is right next to EDRE, just fly N.
 
Another place: Lake Towada, Japan. It's in Northern Honshu, south of Amori, west and a little south of Misawa Air Base. 240 degrees out of Misawa I think but that's from memory. I spent several years at Misawa. The road up to the lake is really beautiful.

Glenn
 
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