An X-Plane community member, Chris messaged me the other day to highlight their scenery for the Chatham Islands. The scenery can be found here.

The scenery itself doesn’t come with any ortho, so users have been adding their own. To make it a little easier for people to combine ortho with this scenery, I’ve added the ortho to my set and it will be included as a region in my next release.

The imagery comes from this LINZ dataset here, and is dated circa 2014-2019.

Here’s a quick look at where it is at so far.

Original ortho with all the clouds removed and bump decals added.

I then went through to add in masks for the lagoon and lakes to give it more character:

I’ll tweak a few things over time, but this is looking like a great little destination to stretch the legs.

There were some islands to the east that are not included in the LINZ data, so I’ve patched them in.

With the islands located about 900km from Christchurch, how will I get out there? I mostly fly single engine aircraft that might not have the comfortable range. Perhaps the Diamond DA-62 twin would do? A second engine sounds good.

I also fly the Cessna 208 Grand Caravan, Quest Kodiak, or the Cessna 210t Centurion. But I have an old LES Saab-340 from X-Plane 10. I’ll probably have to rebuy instead of using the old copy.

Let me know your thoughts!

Categories: Flight Simulation

Tags: feature