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.

This shows the detail in topography you get around Auckland with Roads & Rivers installed.

The same area in FS9. No lakes, a simplified coastline and only one road!

How Do We Deliver a High Level of Realism?

You're probably asking yourself how we can create such highly realistic topographies that no one else offers. Our secret is that we are an exclusive licensee of top quality commercial data. Our data provider is the geospatial company Geographx Ltd., which supplied us with commercial 1:50,000 topography data. Their customers are professional entities who rely on high quality and accuracy on a day to day basis. The good news is that we supply you with the very same topography. The accuracy of this data is between 10 m and 20 m over the whole area. You can absolutely rely on this data to give you a real flight sim experience.

Use the Same Scenery that the Pros Use

When we say this scenery is real, we do mean REAL. Our scenery is used in professional flight sim environments where data quality and reliability is of uttermost importance. What that means for you is that this topographical data really is as close to the real thing as possible. Mt. Cook Airlines has used our data to evaluate a GPS approach used by Qantas into Queenstown Airport - to discover their own airplanes would crash into the nearby mountains if they used this approach. Westpak Rescue Helicopters is using our data to plan and simulate real-life rescue missions. Flight Experience is using it to enhance their simulator operations. A significant number of real-life pilots are using our data for cross country flight training and planning. Do you dream of flying for real? Why not enhance your experience the same way real pilots do?

Great Support for Life

Many scenery developers take your money and you never hear from them again. We are different. We don't just want to sell you our scenery. We want to provide you with an exciting real flight sim experience, and for us, this means going beyond a one-time sales transaction. When you buy one of our products, you receive lifetime support. Whenever possible, we will respond to your e-mails within 12 hours, but often enough, we can get back to you within three. We frequently receive e-mails from customers who confirm that our service is miles beyond that of other flight sim add-on developers or retailers - a fact that we are very proud of.

We Get You Flying

You will get your own personalised access to our support backend, where you will receive updates, special freebies, and tips & tricks. You can also join our monthly newsletter in which we bring you exciting news like new freeware releases relevant to our scenery, tips on how to further enhance your enjoyment of our scenery, and fun cross country tours you should try with our scenery. We provide an ongoing relationship so you receive maximum value from our sceneries. We don't sell you something you use once and then forget about you like so many other add-ons, but with our scenery you will want to come back again and again for a very long time.

Fly for Real

Want to find out how we built a solid fan base of customers who love our sceneries? Want to know why we are consistently rated the top scenery add-on for New Zealand? Do you want an exhilarating flying experience combined with some of the best natural scenery our planet offers? If you enjoy a great VFR experience, we honestly believe that this scenery is for you. Get your copy now and find out why flying in our scenery is almost as good as flying for real!