YS Major: Guilin

When I lived in Guilin from 2005 to 2007 (pronounced 'gway-lin') I often heard and saw the new Chinese J-10 fighters fly above the city. I often wondered what it would look like for the fighter pilots in their planes to fly overhead one of the world's most beautiful sceneries, and now YS Flight has given me the opportunity to see for myself.

Download link:
http://www.4shared.com/file/38141350/15cb93ed/Guilin.html

I have tried to recreate Guilin City, as well as its little neighbour Yangshuo, and I think it's come out pretty well in my opinion. Yangshuo is a village situated South of Guilin, on Li River which flows from Guilin down to Yangshuo. It's about 60 kilometres away from Guilin City, and it's completely surrounded by Karst (limestone) mountains.

It's a tourist hotspot, and chances are that some of you reading this have actually been there! The Clintons visited the place during their visit to China some years ago, and I have also included Xingping village in this map where the Clintons went for an excursion. Xingping is also the location of the backside of China's 20 Yuan banknote:

I myself have visited all the areas around Guilin personally during the 2 something years I have lived there, and I have included as many details of the area as I can remember. Moon Hill, 9-horse-fresco hill, Xingping pagoda, and my favourite swimming hole are all present, and if you have the hot-air balloon in your airplane list you can save yourself 800 Yuan by flying in my scenery for absolutely free! The Giggling Tree guesthouse there (including tree), and I've been creative with the elevation grids to make thick bamboo bushes along the riversides.

My favourite swimming spot:

Xingping pagoda:

My view from Moon Hill:

In reality:

Guilin City isn't as detailed as the Yangshuo area, but that's because I don't like making cities very much. I much prefer mountains and gorges, as I'm sure many pilots do too! I have tried making the maps together in one scenery file, but due to lag this proved impossible. There are so many mountains and polygons in the maps, that even when you are flying on the outside of the map looking inwards, you'll experience some lag. However, if you fly around the centre of the map the computer should be fine and lag minimal.

Guilin city view:

Yangshuo bird's eye view:

Guilin is situated in South East China (about 10 hrs drive from Hong Kong), and it is renowned for its limestone rock formations which give it a surreal character at times.

Karst peaks dot the landscape, and escpecially when the sun goes down the colour of the sky can transform the place in some out of this world location.

In fact, if you don't know where to go to on your next holiday, well, have a look around in my map and I'll see you in Yangshuo next summer. I'll be there taking some tourgroups around this summer as well, and I'm definitely going for a real balloon ride then. For extra realism put a fan next to your computer screen and turn it in your direction on maximum. There are actually no skydiving or paragliding activities in Yangshuo, but tons of climbers go there because of the cool rock formations. People climb 180 degrees on Moon Hill as well.

Go for a balloon ride in Yangshuo (the landing and take off sites correspond with reality):

The next best thing to this:

To the North of Guilin you can find Longsheng, the terraced mountain ranges you have probably seen in pictures here and there. I have not focused on that area, because it is simply too hard for me at this stage. I did put some mountains North of Guilin city though just to fly around in. For more combat orientated people I have put in an enemy region right next to Guilin Airforce Base (fictional btw, I couldn't get a proper map). It's just a few minutes away from KWL airport as well, which I made as true to life as I could (I'm not as good with airfields as most other mapmakers though, still don't know how ILS works for instance).

This is the simulated view from my house: