Flying Carpet's Flight Sim repaints...
Astraeus
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IATA CODE |
ICAO CODE |
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| 5W | AEU | FLYSTAR |
Named after the Greek god of dusk, Astraeus started operations in 2002 as a full charter airline, later also opening a few scheduled services from its main base at London's Gatwick airport.
But in 2008, Astraeus stopped all charter activities to focus on ACMI dry and wet leasing, making its entire fleet available on short or long term contracts. The fleet currently stands at 10 aircraft, including 5 Boeing 757s.
Astraeus is also famous for its 'Ed Force One' special livery applied to one of its 757s when used by heavy metal band Iron Maiden on their world tour in 2008, 2009 and 2011. Incidentally, Iron Maiden's lead singer Bruce Dickinson also happens to be a Boeing 757 captain for Astraeus and the airline's marketing manager.
Astraeus ceased operations in November 2011
Recent flightplans are available from Alpha India Group
Boeing 757-200
Boeing 757-200 G-STRW was obtained in 2008 from defunct Zoom Airways and retained their basic all blue livery until now.
The aircraft was last operated by Astraeus for Thomson Airways and is currently stored
To be used with the Alpha India Boeing 757-200 RR model
Donate!
Each repaint means long hours of research and hard work to make it look as close as possible to the real world original.
Although it is all available here for free, I will appreciate any contribution to keep me going maintaining this website and bringing you more flightsimming goodies!
You can use Paypal from wherever you are to send me any amount you feel like giving -hint: the more the merrier! ;-)
About my repaints
These textures are intended for use as AI traffic in Microsoft's Flight Simulator versions 9 and 10.
They have been thoroughly researched and painted based on actual pictures of the real aircraft, so that each individual aircraft is an exact replica of the real thing at the time of painting, down to the precise windows configuration and the stencils colours and locations.
To view them in your simulator, you need first to download and install the base aircraft models/packages available separately . Most of these models are available from the usual avsim and/or flightsim libraries, but I have provided a link to these base packages on this site for your easy reference. Check the links section.
You will also need adequate flightplans to take these birds into your virtual skies. Running a search on avsim and flightsim libraries will get you up to date flightplans for most of the world's airlines
About bitmap formats
Most of my repaints are provided in three textures formats: 32bits, dxt3 and dxt3 with mipmaps.
AI traffic can draw heavily on your computer resources and significantly reduce your sim's framerate. Using the right set of textures can improve your framerate and ensure smooth and
lifelike movements.
Basically, 32bits texture are larger and therefore having more pixels, will have sharper details and will look better in your sim, particularly at close range. Downside is they take up more HD
space and use more resources.
Mipped textures are supposed to be what fs is really looking for, and will ensure the best framerate and movement smoothness. However, if your graphic processor is an older or a lower end one,
with less than 1GB dedicated memory, mipped textures will look awfully blurred.
To keep things simple, if you run your sim on a new, powerful, high end computer, go for the 32bits or mipped textures, or use the 32bits only for intricate liveries where the quality of finer
details will make a difference.
On the other hand, if you are using an older less powerful machine, or if you are not sure or don't know what all this means, go for the non-mipped dxt3 format.