Do you get lost some times or can't find the airport you want to land on? Or you explore unfamiliar areas sometimes and just would like to know what airports are around you for exploring? FSX allows you to bring up floating red airport labels over close by airports. This is a very cool way to see what airports are close without having to bring up the map window.

We put together a little video that shows you step by step how you can enable these labels:

Reference:

Open "Standard.xml" in "C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Microsoft\FSX\Controls\" for XP or "C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\FSX\Controls\" for Vista.

Add this text:

   <Entry>
      <Key>SHIFT+J</Key>
      <Down>TOGGLE_AIRPORT_NAME_DISPLAY</Down>
   </Entry>

Thanks to Lamont Clark for finding this gem.

Christian Stock

About the author:

Christian Stock has been a keen flight simmer since FS2000. He is one of the leading scenery designers in the MSFS scene and has published several scenery creation manuals, ranging from scenery coding over terrain scenery to weather theme creation. He has also written occasional opinion piece and several flying tours. He and his young family currently reside in Melbourne.