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Airport Review : SBDN Presidente Prudente Airport by Richard G Nunes


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Airport Review : SBDN - Presidente Prudente Airport by Richard G Nunes
 
SBDN - Presidente Prudente Airport is the first scenery to be released as payware by Richard Nunes. This is a welcoming X-Plane scenery from South America, which is very under represented in the simulator. There are a few good sceneries in the north around Venezuela, but except for a couple in Sao Paulo the rest of Brazil is pretty barren?  You can however try FSBrazil for a few airports.
 

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Distance from Sao Paulo (SBGR-Guarulhos Airport) to Presidente Prudente is just over 500knm (511km) or 276nm, in most cases flying time is around 55min (GOL) depending if you fly in a big jet or regional 1h.30min (Azul). Our flight is by the ATR 72-500 so we are flying the route in the slower way and in at a slightly lower altitude (18,500ft), departure was via RWY27.
 

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First Impressions
Flying to Presidente Prudente from Sao Paulo is a flat experience, not the flight...  but just the land. The Brazilian landscape is just stretches away every which way you look from the aircraft and is broken up by the odd river and lake systems. And SBDN is just a speck in this pattern of squares. On the map Presidente Prudente is a big sized area out here but it doesn't really register in X-Plane because the OSM (OpenStreetMap) data probably is not very extensive in this area, so the area is mostly like a small forest with a lot of trees.
 
Richard Nunes does give you a few options here and the details are in the manual (in English and Portuguese). You can do two downloads. One (Brasil OSM 25-02) which is the more recent OSM (OpenStreetMap) data for Brazil, so that will fill in the roads and building data for you. Another add-on is a ortho (image overlay) of Presidente Prudente city (SBDN - City Pres. Prudente), with a few Rus_Scenery buildings added in there to make the area more of an impact in the urban areas.
 

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The images are very tightly packed in to give you great detail, but the ortho imagery square is highly defined in the scenery, the airport scenery (arrowed) is in the top of the picture. This approach depends on if you like this sort of graphic scenery? For me it was a no to the idea, not just because I don't like this sort of panel layering, but the main reason was the tightly grouped high quality images totally destroyed my framerate? So you would need a good machine to run all this scenery together. Which is quite weird in an area that is so empty?  Details on how to download the ortho scenery and the updated Brazilian OSM can be found in "Installation" below. It would have been an interesting exercise if the green portions of the ortho scenery was removed and only the brick urban textures where left in, so the urban areas blended in better than the hard square effect and you would have had a more interesting and natural version of the city.
 
Images shown here are a compromise of the "Brasil OSM 25-02" download, and the "SBDN - City Pres. Prudente" scenery but with the ortho images removed, but the buildings left in the scenery. This was done to recover my frame-rate.

 

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There are no ILS aids at SBDN so only a manual visual (VFR) approach is required. I was to land on RWY12 and from the west, and with that I passed the airport at 4000ft (note the elevation at SBDN is 1403ft ASL, so make allowances for that as my real height was in fact approx 2300ft).
The airport is very well blended into surrounding scenery so it is difficult to spot, You do have a VOR (PRR -113.50) and a NDB (225 PRR) to guide you but it is still tricky as the wide taxiway to the right can make the airport look like it has two runways and not just the main one on the left when landing from the west. Overflying the scenery you do get from some angles a jagged effect of where it blends into the surrounding default textures, It is not too bad and only really noticeable from a slight distance and it doesn't really damage the visual effect.
 
There are some good OSM scenery around the airport and on the left of the runway on approach. This OSM scenery is not there unless you have the Brazilian data installed. The main runway 12/30 is long at nearly 7000ft (6937ft) so if you are landing from the west, then you will be placed closer on landing to the terminal area which is situated on the far eastern boundary, that means then the RWY30 approach or takeoff will require a long taxi from the terminal area to the start of RWY30.

 

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Long lines of sweeps of grass cover the airport grass areas and it is an excellent effect and you feel the need to get the mower out and cut it down a little, the runway and taxiway textures are also excellent and are reproduced according to the Brazilian asphalt specifications (or look), and this creates a very well reproduced tarmac effect. The only issue is the outer runway white lineage tends to roll out in front of you and disappear again behind you (arrowed) and you tend to focus on this rolling out of movement in front of you when landing?  Overall the lineage and markings are excellent.

 

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The main terminal ramp is central to two GA ramps of which the first one which is more to the east is the larger area. It is full of GA aircraft not only on the ramp, but you have full hangars as well, the areas are well fitted out with static aircraft including a GOL Boeing 737 in a turnaround service. There are plenty of people figures, ramp cargo and equipment, and so visually it is an excellent entrance to the airport and the central ramps area. On gate turn in there is a marshaller waiting for you, but he won't flap his arms or show you were to stop.
 
Animations are first rate with all sorts of vehicles going about there business including a tractor...  Twice a day the runway is inspected by an official car at 10am and 8pm local time, so watch your arrival point. There are walking people around the airport and quite a lot of them.
 

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The animation is good, but they seem to move more like the "Walking Dead" than the more fluid designs that Butnaru has mastered...  So you feel a Zombie alert coming on.
 
Airport

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11/29  2,100  (6,890ft)  Asphalt

Elevation AMSL  450 m / 1,477 ft


Presidente Prudente State Airport codes are  IATA: PPB, ICAO: SBDN, and he airport is located 5 km (3 mi) south from downtown Presidente Prudente in Southern Brazil. From above the design of SBDN is very good, and as noted it blends in very well, and that makes it highly realistic on the ground.

 

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The intimate ground feeling is great, as the airport looks very good from the runways and the ramps.
 

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The central terminal and attached control tower are excellent...  first rate and both are modeled and designed very well. Excellent detail and with moving flags. The control tower is also perfect but has a floating animated observer that hovers in mid-air above the railings? But overall airside is first rate.
 

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Arrival side is very complex and very well laid out. I'm not crazy about the average trees and shrubbery as they feel very sort of a decade old and are usually in converted FS scenery from 2004. There is better foliage available today in X-Plane than this, ditto the signs which are very jaggy and average in design, both which spoil a good well laid out layout with those excellent shaped sails over the carpark and central Shell service station.
 

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Standard OSM                                                                  Brazilian OSM

 

Differences with the OSM is significant with the Brazilian data installed. The standard is version is quite out of whack with the layout, were as the new data makes it work perfectly.
 

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The Brazilan OSM does make a difference.
 

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Other good buildings are buried within the cardboard trees, and it all feels a little FS in taste and look, but it is still very good in context.
 

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There are some excellent hangars on the east side of the ramp and mostly for GA and private jet parking, one huge box like hangar is closed but most are open with statics inside. Note the helicopter that is animated, I usually don't like these hovering items as they become a visual distraction, but this helicopter works because it takes off, and then actually flies away and does a wide circuit of the scenery before coming back...   so here it works quite well. One static aircraft here also has a spinning prop?
 

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Western ramp area has two large well designed hangars in one for the Brazilian Aeroclube, and one called Hangar Nil which has a great poster on the wall.  Down the taxiway is a fire station that has again a bit of FS handiwork, but is also very good.
 
Lighting
The lighting overall is excellent on the scenery.
 

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Runway and taxiway lighting is very good, but little directional signage, but the airport is easy to get around any way. There is plenty of different lighting designs for different areas so the whole visual look is very good. Ramps are very well lit with a long throw and the ramp lighting poles are excellent. Down and spot lighting has been used to great effect here and the Shell service station is the stand out in the carparking areas and the tennis pitch and (what I think is a swimming pool?) is great as well visually. The control tower has a green tint, but it works again in a strange way.
 
Services
Not much out here as you would expect, but you can certainly set up a route structure with other Brazilian destinations.
 
Azul Brazilian Airlines  - Campinas, Londrina, Maringá, Porto Seguro, Recife
Gol Airlines  - São Paulo-Congonhas
 
Summary
Overall SBDN - Presidente Prudente Airport by Richard Nunes is interesting but requires a little bit of setting up to get the very best out of it, as noted it is good scenery and a worthwhile investment at this sub-US$10 cost...  any higher than that my guess is it would not be worth the price-point. Not because of the actual scenery but because of the position. But that does not say that South America is not a great place to fly...  In fact the opposite is true as the continent is well under-represented in most simulator flying and I found when I was last down here (Brazilian Grand Prix) I found it a really great area to explore, so the continent certainly deserves far more attention.
 
As scenery I liked it a lot, with just a few old FS (Flight Simulator) ism's that we have moved well on from now, but the grass textures are very well done and realistic. Buildings and design is very good, but I am in two minds if there is too much animation, but I would come down on the point that SBDN is just this side of gimmicky and that includes the zombi ground staff.
 
Lighting is excellent, but if you like the big jets you don't have the landing nav-aids to help you out, on the other hand it is good for heavy VFR landings.
 
Certainly SBDN - Presidente Prudente Airport is a great addition to your X-Plane network and good value as well...
 
 
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 SBDN - Presidente Prudente Airport by Richard G Nunes is now available from the New X-Plane.Org Store here :  SBDN- Presidente Prudente Airport and is priced at only US$9.95
 
Installation : Download is 122.90mb that is unzipped in to 373.60 into your Custom Scenery folder. the GroundTraffic plugin from Marginal for the airport traffic animations is built into the scenery, but you need X-Plane10 for it to work.
 
You need to download the Brasil OSM 25-02.rar from "http://www.4shared.com/rar/WUBt05dmce/Brasil_OSM_25-02.html" and install it in your "Custom Scenery" Folder. (I recommend to put zzz_ before the file to make sure it lists correctly in the ini) it is a 228.30mb download - and you will need to join 4Share to get the actual download or suffer a lot of bad media player downloads.
 
Second download is the same 4Share site for SBDN - City Pres. Prudente" ortho scenery. "http://www.4shared.com/rar/XSrT4qG8ce/SBDN_-_City_Pres_Prudente__Fre.html" which is another 190.20mb download which is also placed in the "Custom Scenery" Folder, but note it is very frame-rate heavy...  I deleted the ortho images in WED which is quite easy to do.
 
Both VOR (PRR -113.50) and a NDB (225 PRR) Nav-Aids positions for SBDN are incorrect in X-Plane, and Richard has provided the correct position data to be corrected by the "edit" on the local map.
 

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Documents
There are two manuals in in English and Portuguese and you need to read them for the above installation information. There is one airport chart and one SID departure chart, and three arrival charts provided.
 
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Features:
    Accurate replica of the real SBDN fully rendered with ambient occlusion.
    Runways and taxiways modeled according to the Brazilian asphalt.
    Many Animated objects, vehicles, people, aircraft    Many statics objects and aircraft.
    3D grass based of the type of the Royal Airport lawn.
    Land meshes published in the Airport area with elevations of the runway 12/30.
    Many custom and high-definition 3D objects
    Day and night lightning- HDR effects.
    Orthophoto of the airport area
    Just like in real life, the runway is inspected by an official car twice per day: 10am and 8pm
 
Requirements:
X-Plane 10.30+
Windows, Mac or Linux
1Gb+ to 2gb VRAM Video Card which is recommended with the ortho textures.

 
Review by Stephen Dutton
 
25th March 2015
 
Copyright©2015: X-Plane Reviews
 
Review System Specifications:
Computer System:     
- 2.66 Ghz Intel Core i5 iMac 27”
- 9 Gb 1067 Mhz DDR3
- ATI Radeon HD 6970M 2048 mb

- Seagate 256gb SSD 
Software:     
- Mac OS Yosemite 10.10.1
- X-Plane 10 Global ver 10.35 (final)
Addons
- Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle

- Bose - Soundlink Mini
Aircraft
- ATR 72-500 Aerosoft (X-Plane.OrgStore) US$32.05

Scenery
- SBGR - São Paulo - Guarulhos International Airport - v. 1.1 by junky (X-Plane.org) Free
 
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  • 4 weeks later...
Guest Richard G Nunes
Hello, very good Review on SDBN, thank you.
But you cited two problems that do not depend on the scenario but simulator settings.
For example, the floating observer, to correct you have to enable the "follow terrain contours runways" ja that the scenario was made and set with this option enabled, of course, for greater realism. The setting has the correct elevations of headwaters, but with the "follow terrain contours runways" disabled elevations cease to exist.
Another problem cited is that lines the side of the track just disappear because the resolution of the textures are not at least "very high" and that the "airport detail" is not in "extreme" which causes many distortions in taxilines, centerlines and other types of lines.
The scenario was totally Constructed according as is the Real, we are always based on the realism without taking nor by giving a feeling more enjoyable time of the simulation.
Well that's it I hope I have clarified any questions.
Thank you again.
 
Richard
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