Payware Airports and Scenery Reviews

Scenery Review : Banff National Park UHD by Frank Dainese and Fabio Bellini Some people never seem to go to bed... just weeks after their amazing K2 - Karakorum 3D, Frank Dainese and Fabio Bellini have now released another epic scenery that covers the Banff National Park in Western Canada. Banff National Park (French: Parc national Banff) is Canada's oldest national park, established in 1885. And is located in Alberta's Rocky Mountains, and situated 110–180 kilometres (68–112 mi) west of Calgary, Banff encompasses 6,641 square kilometres (2,564 sq mi) of mountainous terrain, with many glaciers and ice fields, dense coniferous forest, and alpine la…

Scenery Review : EGGP Liverpool John Lennon Airport We were all led out on to the large playing field, the field was marked out and we had to each stand on a small flag marker in yellow, then hold hands to spell out SPS, or Sandycroft Primary School. I was six years old and standing out in that field on that late spring day in 1962, was actually quite wearing, and mainly because it was 30 or so minutes late. Then to the north the sounds came, and into view came a BEA Vicker's Viscount turbo-prop at around 3,000ft, it flew over, did a circle over the school and then flew on to France... as you could guess is that I was not on that aircraft. This was also my fir…

Scenery Review: Aeroporto Cristoforo Colombo LIMJ by BCSceneries Currently, in the X-Plane world, we have two scenery offerings of LIMJ, an Aerosoft one and one by LIMJ of which is the subject of this review. The current version is 4 and there is a discount offered if you have previously purchased version 2 or 3 beforehand. From the description of the product it states: - 243 square kilometer city of Genova, 850 square kilometers outback of Genova (mountains and coasts). And, of course the presence of the international city airport Genova Cristoforo Colombo (LIMJ). - The city contains hand recolored ground textures (30, 60…

Scenery Review : K2 - Karakorum 3D by Frank Dainese & Fabio Bellini When Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, a Nepali Sherpa climber finally conquered the impossible of Mount Everest in Nepal, they summited at 11:30 local time on 29 May 1953 via the South Col route. It was a major victory to climb the most highest mountain on the planet at 8,848 m (29,029 ft). But they both knew the summiting of Everest was in a way bittersweet, because in technical mountaineering terms, Everest may be the highest and most massive mountain on earth, but it wasn't the most difficult or the most dangerous peak to actually climb, that mountain lay 1,315 km to the northwest…

Scenery Preview : CYUL Montreal by GlobalArt Richard E Nunes and GlobalArt have become one of the great quality X-Plane scenery developers over the last few years. Early projects focused on Brazil with the four quality sceneries of: SBDN - Presidente Prudente, SBGL - Galeo International Airport (Rio), SBRJ - Rio-Santos Dumont and SBSV - Salvador/Bahia of which Bahia is a personal favorite. Then came a change of country to Canada and the huge CYYZ - Toronto Pearson International scenery earlier this year. GlobalArt's sceneries are hugely detailed and complex, if some of the most detailed sceneries available in X-Plane in this larger size of airport…

Scenery Review : CYVR - Vancouver International Airport by GloballArt Vancouver is Canada's third biggest city, with the second busiest airport in the country. Often described as a trans-Pacific hub, it has more direct flights to China than any other North American airport. YVR is in being an important hub for Air Canada and WestJet, as well as a relevant operations base for Air Transat. This huge airport enplaned and deplaned more than 1.1 million passengers in March, with more than 17,650 aircraft runway movements in the same month. Vancouver airport also had more than 1,860 non-runway movements, which includes floatplanes, charters and helicopters. T…

Scenery Review : EFHK - Helsinki Vantaa International by JustSim I have a bucket list of scenery that I really want to complete my services network in X-Plane. Airports that I think are crucial into not only the simulator per-se, but are also a requirement into create good strong route networks. In competition as a simulator then it is a requirement to cover the basics and X-Plane in reality has been woeful in these areas. These airports or sceneries have been on my list since day one and that list was from as long as 10 years ago, but still a lot of of important quality scenery has not been covered, now the spectre of Flight Simulator could even end that spec…

Scenery Review : Torres del Paine National Park by Frank Dainese & Fabio Bellini Early in 2019 Frank Dainese and Fabio Bellini released 3D Cerro Torre "Los Glaciares" National Park that was situated in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina in an area known as Patagonia, A fabled world of Ice, snow and extreme peaks of mountain ranges. After the extensive journey through the European Dolomites, we are now back in this same Southern tip of South American area but lower in Chile with another Patagonia scenery called the Torres del Paine National Park. This Torres del Paine area is set just south of the earlier "Los Glaciares" National Park, a…

Scenery Review : Brenta Dolomites 3D by Frank Dainese and Fabio Bellini This is the fifth and final of the five sceneries that will cover the Dolomite Mountain Ranges in the eastern north of Italy. This new area covers the Brenta Group which is set southwest of the four other packages including the Drei Zinnen National Park, Cortina - Cadore, Belluno and the Western Dolomite areas. Here are the five regions... with the new Brenta Group which is in Green... Drei Zinnen National Park in red, Cortina-Cadore in yellow, Belluno in purple and the Western Dolomites is in Orange. This scenery is unusual in that it does not adjoin or over-lap …

Scenery Review : LXGB - Gibraltar International Airport by Skyline Simulations Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory that is located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula. It has an area of 6.7 km2 (2.6 sq mi) and is bordered to the north by Spain. The landscape is dominated by the Rock of Gibraltar at the foot of which is a densely populated town area, which home to over 32,000 people, primarily Gibraltarians. In 1462 Gibraltar was captured by Juan Alonso de Guzmán, 1st Duke of Medina Sidonia, from the Emirate of Granada and then switched back and too until In 1704 during the War of the Spanish Succession, that a combined Anglo-Dutch fl…

Scenery Review : KLAS - LasVegas by FlyTampa One person and one person alone created the Las Vegas we know today, that desert gambling paradise that shines in everything that is "Sin City", and would send any woke person into hysteria of everything that is wrong or from another perspective right with the western developed world. First thoughts would shout "Frank Sinatra" and his in famous "Rat Pack" and the mob investment. But crooner Frankie and his pals where present in the early late fifties and early Sixies and by the late sixies Las Vegas was already feeling like a doom town, almost broke and empty with the glory days that were already noted and lost. …

Scenery Update : KLAX - Los Angeles International HD v1.1 by ShortFinal Like most things in X-Plane, time passes quickly. It is hard to believe that ShortFinal's KLAX - Los Angeles release version scenery is already two years old, and two years is a long time in X-Plane development and that was (with the quick update) v1.01, not to be confused with this updated version v1.1. Actually this is the third LAX scenery from Mister6X or ShortFinal Designs. The first was a freeware version, but in retrospect nothing like the later payware version, and now this update version pushes the quality and detail out even further. Extremely popular is this scenery …

Scenery Review : LICR - Reggio Calabria XP by Aerosoft I really like Italian Airports, they are colourful and quirky and you know you are landing in Italy and nowhere else on the planet. So any Italian Airport is welcome, even with the odd regional destination. This is Reggio Calabria which is situated on the toe of Italy and fronting the Strait of Messina and across from the island of Sicily, the Reggio di Calabria "Tito Minniti" Airport is named after Italian Royal Air Force war-hero Tito Minniti, who was born in Reggio Calabria, but LICR is also called Aeroporto dello Stretto (Airport of the Strait). First view of Reggio…

Scenery Review : KRDU - Raleigh-Durham International Airport by Departure Designs Located in the state of North Carolina, Raleigh-Durham International Airport is the 39th busiest airport in the U.S and the second in its state, just behind Charlotte Douglas International Airport. The airport started its operations with Eastern Airlines in May 1943, making flights to Miami and New York. Last year the airport had a passenger traffic superior to 14,200,000 (enplaned + deplaned) passengers. The airport has passenger city to 68 cities and an average of more than 450 flights daily. As you see by the title, the airport has international flights too, being London, Pari…

Scenery Update : KDEN - Denver International Airport HD v1.5 by X-Codr Designs I'll look at X-PlaneReviews release review of X-Codr Design's sensational KDEN - Denver airport that took 8 months of painstaking work to bring you the most high quality scenery of Denver's mega-hub, the point is I didn't do a review but only a pre-release overview? Now that maybe a strange and interesting thought, but the reality was that when I looked at the scenery and as really good as it was. then X-Codr's Denver was at the time just missing the mark, and mostly in the night textures. No offence to the developer in that a first scenery is always going to be a huge …

Scenery Review : FALE - Durban XP by Aerosoft/FSDG Only a month after their last crossover conversion scenery of HKJK Nairobi "Jomo Kenyatta", then FSGD - FlightSim Development Group through Aerosoft have now released for X-Plane11 Durban XP or to give it it's full name "King Shaka International Airport Durban". This Durban scenery is also the third scenery released for Africa after GMMN - Casablanca and HKJK Nairobi, of which I am finding that they are all workmanlike sceneries, but certainly not average either. They are however also in bringing the African continent alive, so these sceneries are very interesting in that important aspect. Startin…

Scenery Review : EDDV - Hannover Inernational by JustSim As an area covered by quality airports then with the efforts of both Aerosoft and JustSim, Germany is getting to be now a pretty well filled in country. But there is always room for another one, and here it is with Hannover/Langenhagen - EDDV from JustSim. Hanover is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,061 (2017) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany. Hannover/Langenhagen Airport is 11 km (6.8 mi) north of Hannover. The airport has flights to European metropolitan and leisure destinations, and serves as a base for Eurowings, Condor, SunExpr…

Scenery Review : KRAL - Riverside Municipal by Rising Dawn Three years ago a small studio released KHAF or Half Moon Bay, for X-Plane an airport is on the coast just over on the peninsula and 18 miles (30 km) south from downtown San Francisco. This was Peter Suranyi's KHAF - Eddie Andreini Sr. Airfield. Usually you do a review and then move on from a scenery, but somehow this little gem of an airfield stuck. In time X-PlaneReviews would do about 40% of our General Aviation reviews from this very airfield, so there was something certainly very special about this high quailty scenery, the extra wide and long runway also helped out in the cause. The XPR review i…

Airport Review : KTPA Tampa International Airport by VerticalSim If you follow X-PlaneReviews you will know that we spend a lot of time in Florida or flying around Florida, mostly because it is a very interesting area to fly around. But in X-Plane there has been a very large hole in your network that is a prominent destination and that missing area is Tampa on Florida's western coastline on the Gulf. There was a few freeware versions of KTPA Tampa, but the problem is that as an airport it is a very complex infrastructure of all types of aviation, business, commerce and industrial installations, and it was really impossible to just depict the airpor…

Scenery Review : Western Dolomites 3D by Frank Dainese and Fabio Bellini This is the fourth of five sceneries that will cover the Dolomite Mountain Ranges in the eastern north of Italy. This new area covers the Western area and Val Gardena adjoining both the Cortina - Cadore and Belluno areas. Here are the four regions... with Drei Zinnen National Park in red, Cortina-Cadore in yellow and Belluno in purple and this new Western section is in orange. The areas covered include the Alto-Adige (Sud-Tirol) region and the large valleys of Badia, Gardena, Fassa and Funes. I rightly predicted in the review of the Belluno scenery of …

Scenery Review : KFLL - Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International by Departure Designs In my early X-PlaneReviews there one route that I used a lot and was from KLAL Kinder/Lakeland to KFLL - Fort Lauderdale. As I was flying in a general aviation aircraft then KFLL made more sense than the mega KMIA - Miami International which in reality is a bit of a light aircraft's nightmare with so much heavy traffic, in that KFLL is not lightweight in heavy traffic either as it hosts a lot of regional and even international traffic, but it is also far more general aviation friendly and accessible. So I used to enjoy immensely my little trips across Florida to visit Fort Lau…

Scenery Review : HKJK - Nairobi "Jomo Kenyatta" International Airport by FSDG/Aerosoft Africa is like Australia in that you can fly for over four hours and not see anything, so after the constant buzz and cosmopolitan feel of Europe it all feels a bit empty and even flat as you grind your way towards the horizon. So in reality in the simulator is a sort of barrier to places that are far more remote out of the safety of the friendly two hour flying circle. Personally I love the emptiness as I would living in Australia, as you feel you are going somewhere different and interesting, and I can keep myself interested in many ways anyway of working my way through th…

Quick Impression : KOAK - Oakland International by Departure Designs I still believe that the approach into Oakland's Rwy 12 is one of the very best in X-Plane. Flying in a full flap slow approach speed you get glimpses of the Gold Gate Bridge (The big red one), the classic city of San Francisco on your right and then the brilliant low pass over the Oakland Bay Bridge, and in you go into OAK's Rwy 12... the landing experience here never ceases to excite me. There has been only one decent San Francisco and Oakland package and that was from Tom Curtis (Golden Gate), and yes there was a very good KOAK scenery as part of the pack, but that was released way back in…

Quick Impression : LGIR - Heraklion International Airport by FlyTampa Having looked at the other two Greek FlyTampa recent scenery releases of Athens XP and Thessaloniki XP for X-Plane11, it was only fitting then to have a quick look at FlyTampa's LGIR - Heraklion International Airport in FlyHeraklion XP... LGIR was the first release of the XP series and this is FlyTampa's version with JustSim having a LGIR - Heraklion scenery as well... and I will note that in this Quick Impression is that I am using the misterx6 SFD Global autogen, but it isn't really required as the provided custom autogen is very extensive. Heraklion International Airport "…

Scenery Review : EKCH - Copenhagen XP by FlyTampa Everyone has a bucket list. A list of destinations that they really want and still considering everything that list is still pretty long in X-Plane. Our hopes were quietly were raised as a few more of the iconic brands of FlightSim movement moved over into X-Plane, but in reality a lot of them if not all of the bigger scenery art houses don't do or release any of their most high profile products in the X-Plane Simulator. This was in fact a really big head scratcher in the fact that why try to make a big new presence in a new platform but then deliver the most and obscure scenery products that were so off beat, …