Stephen Posted October 17, 2022 Report Share Posted October 17, 2022 Scenery Review : OOMS - Muscat International by Taimodels Formerly Seeb International Airport, OOMS - Muscat International is the main international airport in Oman and is located in Seeb, 32 km from the old city and capital Muscat within the Muscat metropolitan area. The airport serves as the hub for flag carrier Oman Air and Oman's first budget airline Salam Air, and features flights to several regional destinations as well as some intercontinental services to Asia, Africa and Europe. The airport opened as Seeb International Airport in 1973, replacing a smaller airfield located in Bayt al Falaj. This OOMS scenery has the distinction of being the first scenery to be released for X-Plane 12. Overall the release schedule of projects this year from TaiModels has been already extensive with both YSSY-Sydney International and OMDB-Dubai International, already released. With the release of such very big complex mega sceneries, you would expect a drop in standards and quality. But both reviews show that was not actually the case, in fact both sceneries had a significant jump in quality far relative to their size. So here is another large airport, not mega this time though, but the standards of the earlier scenery is well in vogue again here. First view of OOMS... extremely good. But you have to take into account here the X-Plane global textures even in X-Plane 12, as they are not the very best in desert conditions with no updates for over a decade. The X-Plane 12 hue is also significantly different, slightly darker but more well detailed. Muscat International Airport مطار مسقط الدولي IATA: MCT - ICAO: OOMS 08R/26L 11,758ft (3,584m) - Asphalt 08L/26R 13,123ft (4000m) - Asphalt Elevation: 48ft (15m) Focusing on the central area, it is dominated by the new Terminal 1 complex of a simple cross + But we won't start in the newer section, but in the older Seeb area on the south boundary called South Civil. Terminal 2 is a single-building, two-story, T-shaped passenger terminal. It opened in the 1970s as a replacement of the Bait al-Falaj airport and has been expanded several times during the last years to cater for growing passenger numbers. This terminal originally featured 58 check-in counters, 23 departure gates, 4 baggage reclaim belts and several service counters and shops. During its years of operation, passengers and crew were transported to and from the aircraft using shuttle buses as the terminal lacks jet bridges. I'm a huge fan of older airport infrastructure. It give a time-traveler look into the past of what it used to be, and usually the buildings are far more intricate and relative to the culture and the area. Certainly in this case, as the old MCT terminal has a very Arabian feel and design to it. It is very well done as well by TaiModels with a lot of detailing and texture. Notable are the ground textures, here they are a scale too large, and making them larger than they ought to be, the reflective nature of the texture reflection effects don't help the visual appeal either. Overall T2 is very good, if quite now deserted... the old facility was planned to be redeveloped into a low-cost carrier terminal, but was instead turned into a field hospital and COVID-19 vaccination site ever since the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. Terminal 1; The airport's newer and significantly larger terminal located north of the existing terminal and with first the runway which opened earlier in 2018. This new building initially brought the airport's capacity up to 20 million passengers a year upon completion of the first phase. Subsequent enlargements under second and third phases will increase the airport capacity to 24 and 48 million annual passengers respectively. The terminal covers 580,000 sqm and features 118 check-in counters, 10 baggage reclaim belts, 82 immigration counters, 45 gates and a new, 97-meter control tower. The new terminal is centrally located between the old and new runways and is capable of handling large aircraft such as Airbus A380s and Boeing 747s. The Terminal 1 was opened on 18 March 2018, with the first flight, an Oman Air flight from Najaf, arriving at 6:30 p.m. The Terminal 1 is as noted in a Christian Cross, with three separate piers in C (green) the longest, Then each side A (Blue) and B (Brown). Notable are the two side Piers are on a slight curve. You have to admit, TaiModels do certainly create extremely good modeling. Their design and reproduction of the terminal and piers is excellent, very impressive. The external terminal detail and construction webbing is first rate. Roof paneling is reflective glourious and nicely detailed with skylights and air-con units. Pier detail is again beyond excellent, with a breaking star motif, like with the excellent external design at both YSSY and certainly at OMDB it is all again intricate and highly stylised work at OOMS from TaiModels, you have to admire the work created here. All gates are SAM powered/animated and are "Bank Dhofar" branded, all airbridges are very well detailed and feel Arabic authentic. You have both working single and double bridges to the aircraft and one stand for an A380 category (305). The Control Tower is impressive as well. The tower being 97.6 metres high and comes with 100 square metres of floor space within the VCR. The visual control room comprises 20 facets of TEX ATC ‘Maxi-View’ laminated glass, providing the controllers with a 360 degree uninterrupted view. Each panel measures over 4 metres high and is over 55 mm thick and weighs in at over 1200 kg. The Control Tower is part of the Pier C concourse. Sadly the X-Plane "Tower View" is not set? an oversight, maybe, but not a good one. But again the detail and shape of the tower is absolutely first rate. The clutter around the terminal and piers is good, but not overwhelming, also it is all X-Plane (Laminar) and not local Oman branded... .... same story with the animated traffic. They are here only the Laminar branded vehicles, and they keep mostly to just to the ring around the terminals... at least they are the more better quality X-Plane 12 vehicle traffic, but I would rather have them all be locally branded. As with most TaiModel sceneries, as you move away from the central focus of the terminals, everything sort of dies a little... it is well done, but also very flat and sterile in feel, with no vehicles or animated traffic? Cargo East of the Terminal 1 is the twin areas of the cargo facilities, first is the "Transom Handling" building is well done, but the significant large "Transom" signage is missing? The large Oman SATS Cargo building is well represented and there are three large cargo stands, 901-903. South boundary (South Civil) has a lot of infrastructure on both sides of the old Terminal 2 complex, The Royal Flight of Oman and Royal Air Force of Oman are based at the airport and the RAFO also shares its facilities with the airport. A Royal Terminal and Royal Flight hangars are located adjacent to the old terminal. There is also faded remnants of the old United Kingdom which has hosted Royal Air Force BAe Nimrods in the past, including for the 1991 Gulf War. These aircraft cooperated with the Royal Navy of Oman in the 'Magic Roundabout' exercise series. The base was used by a detachment of Vickers VC10 tankers from No. 101 Squadron RAF during the Gulf War training with Royal Air Force SEPECAT Jaguars. There are two (each end) large engineering hangers, nicely reproduced here. A mosque with great detail is also positioned central. There is some infrastructure east of the Terminal 2, but mostly it is a photo layer with objects on the top, and then every object isn't covered but the Flight Catering building is represented. To the west is Al Mawaleh South, and there are some custom objects representing the area, but again it peters out with just a few objects on the photo layer... highly recommended is the SFD (ShortFinal) Global object addon. It creates (in this case) Middle-Eastern bright white autogen to replace the American/European default autogen... and here again it works absolutely brilliantly. Textures As we have found in the past, the central areas of TaiModel sceneries are excellent, but surrounding areas and certainly on the points of the custom scenery meeting the X-Plane default textures it can go to be all a bit sparse, as I noted the X-Plane textures are very old, but still an experienced developer should be able to blend in the two together. Here in TaiModel's Muscat, you have roads not joined up, or over well done roads that look a little fake and devoid of traffic, either don't work? The internal custom scenery photo textures, don't match up either with the external X-Plane textures in creating an island custom scenery feel... On the surface or close up the runway, taxiway and ramp textures look very good... I certainly like the different old and new runway compositions that separates the two airport sections... but there is no 3d grass and an over reliance on photo textures to create visual objects, including the odd burnt in ground aircraft... ... as I mentioned, close up the textures look good, but dig down and there is a visually nasty repeated pattern in all the textures. The textures do have the usual PBR, built in Burnt-in ambient occlusion effects and their reflections are all in there. But this is the first scenery as mentioned that is also configured for the state of the art X-Plane 12 effects. And they are quite sensational and highly realistic. Does it snow in Oman? probably not as this is a desert country. However turn on the snow machine and you can instantly see a problem with these heavily patterned textures, as they don't absorb, but even react badly to the repeatable pattern. Close up it's again not too bad, but scenery developers are going to have to be aware of theses special problems going forward in X-Plane 12 development. This is obviously the beta version (b7) of X-Plane 12, so it might be refined before going final. A scenery in the hot desert region means you would never see them, but what of a northern clime? Lighting Airport lighting was never a TaiModel strong point, and here again a OOMS-Muscat it is a mixed bag... First again is the X-Plane 12 feature of better runway lighting and now set technically to the FAA approved brightness levels. The difference seen here is excellent. It looks and feels as it is so very different from X-Plane 11 and earlier. OOMS-Muscat lighting is all a bit fun-fair gaudy as the Blackpool Illuminations, even as in earlier Flight Simulator production. But in areas where it is done right, like the arrivals awning it looks really quite good, and the ramps are nicely lit, but there are no exquisite lighting skills presented here... The water feature at the Terminal 1 entrance is all very Las Vegas, but it is probably like that anyway.The Control Tower lighting is horrible, again more like the Blackpool Tower. Terminal 2 area is fine, but again not very discrete, the Mosque is.. well pretty, but there is also a badly place lamp set directly on the taxiway at the A & C intersection? nasty. Navigational signage is one-dimensional and non-ground reflective. ___________________ Summary This OOMS-Muscat from TaiModels is the first airport scenery for X-Plane 12, so it is the first glance we get to see the exciting features in action and feel. Over the last year with both YSSY-Sydney International and OMDB-Dubai International already released from TaiModels, we found the quality and detail has been of a far more higher level and even a quite impressive elevation in the modeling and the quality of the TaiModels airports overall. There are even in areas that you will find the internal and the important terminal and piers (Concourses) expertly done and very nice to use and to look at, even the word impressive comes to mind. Both the older Seeb Terminal 2 and the far more modern Terminal 1 are all very well recreated and decorated here in detail and feel. T1 comes with the SAM intergration for aircraft bays, including both single-double airbridges. Animated traffic (X-Plane default and non-branded) are active, and good, but not brilliant clutter (again default) could have been better. All the new X-Plane 12 features are also active here, with seasons, wet areas and the excellent modern well lit approach and ground lighting. The overall feel, ambience and environment of the airport is the far more distinctive X-Plane 12, making the scenery more realistic. Like all TaiModels sceneries, once you move away from the highly and even extremely detailed central area, the detail falls away, the boundaries are all covered with objects, but immersion into the surrounding (if now very old) X-Plane default scenery is average, roads are not connected and devoid of traffic, and even look unrealistic. There is a bit of a sterile feel to the whole airport, with areas not covered in objects and traffic, and relying heavily on the photo ground textures to provide visual stimulation. Textures are good, but have bad repeatable patterns that are again visually noticeable and react with the seasonal elements of X-Plane 12. Night lighting is sadly quite FS in style and gaudy in taste, and not mine. First of all let me state I love far away destination exotic airports. Better now with seasonal X-Plane 12. So Oman in Arabia is always going to be a very attractive destination for me, and this TaiModels scenery of OOMS-Muscat is always going to be on my departure board. Overall the excellent modeling, inner detail and nice working ramps will be the big attraction here along with the X-Plane 12 features. And you get both X-Plane 11 (without the features) and X-Plane 12 which are included in the one package. If TaiModels would take more or as much time on the more external areas as they do on the inner, OOMS-Muscat would easily rate as a 5 Star scenery, but in this case it is more a 3 Star... Still very good though and certainly very worthy of being in your long haul collection as a destination worth using regularly, certainly a buy and as a very good value investment from me. _______________________________ The OOMS - Muscat International by Taimodels is NOW available! from the X-Plane.Org Store OOMS - Muscat International Priced at US$21.00 Features 4k textures High detail models SAM amination jetways High quality pbr texture on object and ground High performance Completed autogen around airport Ground traffic plugins( car and truck) Compatible with XP11 and XP12 Include weather texture in X-Plane 12 Requirements X-Plane 12 or X-Plane 11 (both versions included) Windows, Mac or Linux 4 GB VRAM Minimum - 8 GB+ VRAM Recommended Download Size: 1.2 GB Current version : 1.0 (September 7th 2022) Installation and documents: OOMS is download of 1.1Gb download that is translated into a; MUSCAT_OMSS_TAIMODELS_XP12 2.11Gb full install in your Custom Scenery folder. SAM3 Plugin - Scenery Animation Manager - Suite 3.0 is required for this scenery, Documents There is a 1 page "Instruction" page for installation and requirements OOMS_Instruction.pdf ___________________________ Review by Stephen Dutton 20th October 2022 Copyright©2022: X-Plane Reviews Disclaimer. All images and text in this review are the work and property of X-PlaneReviews, no sharing or copy of the content is allowed without consent from the author as per copyright conditions) All Right Reserved Review System Specifications: Computer System: Windows - IS1700 Core i7 12700K 12 Core 3.60 GHz CPU / 64bit -32 Gb single 1067 Mhz DDR4 2133 - ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 8Gb - Samsung Evo 1TB SSD Software: - Windows 10 - X-Plane v12.00b7 (note this review was done in the beta revision period) Addons: Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick, Throttle & Rudder Pedals : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini Plugins: US$69.90 : Traffic Global - JustFlight-Traffic (X-Plane.OrgStore) US$52.99 : Global SFD plugin US$30.00 Scenery or Aircraft - None- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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