Stephen Posted July 17, 2019 Report Share Posted July 17, 2019 Scenery Review : LGSR - Santorini Greece by Logo Projects If being perched on the edge of a volcano is your sort of holiday then this place is certainly for you. Several things are working in your favour, for one the volcano is extinct and has been for thousands of years, and all that remains now is this sunken remnant of an ancient volcanic caldera. Secondly this place is Santorini, which is the southernmost member of the Cyclades group of islands of Greece, with an area of approximately 73 km2 (28 sq mi) and has a 2011 census population of 15,550. Yes the same Santorini which is one of the most desirable locations of "that view" in the world, and many a selfie tourist has plunged to their deaths here. (navigraph) X-Plane has already a very good version of Santorini by uwespeed, but that version is now five years old and built for X-Plane10. Like anything you always want another step forward, better ortho textures, better buildings and more details, in other words you want something more current and more realistic and better realism, hence this new version from Logo Projects. First views of the Santorini caldera are quite impressive. There are great photo textures provided that give you a very realistic feel of the volcanic island, certainly the X-Plane11 dynamic lighting helps, but that is part of the experience. LGSR - Santorini airport is on the eastern side of the island (above). These volcanic islands are hard to represent, there isn't a lot of over growth or fauna to make them attractive and hide any faults, so that the textures look as good as they do is a major plus, and the photo textures however do also create nice and realistic shorelines right around the Islands. Orthophoto scenery is quality Z17 with a 3D effect on the ground textures or grooves representing the ground features, and in any shadow lighting it looks quite impressive and gives the mountain areas a bit of character and to a point hides that full flat surface look, I wouldn't say the textures are as brilliant as the Faroes as they are there classiclly good, but they are up there with the best. Officially the island is the municipality of Thera, Thera as the capitol is on the central western ridge, and is adjoined to Faro's and Santo. All the Greek buildings are custom to Santorini, there is a lot of replication of course but still enough variation to create a realistic representation of Thera, and of course the building coverage of the whole island(s). The highlight is of course the Orthodox Metropolitan Cathedral and that is nicely reproduced here, with the Atlantis Hotel to the north. There is a huge amount of churches and Orthodox buildings, but a lot of the dwellings here are actually caves set into the mountain side, but as for the visual aspect it works quite well. Santorini Harbour is set below, but it is not highly detailed, the cablecar however is there and animated, but there are no cables... there are only a few Donkeys now as Santorini has been pared back to in using them and weighing the overweight Americans that rode them up this steep cliff side. Ola is on the far north inner rim.... Famous are the "Three Blue Domes", two the Anastasi Church and Panagia Platsani are together and the third is up on the tip of the island. The textures are very low resolution at this ground level, so don't expect any street detail, but overall in a visual sense it works quite well. There are a few cruise ships represented in the central caldera and a ferry at the Athinios Port. Greek scenery has to have Greek windmills and so you have here at Ola with the Lioyerma Windmill. The Ola castle however is not represented. All the major villages and settlement areas on the island are represented including Emporeio, also known as Nimborios and the hilltop village of Pyrgos Kallistis. LGSR - Santorini Thira Airport Santorini International AirportΚρατικός Αερολιμένας Σαντορίνης IATA: JTR - ICAO: LGSR 16L/34R 6,972ft (2,125m) Asphalt Elevation AMSL127 ft / 39 m Outwardly LGSR looks like a twin parallel runway and officially it is with the main 16L-34R 6972 feet/2125m in length and the smaller parallel taxiway that is built to runway specification and is labeled 16R-34L. There are no ILS guidence instruments here, so you are going to have to fly the approaches manually. Ramp area is super small and comes with only four stands, with another four GA parking areas set north. Single terminal is the original 1972 building, all walk on/off and no shiny glass or metal structures... Terminal detail is good, but not exceptional, but the whitewash Greek white design doesn't help either in creating a dynamic texture environment, it is fine in context. The built in control tower is small, but I like the windows... the tower view is set, but not actually on the control tower itself and in fact you are positioned a fair distance away from the control tower view (below right). Roof detail however is very good. Some odd business puts the X-Plane airport rotating beacon inside the control tower? It is worse at night as we shall see. The landside has a lot of elevations, and they are all very well done here with the levels all being correct and highly detailed... .... the very low photo texture detail is quite poor, so no detail comes through, worse is the mess on the entrance road, mostly missing, but with no detail and a bus set in the fencing it is a distracting eyesore, horrible also are the decades old trees. Clutter is good, but most vehicles feel abandoned with the poor ground washed out texture detail. On the ramps it is pretty good, with a lot of detail to catch your eye, Fire Station is new at LGSR and Fuel depot is well done as is the GA area. I like the way the boarding of a Boeing 737 is set out, but Air Berlin are now long gone?.. maybe Aegean or EasyJet would have been a better choice, another oddity is the ramp workers set out in front of each parking stand.... they look good, but you have to run over them and the bollards to leave the stand on departure? There are some NATO style hangars on the southern Rwy 34 Approaches, they are authentic, but the one dimensional inserted images ruins the idea. I will always say yes to 3d grass, and it is good here with the matching brushy dried out grass that suits the surrounding dried ground textures... ... runway and taxi surfaces are a bit average, feel very flat with no real depth or grain or wet effects, they do the job, but that is all. Lighting First response to the Santorini lighting is "WOW" this is excellent, and it is really brilliant, second response is, "Why can't all of X-Plane night lighting be like this?" This is the best nightlighting coverage I have seen yet in X-Plane, very realistic. Close up it is not really a village type atmosphere, as is areas it is quite bright, but in context overall Santorini looks amazing... smaller areas like football (Soccer) fields and the small industrial areas also come alive at night Terminal and ramps are also excellent, LGSR would make for a great night arrival... only oddity is the rotating beacon set low in the control tower? Approaching Santorini at night is certainly almost a holy experience, the island just feels so realistic. WT3 : Santorini doesn't have any built in ATC ground routes? so WT3 - WorldTraffic3 does not generate any routes and so doesn't work here. You could debate with only four stands you are not going to get a lot of traffic activity here either, but this still payware scenery and what if you required ATC control... not really good enough at this level. Summary A highly desirable scenery and an interesting one with in the last year their has and with still lot more scenery coming of the current focus on the Greek and Turkish regions of the Mediterranean, and certainly this Santorini Scenery from Logo Projects would be a brilliant addition to the area. Overall the scenery is very good with a good representation of LGSR Santorini Airport and the local areas that cover the municipality of Thera. Buildings tumble down the mountain sides with realism, but most are generic with the odd customised iconic churches, windmills and infrastructure that do create a decent interpretation of the islands, the object coverage is also very high and well done as is the clutter. The Photo textures are very good and also give a decent interpretation of these volcanic islands, they have 3d ridge and groove effects as well, however in the required more detailed areas like landside LGSR they are found to be a bit wanting and too low a resolution to be realistic, the few trees are awful and dated as well. Other quirks include a badly placed airport beacon, wrongly placed tower view, Air Berlin aircraft, poor landside airport entrance and no ATC ground routes (or WT3) which is a sin and punishable for any payware airport and average runway and taxiway textures. Lighting here is a major surprise and a big highlight and feature of the scenery, a pure night approach experience that you wish was available thoughout all of the X-Plane Simulator, it is intensely beautiful and realistic. Santorini is certainly a scenery for the collection, a few quirks but overall a well presented scenery and a few big and positive steps up from the older uwespeed Santorini version... just make sure your first landing is a night landing, as it is excellent. ______________________________________________________________________ Yes! LGSR - Santorini Greece by Logo Projects is Available from the X-Plane.Org Store here : LGSR - Santorini - Greece Price is US$22.49 Features: Highly detailed airport terminal High quality realization of houses on the island Custom airport lights Excellent night light effects on the whole island Orthophoto scenery Z17 3D effect on the ground textures Custom modeled vegetation, grass Optimized for excellent performance ______________________________________________________________________ Installation The download package is 785.80mb and is 1.03gb when installed as a single folder in your X-Plane "Custom Scenery" Folder. Install is two files Santorini 1 & 2 and the Santorini 2 is the mesh, so it has to be set lower than Santorini 1 LGSR - Santorini 1 - LogoProjects (1.03Gb) LGSR - Santorini 2 - LogoProjects (99mb) This scenery can now be ONLY used in X-Plane11with this XP11 version Documents: None Requirements : X-Plane 11 Windows, Mac or Linux 4GB VRAM Minimum - 8GB+ VRAM Recommended Current and Review Version v1.00 (12th July 2019) Download Size: 785MB ______________________________________________________________________ Upgrade Review by Stephen Dutton 19th July 2019 Copyright©2019: X-Plane Reviews Review System Specifications: Computer System: Windows - Intel Core i7 6700K CPU 4.00GHz / 64bit - 16 Gb single 1067 Mhz DDR4 2133 - GeForce GTX 980/SSE2 - Samsung Evo 1Tb SSD Software: - Windows 10 - X-Plane 10 Global ver 10.45 / Checked install in X-Plane11b6 Addons: Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini : Headshake by SimCoders Plugins: JARDesign Ground Handling Deluxe US$14.95 : Environment Engine v1.10 by xEnviro US$69.90 Scenery or Aircraft - ToLiSS319 (A319) by ToLiSS (X-Plane.OrgStore) - US$69.00 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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