Stephen Posted February 26, 2021 Report Share Posted February 26, 2021 Upgrade Scenery Release : GCTS - Tenerife South - Reina Sofía Airport v2 by Digital Design JustSim released their first version of Tenerife South back in December 2018, and it had a few updates in, one still in Dec 2018 and another one in 2019, overall I wasn't that taken with the scenery, it was good as all JustSim scenery is, but it just didn't register enough for me to do a review or give the airport the exposure it really deserved. It is now back in an upgraded GCTS version v2 and the scenery has had a very though decent overhaul and revision. The Tenerife scenery has also rebranded under the Digital Design label, but it is in reality still a part of the JustSim stable of quality, but value focused sceneries. First there is supplied a few different options for the install of the GCTS - Tenerife scenery. First is the X-Plane default version (of which is reviewed here). Second is a ORBX TrueEarth Canary Islands option that intergrates the scenery with the ORBX Photo-Othro textures. The third option is to use the Spain UHDv2, Ultra High Definition Photoscenery that is free from the X-Plane.Org, but to note the full Spain UHD download is a walloping hard-drive smashing 424GB! GCTS - Tenerife South Airport v2 First impressions of GCTS - Tenerife v2 is impressive and light years better than the original v1 release. If you want to look hard over the scenery there are a lot of those original elements that have been moved over to this second upgraded version, the fuel tank depot for one, and there are a few others... but mostly it feels and looks far different and in a quality way. The biggest visual points are those scattered large blocks that cover the whole area of the scenery... ... these are netting covers that protect the Banana plantations, and about 9,000 hectares are dedicated to Banana cultivation in southern Tenerife, and the nets are used to catch the early fog, or the moisture is trapped to keep the fruit fresh and cool. Digital Design have done these nets structures very well... it would have been very easy to just have created 3d modeling blocks and just dumped them in the scenery, but up close the detail of the netting is well done, and the various farms are actually done differently, and more than just a one block does all approach, so the approach view is very realistic. Tenerife South Airport Aeropuerto de Tenerife Sur / Aeropuerto Internacional Reina Sofía Tenerife Sur / Reina Sofía Airport - GCTS IATA: TFS - ICAO: GCTS 07/25 - 3,200m (10,498ft) Asphalt Elevation AMSL 64 m / 209 ft There are two terminal buildings, and long main building, and a smaller LCC Terminal east. The main Terminal Tenerife South consists of a three-storey passenger terminal in a classic brick style. The Main level, Floor 0 (middle floor) contains all the check-in and service counters, the departure and arrival areas and the main baggage reclaim. The departures area features 34 boarding gates of which eight gates are equipped with Airbridges. While the upper floor 1 contains office space and transit corridors, the basement level - features the airside luggage belts and baggage service areas. Digital Design has completely remodeled the main terminal building with new High Resolution (Hi-Res) textures and PBR Materials, glass is also all new as well, and it is a green see-through tint. All the Airbridges are well modeled and also use the excellent SAM (Scenery Animation Manager ) system, to connect the bridges to the aircraft. G2, G4, G6 - J1, J3, J5, J7 and J8 cover the parking slots. Terminal interiors are also now modeled in v2, it is better than the usual, and quite a nice place to sit waiting. Gate and ramp detail is very good. Visible Ground floor is detailed with tables and baggage conveyor belt systems are also easily visible... ... busy, busy traffic animations are (SAS) default, but very well done and there is a lot of movement around the ramps and under the terminal buildings. Ramp clutter is also very good and many locally (Iberia) branded. Movement also comes from the animated Air-Conditioning plant fans feeding the Airbridges, a nice touch. Landside For once you are not faced with Lo-Res ground textures landside, but a fully detailed area... very good, and all this is with tons of nice fill detail. Nice tropical palm trees and flowers, as here it is a bright and colourful place for a getaway holiday, even the long-term carparking areas are shaded... nice. Buses are all locally Canary Shuttle and TransTenerife branded for detail. People and passengers are also placed nicely, but don't have a lot of detail. Control Tower The control tower is positioned at the end on the main terminal building, mid-apron. Detailing is very good, with detailed roof mounted aerials and admire the fantastic spiral stairway attached to the east side of the tower. Tower view is good, but a few of the aerials get in the way at certain angles, but both approaches do have a clear view. At the other end of the Main terminal and connected by a walkway is a small LCC (Low Cost Carrier) Terminal. GCTS is obviously a tourist focused facility, so a cheaper LCC terminal is a big requirement here... the smaller terminal is really well done with H38, H39, R40 parking stands, R47, H36, R45, H41, H44, R42 H43 are adjoining remote stands. LCC Terminal detail is excellent with wood trim and slatted detailed window blinds. Far east is a GA parking area with five stands AG1 to AG5, and behind a large open plan parking and service area. Note the nice rock wall set behind. All the way end to end of the aprons mid-field are 21 overflow stands for the seasonal services... E49 to E70, they also lead into the west side small cargo hub area. The cargo hub is well detailed with loads of clutter for a lot of realism, far west is the airport's services and administration area and a taxiway facing Fire Station. Two Fuel Depots cover the west rear, and a nice golf ball radar installation covers the rear of the east end, and note all the elevation changes in this scenery, which are all done very well, with the main runway elevated lower than the apron areas. Infrastructure There is a lot of infrastructure in the local flavour of the resorts around the the airport. Las Galletas, Oasis del Sur, Los Abrigos are all represented as is the San Miguel marina. Golf Courses and resorts are all represented and the coverage is very good and overall realistic. Autogen does a good job as well in filling in the other island blank areas... I do however recommend SFD Global, that does a better layout and feel of the Spanish heritage look, the default autogen is not bad, but SFD gives you a far better filler of content (below). Ground Textures The ground textures are some of the best I have seen in a fair while... great grain and the edges are stony and are quite realistic. Grain is very good, as is the asphalt detail... lineage is faded were required, and there is very nice rubber markings at heavy work load turning areas... ... but there is also a clever effect going on here as well. Get the right lighting conditions and the burnt-in ambient occlusion effect works brilliantly, but also those same rubber markings are still matt darker, giving off a really realistic runway wear effect... ... high marks here for the realism. 3d Grass is of the desert variety, and very good, but in a few areas that should have the 3d grass (i.e. outside the Firestation) would have benefited if used. Lighting Like everything in the scenery the lighting is also very good, but with a slight twist... The Landside lighting is far brighter than the Airside... Both 07/25 approaches have RAIL lighting, and visually very good (It needs to be because of the frequent fog conditions here), taxiway centreline is dual coloured (green/yellow) and navigation signage is fully ground reflective and very nice. Airport lighting is very realistic visually, and a nice place to arrive at in the wee hours. The debate here is not that the aprons are too dark, of which they are not, but if the airside terminals are. See through glass causes all sorts of problems, but most always come out on the dull side, as that is the case here also... ... it looks good, but internally you can see it is far too dark or dull, the developer is maybe having a foot in both camps and not winning in either... the terminal lighting needs to be more vibrant. Not so the terminal lighting Landside, as it is brilliantly bright over here, and looks good. The highlight is lovely lit Control Tower, it looks great from any rear view. Some areas though are lit up, without or just a few of any physical lighting elements, in the Fire Station/Admin area and some private properties they are just areas of light... ... and it feels a little bit artificial. Overall the airport lighting is top notch. The Infrastructure of Tenerife however is not great, blocky one coloured windows or simply poor lighting at all from the housing windows, does not make the area or the resorts around the airport light-up very well, and it is all pretty well dark on the western approach, overall the township lighting is pretty basic. ___________________ Summary Tenerife South - Reina Sofía Airport, is the largest airport on the Canary Islands, situated in the southern part of the island. The airport was inaugurated on 6 November 1978, by Queen Sofía of Spain, to whom the airport is dedicated. This scenery is an upgraded GCTS version v2 of the original JustSim Tenerife-South from 2018, and now GCTS is also rebranded Tenerife under the Digital Design banner, the scenery has had in the process a very though decent overhaul and revision. Note the scenery is upgraded, and it is not an update, but there is a very generous low upgrade cost from the original v1 of only $7.50, to install this vastly better v2 Tenerife. All the main elements here have been remodeled including the excellent long terminal building, it also now has internal detail as well which is very good. Ground textures are excellent and comes with burnt-in ambient occlusion and great rubber effects on the surfaces, surface grain is good as well. SAM support is also added, as is a lot of busy animations and twirling Air-Con fans and good clutter. Detail is very good, even Landside which is well detailed and realistic, but clutter is good Airside as well. Lighting is strong Landside, but weak in the see-through terminal glass, making the Airside aprons a bit darker. There is a lot of elevation changes in this scenery and even the feature of the main runway being lower than the terminal aprons, that adds in a bit of novelty. Local environs are also modeled with the local resorts being clearly very visible from the airport and on approaches. There is not a lot to fault here at Tenerife... just the noted dull internal lighting and township lighting which is all very basic, and few objects get in the way of the tower view... otherwise the whole scenery is pretty solid. Three options in the X-Plane default version, ORBX TrueEarth Canary Islands Photo-Othro textures, and the Spain UHDv2, Ultra High Definition Photoscenery are all provided to suit your particular tastes. JustSim and by definition Digital Design, always deliver excellent scenery at a value cost, and that is exactly what you get here at Tenerife v2. I love an airport I can instantly like and start adding in routes to accommodate in going or leaving from there... so any scenery that just wants to used has to be again great value, and overall that is what another Digital Design gem delivers, great value and a great destination. _____________________________________ Yes! GCTS - Tenerife South - Reina Sofía Airport v2 by DigitalDesign is now available from the X-Plane.OrgStore GCTS - Tenerife Airport v2 Price is US$20.00 Owners of Tenerife v1 can get this new version for only US$7.50. Please use the coupon code found in your original Tenerife invoice at the X-Plane.OrgStore Features V2: Compatibility ORBX TE Canary Islands Slope runway and taxiways according to the real runway profile Using New High Resolution textures Using PBR Materials New 3D Model Ground 3D Grass New Ground textures New marking and updated parking numbers according to the latest data Improve 3D Model Terminal Improve airport vehicles 3D models Interior modeling Added new buildings in the approach areas. Compatibility Spain UHDv2 WT3: WorldTraffic3 GroundRoutes are NOT provided but the scenery is compatible and extremely good, and Traffic Global also operates perfectly, Requirements: Windows, Mac or Linux 4 GB VRAM Minimum. 8 GB+ VRAM Recommended Download size: 2.5 GB Install and Review Version 2.0 (February 24th 2021) Installation Download scenery files required are in one zip folder download of 2.44GB (a big step up from the original v1 size of 840Mb) There are two folders of which are placed in the X-Plane Custom Scenery Folder in this .INI order "Mesh" must be sited below the main "GCTS Tenerife V2" folder). Digital Design GCTS Tenerife v2 Digital Design GCTS Tenerife v2 Mesh Total scenery install is: 2.28Gb Options include: Three photographic layouts with the X-Plane default version, ORBX TrueEarth Canary Islands Photo-Othro textures, and the Spain UHDv2, Ultra High Definition Photoscenery all provided. You just select the set of both Airport and Mesh choice to install. SAM Plugin - Scenery Animation Manager - Suite 2.0 is required for this scenery ShortFinal Global SFD plugin is highly recommended with this scenery. Documents Read Me only ______________________________________________ Scenery Review by Stephen Dutton 27th February 2021 Copyright©2021 : 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 Rights Reserved Review System Specifications: Computer System: Windows - Intel Core i7 6700K CPU 4.00GHz / 64bit - 32 Gb single 1067 Mhz DDR4 2133 - ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 8Gb - Samsung Evo 1Tb SSD Software: - Windows 10 - X-Plane v11.51r3 Addons: Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini : Scenery Animation Manager - Suite 2.0 - Free : Environment Engine by xEnviro US$69.90 Scenery or Aircraft - Default Boeing 737-800 by Laminar Research Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medellinexpat Posted February 27, 2021 Report Share Posted February 27, 2021 Bought this today from the Org store and the review above is very accurate. I use it with Orbx TE Canaries and it looks excellent. As seems to be the case with DD the documentation is at best thin and there Installation with Orbx could do with a clarification or two. One thing is that the basic and the Orbx versions are both included in the package so your unzipped download is effectively twice the actual disk space needed. I also use JF’s Traffic Global and the airport was nicely populated with aircraft on the stands and heading for take off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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