Stephen Posted July 12, 2021 Report Share Posted July 12, 2021 Scenery Review : LTFM - Airport Istanbul XP by Aerosoft To understand the importance and the major relocation of Istanbul's major airport from the former Atatürk Airport to the newer mega airport at Arnavutköy, is to look at not only the major updating of the facilities and the use of the more airport and runway space than with the overcrowded older ISL. As the new development is much more in a strategic positioning and a significant major change of the world's routing to capture a bigger, if not the biggest world passenger traveling market. East to West and vice-versa and to ultimately accommodate 200 million passengers a year traffic at a cost of €7 billion. That is a lot of money even for an airport, so let us understand why the Turkish Government are so willing to invest in such an extravagant project. Well it is for a purely strategic reason, but one even important for X-Plane users if you do a lot of medium to very long haul routes. The story really goes back to Qantas and British Airways, or the very lucrative "Kangaroo Route". These were a set of hops from the United Kingdom to Australia, and even to the other colonial routes such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Bangkok. It was basically all two-way traffic for decades, but this was also an age through the 70's and 80's when the other Asian ports were not quite as developed as they are today. The Arab States were the first to want to change the olde world order, the idea was for the UAE and surrounding Emirates, with a focus on Abu Dhabi and Dubai, in that to be future major global hubs between the now growing if huge Asian markets and connecting them through to the African and European markets. The idea was to fly say from Asia to Abu Dhabi/Dubai, then reconnect onto an African or European hub, and in so bypassing the nasty reverse routes that were built in solidly by the Kangaroo Route hub into London. These older routes required backtracking, if say you wanted to fly to Rome... a route from say Seoul to Rome would be now Seoul-Dubai-Rome and not the old sectioned route of Seoul-Singapore-London-Rome, that routing added in not only a lot of extra mileage but also the longer time traveling, but also in a wasted flying distance as well. So the Emirates built mega hubs, but they also made one fundamental mistake in their planning... they made the transition from one flight to the next extremely expensive in and around their hubs as to recoup their huge expenditure, plus the serious heat of the deserts. These aspects just turned passengers off in droves of these Middle Eastern hubbed routes. But the basic idea of connecting the west directly to the newly growing east was correct. The biggest growing area of aviation at the moment is in the empty space between Europe and Asia, and spreading one of the borders of these two continents is literally Turkey, and its hub at Istanbul. This strategic position of Istanbul totally changes the game, certainly with economic reasons for airlines. With the UAE hubs you will always required a large twin-aisle aircraft to fly in and out on each section from the Middle East, so the UAE is dominated by B777s, B787s, A350s and of course the huge fleet of Emirati A380 aircraft. But Istanbul's position changes the game a little in that any of the European hubs can instead use a single-aisle (even better the newer long range XLs) from any European/Eastern Europe capital straight into Istanbul and then use the medium wide-bodies to go the rest of the way to Asia, again in reverse in that a wide-body from Asia and then a single-aisle aircraft to cover the mass of segments directly to really any airport in Europe and fly even as low as North Africa and as high as Scandinavia. The game plan is quite perfect, certainly if like me you are traveling say to Budapest from Australia, or even directly to Rome, as it would be only one stop and direct all the way. IST will be the hub of hubs in the centre of the routing world universe... and that is why they spent their €7 billion So to a point this LTFM Airport Istanbul XP scenery is important to X-Plane if you are into serious routing, as IST will give you loads of options, either if you want your jollies from a short European sector to Istanbul, or to do full European to Asia routes. Istanbul to Singapore is only 4688 nautical miles and also and well within a standard A330 range, and to that end then note how many A330-300 Turkish Airlines have bought over the last few years... as it is currently 40 aircraft and the fleet is still growing daily. So Turkish Airlines don't need mega sized or even extremely expensive aircraft to cover Asia from Turkey, or from Europe for that matter. Paris to Istanbul is only 1198 nautical miles with an estimated flight time of 3 hours 6 minutes and well within an Airbus A320s range, so at both ends you can get a lot of routing in and out of a very good Istanbul scenery... do you see where I am coming from. There was a freeware LTFM that was very good, but totally diabolical to install, in the end I pulled it out with the consistent crashing CTD the scenery caused... disappointed. But then I got wind that Stairport Sceneries were also doing a payware LTFM, and that certainly got me very excited. It is released under the Aerosoft banner, but this is totally a Stairport Scenery project. It is very hard to get a grasp on the size of Istanbul's new airport, it is simply HUGE, massive and the nearest airport I can think of in the same scale and the spread out in layout terms is KDEN-Denver. The airport currently has only the one terminal in service for domestic and international flights and four runways that are currently in operation. The two 17/35 runways are both 4,100 metres (13,451 feet) long, while the 16/34 runways are both 3,750 metres (12,303 feet) long. Runways 17L/35R and 16R/34L are 60 metres (197 feet) wide, while 17R/35L and 16L/34R are 45 metres (148 feet) wide. All runway surfaces are asphalt. Istanbul Airport İstanbul Havalimanı IATA: IST - ICAO: LTFM 16L/34R - 3,750m (12,303ft) Asphalt 16R/34L - 3,750m (12,303ft) Asphalt 17L/35R - 4,100m (13,451ft) Asphalt 17R/35L - 4,100m (13,451ft) Asphalt 18/36 - 3,060m (10,039ft) Asphalt & Concrete Elevation AMSL 99m / 325ft Notable is that there are two more runways coming to the east of Rwy 18/36 adding up to a total of seven by 2025, in the scenery five of the seven are noted and currently active. (Navigraph) The opening ceremony of Istanbul Airport took place on 29 October 2018, and scheduled so as to coincide with the 95th anniversary of the proclamation of the Turkish Republic. The airport had been unofficially known as 'Istanbul New Airport' during construction - and the new official name of 'Istanbul Airport' was announced at the opening ceremony. The first flight from the airport was Turkish Airlines flight TK2124 to the Turkish capital Ankara on 31 October 2018. On 1 November 2018, five daily flights began to arrive and depart from the airport: from Ankara, Antalya, Baku, North Nicosia, and İzmir, followed by Adana and Trabzon starting in December. Before the full transfer, all flights were operated exclusively by Turkish Airlines. Regularly scheduled flights to all of the new airport's destinations continued to depart from Atatürk and Sabiha Gökçen airports alongside these trial flights. It was originally planned that on 31 December 2018, all equipment from Atatürk Airport would then be transferred to the new airport via the O-7 Motorway. As of 17 January 2019, then transfer phase was set to start 1 March 2019. However, on 25 February, the transfer phase was moved a fourth time to 5 April 2019. The full transfer of all scheduled commercial passenger flights from Istanbul Atatürk Airport to the new Istanbul Airport took place on 6 April 2019 between 02:00 and 14:00. Hundreds of trucks carried more than 10,000 pieces of equipment, each weighing about 44 tons were moved to the new airport over 41 hours. Istanbul Atatürk Airport's original IATA code IST was also transferred to the new airport. The new mega main terminal at IST will have an annual passenger capacity of 90 million and an area of 1,440,000 m2 (15,500,000 sq ft) – making it the world's largest airport terminal building under a single roof, despite Dubai International Airport Terminal 3 having a larger floor area at 1,713,000 m2 (18,440,000 sq ft) but only due to tunnels connecting its two concourses. The mammoth terminal has been really well recreated here, with some very good and authentic modeling... detail out front of the main terminal is that lo-res photo-ortho look, as you know I am not a big fan of such low resolutions in priority areas like with the immediate Landside environs, however there is something interesting and to keep in mind for the scenery overall... as the original area that covers the airport boundaries are actually old open-pit coal mines, which were later filled in with soil, ultimately it is still also an ongoing building site, so open rough areas like this are correct when viewing the scenery, but the open visual mosaic aspect is still not good to the eyes... ... the İstanbul Havalimanı Camii (Istanbul Airport Mosque) positioned in front of the terminal is however excellent and highly detailed, but the join to and the surrounding Lo-Res ortho images are really awful. The IST Terminal's modeling is very good, and the highlight is the lovely well done canopies in a Islamic and ottoman design pattern, very Turkish in design. Overall though four architects worked on the airport's design, but three of them were UK-based in Grimshaw Architects, Scott Brownrigg, and Haptic Architects. The four huge carparks fronting the terminal look like they are still under construction, but they are completed, with only the 3d cars on the top floors, the roof skylight domes also are very significant in the design pattern.... but overall the terminal and landside environs looks and feels empty, or even totally deserted, with no intimate detail or even advertising... this is carried on with the glass, which very good and see-through, but inside it comes also with blank areas that again make the terminal look closed and not fitted out or even half developed in context. Glass however is very good, and nicely reflective.... but one word sums it up as "empty". The gate layout is deceptively simple. Each side of the Terminal are two concourses built together with a single long concourse on the front. A and B Concourses are on the west, and F and G are on the east, with the north single Concourse D. Four each C and E gates are position directly on to the terminal between obviously B and D and D and F. Gate or bay detail is excellent, in detail and modeling. Obviously being Stairport Sceneries, the built in SAM functionality is first rate, and it is all wrapped up with great HSBA Banking advertising. There is a huge remote parking area directly opposite the main Terminal, this is Apron 1 (stands 109 - 149) but also there are the H Stands for Deicing in Aprons (Deicing) 3 and 4... In time Apron 1 will front a new satellite terminal and then incorporating this now remote standing area. The airport's main Fire Station is set on the end to the west of Apron 1, and there are also two ground radars to watch the aircraft movements, but the radars are surprisingly not animated, which is usually something in their detailing that Stairport do. Airport infrastructure is still in it's infancy here, but already there is a large column area to the west of the terminal zones that is already quite built up. Included in this zone is the Control Tower and Cargo facilities. The control tower is noted to be in the shape of the Turkish national flower, the Tulip. it is 90 meters (295.28ft) high over an area of 6,085 m². To me though it doesn't look like a flower but more of a King Cobra snake... or I'm missing (or hissing) something in the transition. Tower view is perfectly set, with views over all of the airfield, however the threshold of Rwy 36 is partially obscure by the main Terminal building, there is a smaller tower on the western side of the field to cover this abnormality, but you can only have one tower view setting. Cargo Currently there are two major cargo areas and four cargo aprons at IST, and the main one is set near the base of the control tower. This is the growing Turkish Cargo operations centre, totally new and very large and created for growth and expansion. The modeling and detail of the significant Turkish Cargo facility is very good and covers the Cargo Aprons of 2 and 3, and this includes the Ptt or Posta ve Telgraf Teşkilatı the Turkish Postal service also has a huge facility here... like noted all buildings are really good, but everything set around them is sadly not... .... a lot of the layouts on this central zone corridor is basically extremely low res images with a bit of facade bases, with the custom buildings placed on top, and in areas the layouts are really quite ugly and not even at all authentic to any realism... ... if you do use these brightly coloured underlays, then at least cover them with something feasible, but that is certainly not the case here, and worse they are all highly visible from the aprons or the aircraft cockpits. Cargo Aprons 5 and 1 are on the corner of the DHL facility, with the MNG Kargo facility fronting Apron 1. The position of this cargo zone is directly between the 34L/16R - 34R-16L and 35L/17R - 35R/17L runways and you have direct access to all of them via a short taxi and taxiway A1 connects them together, again to the south is another deicing area Apron (Deicing) 2. Cargo Apron 4 is directly opposite the Turkish Cargo areas fronting taxiway A, a smaller four stand (K50-K53) apron and it serves Celebi, FedEx, TNT, UNSPED and Fevzi Gandur logistics. Airport Infrastructure To the far north of the central control tower, there is another deicing area Apron (Deicing) 1 and stand parking on Apron 4 (not to be confused with Cargo Apron 4)... here there are nine stands 401-409. Set on Apron 5 is one huge Turkish Technic facility and a smaller hangar sized one, and another Fire Station (West) opposite. There is another major Turkish Technic facility at the southern boundary on the entrance to the airport... noted as the THY (Turkish Airline) facility. This is a very imposing hangar that can be seen from most of the southern approaches and the detail is excellent, but Stairport certainly missed an opportunity to show off their SAM door opening feature, as the doors set here would have been perfect for animation? Highly noticeable though is the detail, in that there is no fencing and the photo-image lines are clearly there to separate the highways and roads from the airfield I am a fencing nazi, no fencing is a big deal in not covering even the basics of doing good scenery, and most of the fencing and hence the good detailing is certainly missing here at IST. The fencing point is not for just show? If you are taxiing around taxiways and areas of the airport, and missing fencing gives you a view that is totally unrealistic, as it does here at IST, the fencing breaks down the view between the flat surfaces and the far open flat surface that looks and is horrible, no one wants this view out of an aircraft window. South of the central corridor, is mostly a commercial industrial estate dominated by the new Turkish Airlines impressive "Turkish Airlines Operations Center" and most associated THY operations and food catering. Again the simply layout of (very) lo-res photo textures, facade bases and custom modeling tiered above each other is about the best way to fill in a large area, but that doesn't mean it looks very realistic, as it comes across as just quick cheap fill-in modeling. Notable on the eastern south side is the VIP Terminal with a very nice four stand parking area (316 -319) that can take large twin-aisle private jet aircraft, and the smaller VIP jets as well. There is a secondary VIP Terminal (the same custom building) placed over on the western airport boundary, and accessible by the same A1 Taxiway, this is noted as Apron V. Behind there are some animated Wind Turbines, but the wind needs to strong enough to make them turn. Textures The taxiway and runway surfaces are excellent. Obviously this is a very, very new airport and the surfaces are going to be very new and clean as well, without a lot of dirty grungy areas... but Stairport have been able to add in some nice rubber wear and surface details... so it is all very good, linage is excellent as well. Nice and well done also are the joins between the asphalt and concrete aprons, no straight lines here, but a realistic join. Burnt in ambient occlusion effects are excellent and bring out the best in the HDR surfaces, which again are highly realistic. Reflection and surface sheen is also first rate. Stairport Sceneries include a "Seasons" pack for their SAM Plugin (Seasons are a separate SAM install). It gives a full winter coverage (and thankfully covers over the mosaic mess), but the track and runway/taxiway wear is not all defined in the fallen snow, so overall it is pretty average. Notable is using the Traffic addons with Aerosoft's Istanbul. Here Traffic Global is working very hard to cover the sheer numbers of flights departing and arriving at IST. At first I thought the long queues were because of faulty built in taxi flows, but no... finally the sheer numbers slowly but surely sorted themselves out to depart or go their assigned gates, great to watch if you have the time to do so, it also means when arriving, it could take a fair while to get to your gate if you arrive at a busy timetable period. Also the default X-Plane Global Airports, do a good job of replicating the old Atatürk Airport on any of the southern approaches. Lighting Overall pretty average is the lighting at Istanbul International. Approaches and runway/taxi lighting is very good, as are the huge array of navigation boards, which they need to be, as it is a complicated place to taxi around at night, but the Nav boards are not ground reflective. The problem with using clear glass, is it looks great in the daylight, but is really dull and flat at night, as it does here on the Main Terminal building, the only bright aspects are the excellent under the roof support lighting which is very impressive... ... down on the aprons it is not toooo bad, but the dull towering terminal and gate towers however don't give you much in the way of detail, but at least it is bright down here to work on the aircraft, but overall dull is the word. The THY Maintenace Technic hangar and operation centre both look good on the southern approaches, but that is about it. Control Tower is nicely lit, and there is a a lot of building branding that does look great in the dark, but there are also a lot of dark patchy areas. __________________________ Summary Istanbul's modern new mega airport at Arnavutköy, replaced the older and outdated Atatürk Airport on 29th October 2018, it cost (or is costing) a staggering €7 billion to build and is when finished expected to cater for 200 million passengers a year. Both very big numbers. Important is the strategic position of Istanbul of not only in it's formal line of being the crossroads between the east and west continents, but also in air routes of being a mega hub between the now impressive number of Asian hubs to connect over to the major European and North Africa ports. This scenery is a Stairport Scenery airport development released under the Aerosoft banner, and big in every way it is. I need this to be clear. Airports at this huge scale don't deliver the finer details and intimate quality textures of the smaller scenery airports, it is just not possible to do that aspect in delivering an airport of this size as your framerate would crash, or take the fun out of using the scenery in the simulator... and anyway the developer would never finish the product. However the basics should also still be delivered in a quality fashion. Another point is that the IST airport is brand new, and built over old open-pit coal mines, so don't expect a pretty surrounding landscape. The massive current terminal building (second largest currently in the world after Dubai) is really well modeled and designed, certainly the gate towers and bay areas, there is nice clear tinted glass but sterile empty innards that can be clearly seen. The Airport Mosque is also a great focus point, as is the THY (Turkish Airlines) Technic and operations areas. The Control Tower is very stylish (if Snakeish) as well and there are a lot of great Cargo aprons to choose from. Runway and taxiway surfaces and linage is also first rate, and overall it is a great and well done layout. SAM is implemented on every gate and works fine, as expected as Stairport created the plugin themselves, SAM seasons are also available if required. Negatives concern the over use of very low density orth-images, and in places they are quite noticeable and jarring... not helped by the missing of important aspects like fencing, 3d grass (there is a little grass, very little) and even basic working animations like radars on the many field towers. Placed elements of buildings on top of facade bases is also quite evident with no creative input for realism. Night lighting (with the clear glass) is dull and flat, but apron, runway/taxiway and brand lighting is very good. In areas overall the detail could be far better, of course within reason. Make no mistake that this new Istanbul International airport is a very important airport to X-Plane, it's positioning globally is very important for your routing and hubbing in going from the west to east or vice-versa, or even doing a European or Russian domestic to the airport. Overall I found the flights into and using Stairport's IST very good, but in many areas it certainly it could also be significantly better, as it is a major airport to use regularly... and a needed destination of significant value, very useful at the moment, but also currently requires more development to realise it's full potential, is that like the real world's newest of world's major hub in Istanbul International... maybe it is as again that X-Plane parallels the real with the simulation... overall currently great, but could be in the future sensational. ___________________________________ Yes! the LTFM - Airport Istanbul XP by Aerosoft is now available from the X-Plane.Org Store here : LTFM - Airport Istanbul XP Price is US$29.95 Features: Highly detailed virtual replica of the airport buildings and its surroundings Photorealistic textures on airport buildings and vehicles Custom high resolution ground textures, detailed markings and full PBR Custom 3D Taxiway signs Animated jetways, VDGS and marshaller (SAM Plugin required) Custom animated vehicles (SAM AirportVehicles required) HDR night lighting Custom surroundings with hand placed autogen and water Realistic static aircrafts included Custom road layout Seasonal texture adaptions (SAM Plugin required) Compatible with Ortho4XP Navdata AIRAC 2104 included Requirements X-Plane 11 Windows, Mac and Linux 4 GB VRAM Video Card - 8 GB+ VRAM Recommended Download Size: 2.3 GB Current and Review version: 1.01 (June 16th 2021) Installation and documents: Download consists of; AS_AIRPORT-ISTANBUL_XP11.zip (2.38Gb) Install in your X-Plane Custom Scenery folder includes two folders; SceneryTR - LTFM Istanbul - 01 - Airport (2.58Gb) SceneryTR - LTFM Istanbul - 00 - Seasons (1.93Gb) Full Installation in your Custom Scenery folder is: 4.21Gb Note Nav data: In order for the newer nav data to be recognized by X-Plane, the “Custom Data” folder in the “Custom Scenery / SceneryTR - LTFM Istanbul - 01 - Airport / NAVDATA_AIRAC_2104” folder must be copied into the X-Plane main directory. If newer Nav data are already installed, this step is not necessary. I use Navigraph data, and it is noted as up to date for the use with LTFM. SAM Plugin - Scenery Animation Manager - Suite 2.0 is required for this scenery Documents Manual is provided (11 Pages) in German and English Manual_Istanbul_XP_de-en_web ________________________________________ Scenery Review by Stephen Dutton 15th July 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 Right 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 v11.55 Addons: Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini Plugins: Environment Engine by xEnviro US$69.90 : Traffic Global - JustFlight-Traffic (X-Plane.OrgStore) US$52.99 : Global SFD plugin US$30.00 : Scenery Animation Manager - Suite 2.0 - Free Scenery or Aircraft - B 747-8 Series Anniversary Edition by SSG (X-Plane.OrgStore) - US$54.90 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.