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Scenery Review: VerticalSim KSYR - Syracuse Hancock International By Joshua Moore Introduction Syracuse International Airport is situated in upstate New York, USA. The site on which it was built was first developed into an airport by Charles Hanna, the Mayor, and former WWI pilot. Upon the United States entrance of WWII, the US Army Air Corps built 3 runways and renamed the airfield Mattydale Bomber Base. It was used as a training and staging base for B-17 and B-24 bombers. In 1946 the airport was leased back to the city, with it being reopened as a commercial airport in 1948. It gained international airport status in 1970 and today serves twenty-eight destinations over eight airlines. Syracuse has two asphalt runways: 10/28 is 9,003 by 150 feet (2,744 × 46 m) and 15/33 is 7,500 by 150 feet (2,286 × 46 m). Prior to developing this X-Plane 12 version, VerticalSim had previously released Syracuse International Airport for X-Plane 11 and MSFS. Having enjoyed both, I was intrigued to see what Syracuse would look like in Laminar Research’s latest sim. So, without further ado, let's see how this rendition stacks up... Download & Install The installation process follows the tried and tested method many X-Plane users are familiar with. Once the 1.6GB file has been downloaded and unzipped (extracted size is 3.1GB), it’s a simple case of dragging and dropping the airport into your X-Plane’s Custom Scenery folder. Located in the airport’s scenery folder is a single eight-page PDF document which covers the installation process, features, and contact details for the developer. It’s simple and to the point, but it would have been nice to have seen some charts of the airport included. First Impressions Like many scenery developers, Verticalsim has used a photographic overlay as the main airport ground texture, and it certainly looks the part, especially with the ground objects all being correctly placed. When viewed from above, it makes X-Plane’s default ground textures stand out, but if you use photographic tiles of the surrounding area, it fits together seamlessly. However, one thing I did notice that was missing from the previous X-Plane 11 version, was the copious amounts of 3D grass. When I contacted the developer about this, I was told it had been temporarily removed, with the reason being, and I quote: “I removed it because they changed the way .for (forest files) are working, and I was getting weird shading issues with it. So, I just removed it for now till I had time to figure it out “ Other than the 3D grass, the rest looked quite familiar, which was a positive sign. Exploring the Airport Starting off with the main terminal building and I have to say that Verticalsim has done an excellent job at modelling the exterior, with all the major details being covered. It looks good, especially the smaller details that could have easily been left out. Unfortunately, some of the texturing didn’t quite meet the high standards set by the modelling, as I thought the entrance of the terminal looked a bit bland by comparison, especially with its repetitive textures. In saying that, this was when viewed close up and not something you would normally see from an aeroplane, so in this respect, the texturing is sufficient. The same is also true for the textures used for the roads, which I found to be slightly blurry but again adequate. As well as the main terminal, there is also the Million Air building located close by and again, this has been modelled to a high standard. The texturing was also good and upon checking with numerous sources on the web, found it to be a remarkable likeness of the real building. Further afield and you'll find the FedEx building plus other smaller maintenance facilities and hangars, along with the airport's own fire station. Airside and there’s plenty of detail to be observed. Multiple baggage carts, containers, pushback trucks, and other typical details can all be seen, with each being modelled to an acceptable level. Many of these are animated too, which really helps bring the airport to life. The cargo ramp contains plenty of ground clutter, and if you enjoy cargo operations as I do, this airport sees daily flights from UPS and FedEx, so there are plenty of chances to visit the apron from your choice of aircraft, be it an A300, 757, 767, etc. The Air National Guard side looks quite typical for a guard base, as it includes a lot of brick and steel buildings, all built to typical DOD standards. The one thing missing is the guard shack at the entrance of the airport, as in the scenery it’s represented by a single US flag. One area of the scenery which I hope will see an update in the near future is the addition of a 3D interior to the main terminal building. While I am certainly no fan of memory-hogging lavish interiors, such as those seen in certain sceneries in MSFS, I do think this add-on would benefit from one, even if it were basic. Being able to see chairs, counters, or even people inside the terminal, would add some additional life to the airport. As it is, it just seems to feel slightly empty. The developers at Verticalsim have always managed to get their apron ground textures to look authentic and Syracuse is no exception, as there is plenty of weathering on offer, such as scuffs, rubber marks, oil stains, etc. If only every airport employed this kind of detail…unlike the clinical feeling you get from some I have experienced in the past. The included jetways, and I observed three types, on the whole look good, with some variants looking more realistic than others, mainly due to the texturing. Both taxiway and runway texturing have been used to good effect and unlike some airport sceneries I have used, they do not look repetitive or blurry. Both the numbering and lettering for the majority of the scenery is very good, but I did notice that one of the runways was labelled sixteen instead of fifteen as it should be. Apart from that one error, the results were quite pleasing. Lighting Night lighting overall was good, especially the volumetric effects used around the ramps, terminal, and other buildings, but there were a few areas which I felt were lacking, the lit windows on the terminal being the main culprit. Here the textures consisted of a baked, flat 2D lit texture and didn’t do the building any favours whatsoever. This was a shame because the terminal itself (as mentioned previously) looks good and is another reason why a 3D interior would be beneficial. When it came to navigating around the airport, I found the lighting to be more than adequate, with both taxiways, runways and signage being well lit. Performance While testing Syracuse, I observed no noticeable slowdowns or stutters. Framerates always remained high which wasn’t a total surprise, as the airport isn’t overly detailed, plus it was missing the 3D grass, which can, on some systems, occasionally play havoc with framerates. Conclusion I have always been a huge fan of Verticalsim’s work as many of their sceneries exhibit higher than average framerates, decent quality texturing and modelling, plus interesting locations to fly in and out of, and Syracuse doesn’t break with that tradition. Yes, it does currently have a few issues, namely the lack of any 3D grass and a 3D interior of the main terminal. However, even with those faults, I still found this to be a scenery I enjoyed flying in and out of. So, is it worth the asking price? Well, if you enjoy flying airliners and visiting large hubs as I do, then this is a scenery I think you would really enjoy. When you also factor in the developer’s track record for updating and improving their sceneries, then I think this add-on becomes even more compelling. ________________________ Syracuse Hancock International Airport by VerticalSim is now available from the X-Plane.Org Store here: Syracuse Hancock International Airport by VerticalSim Priced at US$19.99 Features X-Plane 12 version now available 4K PBR texturing Circa 2022 airport layout SAM jetway support Animated vehicle traffic HDR night lighting Taxi routes for use with AI traffic addons Requirements X-Plane 12 or X-Plane 11 Windows, Mac or Linux 4 GB VRAM Minimum - 8 GB+ VRAM Recommended Download Size: 1.7 GB Version XP12 - September 21st 2022 Review System Specifications Windows 11 Ryzen 5800x RTX3070ti, 32GB RAM __________________________________ Scenery Review by Joshua Moore 8th December 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.

Behind the Screen : November 2022 When Laminar Research declared that X-Plane 12 will go final and will be out of beta by Christmas 2022, I almost choked on my coffee. "No way". There just seems still too much work to be done, too many areas and details to be crossed off the whiteboard list. And then to go and present the new Simulator version to the finicky hoards and masses in a few weeks. It all felt like a bit of a stretch to me all round. Testing Beta 14 was however a huge step forward towards the goal of a release, but there are still some big issues to be addressed, mostly the square clouds and ridiculous winds that never seem to change day to day, I'm not going to mention VR. Laminar say a fix to both is coming very soon, VR probably not until 2023. That fix will be an important one in making the final release actually believable. Stutters? I didn't get that one, what are your settings, being too greedy as usual... Laminar Research are quite confident they can achieve the Christmas target, my personal feelings say more to the middle-late Q1 before the Simulator is a more totally refined and stable Simulator. So what to expect in the New Year? Well quite a lot actually. Laminar have released a list of areas they will be working on, including; 3d Rain shafts which is very, very nice, 3d volumetric low level fog of which I really expected to be in the release version, but it is coming. God rays are planned. This is an area in being the one thing I was a bit down about in losing, by moving my simulator environmental needs from xEnviro in X-Plane 11 to the default weather in X-Plane 12, as I badly miss those rays (It makes images pretty!) and lens flares. And that they are now coming cheers me up no end (A Christmas Present!). Laminar has also announced that the weather engine will also be open to 3rd parties but there will be limit on what they can and cannot access, which is another interesting aspect, fine, even great as long as we don't get loads and loads of similar shader apps again. Notable is that there is better wind and turbulence improvements coming. This one is a no brainer, it is stupid to have aircraft reacting badly to abnormal weather conditions, and it is the one area that is severely currently restricting my flying. I mean winds and turbulence of 97 knts? you would break up and fall out of the sky if you encountered that in real life, I flew once at 12,000ft in 63 knt winds, I won't say my swear words at the controls, as my GA (and me) was being thrown all around the sky. Yes I'm not saying 63 kt turbulence at 12,000ft has not been encountered in the real world, but not every day since September? I went to manual settings to land. Laminar admitted that getting data for the NOAA GLIB files from the Laminar Research central server has not been going to plan, but again are working on a fix, it works but not as efficiently or as well as promised (actually I don't see it changing much day to day), but a fix is as promised in really (hopefully) coming soon. Overall in this Beta I have been flying on the "Manually" set weather, I just can't rely on the "Real World", settings, a shame as I want to try out the real world Winter Wonderland that I expect to be brilliant (I've seen shades of what can be presented by messing around with the settings), but you shouldn't have to do that manually. Before X-Plane 12 came out. Ben Supnic (Laminar) noted as a comment that they would look into better satellite imagery even against Austin's wishes, even in streaming it à la MSFS. But Supnic noted at the time it was not a top priority. Again Laminar has recently again noted they are actively looking at satellite imagery so it looks like it is back on the table or whiteboard. Now having used X-Plane 12 for a few months I have a few comments on that. Over most countries of flying in general X-Plane is very good in replicating the real world (Night lighting aside). However when in the departure, landing or VFR phases it is certainly not as detailed to be called authentic, as texture tiles in areas are just not good enough to reproduce a complex planet. Streaming is not good either, no matter how powerful your internet connection is you are always going to get lag, worse for me as I can change location quite often while doing reviews. So waiting ages between loads for scenery to load would be a backward step. However I do feel that finding quality satellite imagery as a base, but still keeping X-Plane a closed system is still a great step forwards in fixing the realism ground texture problem. The trick is still making it look very good, while still keeping efficiency in the Simulator. Can we have the best of both worlds, well I think so, but don't expect anything soon, but in a year or even maybe two. Many say X-Plane 13, but I very much doubt X-Plane as a Simulator could last that long in say waiting 4-5 years in this competitive (MSFS) commercial world to fix the problem. Austin Meyer has also been making a lot of noise about Networking X-Plane, and is even actively looking for staff to create the dream. Really when using On-Line ATC you are now already networked, but I suppose he wants to connect us all, and together... which creates a bit of a problem? "Have you seen other users fly". By personality I'm a very procedural pilot, all very by the book. I do actually like the idea of other pilots doing their work around you, but then comes the cowboys, the F4 jockeys who just feel that the airspace is their airspace and not yours, or the wandering GA pilot, who is not sure which runway to pick to land... It's all a personality thing and I'm not saying who is right or wrong in the way they want to fly.... but I don't really want to do it all together ATC aside. What I have learnt is that many users are Gamers in flying and not Simulation users, obviously our styles are going to clash, probably in mid-air. Another item on the table is that Laminar are actively investigating is OpenXR (Not to be confused with OpenGL) by The Khronos Group, a member-driven consortium of over 150 industry-leading companies. OpenXR is a newer VR standard for Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). And already OpenXR API is standard on Windows Mixed Reality (WMR) and HoloLens 2 headsets. Most will be adopting it as native support, and even previous APIs like OculusSDK and SteamVR are also moving to it as an open standard. MSFS is already native to OpenXR, so expect X-Plane 12 to be native or it to be in development once X-Plane 12 is in it's basic form completed. Bottom line it will make a lot of VR users very happy, more importantly it will create a standard across the board. If you want a job then Laminar Research are hiring, but oddly only a few of the new positions are actually related to the Simulator development, mostly the jobs are in marketing, customer support and website support... get your CVs out now, Laminar Research is going Global. This conversation has been visited quite regularly in BtheS. Austin has made noises he wants to bring in more gamers (obviously for the money) into the X-Plane Simulator. I have noted quite often in the time required to set up an airliner for a flight, even a short bounce of say under an hour. Earlier you set up and could fly under ten minutes, but now the quickest you could set up a flight from cold is around twenty minutes, as its a lot of work if you do all the correct procedures. Its even over 30 min if you want to set up the MD-11 and B742 for a flight. I don't mind it, as it is totally realistic simulation to it's core, and you now have a lot of great tools now to help with the set up. At one point, programming in a route of say 25 waypoints across the globe was tedious, but extremely satisfying in that you were mirroring one of them (professional Pilots). That is what Simulation is all about, I seriously love it, why I do it. Put a full cold up sequence under a Gamers eye and they would freeze over... they want instant gratification, oddly to get the ultimate gratification out of Simulation is doing the full experience from cold to shutdown, but as noted it takes time, too much time sometimes. Is there a middle ground? There is actually. The excellent save system on ToliSS Aircraft has to be the best overall tool in our toolbox. As the system is so complete when resetting up an aircraft, on the ground or in flight, it really does open up your world to instant gratification when you don't have a lot of time to do the complete main course. Many times I have wanted to fly, but was restricted by time or work. Pull up a ToLiSS and I can be ready and waiting to depart in a minute... ditto wanting to practise a landing, or even a takeoff, and with all the correct settings is just at a touch of a menu selection. Yes the X-Plane Simulator comes with a save system, but to be honest it is very if extremely poor in resetting up your flight at the point you saved it. You will never ever get it back the way you left the aircraft state, but you can do that with the excellent ToLiSS system... I don't don't know if this could be done, but could we swap ToLiSS saves for instant setups between us. That would allow non-experienced users (hint Gamers) to access the detailed setups of the Pro-Users, obviously for instant gratification. I don't mean for users (Gamers) not to be being able to just forever glide along on the backs of the Pro's, but to see and learn on how they do it, it is a consistent learning curve to get it all right. But many a time my reverse engineering of (mostly FMC's) has opened the "Ah ha" door to learning on how it all works. They are bloody complicated (Flight Management), they need a lot of study to get right. But it is how you get from there (dumb) to being here (guru). I don't know that if the basic X-Plane save and situation tool can be improved. The roadblock is the aircraft plugin architecture, and a few developers do actually include good save systems, but they never make it as a priority feature as ToLiSS does. But the ToLiSS system proves without doubt how extremely versatile it makes your Simulation experience when it works so perfectly, developers need to take note, this for me would make and break a sale, as it is the number one feature I would want in an (every) aircraft, because it translates to you flying that aircraft more, because you can. There will be as usual no Behind the Screen December 2022 issue, but our full yearly round up of the year review is to be published on 16th December 2022, so watch out for that. Stephen Dutton 1st December 2022 Copyright©2022 X-Plane Reviews