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Scenery Review: KMMH - Mammoth Yosemite Airport by X-Codr By Joshua Moore Introduction Mammoth Yosemite Airport is located approximately seven miles from the town of Mammoth Lakes California and is one of the premier GA airports serving the local area. Built as an auxiliary landing strip by the US Army Air Corps in WWII, it has seen multiple expansions and runway improvement projects over the years in which to increase its commercial viability. As of today, the runway is seven thousand feet long by one hundred feet wide with one parallel taxiway spanning the length of the runway. X-Codr’s rendition of Mammoth Yosemite is an update to an existing product available for X-Plane 11 and features native support for all the enhancements and features the latest version of X-Plane offers, including surface water, snow, icing, new texture support, lighting, and much more. The surrounding scenery includes 120 square miles of custom ortho imagery and an enhanced rendition of Mammoth and the ski resort. NOTE: The airport does feature custom 3D grass and vegetation, however, due to an update to X-Plane 12, the rendering of such vegetation has turned all the grass invisible. My many bug reports and emails over the last month to Laminar regarding this issue have (so far) unfortunately fallen on deaf ears, which is disappointing. I’m unsure whether this issue is unique to my setup as I have yet to find any mention of it anywhere else or even being acknowledged by Laminar themselves. This issue affects not only KMMH being reviewed here but almost every other scenery that includes 3D vegetation. As such, please keep this in mind when viewing the screenshots, and if you can, shoot the team at Laminar an email regarding this issue so it can be properly dealt with. Enjoy! First Impressions The installation process for this package is a little bit more involved than some users might be used to. I mention this because once purchased, you are greeted by a download page containing three zip files. All three are required for the installation and include the airport, the mesh file, and the library X-Codr uses for all their sceneries. Once installed, you’ll find a total of four folders added to your X-Plane Custom Scenery folder totalling 5.36GB. The included PDF manual is four pages in length and whilst relatively short, includes all the basic installation instructions for installing the scenery. Exploring the Airport Starting from a large overhead view and it was clear to see that the textures included were rather good, with the ortho not appearing too out of place and the airport blending in well with its surroundings. Moving slightly closer, the overall layout of the general ramp area and buildings are done quite well, and I have no complaints in that department. Many of the hangars and maintenance buildings leading up to the terminal are not only accurately placed (as far as I could tell from Google Maps) but are well-modelled and exhibit many finer details which could have easily been overlooked by less savvy developers. In terms of 3D modelling, the main terminal is, without a doubt, the highlight of the scenery and as such, is well done, especially the exterior details. Texturing is also of a high standard (more on that later) and when combined with the modelling, really helps add a degree of authenticity and realism. My only gripe with the terminal and this goes for the FBO as well, is the lack of interior modelling. Due to Yosemite being a relatively small airport, I think X-Plane 12 could easily handle an interior due to its low VRAM requirements and would help to make the airport feel more…alive! When winter weather sets in, the airport looks extremely atmospheric, especially with its snow-covered buildings. However, I did notice that with severe winter weather, both the runway and taxiways were particularly difficult to navigate, which I thought was strange, especially as the numerous YouTube videos I had watched previously, show these areas clear of any snow. I don’t know if this is a bug with X-Plane or with the scenery, but the end result is that the airport is pretty much off-limits when a snowstorm rolls through. Mammoth Ski Resort A nice bonus to the scenery was the inclusion of the nearby Mammoth Ski Resort. Whilst simple in terms of modelling compared to the main airport, it was nevertheless highly welcomed. The ski lifts unfortunately weren't animated, but even though they are described as generic by the developer, I still enjoyed seeing them. Textures When it comes to the textures used in the package, they are certainly up to today’s modern standards, although I did notice some of the smaller items were a bit lacking, mainly the taxiway signs. As mentioned previously, the terminal looks great and the use of PBR texturing on the corrugated metal surface looks outstanding. The ground textures are done extremely well, with the pavement having noticeable defects, such as bumps, wear and tear and other things you’d expect an airport surface to have. The smaller vehicles and details situated around the scenery also seemed up to the job and didn’t seem to lose too much quality in the texture department. The one area which I did think wasn’t quite up to the same standard was the large photographic ortho for the scenery. The reason being, it had been sampled at ZL16, which if you’re flying at 36,000ft in an airliner, would be totally acceptable. However, this is a scenery designed for VFR exploration, and as such, a higher Zoom Level (for example ZL18) would have been very much preferred. Night Lighting Much like the real airport, night lighting isn’t the scenery’s biggest selling point, so although it doesn’t look particularly impressive, it’s pretty much how the airport is in real life. The main terminal is adequately lit and the other small maintenance buildings surrounding it, all exhibit the usual “X-Plane” glow. So, whilst nothing really made me go “wow!” regarding the lighting, I wasn’t particularly disappointed with what I saw either. Performance During my testing, I noticed no slowdowns or spikes whilst exploring the scenery, everything was as smooth as butter. This could have been due to the relatively low VRAM requirements set by the scenery or the fact that the 3D grass was on holiday. Either way, I was happy with the way the package performed as there’s nothing worse than having a scenery which is a stutter fest! Conclusion I really enjoyed my time at Yosemite, especially whilst flying in and out in the Phenom 300; the RNAV 27 approach is a wonderful way to arrive at the airport. For someone who enjoys VFR flying, both real and simulated, I found the scenery to be an excellent starting point in which to explore the greater wider area. This is probably one of the scenery’s biggest selling points, as there are so many places within easy reach of the airport, such as Yosemite National Park, the Sierra National Forest, and if you’re brave, Death Valley National Park! So, if you’re looking for a small airport in which to explore some of America’s incredible and diverse scenery, Yosemite Mammoth Airport is certainly well worth considering. ________________________ KMMH - Mammoth Yosemite Airport by X-Codr is now available from the X-Plane.Org Store here: KMMH - Mammoth Yosemite Airport by X-Codr Priced at US$19.95 Features Detailed rendition of KMMH All buildings feature ultra-high resolution textures (most 4 pixels per inch). All buildings feature advanced PBR normal maps for realistic reflections and bump mapping. All buildings are highly detailed, down to even door handles. All buildings feature "lite" interiors to give windows more depth. Detailed ground textures with large scale realistic wear. All ground textures feature realistic normal maps. Realistic X-Plane 12 3d vegetation for the entire airport. Living scenery Integration with X-Plane 12’s weather effects system Ground equipment automatically serves your aircraft upon request. Other Features All models optimized for maximum performance. Generic custom rendition of Mammoth. Generic custom rendition of Mammoth Ski Resort. Realistic surroundings including custom forests. Custom 10-meter mesh with color-corrected ZL16 ortho. (Thanks to Oscar Pilote for creating the amazing tool Ortho4xp) Custom overlay scenery based on Alpilotx’s HD Mesh V4 scenery (used with his permission) Requirements X-Plane 12 or X-Plane 11 Windows, Mac, or Linux 4 GB VRAM Minimum - 8 GB VRAM Recommended Download Size: 3.6Gb Current version: XP12 - September 6th, 2022 XP11 - 1.01 (December 13th, 2020) Review System Specifications Windows 11 Ryzen 5800x RTX3070ti, 32GB RAM __________________________________ Scenery Review by Joshua Moore 27th January 2023 Copyright©2023: 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.