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  1. NEWS! - Scenery Release : LTFE - Bodrim Airport Turkey by JustSim Bodrim Airport is an international airport that serves the Turkish towns of Bodrum and Milas in the southwest of Turkey. The airport is situated 36 km northeast of the town of Bodrum, and 16 km south of Milas. This is another X-Plane Simulator release again for the Turkish and Greek areas of the Mediterranean Sea. There has been a significant amount of releases here over the last few years from not only JustSim (here again with this LTFE-Bodrim) but also from FlyTampa and Aerosoft. A spacious new international terminal was completed in 2000 at Bodrim; this then became the domestic terminal in 2012 following the completion of another newer international terminal. The older terminal, now reserved for only domestic flights, and is positioned next to the international terminal. Features: Detailed airport objects and vehicles Custom textured taxiways, runways and apron Custom surroundings Custom airport lights Handplaced autogen, greenhouses and trees Compatible with X-Plane 11 features Shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on terminal and other airport buildings High resolution ground textures / Custom runway textures High resolution building textures Excellent night effects Realistic reflections on glass World Traffic compatible X-Life traffic compatible Optimized for excellent performance Custom patch for Ortho4XP for real runway curvature Images are courtesy of JustSim... The LTFE - Bodrim Airport Turkey by JustSim is now available from the X-Plane.OrgStore _____________________________________ Yes! - LTFE - Bodrim Airport Turkey by JustSim is NOW available from the X-Plane.Org Store here : LTFE - Bodrim Airport Turkey Price is US$16.90 Requirements X-Plane 11 Windows, Mac, Linux 4 GB VRAM Minimum - 8 GB+ VRAM Recommended Current version: 1.0 Download size: 1.2 GB ___________________________ News by Stephen Dutton 24th February 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) All Rights Reserved
  2. Scenery Upgrade Review : EVRA - Riga International Airport v2 by JustSim The equation is quite simple. Quality scenery at the right price in the right place. I don't deny I champion certain scenery developers because they hit every point in delivering consistently good quality scenery at a good price point. The price set is in so that the developer gets a good return for the work put in, but the price is also relative to the you being able to form a decent collection of quality destinations within a good network. JustSim has always delivered very well in this context. It is very rare that their scenery is below par or under developed, but overall they deliver great destinations for very good value... but one destination in past reviews from JustSim, somehow got overlooked... Riga in the capital of Latvia. This is odd for me as I do a lot of routes around the Scandi and Baltic areas, and Riga is nicely positioned for a short-haul from Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm or Helsinki, and a medium-haul from the UK or Germany or even Switzerland. Time to put that right with a new and upgraded version from JustSim of EVRA - Riga to v2 or version 2. The original JustSim EVRA release was in Oct 2017, so this is a welcome update to add in some or mostly the newer introduced effects and clean up any changes at the airport to current layout standards. It is an upgrade to v2, so that means you have to repurchase the scenery to get the upgrade, but that aspect is quite small considering the expansive changes here and that only a US$5 Upgrade fee is required, not really painful at all or just a missing cup of coffee. Riga International Airport is the international airport of Riga, the capital of Latvia, and it is the largest airport in the Baltic states with direct flights to 76 destinations as of November 2019. It serves as a hub for AirBaltic, SmartLynx Airlines and RAF-Avia, and as one of the base airports for Wizz Air. The Latvian national carrier AirBaltic is the largest carrier that serves the airport, followed by Ryanair. The airport is located in the Mārupe Municipality west of Riga, and approx. 10 km from its city centre. (Google Maps) Riga International Airport Starptautiskā lidosta "Rīga" IATA: RIX - ICAO: EVRA 18/36 - 3,200m (10,500ft) Concrete/Asphalt Elevation AMSL36 ft / 11 m First impressions of this upgraded scenery is excellent... you can see the the scenery's boundaries, but they are expertly intergrated into the default scenery, some clever use of trees covers and even forms the Rwy 18 Approach, mostly the orthophoto toning is perfect and upgraded here in v2 to the latest photo images. Overall the EVRA fits in perfectly into the surrounding landscape. Riga airport was built in 1973 as an alternative to Spilve Airport, which had become by then very outdated. A renovation and modernisation of the airport was also completed in 2001, coinciding with the 800th anniversary of the founding of the city. In 2006 and 2016, the new north terminal extensions were opened. But there is a nice feel here of the modern and older aspects of the airport, that is if you think of the 70's era as old. You can see how the old original single terminal has been enlarged and expanded outwards with the North Terminal extension, but the original layout is highlighted by the old "Witches Hat" style walkon/walkoff circular gates (used for only Stands 101/103). The feel and look of the weathered concrete roof is spot on. Exceptional are the terminal's glass and surface textures. Again all glass and surfaces have had the full shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects added in v2, and they are breathtaking in quality, the glass shines and the terminals glow in detail... everything is absolutely first rate. The visual quality is excellent, as is the architectural design of glass frames within the glass panels. Other highlights are the light vanes on the main terminal windows, and the lovely surface sheen of the cladding. The original (but refurbished) pier has only seven stands in 102 - 109, and only the five inner have Airbridges in 102, 104, 106, 107 and 109, both 108/109 stands are Walkon/Walkoff. JustSim still use the older (Marginal) Animated Jetways system, not the better SAM system. The system here is custom designed and highly detailed, but the older Jetway system can be a bit hit and miss in working. But you can't ignore the excellent detail on the airbridges, and the gate internal detail, transparent glass and advertising is absolutely first rate. The North Terminal Pier is of the same design. This pier has the same layout of eight stands, with Airbridges on seven Stands 300, 301, 302, 304, 306 and 308. Stand 309 on the end is Walkon/Walkoff. It is easy to get confused in in the use of the piers as that areas are split up in A,B,C zones or Schengen or Non-Schengen Areas, basically the original pier is Non-Schengen and the North Pier is Schengen, but there are areas of crossover. Behind the North Pier is the excellent Riga Aviation Museum or Rīgas aviācijas muzejs. It was established in 1956 by Victor Talpa, and is all mostly supplied with Russian and Eastern-Bloc aircraft, but the layout is well reproduced here as are the enclosed Russian aircraft. There is also extensive remote stand parking, both north and south of the central terminal area piers. Aprons 3, 4 and 5 are positioned north and Apron 1, P (North) and P (South) and lowest is Apron 2, is to the south. Landside On the arrival side of the airport it is mostly very good, but there are a few quirks here that are a bit headscratching... The actual terminal facade is excellent, and certainly with the add on northern section with some amazing glass construction, outward as well as across... ... but you have this really well modeled and textured terminal areas, then it all goes to a bit Lo-Res orthophoto (noted as Hi-Res?) then it returns back into the X-Plane traffic roads, but in between is not a very convincing carpark? It is obvious because it looks obvious, on the lower part there is a substantial requirement of trees (burnt-in), but only a few set 3d trees as coverage... so it all looks a bit half done. Infrastructure wise though landside it is all very good. There is the RIX Administration Offices, Tez Tour, Policija Station and a very nice and prominent AirBaltic Administration building... ... plus all the required buildings including a Havaş-ground handling services company, the Siemens dept and the Itella Logistics SIA of which both have nice reflective facades. Control Tower Another quirk is on the control tower... outwardly this 70's era tower is very authentic, but related to the render scaling there are some very bad blue border outlines around the tower's railings and stairs, so bad are the outlines that they split the towers forms into two sections from every visible angle, it is visually far worse at night. A shame as the tower detailing is very good. There is a basic tower interior fitout and the view in here of the field is great with even window shades, but the X-Plane Tower View setting is also correctly placed position wise, but set too high above the tower itself. Field Infrastructure There is a lot of excellent field infrastructure, including a very nice VIP arrival centre and RIX logistics base. Animated traffic does work around here (Fixed for v2), but there is not really a lot of it, but overall that is enough anyway... enough movement to give action around the ramps, but not enough to overwhelm the scenery... perfect. All JustSim scenery has a lot of excellent clutter and you are well provided for here with a lot of the buses and vehicles that are locally branded. FBO Riga has a large presence at RIX as a certified ground handling agent and the operator of the business aviation center all positioned to the far south of the field. Their reception and administration building is very stylish and very well reproduced here, as is the huge adjoining maintenance hangar, AirBaltic also have a maintenance hangar near by. Situated in front of the FBO Riga facilities is a very authentic Fire Station. To the far north on Aprons 4 and 5 is another FBO Riga maintenance area with one very large hangar with open doors, and three other medium sized hangars fronting a work parking area (Apron 4) Over the field in an area called Z3- Remote Apron are two more AirBaltic storage hangars, a VOR facility (RIA) RIGA 112.05 Mhz, and two more Russian aircraft in static storage. There is some very nice detailed field infrastructure, like both the approach localiser antennas and the said VOR frame. If looking to the east from the airport, there is an unusual object sticking high up into the sky. This is the Riga Radio and TV Tower, which is highest point reaches 368.5 metres (1,209 ft), and which makes it the third tallest tower in Europe (after the Ostankino Tower at 540 metres (1,770 ft) and the Kyiv TV Tower at 385 metres (1,263 ft)) and the 16th tallest self-supporting tower in the world. JustSim have modeled the tower as a visual reference to the city, so no you were not seeing something odd or an X-Plane elevation error. Ground Textures If the building textures have had the the full occlusion texture baking effects, then you would certainly expect the ground textures to have been put through the same process, well they have and also redone with a more updated process for v2. All the varied combinations of surfaces are really well done here at Riga. Runways have lovely rubber landing wear, and inner outer wear, and all the surfaces are not clean, but have some dirt and wear, even the concrete squares. Lineage is first rate with slight wear in some areas and heavy wear in others, so it all looks totally realistic... The PBR effects are excellent as well, with great reflection detail that brings out the best of all the surfaces, the concrete ripple surfaces are the absolute highlight here. Grass is very well done (the underlying textures are very good here and help enormously) and all new here. 3d and very comprehensive, is the grass that covers most of the field surfaces, it all looks very good from the aircraft as well (meaning realistic). Lighting Overall the lighting at EVRA is very good, but again there is a quirk. There is only one runway here at RIX to light, and Rwy 18/36 is well served on both approaches with excellent lighting. There is however no RAIL or approach aids. Airport lighting is two tone, but not say airside and landside. Here I like the layout of lower tone for the older original airport layout, and the brighter tone for the newer North Terminal zone.. that said the older darker tone is quite a lot more darker on the ramps to use. I am still debating the night window lighting in this review of RIX? JustSim have done excellent terminal lighting before (EBBR-Brussels is a good example), but here at Riga it is a bit odd or is it just simply too over bright... ... more odd is the fact the other terminal lighting is far too dark? I understand what JustSim are trying to achieve in creating both types of area lighting, but does it work in context? in fact the glass lighting here at RIX seems to conflict more than compliment each other. And the Landside arrival area again comes up short as the drop off areas are all in darkness? FBO and AirBaltic south area is really well lit, as are the Landside infrastructure buildings, Siemens and AirBaltic buildings. Navigation signage is very good, but not with any ground reflections (surprisingly), but the signage does have a worn realistic feel. _______________________ Summary JustSim are known for quality scenery at a value price. This is Riga International in Lativa, and this scenery is an upgrade from the original EVRA released scenery from Oct 2017. The focus here in this upgrade has been the redone textures, to a higher and more modern quality with better PBR and the full occlusion texture baking effects, ground orthophoto images have also been upgraded as has the new vegetation and grass. Glass and building textures are beyond excellent, as is all the clutter and branded animated (also new) traffic. The ground layouts have also been upgraded to the latest charts with the (Marginal) Autogate system being all very custom made and being really well done. As per any JustSim scenery as much detail has been added into the Landside area as is the focus on the Airside with the Riga Radio and TV Tower thrown in for good measure. But there are a couple of nicks in all this perfection. The Landside by the arrival area of the Terminal goes Hi-Res to Lo-Res and back to Hi-Res and the area generally feels not completed, same with the missing landside terminal arrival lighting at night. The Control Tower has some nasty render scaling that creates some very bad blue border outlines that is highly visible and the terminal window lighting is either too bright or too dull to be authentic. To be fair I never reviewed the original released scenery, but mostly guess that these issues followed on to the newer v2 version. Overall this another brilliant scenery from JustSim, and highly usable in any network around the Baltic Sea. As this is an upgrade to v2 and not an Update, so that means you have to repurchase the scenery to get the upgraded features, but that aspect is quite small considering the expansive changes and only a low US$5 Upgrade fee is required if you already own JustSim's v1 original scenery. So another nice EVRA upgrade from JustSim, certainly a great Baltic destination that will see a lot of visits on your network, another great scenery at a great value price... perfect! _____________________________________ Yes! EVRA - Riga International Airport v2 by JustSim is now available from the X-Plane.Org Store here : EVRA - Riga International Airport v2 Price is US$18.50 If you already own EVRA v1 by JustSim can get this new v2 for only $5, please find the coupon code under your original EVRA v1 invoice at the X-Plane.OrgStore New Feature List (v2 changelog): - new high-res ground textures - new parkings and apron (charts 2021) - new ground equip models - new surrounding models - new airport nav and service models - new vegetation and grass - new orthophoto (latest 2020) - all models now have full PBR textures - COM frequencies updated - ground traffic routes updates and fixed - autogates LOD radius fixed - minor fixes and improvements WT3: WorldTraffic3 GroundRoutes are not provided and Traffic Global operates perfectly. Requirements: X-Plane 11 Windows, Mac or Linux 4 GB VRAM Minimum. 8 GB+ VRAM Recommended Download Size: 757 MB Current and Review version : 2.0 (April 5th 2021) Installation This is an extensively large download of 738Mb download to install in your Custom Scenery folder. The Install (INI) order is: EVRA_Riga_JustSim_v2.0 Total scenery install is: 1.63Gb ShortFinal Global SFD plugin is highly recommended with this scenery. Documents None ___________________________________________ Scenery Review by Stephen Dutton 7th April 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 v11.52 Addons: Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini  Plugins: Traffic Global - JustFlight-Traffic (X-Plane.OrgStore) US$52.99 : Global SFD plugin US$30.00 : Environment Engine by xEnviro US$69.90 Scenery or Aircraft - Zibo Mod Boeing 737-800 by Laminar Research
  3. Scenery Upgrade : EBBR Brussels v2.0 by JustSim A scenery that I use frequently and for reviews then makes it certainly a valuable addition to my scenery portfolio, value is the word here in that if the scenery delivers for you on a highly realistic level then I will use it, and then if I am using the airport regularly then the actual purchase is also worthwhile because you have got your full value for money. So JustSim's excellent EBBR - Brussels that was released in the 3Q 2018 is that good, but the scenery also had a few gripes that just lost it's position in the overall 5 Star rating it really deserved, here is the original full release review: Scenery Review - EBBR Brussels Airport by JustSim EBBR Brussels v2.0 by JustSim Brussels Airport Aéroport de Bruxelles-National (French) Luchthaven Brussel-Nationaal (Dutch) IATA: BRU - ICAO: EBBR 01/19 2,987m (9,800ft) Asphalt 07R/25L 3,21 (10,535ft) Asphalt 07L/25R 3,638 (11,936ft) Asphalt Elevation AMSL184 ft / 56 m The first thing that took in your eye in was the far more over-saturated ground textures to the surrounding mesh. To a point they are still the same in v2 But they don't seem in this version to have the same overt impact they did before? Why... the reason I think is hidden in the Witt and Rode Cites area that is on the threshold to 07R and to a point could also be easily seen from the 07L approach. In v2 the autogen boundaries have been redrawn, so the full Witt and Rode Cites area is now filled in with objects and also in taking away the hideous empty spaces and replacing it with perfect autogen (images above left and right). And so it has the same effect of also covering over the over-saturated photo images as well in creating a more tighter autogen boundary around EBBR, and boy it does make a big difference, but you do still lament that a just a small adjustment to the ground texture saturation would have made it all so perfect, but this is anyway still a nice fix to two large outstanding issues from the v1.0 scenery. The missing Eurocontrol ATC building are now sort of there, the better autogen also creates some of the buildings, but I think the ATC control centre deserved some custom 3d worthy objects. But at least now the autogen fills in around the formally deserted NATO Headquarters area. Terminals The Terminals and Piers A and B have been redone. So why would you remodel already good and well modeled terminals... The answer is in the addition (thankfully) of the now multiple and active (Marginal) VDGS airbridges!, yay I was very disappointed that the original release EBBR had only static airbridges, now that missing element has been fixed in V2. The airbridges are also custom to BRU and come with the current "equinor" branding. Highly noticeable is the newer and shinier Pier A glass and detail... .... Pier B is also all new and is more detailed than the earlier version, also now are the A380 stands on Pier B in Gates 31 (231) and 33 (233) have now been included as well... ... the Category 5 321 stand with double boarding levels and a three airbridge facility is really well modeled and authentic here. The provided WorldTraffic3 ground routes have also been updated to reflect these taxiway changes, but you won't see a lot of A380 aircraft here as only Emirates has one flight a day to BRU in EK183, and mostly that route is on demand and uses Boeing 777's. At Apron 3 North at BRU there has been a lot of ground work been done. Those apron, stand changes and signage have been done here as well to reflect the work completed. So the v2 scenery is totally up to date with the current EBBR layout. Other airport taxiway navigation signs and ground markings have also been updated to the current 2020 layout. Lighting Another slight frustration was with the lighting in v1.0. It was so visibly good, but also lacking in many other areas. All my concerns have now been addressed in this v2 update. The biggest blackhole area was around the old circular Pier C, in that the missing lighting has now been fixed, and very nice is the lighting fill-in as well. Another gripe was that the Pier A looked magnificent in the daylight, but the night textures were very dull and bland and not at all worthy of the terminal... again that aspect has been well rectified as the terminal now looks excellent at night. The Pier A landside entrance has had a little lighting upgrade as well, it now has more consistent lighting. So has the entrance to Pier B as the landside panorama of 3d people and the terminal entrance looks very good in the night environment. Taxiway parking zones and other areas have also had lighting touchups, and the full overall EBBR airport lighting effect is now very good. Summary Very good on release, JustSim's EBBR - Brussel's v1.0 scenery, was just missing that extra finer refinement. This v2.0 upgrade release covers all those noticeable quirks and a lot more. All the fixes here are spot on to rectify the areas required to make EBBR perfect. The autogen has been refined to covered over the over-saturated photo-textures, and thankfully fix the flat empty Witt and Rode Cites area on the 07L/07R approaches. New Terminals (Piers 1&2) have been completely redone to now incorporate Marginal's VDGS autogates with its current "equinor" branding. A380 gates (31/33) and taxi markings have been added with the full double-boarding gate complex. Apron 3 North has also been updated with current stands and markings. The lighting has had a good upgrade as well, with the dark zone around Pier C has been fixed as has the dark Pier A concourse glass, both are now excellent, all lighting has been completely looked over and refined, so it is now perfect. Even if the ground photo textures over-saturation have been nullified to a point with the covering autogen, they are still very strong and in need of some less saturation to blend in more with the default surrounding textures, but otherwise the negatives are minimal. Already very good was the original release of JustSim's Brussel's EBBR, then this v2 upgrade totally fills in the blanks and more, then very worthy before, now v2 Brussels is certainly 5 Star scenery... great value, great scenery... so what more do you want! _____________________________________ Yes! EBBR Brussels Airport v2.0 by JustSim is available from the X-Plane.Org Store here : EBBR Brussels Airport v2 Price is US$25.00 Customers who own the previous EBBR Brussels by JustSim can get the new v2 version for $6.50. Use the coupon code location in your original EBBR invoice Features: Detailed airport objects and vehicles Custom textured taxiways, runways and apron Custom surroundings Custom airport lights Compatible with X-Plane 11 features Animated ground vehicles (X-Plane 11 only) Shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on terminal and other airport buildings High resolution ground textures / Custom runway textures High resolution building textures Animated autobridges, Marginal VGDS Excellent night effects Realistic reflections on glass World Traffic compatible X-Life traffic compatible Optimized for excellent performance WT3: WorldTraffic GroundRoutes are provided and overall the airport functions perfectly, but it has no airport operations file. Ground routes are to be installed in the ARR and DEP folders and the ParkingDef.txt goes into the ParkingDef folder. Requirements: X-Plane 11+ Windows, Mac, Linux 4 Gb VRAM Video Card Minimum, 8 Gb+ VRAM Video Card Recommended Current and Review version: 2.0 (February 17th 2020) Download Size: 1.3 GB _____________________________________________________________________ Scenery Upgrade Review by Stephen Dutton 18th February 2020 Copyright©2020 : 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)
  4. 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
  5. Scenery Review : LFSB - EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg by JustSim EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg ( LFSB) is an international airport 3.5 km (2.2 mi) northwest of the city of Basel, Switzerland, 20 km (12 mi) southeast of Mulhouse in France, and 46 km (29 mi) south-southwest of Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany. This Franco-Swiss administered airport is geographically located within the French Alsace region, in the administrative commune of Saint-Louis near the border tripoint between France, Germany, and Switzerland, so being noted as the EuroAirport of three regions is a good definition of the position and significance of this Swiss/Franco airport. EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg Aéroport de Bâle-Mulhouse Flughafen Basel-Mülhausen IATA: BSL, MLH, EAP - ICAO: LFSB, LSZM 15/33 : 3,900m - (12,795ft) Concrete 08/26 : 1,820m (5,971ft) Concrete Elevation AMSL : 885 ft / 270 m Many sceneries are incorporated into reviews because in the their own review they are so good you just don't want to lose them again into your expansive network of destinations. Two come to mind with Luxembourg Airport (ELLX) and Brussels Airport (EBBR) that both have had extensive exposure and are use consistently in X-PlaneReviews that would have not even been considered in my normal flight routings.... and oddly enough is that both of these sensational sceneries are by JustSim. So here is EuroAirport LFSB/LSZM or Mulhouse which is again by JustSim, and is already probably destined to become another of those sceneries that in most cases would never even think of, or never mind in actually using... in which case you will from now on will probably use the scenery all the time. Intergration into the X-Plane mesh is simply sublime, with the excellent layout set within the landscape perfectly. There are a few flat areas to the south that the autogen has not covered, but it is not really noticeable in context. The highlight is the main terminal building with it's Y shaped concourse that was built in 2002. Terminal Building You cannot be anything but totally blown away by the quality of the EuroAirport terminal building, it is simply sensational in detail and design. Developers take note, this in the sort craftmanship you have to aspire to in this high level of competitive scenery, everything here is perfect, reflective glass, oh yes, and in the perfect detailing, well yes as that is all in here as well. There is no internal detail, but in reality that isn't required here, but the external detailing is perfect where needed. The terminal gates are numbered 1-2, 20-46, 60-61 and 78-87 of which gates 22-32 are used for non-Schengen flights. Seven of the boarding gates (animated/active) but are not SAM, but the highly converted "Marginal" design featured Autogates, the other gates are used for walkon - or bus-boarding. .... glass is the one area that differentiates even the very best of quality scenery, but the glass application here is simply above and beyond, yes I am gushing, this is brilliant stuff and it all comes with shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects. Control Tower mid-Terminal is faithfully recreated with nice detailing. Tower View is correct, if a little low. Clutter is also very good. Airside there is a lot of well placed clutter with some branding, but mostly they are all placed default vehicles. Landside is the same but still very well done. The photo ground textures are a bit grainy, but not the usual washed out and they are still highly visible with a few burnt into the ground cars. There is also a lot of animated vehicles spread around the scenery, the vehicle traffic is spot on with a lot of movement, but not too much to overwhelm the roadways... .... unique here is that the landside areas are uniquely divided into both separate French and a Swiss parts (Swiss customs road is arrowed) . The headquarters of Swiss International Air Lines and Swiss Global Air Lines are on the grounds at EuroAirport Basel–Mulhouse–Freiburg in the Swiss section of the airport; even though the airport is within France, the Swiss head office is only accessible from Switzerland by that same unique road connection. Older original Cargo facilities are very good with F1, F2, F3, F4 and F4A parking stands. Jet Aviation maintenance area (Maintenance Apron) is huge with some really nice static Boeing 747-400's... ... nowhere to park your private jet? well why not up on the roof, it is the perfect solution. To be noted are the excellent elevation changes within the scenery. AS there are clever gradients that are set out everywhere including (3d) below ground large channel areas. On the southern boundary is the new Swissaport Cargo facility and it is huge. There are only two cargo parking stands, but they are both category F stands in F21 and F22. Cargo operators include: ASL Airlines, DHL Aviation, FedEx Feeder, Korean Air Cargo, Qatar Airways Cargo and UPS Airlines. Southwest is a large MRO maintenance area and industrial complex (Maintenance Apron South-West)... the main tenants here include AMAC Aerospace, Jet Aviation and Airservice Basel. The whole complex is really well done with individual designed buildings and a huge amount of detail, static aircraft that are neatly packed in and well represented, overall the Southwest area is first rate. Also represented in this area is the La Comète Sports Centre. There is a fair bit of infrastructure in the Northeast along the main Taxiway B. Highlight is the older original hangers that front the General Aviation and Private Jet apron and stands G3 - G20... The huge airport Fire Station is far north. The old traditional Swiss Buildings at the entrance to the EuroAirport have also been well reproduced as is the massive undercover carpark. Ground Textures The Runway textures are excellent as the main runway concrete construction is perfectly realised, worn and in parts well rubberised, and the taxiway asphalt is also spot on in general use wear and tear, verges are perfect as is the large coverage of the airfield with 3d grass. All surfaces are PBR (Physically Based Rendered) with reflections and wet (rain) effects and they are very, very good. Lighting I was expecting the lighting to average, but it is again only exceptional. Main Runway 15/33 has significant approach lighting on RWY 15, however the approach to RWY 33 is quite different... the actual runway only starts past Taxiway D, the rest is just the runway extension... ... the boundary is made clear by the side runway red lighting before the official white lights, and here that aspect is exceptionally done, and also note the short 08/26 does not have any lighting and neither does the adjoining Taxiway P. Think that the terminal looked great in the daylight, well you haven't seen it in the night time, well it is stupendous! Lower terminal and Y concourse LIT textures could be a bit overbright and not to everyone's taste, but I like them a lot... Landside in carpark lighting is also excellent, as are all remote aprons which are also well catered for... ... all building detail and lit signage is first rate and the attention to lighting detail here is perfect. Services: EuroAirport Basel–Mulhouse–Freiburg is mostly a LLC (Low-Cost Carrier) centric airport, with a lot of seasonal sevices. EasyJet Switzerland is based here as is Ryanair, well off and on. BSL was also the old Crossair headquarters, but Eurowings are now also starting to have a significant impact on the airport as well. Summary You see a lot of scenery when you do a lot of significant reviews, and in most cases if not in all then with exception of a few cases there is always an area or that something that reduces the perfect scenery down from it's almost perfect perch at the top, to a far lower expectation... but this EuroAirport Basel–Mulhouse–Freiburg airport scenery is certainly not one of those. This is an airport that covers two countries in France (It is built on French soil) and Switzerland, but also on the boundary of a third country in Germany, so it is a pure multinational and international airport. It is really a place to it's own in being a Euroland. I'm rating this JustSim scenery Five Stars and it deserves that rare accolade, it is almost the perfect scenery with excellent mest intergration, overwhelming terminal modeling, excellent clutter and landside detail, active vehicles, glass and textures (All PBR) and airbridges (all seven of them), then the icing on this already great cake is the excellent terminal, landside lighting and night signage... only very small kink is that in some areas you get no autogen to cover the phototextures, and some users may not like the terminal lower LIT overbright textures... and that is it, otherwise this EuroAirport is almost perfect in what you require in airport scenery. Yes I was blown away by this scenery and the high quality it delivers.... and you will love it as well. Five out of FIVE stars ☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️ ______________________________________________________________________ Yes! LFSB - EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg by JustSim is Available from the X-Plane.Org Store here : LFSB - EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg Price is US$21.60 Features: Detailed airport objects and vehicles Custom textured taxiways, runways and apron Custom surroundings Custom autogen for whole island Custom airport lights Compatible with X-Plane 11 features Shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on terminal and other airport buildings High resolution ground textures / Custom runway textures High resolution building textures Excellent night effects Realistic reflections on glass World Traffic compatible X-Life traffic compatible Optimized for excellent performance ______________________________________________________________________ Installation Scenery download zip package is 850.30mb, and it is installed in your X-Plane custom scenery folder in this order: LFBS_Justsim_v1.0 (1.79Gb) LFBS_Mesh_Justsim_v1.0 (20.8mb) Total scenery installation is 1.81gb Requirements : X-Plane 11+ Windows, Mac, Linux 4Gb VRAM Video Card Minimum, 8Gb+ VRAM Video Card Recommended Current and Review version: 1.0 (Feb 5th 2020) ______________________________________________________________________ Scenery Review by Stephen Dutton 12th February 2020 Copyright©2020: 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 11.41 Addons: Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini : Headshake by SimCoders Plugins: WorldTraffic3 US$29.95 : Environment Engine v1.07 by xEnviro US$69.90 : SFD Global by misterx6 US$30.00 Scenery or Aircraft - Boeing 738 by Laminar Research - Default with X-Plane11
  6. Scenery Review : EFHK - Helsinki Vantaa International by JustSim I have a bucket list of scenery that I really want to complete my services network in X-Plane. Airports that I think are crucial into not only the simulator per-se, but are also a requirement into create good strong route networks. In competition as a simulator then it is a requirement to cover the basics and X-Plane in reality has been woeful in these areas. These airports or sceneries have been on my list since day one and that list was from as long as 10 years ago, but still a lot of of important quality scenery has not been covered, now the spectre of Flight Simulator could even end that speculation, but I don't think so. But for everything else and a virus, 2020 has been a very good year in for filling out a lot these blank holes in the X-Plane's network... most users will note that most (not all) have been covered by Freeware versions, and that is a fair comment. But we look at the simulator from a quality aspect and in most cases a facade built airport just can't cover the detailing required for a high quality scenery, no matter how talented the author. But back to 2020. If you count late last year 2019 the LIMC-Malpensa was a nice hole filled, but it was FlyTampa's extraordinary EKCH-Copenhagen that was a huge network filler, next was FSIA-Seychelles, admittedly not on any high traffic route was also a nice filler, CYVR-Vancouver was also a requirement, as was (finally) a KTPA-Tampa, two airports have opened up Africa with HKJK-Nairobi/FALE-Durban and finally the most exclusive of them all in YPPH-Perth... It's been a really good year in that respect. After EKCH-Kastrop then my other biggest route hole in Northern Europe is Helsinki, or EFHK-Helsinki, I fly there now, but the multiple Freewares were always lacking in one area or another, I wanted, always wanted a decent Vantaa, I love flying to Helsinki, but the quality was just not there when I got there. For many years TruScenery created some great if brilliant scenery in Finland, and they actually worked on but never released a EFHK... So I was seriously excited when JustSim a quality developer announced that they were doing a EFHK-Helsinki, "Thank the Lord Jesus". Helsinki-Vantaa Airport or simply Helsinki Airport, is the main international airport of the city of Helsinki and its surrounding metropolitan area, and the Uusimaa region in Finland. The airport is located in the neighboring city of Vantaa, about 5 kilometres (3 mi) west of Tikkurila, and 9.2 NM (17.0 km; 10.6 mi) north of the Helsinki city center. The HEL airport is operated by state-owned Finavia. Helsinki-Vantaa Airport Helsinki-Vantaan lentoasema Helsingfors-Vanda flygplats IATA: HEL- ICAO: EFHK 04R/22L - 3,500m (11,483ft) Asphalt 04L/22R - 3,060m (10,039ft) Asphalt 15/33 - 2,901m (9,518ft) Asphalt Elevation AMSL - 55m/179 ft First to note that in this review I am using the SFD Global addon for autogen, which gives you a more authentic Scandi feel to the housing and infrastructure than the Germanic default autogen. Vantaa's layout is basically an L shape around a high cross runway and a spare north runway field layout. Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 are in reality meshed together and are further confused by the separate Schengen sections and further more with the now completed extensions to both Terminal 1 and Terminal 2. The airport is however currently nominally divided into two terminals, located 250 metres (820 ft) apart and linked by an internal pedestrian connection both airside and landside. In practice, however, the airside parts of the terminal buildings are not divided into Terminal 1 (the former domestic terminal) and Terminal 2 (the former international terminal) but to Schengen and non-Schengen areas. The terminal capacity of the airport is approximately 16–17 million passengers per year. Domestic flights, as well as flights to European Schengen countries, are operated from gates 11–31. Long-haul and European non-Schengen flights are operated from gates 31–38. As the newer terminal extension is completed, the airport will then have 60 gates altogether with 19 gates in Terminal 1 and 41 in Terminal 2. The airport is known for it's fastest transition between flights (International - Domestic) in the world. Terminal 1 You can from the air see the division of the earlier passenger terminal opened in 1952, and then in being totally replaced by the 1969 iconic version we know as Vantaa and it's two-tier corner Control Tower. And a first look at the T1 Domestic terminal shows how it was impossible it was to replicate in a facade environment, JustSim however have done a brilliant job of it, and the building has nice if perfect reflective glass. The corner Control Tower is excellent in it's sheet metal facade and glass, and the Tower View is set perfectly. Airbridges (15) 12-27 are excellent in detail, and are the "Autogate" Marginal system (Plugin required)... there is Visual Docking Guidance System (VDGS) and also the A-VDGS (the A standing for advanced) available. 23, 24 and 25 are finger gates, but the connection corridor is perfectly modeled to match in with the custom Airbridge and terminal. Opposite are three remote stands (121-123). Terminal detail is excellent, all items like ladders, walkways,vent and air-conditioning units are all present. Scenery has animated traffic, but uses the X-Plane default traffic vehicles, but as the default traffic is SAS branded then it all works perfectly here. There is good clutter, but not overwhelmingly so. Terminal 1 has been expanded by four separate departure gate buildings which will be connected by walking corridors. Each building will have one departure gate excluding one, which will have three gates. Gates (5–11). This is the new Walkon/Walkoff LCC section for Schengen arrivals and departures... the extension is very well done here in the scenery and well suited for regional operations. Terminal 1 Landside is well done... but most of the area is taken up by the construction of a new carpark, the trouble with this is that the area comes across as very bare or even empty? there are a few cranes, but it looks like a construction project that has been abandoned, it needed far more construction fill as it is highly noticeable, or better yet the completed carpark. Terminal 2 The original T2 has basically disappeared inside the massive redevelopment of the newer terminal additions. There are glimpses of the older facade of like of where T1 joins to T2. The new piers are noted as "South Pier" and West Pier", however earlier it was part of the plan to build a satellite terminal next to Terminal 2, but the plan was cancelled in favor of keeping the expansion under a single terminal building concept. There are four gates (28-31) in the older style on the T2 older section and with another three remote stands set opposite (124-126), note that all these six remote stands would be used for Domestic services (121-126). T2 detail is again excellent and with perfect glass, Landside however is all a bit bland and bare (that construction)... South Pier The new South Pier of Terminal 2 was inaugurated on 10th July 2017. The first scheduled flight from the new pier, AY006 departed from Gate 54 to New York City. The new pier covers 8,300 square metres (89,000 sq ft). In addition to the new terminal building, new dual boarding gates S54 and S55 as well as aircraft stands 171 and 172 were opened. Construction of this southern wing of Terminal 2 was started on 4th January 2016 and the construction took around 18 months. There are two floors: one for arriving passengers, the other for departures and gates 52 to 55. All the gates have dual boarding jet bridges. The new wing also features the first moving walkway at any airport in Finland. The modeling and certainly the expansive glass in the South Pier is really well done, notably in the walkways between the old and the new sections, there is however a general feel of emptiness, maybe a few figures on the walkways or in the corridors would have helped. The first part of the west wing that was built was the large central plaza, "Aukio", which was opened in February 2019 set between both the "South" and "West" piers, and the plaza is very well represented here. Gates in the new zones have a "W" or "S" prefix in front of the number, as per the Apron number (Apron 1W). W is facing the northwest, and follows on from the older T2 in gates (W34-W48) and Gate W48 is able to accommodate the Airbus A380 class E. The feel and look is very much like Heathrow Terminal 5, with tall towers with an associated airbridge, with a two-level loading and unloading system. The internal apron "Apron 1S" continues with on the 'South Pier" gates (S43-S49). West Pier The "West Pier" was completed in October 2019, and it brings together 25,000 square metres (270,000 sq ft) of new passenger and baggage facilities to the airport. The pier is equipped with four gates (S52-S55) for widebody jets. The design and style for the "West" is exactly the same as the "South" section. Internally in the corner of the L are a Hilton Hotel and the twin Finavia office buildings, on the taller Finavia there is a nice large red Radar on the roof of the offices, but it does not rotate? The distinctive P3 Domestic circular car parking buildings and the large P5 International car parking building are all well represented Also noted is the newer Vinavia building known as the House of Travel and Transportation, or "HOTT", and the well done striking checkerboard Clarion Hotel. Cargo Overall there are three Cargo zones at EFHK... The newer large Finnair cargo depot is set out behind their huge, massive Finnair maintenance hangar, with three stands (961-963) on Apron 9 The rest of the action in two separate cargo zones is based around the threshold of Runway 33... East is Apron 4, with DHL and TNT in residence, Airfix Aviation and Scanwings are based here as well... West is Apron 2 or the original HEL Finnair cargo facility. Because of the Domestic LCC extension the cargo's facilities parking stands have been reduced to four (201-204)... ... and three more stands are available (206/301-302) in front of private cargo contractors including, Swissaport, Posti and Jetlite. Far southest of Apron 2 is Apron 3... here is a very nice VIP terminal and a small General Aviation parking ramp... ... and further southeast is the airport's fuel depot and very pronounced Neoplan Transfer bus maintenance facility, it is highly visible on the RWY 33 approach (you look for the building and not the runway for the approach). Far north along the Runway 04L/22R boundary there is some very nice visual infrastructure, with a DHL distribution facility, and the large Apron 6 De-Icing area. There are also several other smaller De-Icing areas noted off most taxiways. Infrastructure Overall the infrastructure around EFHK is excellent including a very well done DB Schenker transport hub, but... ... on the very visual approach of 04R, there is in parts only a flat ortho image, and you notice it, worse is on the final approach of RWY 33, here you have a completely large flat ortho-image right under your nose, and one that is seriously horrible to the eye, why??? and it needs fixing fast. Ground Textures Overall the ground textures are excellent, they do feel slightly softer at my Texture Quality setting of only "High", but my guess is they are set for maximum framerate efficiency more than absolute quality (which is noticeable throughout this scenery)... mostly you would never notice anything anyway, but good and detailed in every area they are. There is great grunge, oil and rubber dirt were required and the lineage is lovely and worn, but also highly realistic... just a nice job. Yes we have PBR reflective (wet) active textures and also have excellent burnt-in ambient occlusion, but it is not as gritty as a few I have seen, again the more softer aspect does come though, but that is not to say you won't get that North Scandi winter aspect, because in the right conditions the ground textures will certainly deliver... on that note there are no winter textures provided here, which considering Vantaa's very northern aspect is surprising. There are some 3d bushes where required, but overall there is no 3d grass?... ... the missing 3d grass is however highly noticeable, with areas feeling empty and flat, why no 3d grass as it is de-rigueur now on any payware scenery... worse there is no boundary or airport sectional fencing either... NO FENCING? This is a major oversee by JustSim, fencing creates boundaries and segregates areas, but there is absolutely nothing here? The fencing lines are of course burnt into the Ortho-textures and certainly you can easily walk anytime on to a taxiway or an active runway... A hanging offence. Lighting As with everything else with EFHK the lighting is excellent by JustSim... ... but one aspect has to be noted. When in non-alignment with a runway, then it's lighting will disappear? so if you are on an approach circuit at night, then it can be hard to get an alignment on your arrival runway until turning into the final direction of your approach, and this can make landings and orientation difficult. JustSim have used the lit graphic approach to building lighting, some will hate it, but most including myself love the vibrancy the lighting gives off, the terminals feel bright and alive (which is a great arrival feeling)... ... close up the metals and windows reflect nicely and the lighting is well done and realistic. Also excellent is the apron lighting, and you can work down on here easily. Signage lighting is very good, as is the excellent drop lighting. Hotel and office window lighting could have had a bit more pizzazz and considering the graphic terminal lighting, then why not light up these buildings as well? Overall though the lighting is very good. Note... I recommend adding in as part of the Finnish JustSim EFHK scenery... EFHF-Malmi (US$16.90) by TruScenery. The EFHF scenery is on the approach to runway 33, directly on the approach and looks brilliant, and an ideal General Aviation base in Helsinki. _____________________ Summary JustSim are a very good X-Plane scenery developer with an excellent past record of airports including Hannover, Brussels, Barcelona, Malta, Hamburg and may, many more, and JustSim are known for their excellent quality and value to price factor.... and here is their next scenery in EFHK-Helsinki. X-Plane has never had a decent HEL or Vantaa Airport, and mostly because the iconic building structures require skill and detail to work correctly, so a fully developed Helsinki Airport from a leading developer is very much welcome. And so the scenery delivers in spades, great terminal modeling with a lot of detail includes all the latest terminal expansions and changes, glass is excellent with reflections and PBR, layouts and ground textures also are excellent as is the all round lighting, although the use of graphic images may not please many, to most though they will love them as they are highly effective at night. All the airport and surrounding infrastructure is also well done (JustSim have always been very good at infrastructure)... and all the terminals come with the "Autogate" Marginal system with VDGS. There is the feeling that the scenery was released before being fully completed, although in most areas everything from great clutter, traffic animations and the general overall layouts it is extremely well done, but there is the feel of some blank areas? The construction carpark area behind the T1&T2 Landside is a bit too bare and empty, it feels abandoned more than a building site, more fill is certainly required, missing infrastructure detail and only flat ortho-textures on the critical approach areas to Runways 33 and 04R is an oversight, as is the totally missing any airport security or building fencing? No 3d grass is also a big oversight and hurts the overall excellent quality feel. But if you crave good quality to quality route simulation sceneries, then this quality one from JustSim should be at the very top of your list and a brilliant companion to the excellent FlyTampa EKCH-Copenhagen. I fly to Helsinki a lot, I mean a lot, and to now have a high quality airport ready at the destination. So then this scenery from JustSim will certainly get a lot of action from X-PlaneReviews, not only for passenger but cargo as well... Yes an absolute recommendation, JustSim's EFHK-Helsinki is a must have! _____________________________________ Yes! EFHK - Helsinki Vantaa International by JustSim is now available from the X-Plane.OrgStore EFHK - Helsinki Vantaa International Price is US$21.50 Features: Detailed airport objects and vehicles Custom textured taxiways, runways and apron Custom surroundings Custom airport lights Compatible with X-Plane 11 features Shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on terminal and other airport buildings High resolution ground textures / Custom runway textures High resolution building textures Excellent night effects Realistic reflections on glass World Traffic compatible X-Life traffic compatible Optimized for excellent performance WT3: WorldTraffic3 GroundRoutes are NOT provided but the scenery is compatible and extremely good and Traffic Global also operates perfectly, Requirements: X-Plane 11 Windows, Mac or Linux 4GB VRAM Minimum - 8GB+ VRAM Recommended\ Download Size: 1.1 Gb Current and Review version: 1.0 (October 25th2020) Installation Download scenery files required are in one zip folder download 1.13Gb Only one folder is placed in the X-Plane Custom Scenery Folder EFHK_JustSim_v1.0 Total scenery install is: 2.33Gb ShortFinal Global SFD plugin is highly recommended with this scenery. Documents No Manual but an Install note (very basic) _____________________________________________________________________ Scenery Review by Stephen Dutton 29th October 2020 Copyright©2020 : 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) 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 v11.50r3 Addons: Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini  Plugins: Traffic Global - JustFlight-Traffic (X-Plane.OrgStore) US$52.99 : Global SFD plugin US$30.00 Scenery or Aircraft - Default Boeing 737-800 by Laminar Research - EFHF-Malmi by TruScenery (X-Plane.OrgStore) - US$16.90
  7. Scenery Review : EDDV - Hannover Inernational by JustSim As an area covered by quality airports then with the efforts of both Aerosoft and JustSim, Germany is getting to be now a pretty well filled in country. But there is always room for another one, and here it is with Hannover/Langenhagen - EDDV from JustSim. Hanover is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,061 (2017) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany. Hannover/Langenhagen Airport is 11 km (6.8 mi) north of Hannover. The airport has flights to European metropolitan and leisure destinations, and serves as a base for Eurowings, Condor, SunExpress Deutschland and TUI fly Deutschland. Hannover Airport Flughafen Hannover-Langenhagen IATA: HAJ - ICAO: EDDV 9L/27R - 12,467ft (3,800m) Concrete 09R/27L- 7,677ft (2,340m) Concrete 09C/27C - 2,559ft (780m) Asphalt Elevation AMSL183 ft / 56 m First impression of EDDV - Hannover is very impressive. The intergation into the default mesh of HAJ is faultless and it is highly realistic in detail and the perfect overall view. In reality EDDV has only two usable runways as 09C/27C is very short and even for a GA. Runway 9L/27R is really the main operations runway and the one you would usually use. The original 9R/27L is for regional or propeller based services, but I do love the layout of Langenhagen. The original two modern terminals were opened in 1973, of which they became famous because of their compact design. They also became the archetype for the Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow. These original terminals A and B are still in service today. Detail and reproduction in JustSim's version is excellent, really good. Not only with the modeling but in the finer detail and the great reflective glass. Unusual though and noticeable is that there is no ground traffic around HAJ? no plugin either, and you miss that bustling activity aspect. Clutter though is excellent and well done, but not branded and only generic. Gates are 1 -12 with 1A, 2A, 5A, 7A, 10A and 11A being set for narrow and wide-body aircraft. Terminal, C, was opened in 1998 to handle more passengers, adding on 8 more boarding gates and 3 bus departure gates. Up to 33 aircraft can be handled simultaneously at Terminal C, of which 20 can use aircraft stands equipped with an Airbridge. The extension terminal is larger than the original sections, but as it is done in exactly the same same style and so the terminal blends in perfectly. Gates 13 - 20 with the same 14A, 15A, 17A, 18A and 20A layout as the first section. All Airbridges use the SAM (Scenery Animation Manger) system and is excellent, the only slight note is that the VDGS or Visual Docking Guidance System is set a little high, well done so no doubt, but you have to get low when you get close to the final stopping (parking) point. I particularly like the gate co-ordinates on each system, overall SAM intergation at HAJ is excellent. There is the additional Terminal D to the east of the main terminals, which is a rebuilt hangar that is exclusively used by the Royal Air Force to transport British troops to and from Northern Germany. Landside There is really great detail landside... ... there has been given a large amount of attention to the entrance to the terminals, and all the work is not at all wasted here, nice flags, banners, loads of cars and great (puppy) Sixt advertising. Highlight is the TUI Fly childrens play area that is really nicely detailed, for once there are no landside low-res textures in sight! There are 10 carparks at HAJ with 14,000 parking spaces that are available. And everywhere you look here there is a carpark! Short - long, expensive concierge, cheap and even Kiss & Fly Zones, Hannover has all your parking needs covered... All carparks are really well done, with advertising, 3d vehicles, branded radars, but what is the most well done aspect is that it is clear and sharp and not just background terminal filler. Hotels covered are the Martime and Leonardo. Cargo The cargo zones are split into two areas by the taxiways F and L. The earlier area is quite small with only a two bay 27 (27A, 27B & 27C) and 28 parking stands layout... .... the second (larger) zone opposite a large remote parking area (stands 45 -52) has six stands 53 - 63 (four are cross stands). Both areas have excellent facilities with the second area dominated by DHL and rear warehousing. Control Towers There are two control towers at EDDV, the earlier version is set between the terminal A and the older cargo facility... in use or not is debatable by the greyed out windows... .... the second newer 68.0m tower is central of the DHL facility and was completed in 2002, detail on both towers is excellent, and the detailed construction (boxes) on the newer tower that is really well done with very good intimate detailing, a rotating radar works on top as well. Tower view setting is also spot on, with approach views on every runway just perfect. Airport Infrastructure East of the terminal on taxiway A1 is a partially dismantled large hangar, that is well done, then further east are two large maintenance hangers for TUI Fly and ACC Columbia Jet Service, the main TUI Fly offices set just behind the dismantled hangar. Taxiway M has a lot of facilities along the long taxiway. Situated besides a very Germanic looking building (there are a lot of these Gemanic style buildings in the scenery, which adds in a lot of local flavor) is the General Aviation Zone 1, Zone 2 is for remote GA parking opposite... note the excellent three H Pads in the foreground. General Aviation area 1 is great with some nicely done hangarage set to the east, but you feel it needs a few GA statics to fill both of these areas out. Further east is another (larger) ACC Columbia Jet Service facility... ... and an area far east that looks like an old military (German) barracks, now they house private aviation and administration offices. There are loads of detailed buildings that cover the area between what you could say is the front and rear of the airport and far too many to cover here, but they are all very well detailed, but the highlights that stick up like a small radar tower, chimmeys and remote parking cover structures give the scenery a great depth of detail. Infrastructure on the southern boundary is also excellent. There has been a lot of attention given to this industrial areas with loads of well done factories, warehousing and business parks. JustSim are always good at filling out the visual aspect of their sceneries, and not just recreating the actual airport, but doing the whole concept of the area around it, and here at Hannover it is very good with local branding and custom buildings as per the real structures. Ground Textures I really, really like the ground textures here at Hannover, great detail and the various surfaces are all mostly concrete in modulation. Ribbing is done really well and you notice the realism and wear from the cockpit, I love taxiing around EDDV just to look at the textures. Note the nice shiny detailed metal grids. The PBR reflective (wet) and burnt-in ambient occlusion can be seen even in bright sunny conditions, add in the right lighting and it gets even better. It is how good developers are creating these surfaces now, as they are so highly realistic. There is some nice 3d grass as well and the coverage is wide across the whole airfield, only north of 09L/27R does the grass line stop abruptly, and it looks a little odd from the air? Lighting Overall the lighting is a bit hit and sadly miss... main overview of EDDV however is very good. Apron lighting is very good, but those Terminal textures are simply horrible? All are orangey, samey and all the bland not dissimilar at all... .... worse is that excellent landside detail is hidden with no lighting at all? There are street lights set but they are not lit? So something has been overlooked or not finished? I also checked my graphic settings and no they are set at the highest setting for the lighting, so it is not me but the way it actually is. Advertising signs and carpark drop lighting (internal carparks are nicely lit as well) is really good, but heavily let down by the rest of the lighting. Approach, landing and taxiway lighting is all very good and the highlights are the lovely realistic reflective navigation signs. ________________________ Summary Between developers Aerosoft and JustSim they have both covered Germany with a lot of quality scenery, this is another in Hannover/Langenhagen and when it is this good then why not use another good choice to fly into or out of Fatherland. And very good it is, but not perfect. On the positive side there is a huge amount to really like here, modeling and texture detail is excellent and extensive, the surrounding infrastructure is also excellent and that includes the off-field detail as well as the complex actual airport detail, all infrastructure is really well developed and it all comes with high quality, extensive detail. Ground textures are simply first rate and has very nice surface detail and realistic reflective activity, and they look spellbinding in the rain, as a EDDV - Hannover recreation this is a great scenery. Minuses are weird in a way... missing airport traffic is a head scratcher, and so is the non-lit landside lighting? It is just not like JustSim to miss details like that? But the overwhelming thing that I didn't like were those night Terminal textures, we have moved on a long way from these sort of night textures, I admit they are hard to make realistic, but they just don't work here at all and spoil any night time operations at HAJ. This Hannover review got pushed aside a few times to cover more extensive sceneries that were released, but in the mean time I based my operations here and used the scenery extensively over the intermediate few weeks period. The results were that I absolutely loved using this EDDV - Hannover scenery, and it was a really great base for European operations. I loved leaving but also totally loved arriving back at the airport, and it became quickly a firm favorite, that is a big one because I love Hamburg and especially Düsseldorf which is a firm favorite (Frankfurt and Munich are a bit too big for my route needs), so on wanting to add in HAJ to my route network speaks volumes. So how can you beat the fact that if you want to use a scenery as much as using Hannover EDDV then it is a really worthwhile investment, the sheer realism here and the JustSim detail and quality makes it a must have for me... Highly Recommended! _____________________________________ Yes! EDDV - Hannover International Airport by JustSim is available from the X-Plane.Org Store here : Hannover International Airport Price is US$21.50 Features: Detailed airport objects and vehicles Custom textured taxiways, runways and apron Custom surroundings Custom airport lights Compatible with X-Plane 11 features Shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on terminal and other airport buildings High resolution ground textures / Custom runway textures High resolution building textures Excellent night effects Realistic reflections on glass World Traffic compatible X-Life traffic compatible Optimized for excellent performance WT3: WorldTraffic GroundRoutes are not provided but overall the airport functions perfectly with a generation. Traffic Global works fine, but with not much activity Requirements: X-Plane 11 Windows, Mac, Linux 4 GB VRAM Minimum . 8 GB VRAM Recommended Download Size: 780 MB Current and Review version: 1.0 (July 17th 2020) Installation Download scenery file size is 7.34mb. With the full installation installed package is 1.79gb in your custom scenery folder. Only one folder is installed.. EDDV_JustSim_v1.0 SAM Plugin - Scenery Animation Manager - Suite 2.0 is required for this scenery Documents No documents, and only incuded is an installation text. EDDV_INSTALLATION.txt _____________________________________________________________________ Scenery Review by Stephen Dutton 4th August 2020 Copyright©2020 : 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) 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 11.41 and tested in v11.50b17 (really good!) Addons: Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini  Plugins: None Scenery or Aircraft - Default Boeing 737-800 by Laminar Reserch
  8. Scenery Review - EBBR Brussels Airport by JustSim I just want to make it clear that EBBR and myself did not get off to a great start when flying in X-Plane? And I would like like to make it even clearer it has nothing to do with this EBBR - Brussels from JustSim Scenery. EBBR - Brussels Airport is known as the airport at "The Heart of Europe", and that explains my pain. You see every time I left the UK on a long haul flight, say to Hong Kong or Singapore or even Dubai, or returning to the UK from any of the above or to just to simply to fly over to Germany, I always got a bad to desktop scenery crash, and it was always EBBR that caused it? I tried everything to fix that painful freeware EBBR scenery, but in the end it had to come out of my custom scenery folder... So EBBR was always a blank on my X-Plane landscape, I never visited there, and always feared and still do that fear it would damage any long haul route in it's final stages, and usually after many flying hours in the air, and even when it had been removed... I loathed EBBR, absolutely hated it, just like the Brexiteers that loath the people that live in Brussels as well. So when JustSim announced their next scenery release was EBBR - Brussels, I wasn't exactly jumping for joy... but that nasty EBBR is now many years old and that painful time was now a long time ago, so was I willing to go back or even land at my most hated and feared scenery in X-Plane? Scenery design has come a long way in a few years and JustSim, are great scenery developers and one of my favorites, so if anything it was worth a try, I loaded in the new JustSim version and took off from EGKK - Gatwick, for a quick flight over the channel towards Brussels. Don't get me wrong I did still close my eyes as I neared the 100nm boundary and the loading of EBBR into X-Plane, but at 85 nm I could safely assume that I was not going to get a nasty desktop crash... I was through and the past lurking monster of EBBR and hard crashes had finally been put to rest. EBBR - Brussels Airport Brussels Airport Aéroport de Bruxelles-National (French) Luchthaven Brussel-Nationaal (Dutch) IATA: BRU - ICAO: EBBR 01/19 2,987m (9,800ft) Asphalt 07R/25L 3,21 (10,535ft) Asphalt 07L/25R 3,638 (11,936ft) Asphalt Elevation AMSL184 ft / 56 m Brussels Airport (also called Brussel-Nationaal / Bruxelles-National (Brussels-National) or Zaventem) is an international airport 6.5 NM (12.0 km; 7.5 mi) northeast of Brussels, it is the capital of Belgium and the base of the European Government. My first overview of JustSim's EBBR was not a good one? The custom textures that underlay the airport are highly over-satuarated. I actually thought my monitor's settings were set wrong? but no it is the scenery's textures that don't match or merge well with the X-Plane default mesh textures? It is very noticeable on any approach and even if you overfly the airport (below) of being in central europe as you do most of the time. This is very unlike JustSim, as they usually get the custom textures perfectly matched with the X-Plane textures? The odder thing is it is only the surrounding area textures that are over-satuarated and not the inner airport textures as they look and feel fine... Overall view of the Brussels Airport, and it looks excellent, it is well crafted and has a very nice layout... ... and many detail highlights was noticed on my arrival at EBBR on a very miserable low cast and a minimum visibility day, approach was into RWY 02. Even in these conditions then EBBR looked excellent from the air, autogen is nicely intergrated with the custom housing provided by JustSim, but more on that later... The wet weather and low light highlighted the excellent reflective runway surfaces, note how the dark rubber patches shine in the light, lovely... and the sun's rays sparkle across the runway when the light breaks through the low cloud, both are highly realistic. As two runways in 02/20 - 07L/25R intersect at the top of an A frame then all the terminal taxiways merge together at this point as well, and there are four taxiways to choose from. This is simplified by noting the taxiways as "OUTER - OUT" and INNER - INN", and it is also more simplified in that each taxiway segment is noted via a number between each link taxiway to the terminal ramps. Yes you will still need an Airport layout chart, but on the ground it makes the airport easier to navigate and find your taxiway exit, and to also identify which taxiway is for arrival and which is for departure. This layout is very well defined in the scenery as all the navigation markings and runway layouts are excellent, but very complex. Central Terminal Area Although originally quite easy to identify, as because of all the big changes at Brussels it is still a sort of in transition layout of where the terminals are defined. The oldest is the Satellite C complex from 1957... Originally there was two C Satellites, but one has been raised to the ground to create a new LCC (Low Cost Carrier) pier, but for now it is only used for stand parking, The circular C terminal covers gates C1 - C29... airside the terminal is noted as 3 South. The huge office complex behind was a modernisation of the original terminal, with the control tower as part of the redevelopment deal and you have lost the gritty feel of the original building under the more modern cladding, but it is very well done here.... the old control tower is still visible, but operations have now been moved across the field. The window textures on the Sat C are quite bland, but everything else is excellent and well reproduced. There are no inner terminal areas, but I'm not fussy if the external glass is very good, of which it is here. There are a few areas of missing fencing, which means you could just step out of your car and walk over and board the aircraft... which is not good for security. All the carparks are present and all have placed 3d cars and vehicle on top, and thankfully no burnt in vehicle flat textures. Concourse B Originally this pier was connected to the two Satellite C terminals when it was constructed in 1995, but now it is refurbished and connected via the "Connector" terminal building (originally there was an 400-metre-long (1,300 ft) tunnel under the apron!) to Concourse A... Concourse B covers gates B1 to B40, and detail is excellent. Glass is very nice, highly and realistically reflective... concourse reproduction is very good as well and highly realistic... ground clutter is excellent and you get "Brussels Airport" branded vehicles and ground equipment. Vehicle animations are also very good as well, with enough and not too much activity. This oldest pier still in use at Brussels Airport and is only used for flights outside the Schengen Area (Europe) and in other words it is the International area of the three terminal concourses. Custom bay guidance lighting is on the the side of the terminal wall, it is well done, but doesn't actually work... neither do the airbridges as they are not animated. Worse is the parking positions are all out of sync with the correct parking positions, so all the aircraft are not all correctly in line, not by very much but it can be noticeable here and there. Smaller intimate detailing is very good with piping and very well represented air-conditioning units on all terminals. "Connector" The connector building links all three terminals together as one space. And it's unusual design is very well replicated here, note the glass reflects nicely at certain lighting conditions. Concourse A To a point the new 15 May 2002 built terminal is the new face of Brussels Airport. This pier was destined to support flights from and to the Schengen countries (A-gates). However, since 15 October 2008 all Brussels Airline flights to African destinations are now also handled at this pier. Therefore, border control was installed towards the end of the pier in order to create a new pier. As a result, gates A61-72 were renamed T61-72. Concourse design and 3d construction is absolutely first class, ditto the glass and clutter details. Terminal Lighting The terminal and ramp areas in lighting is very good... Window lighting is excellent, but it is a feel and look that some will love and a lot will not like, personally I love it. You expected the green glass terminal to glow more green that it does, but it is fine and well lit below the glass line, with drop down lighting. The older Satellite C terminal looks excellent, but... .... from the ramp aspct, it is only well lit on one side, and completely dark on the other? If no tower lighting then why not terminal placed lights to fill in the parking ramp area? The landside lighting is very good as well, but there are a few areas of darkness and in areas that are terminal passenger arrival zones? Control Tower The Control Tower at EBBR is very distinctive, and for realism you need this building to be correct in it's design. And here the tower is excellent, really well detailed and a great reproduction of the real building, the radar on top is animated in rotation. Tower view is correct "Yay!" as JustSim have usually missed this detail in most of their past sceneries, but here they have got it right, and a great sweep of the airport the view gives you as well! Cargo and Maintenance There are many areas that cover Cargo and Maintenance at EBBR. One is area is west directly behind the central terminal area. This area is a collection of (very) remote stands and the left over ghosts in maintenance hangars for the old now long gone national airline of Belgium in Sabena. The western area though is very well done with loads of clutter to make what could have been a very uninteresting bland area into a very realistic point of view and more so if you are using RWY 07L/25R, and there is a nice stand area to store your aircraft or to do some on site maintenance. Across north of RWY 07L/25R is a huge amount of facilities that basically run the whole length of the 12,000ft of runway... northwest is a large cargo facility is the biggest ramp area.. The DHL facility is the largest presence here, and again the area is highly detailed with clutter. And there is an open large detailed Lufthansa Technik hangar for your use as well. Note the north positioned radar tower by the Technik Hangar. The north boundary caters for everyone, from Cargo to GA and Private Jet facilities. There is a nice reception centre half way down the runway with a nicely create Fire Station positioned next to it. Branded facilities are well covered with Bruxelles Sud, TCR, CTC-Moyson, Swissport, AVIAPARTNER, WFS, TNT, Landmark Global, CEVA, MSE, Crown and Schenker. There is a large maintenance area with two large hangars west at the 07R runway threshold. These are for local based airline Brussels Airlines (created out of the ashes of Sabena) and TUI. There is a lot of nice clutter to help in with the overall visual effect of the area. Note the excellent 3d grass, and the grass is filled out thoughout most of the main boundary areas and the inner field. Custom buildings On the entrance to Brussels Airport and to give coverage of the approaches to runways 07L and 07R are a few custom buildings. These are not highly detailed buildings, and just mostly boxes with average textures, but they do the job... They cover a business park with Samsung, Levi Strauss and Estee Lauder as tenants, Johnson & Johnson and the Crowne Plaza hotel... further down the motorway is Verizon. Distinctive is the NATO Headquarters, but the blank area around the strange building takes away all the effect it could have on the scenery. The X-Plane European autogen again does a brilliant job in creating a very authentic areas around the airport, it also has the v11.25 new urban and industrial autogen that makes it even more filled out and comprehensive in detail. An overlook or just a plain "what are you thinking" moment is the flat area around around the entrance to EBBR that is the Witt and Rode Cites? Could be the issue be that the autogen was fenced out, and if so then why not just fill it in with custom buildings, as it is very highly noticeable on both 07L and 07R approaches and certainly if the lighting is low at dawn or dusk as it creates a dark empty zone? Oddly JustSim did the same blank space behind the terminal at LCLK - Larnaca with the carpark. Cargo and Maintenance lighting The ramps for all the cargo areas are very well lit and are all excellent, east on the north side it get a bit more sporadic and more widely spaced lighting the more you go east. But overall these areas are well done. The Brussels Airlines and TUI maintenance hangars are nicely lit, but the ramp areas in front of them are dark and not very usable at night? Custom Building Lighting The Brussels Airport entrance buildings at night are simply horrible! You wonder what JustSim are really thinking in doing textures like these when all the other night building lighting and glass is so good... It feels rushed and very last minute.... or anything will do. Really it is better off without the buildings at night than lit like this... .... the NATO Headquarters is just a black hole? Summary This Brussels Airport from JustSim is a bit of a wide contradiction. In the main and most areas it is not only good, it is simply brilliant. The central terminal area is superbly well done, as is the terminal building lighting. The airport layout and ground textures are also superb, as is the runway marking and detailing. You get a lot of quality infrastructure for your money as well so there is a lot of great value in the scenery, so you are certainly getting a lot of detail and that quality for your money... clutter and fill detail is also overwhelming and excellent. But there are a lot of quirks going on in this scenery as well, and in the areas that are easy to do, and in reality should not have to be discussed in this review? Was the scenery rushed to complete?, or was there a "that'll do" attitude... but lets us note the items, and starting with the outer ground ortho textures that are over-satuarated and don't match the surrounding X-Plane mesh? No animated air-bridges and odd aircraft terminal placement, missing fencing, dark lighting areas (Satellite C) and the nearby maintenance ramp and the totally horrible custom building lighting is a total contradiction to the brilliant terminal glass lighting? and finally as also is the distracting blank flat housing area that covers the Witt and Rode Cites that is seen on both western approaches. So you are trying to and then reconcile these two points, and you can't, because how can a developer that has creates this totally excellent work alongside these few other average areas. It is like the main developer has done almost all the work, but had to go off on holiday and left his friend to finish it off, but most of these items thankfully are very easily rectified, but JustSim in the past have also been a bit slow in this area? But I am still a very big JustSim scenery fan and very happy to add this EBBR to my scenery collection. Overall the high plus points totally overwhelm the negatives and this EBBR is priced like all JustSim sceneries in the very high value category, and so yes it should sell very well and to everyone or anyone that wants a decent EBBR in their X-Plane destination routing. Deep down however your thoughts are that with just a little more of the final touches, and a little more then of refining this Brussels Airport, it is that JustSim could have really knocked the ball totally and completely out of the ballpark and crafted one of their best sceneries to date... so why didn't they? _____________________________________ Yes! EBBR Brussels Airport by JustSim is available from the X-Plane.Org Store here : EBBR Brussels Airport Price is US$25.60 Features: Detailed airport objects and vehicles Custom textured taxiways, runways and apron Custom surroundings Custom airport lights Compatible with X-Plane 11 features Animated ground vehicles (X-Plane 11 only) Shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on terminal and other airport buildings High resolution ground textures / Custom runway textures High resolution building textures Excellent night effects Realistic reflections on glass World Traffic compatible X-Life traffic compatible Optimized for excellent performance WT3: WorldTraffic GroundRoutes are provided and overall the airport functions perfectly, but it has no airport operations file. Ground routes are to be installed in the ARR and DEP folders and the ParkingDef.txt goes into the ParkingDef folder. Requirements: X-Plane 11+ Windows, Mac, Linux 2Gb VRAM Video Card Minimum, 4Gb+ VRAM Video Card Recommended Current and review version: 1.0 (October 20th 2018) Installation Download scenery file size is 1.10gb. With the full installation installed package is 2.48gb in your custom scenery folder. Documents No documents, and included is completed WorldTraffic3 ground routes and parking defs.  _____________________________________________________________________ Scenery Review by Stephen Dutton 23rd October 2018 Copyright©2018 : 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) Review System Specifications: Computer System: Windows - Intel Core i7 6700K CPU 4.00GHz / 64bit - 16 Gb single 1067 Mhz DDR4 2133 - ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 8Gb - Samsung Evo 512gb SSD Software: - Windows 10 - X-Plane 11.25 Addons: Saitek x56 Rhino Pro system Joystick and Throttle : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini Plugins: Environment Engine by xEnviro v1.09 US$69.90 : XPRealistic Pro v1.0.9 effects US$19.95 : WorldTraffic 3.0 Plugin - US$29.95 Scenery or Aircraft - ToLiSS319 (A319) by ToLiSS (X-Plane.OrgStore) - US$69.00
  9. Scenery Upgrade : EDDL - Düsseldorf International v2 by JustSim If you follow a lot of the reviews here on X-PlaneReviews you will be very familiar with EDDL -Düsseldorf International, as it is a mainstay scenery in our reviews for the western European areas of the simulator. Düsseldorf is a great central Europe scenery and has a lot of benefits, and yes while EDDF -Frankfurt is a more obvious choice, but it is also a very heavy scenery to use computer wise as it taxes the system quite heavily and I am hoping the Vulkan/Metal change will give me more options in using that scenery. So EDDL is usually my pick of the most efficient German central Europe airports that also supports the WT3 (WorldTraffic3) application very well. JustSim released their first EDDL -Düsseldorf mid-2017 and for the period it was very good (and that Is why I used it consistently) but the scenery was not perfect, and that was mostly in the areas of the active elements and the period it was released in, there was a minor update in v1.1, but here is the larger upgrade v2 release of the JustSim EDDL airport, not much has been done since the original release, you even say it was even forgotten in the throes of constant updates that JustSim have lavished onto their other sceneries so this new version is very welcome indeed. The light here at Düsseldorf is very harsh, and that is not the developers fault but in the way the airport is positioned means that not a lot of the sunlight during the day gets to shine on the front side of the terminals, and that said the airport now has a full layout of infrastructure and the airport's surrounding local is very well filled out with custom objects, so the airport works extremely well for all your required visual viewpoints. German autogen is also excellent here in creating the best all round experience. There are a few areas the overexposed new Hi-Res (photo) ground textures that do show through and create a few flat spots, but overall you get a pretty full and comprehensive layout. The ground textures are all new as well, and very good they are. The original layout was good anyway, but now you have the addition of the dynamic shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects which are now also active and they are very good at bring out the runway, taxiway textures in grooves and concrete blocks... .... these effects also bring out the shiny wet look to a great dynamic effect, and yes they are very common now in all sceneries, but still very welcome here at EDDL were they work to a great effect and find some moody German weather and you will be right at home. The textures also feature grids, water drains and all the required ground markings and the signage is very good for highly realistic ground areas. I just love those wet look images. You now also get the same PBR (Physical Based Rendering) dynamics with the buildings and the terminals. This then lifts the original textures to a more life-like and depth of feel and I love the Germanic feel of steel and glass here that the Germans do so well, and the reflective glass here is perfect as is the rerendering of the original terminal modeling and texture, I loved DUS before, but now it is simply sensational. The original modeling and terminal textures are still here however, but now look slightly different in their PBR reflective guise, I personally think they are a huge lift to the scenery as I always thought the original textures always looked a little bland, 3d grass also lifts up the visual experience, well done 3d grass is a major help in hiding flat textures, and they work very well here. One of the biggest things missing in the original JustSim EDDL release was active airbridges... arrive back at EDDL after the dynamic Scandi airports and Düsseldorf International felt very flat with it's boring static gates.... .... now on arrival you now get the animated custom SafeDock System (plugin by Marginal), and yes it is now a very nice arrival to have and a big missing element of the original scenery now active and in being able to complete the rest of your service (in other words, to let the passengers off) and note the newer current "Enterprise Car Rental" DUS airbridge branding, and yes I will miss the long neck giraffes.... but in the sake of progress. More active ground vehicles have also been added and are extensive, but not many are DUS branded, but still the standard X-Plane default (SAS). There has been a lot of changes at DUS since the last scenery release. Most significant is the new C concourse. If you are familiar with the older DUS then the daily A380 service by Emirates used to dock at gate B-03. Now there is a ULA code F three arm airbridge bay at C-02. These new gate assignment changes can affect you another way. I loved the excellent WT3 traffic here at DUS, but it is now outdated... JustSim do provide a full new set of WT3 ground routes and parking defs with the scenery, and they are very good and accommodate all the changes. Control tower view has been adjusted and moved from the earlier positioned wrongly ramp tower on to the main, taller and bigger field tower. The field view is now fine with a great view of all the approaches, however if you look to the west (rear) you will get some structure in the view. Lighting The lighting at EDDL is overall really good and very life-like... all the aprons and ramps are excellent, with great lighting detail... .... but there are a few points to make. Nightime building glass is still from the older style modeling and it shows, but as the glass is now reflective, you get a more certain heightened feel, a few notches down in the texture illumination would have countered this effect.. ... but there are some imaginative ideas that are well done, like this lovely hangar drop lighting and working down on the ramps it a nice place to be. All the lighting is new and more focused (laser like) which works very well for the approach lighting and the runways... ... the blue taxiway line lighting is however a bit strong and then overwhelms even the landing lighting, and really requires a few notches down please! JustSim's EDDL is one of the best for WT3, and part of the main reason I have used it as noted consistently. A wide variety of aircraft use DUS from the huge A380 (Emirates) to the local colour Q400's of Eurowing's fleet. X-Life traffic is also supported. Summary This v2 update to X-Plane11 standards from JustSim has been a long time coming, but it fixes most of the missing active elements that were missing in the original EDDL -Düsseldorf International scenery. PBR - Shading and occlusion creates excellent ground and building effects are now active as is the reflective glass, and wet and reflection effects will now also work. Runway textures are all redone to create a 3d realism effect and the animated custom autogates also are now usable (yippee!) and finally taking away the bland previous static look. New lighting is very, very good, but the taxiway side line lighting are a bit over bright, Gate and building changes at DUS (new Concourse C) are all reflected in the scenery and the required new WT3 grounds are provided as part of the package. negatives are small but night glass is still the older textures and with PBR are a little too bright, and those over bright taxi linage lights. I really like and have used this EDDL -Düsseldorf by JustSim a lot over years, it is a major hub for me, and one of the main benefits are it's central Euro position, light frame rate carriage and extensive WorldTraffic 3 activity, so this v2 fills in a lot of the missing blanks that I had wished for in (active gates and (wet) reflections, so I am extremely happy with this update, if you have the original v1 EDDL -Düsseldorf by JustSim it is only US6 to update to this far better v2... highly recommended. ______________________________________________________________________ Yes! EDDL -Düsseldorf International v2 by JustSim is now Available from the X-Plane.Org Store here : EDDL -Düsseldorf International v2 Price is US$19.90 Customers of the previous EDDL v1 by JustSim can get this new v2 for only US$6! Features: Detailed airport objects and vehicles Custom textured taxiways, runways and apron Custom surroundings Custom airport lights Compatible with X-Plane 11 features Shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on terminal and other airport buildings High resolution ground textures / Custom runway textures High resolution building textures Excellent night effects Realistic reflections on glass Animated Autogates with SafeDock System (plugin by Marginal) WT3 - World Traffic compatible X-Life traffic compatible Optimized for excellent performance ______________________________________________________________________ Installation Download is 721mb and the scenery package is un-zipped and deposited into your X-Plane Custom Scenery folder Note: if installed the previous version EDDL v1 it is to be removed Total scenery installation is 2.21gb Requirements : X-Plane 11 Windows, Mac or Linux 4GB VRAM Minimum. 8Gb+ VRAM Recommended Current and Review Version 2.0 (December 9th 2019) Documentation: No manual ______________________________________________________________________ Scenery Upgrade Review by Stephen Dutton 19th December 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 11.41r1 Addons: Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini : Headshake by SimCoders Plugins: WorldTraffic3 US$29.95 (recommended) : Environment Engine v1.13 by xEnviro US$69.90 : - Airbus A319 by Toliss (X-Plane.OrgStore) - US$69.00
  10. Scenery Upgrade : LEBL - Barcelona XP11 by JustSim There is sometimes no rhyme or reason of why you are attracted to certain aircraft or sceneries. You just are. And that is surprisingly in the case that the actual scenery chosen doesn't have all the features and dynamics that it really should have. But a few like EDDL - Düsseldorf (also by JustSim), ENGM - Oslo Airport, Gardermoen (Aerosoft) and EGCC - Manchester (the old one from Aerosoft) have all been very prominent in many of our reviews, added into that list is LEBL - Barecelona which is again always an outright choice for any flights to or from Spain... if looking hard there is one common theme amongst all these favoured sceneries and that is they all run the WorldTraffic 3 plugin very well, that maybe the connection, but even then JustSim's LEBL - Barcelona was always a favoured first routing choice of any Mediterranean destination. More interesting is the fact that JustSim's version of LEBL - Barcelona although good out of the box, still had a lot of areas that I would usually rally hard against as not being up to standard, truth be told then LEBL should not have even come close to being listed on my main usage list, but I was willing (why) to use it despite these in some cases high limitations, so there must be something good going on here, and when this new upgraded XP11 version popped up I was really quite excited and hoped that many of the earlier areas of missed features and dynamics had been rectified. I noted at the time "you get the feeling the scenery has been released quickly and before it is finished" as the Christmas (2017) holiday season was the point of the original release. So let us look at the changes in the XP11 version of LEBL. The original review is here: Scenery Review : LEBL Barcelona El Prat by JustSim Outwardly visually there isn't much much difference than the original, in reality it didn't need it either as it was already quite comprehensive, I will note that included and they are situated in these images here are the addon city objects of the Barcelona Skyline 2.1 by marpilot, as they add in a lot and to the feel of the Barcelona city skyline. Terminal One was really well done originally, it thoroughly looked the modern and stylish building it was supposed to represent, no issues with that aspect at all... JustSim note the terminal has been remodelled here, I think it has had improvements, but more to the finishing off stage than any major structure changes, the only physical change as I can see is on Ramp R-15, the covered walkways have been removed and the stands have been rearranged, the ground signage in front of R-15 is now different as well, your old WT3 parking is now out of alignment as well with the new layout. When you arrived at your assigned gate originally it was simply not a great experience, it was then very bland, empty and inactive (below). The XP11 version has fixed pretty well everything in this aspect... .... a huge amount of good clutter has fixed most of these barren areas, and every gate and even around all the aprons there is now a significant amount of clutter but none is BCN branded, but it is still very good. I particularly like the variations of different ground equipment, like all the neoplans (buses) that are different. There are animations now also present as well, it is noted as still a WIP, but there is enough animated vehicle activity to satisfy into bringing in some movements into the work areas. The X-Plane ground service now also works, I rarely use this because I use the JARDesign GHD plugin, but it is an additional feature for those that use the default version. VDGS - Visual Docking Guidance System Another fix is the now inclusion of the VDGS - Visual Docking Guidance System, or animated airbridges. This is the older Marginal version and not the more recent SAM plugin, and for some reason JustSim is not embracing the SAM system over the Marginal version, weird because JustSim usually use the latest ideas and features with their sceneries... One of the biggest LEBL drawbacks has thankfully now been fixed as it was very odd (boring) with those fixed old fashioned airbridges. The feature is very well intergrated into the terminal as well with a similar design and the correct see through glass. Even if they are the older system, these VDGS airbridges are very nice, but some of the pole navigation electronic displays are a little tall, I had to crouch down low in the MD88 to see the display. Terminal 2 west has the VDGS system as well and JustSim noted that the VDGS system is still a WIP... but I tested two airbridges over here and they worked fine, they are of a solid construction in design than the glass airbridges of T1 but look authentic. Like Terminal One in that Terminal 2 was a very empty place, it is now highly active and thankfully more realistic... .... I usually avoided Terminal 2 because of its blandness, but now in this XP11 version it is perfectly active enough for me to come over here, still mostly for LCC use, but that is fine. HDR active All glass in the terminals, buildings and airbridges are now HDR reflective... .... again this is another step forward in making the gates and buildings more realistic and not dull. LEBL - Barcelona now also comes with HDR ground and surface reflections, so if you have a bit of wet weather into the airport, then the effects shine. The lighting effects show off the great textures on the runways, it is really great for any nocturnal flight activities at LEBL, night arrivals and certainly at dawn or dusk were always extremely dramatic. Wet areas around the brightly lit ramps are excellent, it is brilliant down here and to note the excellent wet shine on the empty baggage carts. Tower view has been fixed... yeah. All approaches are now available, rather than an apron, still set slightly too high, but at least it is working... .... you would be surprised how much you missed something as simple as the tower view here. The control tower itself (which is really well done) has acquired a autogen traffic road around its base? and cars appear and move where they shouldn't. Lighting at El Prat was always good, at night and in use the airport is excellent, certainly from any approach or departure aspect. Terminal 1 night-lighting has been redone, but it is still slightly blueish too dark, Terminal 2 however is excellent. The only negatives are the landside terminal approach roads lighting have still not be added, so you get this very dark blank area in front of the terminal, it is an easy fix, but again overlooked. Another overlooked area is on the RWY 25R, even RWY25L and RWY 02 Departures. In the distance the Barcelona dock cranes have always been a great view filler, but also on those approaches there is a very blank area associated with the docks and it is noticeable... ' .... JustSim have added in a few low warehouses, but it is not enough for the large flat area and it creates a flat hole in the scenery and on these northern significant approaches as well. There has been a little added to the custom autogen, but there are still a few noticeable spaces, but overall the custom autogen is very good... add in the default autogen and you get a great visual feast, it is one on of the main reasons I use LEBL - Barcelona so much. Summary I really liked LEBL - Barcelona El Prat airport by JustSim from the very first landing, and even if at the time it had significant missing X-Plane active features, and as I noted at the same time it also felt a little unfinished... but this new upgraded version puts a lot of those missing features right. Terminals, aprons and buildings felt empty (because they were), are now full of great clutter, there has been added in a lot of nice vehicles and general airport ground infrastructure, you certainly don't feel lonely down here anymore and arrivals are far more realistic. VDGS - Visual Docking Guidance Systems on both main terminals is another huge bonus of interaction. More fixes includes animated vehicles (not a lot yet), ground service and a nice variation in all custom vehicles, but they are not BCN branded. X-Plane11's HDR dynamic features are also another great new added in feature here; includes HDR ground textures for wet,rain and lighting reflections, building glass reflections and even to the HDR use on static clutter (baggage trolleys and more) is very good to exceptional. All lighting is very good as well and the "Tower View" is sort of fixed (too high), but still better. Negatives are small, but notable in missing street approach lighting landside Terminal 1 and an empty flat dockland area on the northern approaches Two options are certainly to be considered at this JustSim LEBL. One is the city objects of the Barcelona Skyline 2.1 by marpilot, and the other is Classic Jet Simulations World Traffic 3 - WT3 (World Traffic 3.0). The running of WT3 is excellent here and it all works perfectly with the complex taxiway and runway layouts, WT3 is one of the big attractions to using LEBL. LEBL - Barcelona El Prat airport is in my high rotation of routing, in other words I use this El Prat scenery a lot, use the scenery yourself and you will see why, more so now as most of the niggles have been comprehensively addressed in this XP11 version upgrade, now it will be more addictive than ever, great value, upgrades from the older version is US$5.00 but it is now only for X-Plane11... A simply must have on your European routing network. ______________________________________________________________________ Yes! LEBL Barcelona El Prat Airport XP11 by JustSim is Available from the X-Plane.Org Store here : LEBL - Barcelona Airport XP11 Price is US$21.00 Previous owners of JustSim's LEBL-Barcelona (XP10/XP11) version can upgrade for US$5.00 to version XP11 Features: New version optimized for XP11 Custom runway, taxiway and airport lights Shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on terminal and other airport buildings Manualy placed a lot of autogen buildings High resolution photo scenery near airport and city High resolution ground textures / Custom runway textures High resolution building textures Ground service World Traffic compatible X-Life traffic compatible Optimized for excellent performance Animated jetway and airport traffic - work in progress ______________________________________________________________________ Installation The download package is 370.10mb and is 1.08gb when installed as a single folder in your X-Plane "Custom Scenery" Folder. The addition of city objects in the Barcelona Skyline 2.1 by marpilot package is well worth the installation. Marginal AutoGate plugin 1.72 Is required for use of this scenery, install in your X-Plane Resources/Plugin folder This scenery can now be ONLY used in X-Plane11with this XP11 version Documents: None Requirements : X-Plane 11 Windows, Mac, Linux 4GB VRAM Minimum - 8GB+ VRAM Recommended Current and Review version: 1.3 (July 2nd 2019) ______________________________________________________________________ Upgrade Review by Stephen Dutton 4th 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 : WorldTraffic3 US$29.95 : Environment Engine v1.10 by xEnviro US$69.90 : AutoGate plugin 1.72 Scenery or Aircraft - McDonnell Douglas MD-80 by Rotate ((Rotate MD-88 - X-Plane.OrgStore) - US$59.95
  11. Scenery Updated to XP11 : LOWI - Innsbruck Airport by JustSim Last August 2016 X-PlaneReviews announced the release of JustSim's LOWI - Innsbruck Airport for X-Plane (Ten). Now only just a few weeks into 2017 the developer has updated the scenery and added in some X-Plane11 features and compatibility. The original X-Plane release scenery for LOWI - Innsbruck by JustSim was very good, but what just six months can do in changes is staggering. Set in a deep valley in the Austrian Tyrol region, Austria, Innsbruck is a tough airport to fly in or out of. One the mountains create a barrier and worse bad vortexes that make any arrival or departure an adventure. X-Plane11 Autogen Outwardly the scenery looks the same as the original release and actually the basics are not changed, but the biggest immediate visual change is in the switch like at LEMN - Nice (the first converted X-Plane11 scenery from JustSim) to the X-Plane11 feature of regional housing. In the original release in X-Plane10 JustSim used a package of OSM(OpenStreetMap) 3d object scenery to make the city of Innsbruck. (X-Plane10 OSM) Personally I hated it, as OSM 3d scenery is very heavy on the download (here 1.3gb) and it all has a big impact on your frame-rate. It doesn't quite look right either which I think it is out of scale and has some very bright basic textures. But it is my personal choice here. But it was all we had and for running this scenery in X-Plane10, and it is still available to use with that version of this LOWI scenery. (X-Plane11 regional autogen) JustSim for X-Plane11 has reverted to the default regional autogen feature and this is a far better installation and with no frame-rate hit except for the amount of the X-Plane objects in the setting that you would usually use. The difference is striking and extremely visually satisfying and shows how really great X-Plane11 will become with its autogen when these regional packages become a standard issue, for now the German package does fit in well here with Austria. LOWI - Innsbruck Airport The airport is very well modeled and not that changed from the original version, but I find in XP11 that the ground texture are a bit bright. Otherwise the airport and it's buildings are perfect. One key difference in this X-Plane11 version is the use of the reflections feature. Like with the recently updated LEMN - Nice is that all the glass and windows now reflect (mirror), and the differences are excellent, look at the control tower glass for the realism this reflection feature now brings to the simulator. The effects are even better here at LOWI than at LEMN because of the different glass perspectives. Night lighting was exceptional in the release version and just as good here with great picture textures to highlight the internal parts of the buildings, note the great strip lighting on the bottom-right image. The ramps however are good but a bit dark in the twilight and dark, a bit more power and throw would have been nice. LOWI lighting overall is first rate, it all works from the traffic lighting to the new autogen night textures and the airport layout... just perfect. Grass The 3d Alpine grass on the airfield has been completely redone for this version, and a great job it it is as well, as the grass is highly realistic and even pickable for the dinner table. Runway Reflections Another X-Plane11 feature is runway reflections, or rain. The feature does work here at LOWI, but you have to have the almost exact correct conditions to see the effects. But it a great feel visually when it does. Static Aircraft With X-Plane11 you have a lot of options now to use the default built in "static" aircraft feature. The JustSim LOWI ground routes are set up ready to use this feature. Myself personally feels that it needs still a bit more work to be completely feasible. It would be a long ride home to say Toronto or Boston on a Canadian A320 or Delta MD-80 from Innsbruck, so they look very out of place here? And with the odd A.I. aircraft will suddenly go slightly mad on the infield is distracting. My choice is still WorldTraffic for regional awareness and timetabled flights. From sparse mid-day to busy afternoon rush hour the plugin delivers great traffic (Set up ground routes and routes can be found below). JustSim provides some great airport animations and parking marshalls. You don't need the over dynamic built in X-Plane ground services yet as this is perfect. Two items worth noting are: Tower View is a mess! Come on people how hard can it be to adjust the tower view and above the building to see the runways? It is happening far too often lately on payware scenery? Another item is as that Innsbruck is very Alpine and deep into the Alps, and so the chances of snow here is very high. This year I have used the winter textures quite extensively and provided "Winter Textures" with the scenery would be a very nice option here. With "Winter Textures" running it is big hole around LOWI that needs filling? Now X-Plane11 with the addition of the X-Enviro plugin is now creating some really dynamic feel vistas... ... and how great would it be to use this scenery with the actual snow covered textures! Summary This LOWI - Innsbruck Airport scenery is excellent from JustSim, certainly almost perfect in X-Plane11, where as suddenly X-Plane10 already feels old. But LOWI will still run in that scenery if the needs be. I do to a point recommend this updated scenery for X-Plane11 more than X-Plane10, It is fine of course, but the earlier version loads and looks slightly better in that version and the scenery is not recommended for earlier X-Plane versions than v10.50. The original release in the middle of 2016 was very good, but the developments and the features that X-Plane11 provides moves the game along quite significantly, and here all the above new added features show off those features well. It is only six months but with X-Plane11 and its features and the new xEnviro plugin you feel light years away from that moment and the same scenery, The reversion to autogen from osm3d objects has the biggest impact here not too mention your lighter frame-rate, but glass reflections are a huge benefit as well for realism, as is the highly realistic grass. Ramp lighting could be brighter and a tower view would help, but otherwise this scenery is close to perfect. As with JustSim's LFMN-Nice there is a token US$5 upgrade fee to this X-Plane11 version, so check your original LOWI invoice at the X-Plane.OrgStore. and the discount code will be listed in your account on there... it is cup of coffee folks, and it is well worth missing one cup for what you get here. ______________________________________________________________________ The LOWI - Innsbruck Airport XP11 by JustSim is NOW available! from the X-Plane.Org Store here : LOWI - Innsbruck Airport XP11 Price is US$18.00 Note: Previous owners of JustSim's LOWI Innsbruck can buy this new XP11 version for only $5: So check your original LOWI invoice at the X-Plane.OrgStore. the discount code will be listed there in your account. Features New version with support for X-Plane 11 (X-Plane 10 still supported) Compatible with X-Plane 11 ground service Compatible with X-Plane 11 reflections Very detailed rendition of Innsbruck Airport Volumetric ground effect textures New 3D grass Custom runway , taxiway and airport lights Shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on terminal and other airport buildings High resolution photo scenery High resolution ground textures / Custom runway textures High resolution building textures Runway reflection effect Animated Marshallers. (AutoGate plugin by Marginal) Animated custom ground vehicles. (GroundTraffic plugin by Marginal) World Traffic compatible - X-Life traffic compatible Optimized for excellent performance Requirements: X-Plane 11+ or X-Plane 10.50+ Windows, Mac, Linux - 1.5Gb HD Space Available (download size 1.1Gb) 2GbVRAM Video Card. 3Gb+ VRAM Recommended WorldTraffic ground routes and routes package by letecxplm are available here on the X-Plane.Org: GroundRoutes_LOWI_JustSim 1.0 ______________________________________________________________________ Stephen Dutton 25th January 2017 Copyright©X-Plane Reviews: X-PlaneReviews 2017 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 512gb SSD Software: - Windows 10 - X-Plane 11beta8 / Checked install in X-Plane10.51 Addons: Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini : Headshake by SimCoders Plugins: : Environment Engine by xEnviro US$69.90 : WorldTraffic US$29.95
  12. Scenery Preview - LGRP - Rhodes International Airport by JustSim When JustSim released their excellent LCLK - Laranca only six months ago, it felt like it was the far end of the world, or Europe at least, as it was a lonely outpost on Cypress on the far eastern end of the Mediterranean. But that far away point is now not so isolated in flying terms. A flurry of excellent sceneries have now filled in the void, including LTAI - Antalya International Airport again by JustSim, Chios Island National Airport by Descent2View and of course Corfu with FlyCorfu XP by FlyTampa... you can also add in a few freeware sceneries for more routing out here, but going or crossing these areas of Greece has now become a busy pastime... now JustSim have added in another very desirable destination with LGRP - Rhodes or as it is known locally as Diagoras International Airport. Obviously you had to connect JustSim's LCLK - Laranca to their newer LGRP Rhodes as it is only a 300 nm hop from one airport to the other... ... basically it is only an hour's flying time, but who would not miss that perfect flying day and in that Cobalt blue sky (pun intended), the ToLiSS319 also helped things along enormously. Approach is into RWY25 from the East and there is something about this area in X-Plane11 that brings out the best in the scenery, the light and the soft mist on the mountains. This approach path takes you over the port of Rhodes itself and the harbour. There is a mix here of (German) autogen and custom local buildings, and they all well meld into each other well (more on this later) LGRP - Rhodes (Diagoras) International Airport Rhodes International Airport "Diagoras" Διεθνής Αερολιμένας Ρόδος "Διαγόρας" IATA: RHO - ICAO: LGRP 07/25 - 3,305m (10,844ft) Asphalt Elevation AMSL6 m/19 ft Rhodes (Diagoras) International Airport is situated on the north side of the island of Rhodes in Greece. The facility is located just north of the village Paradeisi (really the airport is in or part of Paradeisi), and about 14 km southwest of the capital city, Rodos. Interestingly is that the airport is open to the sea to the north and hemmed in by a hillside to the south. First impressions are impressive, this is a JustSim scenery after all as you know what to expect in good modelling detail and excellent blending in with the custom to default mesh and textures. The blending in is even better here as the hillside is very lush with vegetation, fauna, custom trees and bushes. As noted there are custom buildings to compliment the autogen as JustSim usually do provide a little local flavor to their sceneries and don't restrict the scenery just to the airport, in this case it covers the village of Paradeisi, which basically surrounds the whole airport to the east and west. JustSim have been smart in not making their custom buildings completely Greek, in say white, white. but a sort of mid-way but still custom. This does blend in well with the German autogen although you can still tell the difference in the different areas, but it not as bad a it really could have been. In other words it all works very well as a complete scenario from the air on both approach paths. The german autogen however is more noticeable in the Rodos city itself and the lack of local colour and port facilties. Where as Rhodes should be Greek Classic white, it looks more of an Italian port than Greek. This is where FlyTampa gave the Corfu scenery a boost in covering this city area as well as the airport itself in the same feel and architectural design, it also highlights the limitations of Laminar Research's current situation with regional autogen, as white Greek/Turkish Mediterranean default autogen should be now a no brainer and available for X-Plane these days. Another small oddity is the none development by JustSim of the airport LGRD - Martisa which is positioned (arrowed) only just behind the same hill that covers LGRP... ... It is highly visible, but it only required a few buildings and a few bits and pieces to make it a great GA viable alternative to LGRP? Instead it is a wasted blank area in the middle of the scenery? LRGP - Diagoras The airport layout is one large apron and remote stands, and no airbridges. Stands cover 1 to 7 in front of the terminal with semi-circle parking and stands 8 to 14 are set in a line farther out. Stand 10 covers the entrance to Taxiway B, so don't depart the runway there! and stand 14 is a large stand that is noted to cater for a wide-body ICAO category E and F (65m (213.3') - 80m (262.5'); 14m (45.9') - 16m (52.5') or Boeing 747 size. Terminal The single terminal is impressive, if an odd colour that does not translate well. The terminal construction and materials/textures are excellent with the well done lighting ramp towers. Airside detail is excellent with walk-on ramps from the terminal down to the apron, clutter ramp detailing is also top notch. There is a huge amount of animated vehicles that are mostly baggage carts and maybe to many, and to the point you have to be careful taxiing around the ramp and not squashing one or two of them, but there is a huge amount of activity to be had. Landside is as good and if not better than Airside. Loads of people, taxi's, buses and god knows what else creates a dynamic environment. Only odd thing is the colour of the roads and carparks, which are more green and grass like than the required asphalt grey/dark roadway, it tends not to blend in more than it should? High view down on Diagoras is complimented by the high positioned (PARADISI - 108.6 PAR) DME navigation aid, not to be confused with the close by (RODOS 115.8 RDS) Nav-Aid for LGRD - Martisa. Note the great view over the Aegean Sea and the coastline is Turkey. Control Tower The tower is on the west side of the terminal and connected to the terminal. Detail and the all important tower glass is excellent, it is a nice great reconstruction... The tower view of the approaches by Just Sim is not set (Again!). Ground clutter is excellent and fully detailed, I particularly love the jet blast screens, they look great. The Terminal approach roads have associated businesses... ... garages, car rental... usual stuff but well done. Most areas however are not set to the OSM (Open Street Map) settings, so buildings, trees and signage cover roads and are set out in areas that they really shouldn't be in, it makes the scenery quite messy and not authentic in areas, a bit more time in laying out these items would have made it far better, it feels rushed? Ground textures Runway and taxiway surface textures are excellent, and highly realistic with tar, cracks and general repair work visible, Apron square concrete textures are very authentic... .... grass is 3d and excellent, although in parts the navigation signs are covered with grass, but then this is Greece! Water is also blended in well to the ground textures for that nice shallow water feel. Runway textures are reflective in the right wet conditions, and looks excellent if you land late in the day. Lighting JustSim's LGRP has great lighting... ... approach lighting is very good from both directions, but it is slightly better from the east. All taxiway lighting have no centreline (green) markings as per most airports in Greece, so you will need the aircraft side turn lighting to find your way to or from the terminal area. Apron lighting is very good, but only on the terminal side, as if you get to park on the outer stands then you are sitting in the darkness. Debatable is the reflective blue terminal glass, as many people won't like it, but I really liked it a lot, and for me it works very well with the contrasting control tower base lighting. All landside lighting is very good as well, as all areas are covered including carparks, terminal approach lighting, and general areas. Apron lighting stands 1 to 7 and 14 are great and well lit working areas and any arrival here after dark is very impressive. Exceptional is the custom building lighting, windows at night are not those ugly grey rectangles, but ar eas good as the quality autogen lighting, so they all blend in well together. I have wondered ( and complained) why it is so hard not to do good custom building lighting? If you get it right as it is here it make a huge difference to the approaches and also to the quality of the night environment. Overall the lighting is excellent. Preview Notes: JustSim again really deliver, as LGRP is great scenery at an unbelievable price, and like all JustSim sceneries which are not ultra high detailed scenery, but you do always get the latest in X-Plane dynamic features (like reflective glass), great lighting, lots of animated items like ground traffic and wet surfaces and the modeling is usually of a very high quality... and they just deliver. The experience is full, from the approach (at night it is brilliant) to the quality aprons and with surrounding clutter and detail and the X-Plane11 dynamics, LGRP - Rhodes well worth the investment and a worthwhile companion to LCLK - Laranca and JustSim's other local airport in LTAI - Antalya... highly recommended. Features noted are: Detailed airport objects and vehicles Custom textured taxiways, runways and apron Custom surroundings Custom airport lights Compatible with X-Plane 11 features Animated ground vehicles (X-Plane 11 only) Shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on terminal and other airport buildings High resolution ground textures / Custom runway textures High resolution building textures Excellent night effects Realistic reflections on glass World Traffic compatible X-Life traffic compatible Optimized for excellent performance WT3: WorldTraffic GroundRoutes are provided ready to be included with the scenery. Overall the airport functions perfectly fine in giving you that full running airport and full traffic activity. And the aircraft will also loop to the correct stand parking position. A few private jets take up stands that they shouldn't do, but otherwise it is full marks. Positives: Mostly everything, lighting is excellent, texture and building design is first rate and all with excellent clutter and traffic animations. Excellent value. Negatives: Rodos City and Port would have been a nice addition, even for a higher purchase price. Tower View is not really usable (again), buildings and trees are not aligned to OSM layouts, so roads are full of trees and part buildings. Landside terminal roads and carparks are the wrong colour (very light green?).... and why wasn't close by LGRD - Martisa airport added into to the scenery? ____________________________________________________________________ Yes!... LGRP - Rhodes International Airport by JustSim is Available from the X-Plane.Org Store here : LGRP - Rhodes International Airport Price is US$17.20 Requirements : X-Plane 11 Windows, Mac or Linux 4Gb VRAM Minimum - 8Gb+ VRAM Recommended Current and Review version: 1.0 (September 26th 2018) Extras and Documents: - Optional ORTHO4XP Custom DEM - RAW files - WorldTraffic3 Ground Routes and /Parking Def's - Install pdf ______________________________________________________________________ Preview by Stephen Dutton 12th October 2018 Copyright©2018 : X-Plane Reviews (Disclaimer. All images and text in this preview 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) Review System Specifications: Computer System: Windows - Intel Core i7 6700K CPU 4.00GHz / 64bit - 16 Gb single 1067 Mhz DDR4 2133 - ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 8Gb - Samsung Evo 512gb SSD Software: - Windows 10 - X-Plane 11.25 Addons: Saitek x56 Rhino Pro system Joystick and Throttle : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini Plugins: Environment Engine by xEnviro US$69.90 : WorldTraffic 3.0 Plugin - US$29.95 : BetterPushBack - Free Scenery or Aircraft - ToLiSS319 (A319) by ToLiSS (X-Plane.OrgStore) - US$69.00
  13. Scenery Review : LEBL Barcelona El Prat by JustSim As cities go, then Barcelona on the North-Eastern coast of Spain has almost everything. History, cultural diversity, iconic buildings and even its own strong separatist tradition in language as the local dialect is Catalan and it is the sixth-most populous urban area in Europe. It's place on the Balearic Sea gives you a very wide selection of services, not only to anywhere for in Europe, but all of the Mediterranean countries that are very easily accessible and North Africa is well within reach as well for most narrow-body services. Spain was quite devoid of good quality scenery only not too long ago. But today there is now plenty of choice for domestic services but the best is still mostly on the eastern coast side. But LEVC - Valencia Manises by DAI Media is first rate as is LEXJ - Santander and LEZL - Seville Airport by tdg. There is a LEPA - Mallorca and Pilot+Plus's LEIB Ibiza and a great small airport in Soria Garray. But the best combination is with JustSim's excellent (now updated to X-Plane11) LFMN - Nice with their new scenery here which is LEBL - El Prat airport Barcelona. First impressions My approach was from the north or flying in by Southern France over the Pyrénées Catalanes range. The aircraft is Rotate's MD-88 and I have the xEnviro weather plugin running to create the realistic weather conditions. Once you clear the range you pick up the STAR/RNAV "ALBER" via "Gerona 114.10 GIR" for approach to RWY25R. I have the winter textures installed and as winter in Spain is not a natural usual occurrence, but this year it is and they have had even snow in Southern Greece, and so I am vindicated. The heavy low level cloud is making it hard to find the runway, time to trust my instruments. The entrance into Barcelona is picturesque. Helping in the view is that there are a lot of available objects to enhance the scenery and one of the best is Barcelona Skyline 2.1 by marpilot. This loads in a lot of Barcelona icon buildings that make up the scenery, as well JustSim adds in quite a few of their own, and the most impressive are the main loading cranes on the docks directly in line of your northern arrival path. The cranes are a great visual view to the direction of the airport because most arrival routes tend to come in on a slight angle along the coast, in most cases you do a slight right turn to finals on the approaches RWY25L and RWY25R and for most of the arrival sequence the airport is quite hard to focus on... then it is suddenly right there and right on your nose. This arrival was tricky in this service as well with a bad 19knt crosswind, so I crabbed all the way down to the threshold. Runway layout is interesting with two runways in 07L/25R and 07R/25L being situated almost north-south, but the third 02/20 is a cross runway that crosses 07L/25R and in operations on either runway you have to aware of any traffic using the other live runway. The older terminal two is on the right with a 25R approach and is now mostly abandoned today except for a few LCC's (Low Cost Carriers). The bulk of the traffic uses the newer Terminal One that opened in 2009. Lighting is excellent on the ramps at Terminal One. And the view from the cockpit was excellent, however the terminal's window lighting was quite subdued and very dark, and should have been brighter even in this light dusk light. And so it all looked like the outside lights are on, but no one is home. Taxiway E3 took me to the south side of T1 and my gate at stand 256. Opposite both sides of the terminal one's 60 main jetway gates there are plenty of remote stand parking areas, but none of the jetways are yet animated but noted by JustSim that the feature is coming, ditto for ground traffic animations as well that was noted as a "work in progress". Again in stopping at the gate there was the constant feeling of that no one was home. Overall though I found the arrival very good both visually and atmospheric as the terminal design work and external lighting was very well done. ________________________________________________ Barcelona El Prat Airport IATA: BCN - ICAO: LEBL 07L/25R 3,743, (12,281ft) Asphalt concrete 07R/25L 2,660 (8,727ft) Asphalt concrete 02/20 2,528 (8,293ft) Asphalt concrete Elevation AMSL14 ft / 4 m Overview LEBL intergrates really well into the X-Plane landscape, there are no tell tale boundaries except a slight one on the far south-west and the traffic/roads system goes well into the airport as well from the same south-west, from a visual point of view LEBL is perfect. The port area make a significant difference to the scenery as noted on the approach phase above. It an area full of cranes and storage tanks, but well done. The north-west boundary is the older part of El Prat, with the original airport areas... so we will start there. Terminal 2 Ignore everything the other side of RWY 07L/25R and you would have a pretty good idea of what El Prat looked like forty years ago. Top north is the large well modeled Iberian maintenance hangar with in front a lot of remote GA and private jet ramp parking available. Centre field is a fire station and the old control tower and terminal and now administration buildings. A big point of this scenery is the ground markings and layout is exceptional, all the complex (and it is very complex) taxiway designations are very well noted and signed, you will still need a ground map to work the ATC correctly, but the signage helps a long way in finding your way around. Ground textures are excellent with great variations in detail and the many different surfaces, and note the excellent 3d grass centre The old original terminal is now split into three Terminal 2A, 2B and 2C and currently Terminal 2A is unused. Terminal 2C is used only by Easyjet and Easyjet Switzerland flights, with flights to the UK using module M0, whilst flights to the rest of Europe use module M1. Terminal 2B the oldest terminal dating back to 1968 is mostly used by Ryanair and others like Transavia. And T2A is adapted for large aircraft such as Boeing 777. The terminal is again also split into Modules, where flights to schengen destinations use Module U and flights to non-schengen destinations use Modules W and Y.... got all that? The terminals are well modeled, if a lot unused. Far north-west is a large cargo area with a huge amount of ramp space. There are a few objects lying around but overall it is empty, It is however a good cargo zone to use. Control Tower To the east there is an excellent radar installation and the stylish modern control tower. Detail is first rate and the tower can be seen all over the scenery because of its position. But the tower view setting is not done, so your view is somewhere over on the ground in the cargo area? not very good for a scenery of this class and the sad missed opportunity of a great view of both the 07L/25R and 02/20 crossed runways. Terminal One The stylish Terminal One was opened in June 2009. It is the fifth largest in the world. It has 45 new airbridges that are expandable up to 60 parking gates. This terminal is also capable to embrace large aircraft like the Airbus A380-800 or Boeing 747-8I. Terminal One handles both Schengen and non-Schengen flights. It is split into 5 Modules with Module A handling flights to Madrid, Module B handling Schengen flights, Module C handling Air Nostrum flights, Module D handling non-Schengen European flights and Module E handling non-Schengen non-European flights. A note on the Barcelona to Madrid airbridge, which was one of the most busiest in the world. Started on 4th November 1970, Iberia began the "Air-shuttle" service between Barcelona and Madrid-Barajas. This Barcelona–Madrid air shuttle service is known as the "Puente Aereo" (in Spanish), or "Pont Aeri" (in Catalan) or literally "Air Bridge", and was the world's busiest route until 2008, with the highest number of flight operations (971 per week) in 2007. A few years later, in 1976, a terminal (next to Terminal Two as noted above) was built specifically for Iberia's air-shuttle service. Now it runs out of Terminal One. El Prat's Terminal One was always going to be the central focus of this scenery, and it doesn't disappoint on that level here. It is very well modeled and the glass looks better in the daylight than at night, however it will be interesting to see if JustSim upgrades the glass here with X-Plane11 reflections like they did just recently with their LFMN - Nice scenery. It would certainly add a bit more depth to the textures and make it more realistic again. Airbridges are excellent but none are currently moving, as noted animated jetways are coming. Landside is good with great X-Plane traffic running right into the airport, even if it does come out of a few buildings? The intergration of the 3d terminal ramps into the default roads are clumsy, not aligned and are a different colour and that makes them stand out, and with no animation either makes them also empty. Static Aircraft Using the LEBL - Barcelona scenery from JustSim can be a lonely affair. JustSim don't provide any static aircraft with their sceneries and that is highly noticeable here at El Prat as for it's sheer size. So you can hit the overlay editor to add in a few aircraft or use the utilities of either X-Life from JARDesign or WorldTraffic from CJS. I used WorldTraffic and it worked very well in filling out all those empty open spaces. There isn't any specific ground routes but there is a LEBL pack as part of the "Catalonia Airports" package. But you are going have to edit (cull) a few ground routes as every gate is full, and there is a huge list of 1140! ground routes and that is in "Arrival" only? A tip to cull a few spaces is Gate 256 - take out all runways routes listed as "02-1378" for gate 226 all "02-1363" and for gate 242 delete all "02-1371" files in both Arrival and Departure folders and that trick just saved you 4 hours work. JustSim do note that the WorldTraffic ground routes have been done, but I think they are confusing that with the X-Plane built in ground routes as WT routes have to be supplied and installed directly in WorldTraffic (they go into the WorldTraffic Ground routes folder), and here they have not been added into the package for installment. Night Lighting Best to time your arrival in Barcelona for the dusk period as the lighting is effective and visually exciting. LEBL - Barcelona looks great at night as does the city itself. Runways and taxiways are well lit on approach and on the ground and you get the better highlights of the extra provided 3d object buildings to the north-east of the airport. As noted in first impressions the ramp and apron lighting is excellent, but the glass is a bit dull on T1, but better on T2 of where it is wasted. Services Domestically Vueling dominates El Prat, with the flag carrier Iberia well down the order in 7th. Most carriers are LCC, but the British, German and French Flag carriers do most of the European uplifting. 1. Vueling -15,912,302 : Europe, Africa, Asia 2. Ryanair - 6,785,995 : Europe, Africa 3. EasyJet - 2,799,947 : Europe 4. Lufthansa - 1,407,346 : Germany (Munich and Frankfurt) 5. Air Europa - 1,283,721 : Europe 6. Norwegian Air International - 1,240,280 : Europe, (future U.S.) 7. Iberia - 1,184,660 : Spain 8. British Airways - 829,335 : Great Britain (London) 9. Air France - 739,442 : France (Paris) 10. Wizz Air - 651,098 : Europe International Top 10 international routes note the British love their Spanish holidays, as most routes are for Tour operators and LLC operations. Emirates (Dubai), Aeroflot and American Airlines Delta and American are the only few long haul users. 1. London Gatwick - 1.364.620 : British Airways, EasyJet, Monarch Airlines, Norwegian Air Shuttle, Vueling 2. Amsterdam Schiphol - 1.241.129 : KLM, Transavia, Vueling 3. Paris Charles de Gaulle - 1.235.888 : Air France, EasyJet, Vueling 4. Rome Fiumicino - 1.227.988 : Alitalia, Ryanair, Vueling 5. Frankfurt International - 1.030.604 : Lufthansa, Vueling 6. Paris Orly - 982.125 : Transavia, Vueling 7. Brussels National - 841.374 : Brussels Airlines, Ryanair, Vueling 8. Munich F.J.Strauss - 766.960 : Lufthansa, Vueling 9. London Heathrow - 701.905 : British Airways, Vueling 10. Milan Malpensa - 660.880 : EasyJet, Vueling Summary With a lot of the scenery that we cover here at X-PlaneReviews. it is becoming more and more prevalent lately in the fact you get the feeling the scenery has been released quickly and before it is finished, and you get that feeling here with this JustSim El Prat version. Maybe it was to catch in with that Christmas or holiday sales season, but that is not a great business plan overall. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the LEBL scenery as it is, and it is fully usable. But for the sake of a few weeks or a month to tidy up the edges and complete the whole package is not going to change the bank balance that much. No animated gates and vehicle animation is noticeable, Checking that the tower view is correct, more ground servicing equipment, a manual that is missing, no charts and so on, not big things and all supposedly coming down the line... but it is still important when delivering something that is supposed to be fully completed, not that this aspect is not the usual practice in aircraft, but you do expect it in scenery. The glass on Terminal One needs another look, it needs to be more alive at night than a blank dark tint, and a great advance would be to make really sure that if you don't want to supply static aircraft then supply the tools to run the airport as a live entity anyway (Certainly X-Plane11 will change that aspect with better static aircraft tools). Most really good sceneries are important for the reason that has nothing to do with their design and visual appeal. Position, position, position is the hotel's mantra and so it is with a great airport scenery. But in X-Plane position is no good if you can't use the scenery to get the total effect of arriving and being in that place. But with LEBL - Barcelona you certainly get everything in here that you require and with also the great position to use with most services from Europe and Mediterranean countries. So the overall scenery is excellent and well developed as well and there is no doubt that LEBL will certainly play a big part in my X-Plane network in the future, so as an investment LEBL is top notch. I personally really like JustSim's sceneries, they deliver a lot of value and here at El Prat you certainly get that, but just tidy up the rest of the to do list before releasing next time. ______________________________________________________________________ Yes! LEBL Barcelona El Prat Airport by JustSim is Available from the X-Plane.Org Store here : LEBL - Barcelona Airport Price is US$21.00 Features: Custom runway, taxiway and airport lights Shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on terminal and other airport buildings Manualy placed a lot of autogen buildings High resolution photo scenery near airport and city High resolution ground textures / Custom runway textures High resolution building textures World Traffic compatible X-Life traffic compatible Optimized for excellent performance Animated jetway and airport traffic - work in progress ______________________________________________________________________ Installation The download package is 639.10mb and is 928.80 when installed as a single folder in your X-Plane "Custom Scenery" Folder. The addition of city objects in the Barcelona Skyline 2.1 by marpilot package is well worth the installation. This scenery can be used in both X-Plane10 and X-Plane11, however the X-Plane features at this point in time are not shown. Documents: None Requirements : X-Plane 10.50+ or X-Plane 11+ Windows, Mac, Linux 2Gb+ VRAM Video Card Recommended Current Version: 1.1 (last updated Dec 26th 2016) ______________________________________________________________________ Review by Stephen Dutton 18th January 2017 Copyright©2017: 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 512gb 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 : WorldTraffic US$29.95 : Environment Engine by xEnviro US$69.90 Scenery or Aircraft - McDonnell Douglas MD-80 by Rotate ((Rotate MD-88 - X-Plane.OrgStore) - US$59.95
  14. News! - Scenery Release : LGRP - Rhodes International Airport by JustSim Scenery from JustSim has been quiet lately, but it looks like they are going to quickly make up for it. First off the ranks for X-Plane11 and is now available is LGRP - Rhodes International Airport, or as it is known as "Diagoras" or Diagoras International Airport (LGRP), which is located on the West side of the island of Rhodes in Greece. Features: Detailed airport objects and vehicles Custom textured taxiways, runways and apron Custom surroundings Custom airport lights Compatible with X-Plane 11 features Animated ground vehicles (X-Plane 11 only) Shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on terminal and other airport buildings High resolution ground textures / Custom runway textures High resolution building textures Excellent night effects Realistic reflections on glass World Traffic compatible X-Life traffic compatible Optimized for excellent performance Now available from the X-Plane.OrgStore... JustSim have also noted that the next scenery release for X-Plane11 is EBBR - Brussels, noted as to be released in two to three days, or the weekend. ______________________________________________________________________ Yes! the LGRP - Rhodes International Airport by JustSim is available from the X-Plane.Org Store here : LGRP - Rhodes International Airport Price is US$17.20 Requirements: X-Plane 11 Windows, Mac or Linux 4Gb VRAM Minimum - 8Gb+ VRAM Recommended Current version: 1.0 (September 26th 2018) ________________________________________  News by Stephen Dutton 27th September 2018 Copyright©2018: X-Plane Reviews 
  15. Preview: LTAI - Antalya International Airport by JustSim Turkey was always off the aviation radar, mostly because the country was the join between east and west, but also because it was very political, and it still is. But Turkey is quickly in this second decade of the 2000's becoming a very major player in world aviation, as the investment in Istanbul's new mega airport called ironically enough "Istanbul New Airport" is of a scale of that the country means business and is due to open late 2018. And the growth of Turkish Airlines is staggering as well with mostly the expansion of the international fleet to go for more one-stop journeys between the USA and hard-to-reach destinations in Africa, the Middle East, and India. But the real purpose of all this expansion is to take on the Middle-East carriers and their east-west world connections, in a few years that route through currently Dubai or Abu Dhabi will be also running through Istanbul with connections to any ongoing destination in Europe, Africa but more importantly the opening up of the central markets of far west Asia. But Turkey as a holiday destination in itself is also becoming a large market as well, as seasoned packaged holiday companies have now moved on past Spain and Greece to newer markets and the south coast of Turkey is now becoming a well known choice for UK package operators and European holidaymakers wanting something different and exciting but still cheap. And so here is one of those really big tourism resort cities in southern Turkey of Antalya on the north-eastern side of the Mediterranean. From the X-Plane perspective then this area of the world has had a lot of attention lately as well, mostly around Greece with FlyTampa's excellent Corfu, The Chios Island scenery that has just been released a few days earlier, a great Athens freeware by tdg and from JustSim themselves with their earlier underrated Larnaca, Cypress and now this Turkish destination of LTAI - Antalya International Airport in Antalya. Anyone who reads X-PlaneReviews then would know I rate JustSim's sceneries very highly, for the details, features to value perspective they are one of the best current developers in X-Plane. LTAI - Antalya International Airport Antalya Airport Antalya Havalimanı IATA: AYT - ICAO: LTAI 8L/36R - 3,400m (11,154ft) Concrete 18C/36C - 3,400m (11,154ft) Concrete 18R/36L - 2,990m (9,809ft) Asphalt Elevation AMSL177 ft / 54 m The first impression of LTAI Airport is simply the size of it... this is a huge airport. There are two major international terminals in 1 and 2, a Domestic, VIP building and Terminal C for Cargo. The airport is positioned 13 km (8.1 mi) northeast of the city center of Antalya, Turkey. If you have your object slider set to maximum then there is significant amount of autogen to fill out the scenery. JustSim always provide a lot of custom scenery to match in to the perspective, and that is the same case here also, but it is a slight mis-match in that the custom is a load of blocky low-rise buildings, more OpenStreetMap than custom buildings, so they clash with the German autogen, or does it? On Google Maps the same layouts are also evident as are the odd flat grey shaped industrial buildings are in fact the same in real life. International Terminal 1 - Domestic - VIP International Terminal 1, Domestic and the small VIP terminal is all one long complex. Modeling is excellent with some very well done web style entrance frames, signage and branding is very good as well, and overall the full complex is very impressive. Oddly this Terminal 1 is operated by Fraport AG and has just had a full refurbishment were as the newer Terminal 2 is operated by the company Celebi All airbridges are active with the plugin by Marginal and have the newer movable hoods, branding again is very good. But it is quite sparse down here on the ramp, there is a little clutter created around the gate, but it feels quite empty and inactive overall, very unlike JustSim in the past. Terminal 1 are stands 7 to 22 and Domestic are stands 1 to 7. Cargo Terminal is small by this airport's size, and a nice VIP center is ready for your personal arrival. Terminal 2 The design of Terminal 2 is very similar to T1, but it is a far larger building. Landside arrival detail is exemplary, as terminal modeling is first rate with reflective glass and has again great detailing and brandings, realistic people are well done here for the ultimate realism. Note the checkin counters, outside the terminal... Airside quality is very good as well with the clutter custom made, but like at Terminal 1 not a lot of ramp clutter again makes it feel a little vacant, But overall the terminal layout is excellent. Mid-Field Mid-Field separates the two terminal complexes (only taxi's are available here between the two terminals and that drives interconnecting passengers mad). The area is mostly airport services related and has situated here the large fuel depot. The area is very well filled in and is highly realistic to the eye as small building detail and branding is as good if not better than the terminals. Control Tower - Apron 3 Centre area with the airport's Control Tower and the Fire Station separates Apron 2 (Terminal 2 - stands 40 -72) and Apron 3 for remote stand parking (301 - 315) Complex tower design is very well recreated and is authentic to the real version, with lots of nice detail set out around the building. Tower View however is a bit crappy, it is set too low and so you get a lot of visual obstructions. Runway and taxiway textures are very good as JustSim always do excellent ground textures... 3d grass is also considerable throughout the whole airport and very if highly realistic when taxiing around and to or from the runways. Runway 18C/36C looks a far more worn, tired concrete runway compared to the newer asphalt 18L/36L, and from the air in the distance it can look actually abandoned. Lighting Arrival at Antalya at night is fantastic. The airport has really good and a high abundance of different lighting. Approach lighting is even exciting in realism. Terminal areas are very well lit, but slightly duller than you would like, but it still looks and works fine for night time stand operations. Terminal and building lit textures are very realistic and look great when arriving. Signage and branding lighting is also really well done as is the carpark lighting coverage and the drop down spot lighting on buildings. Preview Notes: JustSim always deliver, and again here at LTAI - Antalya you get a the same. That statement however is to be taken into context, because this scenery like all JustSim sceneries are not an ultra high detailed scenery, but you do get the latest X-Plane dynamic features (like reflective glass), great lighting, lots of animated items like active gates, ground traffic and wet surfaces and the modeling is usually of a very high quality... and you get all of this at an excellent value price and usually under US$20. I will always recommend a JustSim scenery, and this one also comes highly recommended as well. Features noted are: Detailed airport objects and vehicles Custom textured taxiways, runways and apron Custom surroundings Custom airport lights Compatible with X-Plane 11 features Animated ground vehicles (X-Plane 11 only) Shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on terminal and other airport buildings High resolution ground textures / Custom runway textures High resolution building textures Excellent night effects Realistic reflections on glass Optimized for excellent performance Fully Animated Airport World Traffic 3.0 compatible X-Life traffic compatible Animated Jetways (plugin by Marginal) WT3: No WorldTraffic GroundRoutes are provided, but the airport will generate a GroundRoutes. Overall the airport functions fine, but WT3 is a bit sparse in giving you that full airport and full busy look? Even with the settings at full capacity... custom corrected WT3 routes and operations would have made a difference here, but overall WT3 works fine. Positives: Mostly everything Negatives: More gate and stand clutter would have been nice, it feels strangely vacant when parked up at the gate. Custom WT3 routes. Tower View is not really usable... but overall LTAI strangely feels a little soulless and not that buzzy, busy airport you expect. ____________________________________________________________________ Yes!... LTAI - Antalya International Airport by JustSimis Available from the X-Plane.Org Store here : LTAI - Antalya International Airport Price is US$19.80 Requirements : X-Plane 11 Windows, Mac or Linux 4Gb+ VRAM recommanded Current version: 1.0 (July 13th 2018) Download Size: 602mb : Install Size 1.71gb Extras and Documents: - None ______________________________________________________________________ Preview by Stephen Dutton 13th July 2018 Copyright©2018 : X-Plane Reviews (Disclaimer. All images and text in this preview 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) Review System Specifications: Computer System: Windows - Intel Core i7 6700K CPU 4.00GHz / 64bit - 16 Gb single 1067 Mhz DDR4 2133 - ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 8Gb - Samsung Evo 512gb SSD Software: - Windows 10 - X-Plane 11.25 Addons: Saitek x56 Rhino Pro system Joystick and Throttle : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini Plugins: Environment Engine by xEnviro US$69.90 : WorldTraffic 3.0 Plugin - US$29.95 : BetterPushBack - Free Scenery or Aircraft - ToLiSS319 (A319) by ToLiSS (X-Plane.OrgStore) - US$69.00
  16. Scenery Review - Updated : UUWW - Moscow Vnukovo v1.2 by JustSim As X-Plane sceneries go, then Moscow is currently one of the best areas to fly into. That is because Moscow got the full city treatment by Drzewiecki Design with their very extensive Moscow City XP scenery. To a point Moscow went from the very bottom of a wasteland of any desirable destination to the very top with this excellent cityscape and it looked incredible then in X-Plane10, but it is even now more amazing in X-Plane11, Fly into the area at dawn or dusk and be prepared to be overwhelmed... it is that good. The first scenery for Moscow was also a Drzewiecki Design scenery for UUEE Sheremetyevo Airport XP back in 2015. In reality it was a brilliant island of a scenery in the middle of absolutely nowhere, but with the release of DD's Moscow City XP that changed the landscape (excuse the pun) as UUEE Sheremetyevo was merged into the Moscow City scenery to create one large cityscape. With Moscow City XP you also did get a lite version of all the other major airports around the Moscow environments, one was UUWW in Moscow Vnukovo, and even for a lite version it was pretty good. Now here is another UUWW - Vnukovo from JustSim and not Drzewiecki Design, but it has been created with the Moscow City XP scenery in mind, and it does fit in into that specific scenery as well (installation details are important as noted below), so can a completely different scenery style developer fit their scenery into another major layout, so that point alone is interesting here as it has major consequences in building up larger scale X-Plane scenery vistas. This review is created with both the Drzewiecki Design Moscow City XP and their UUEE Sheremetyevo scenery as part of the process and to get the full picture of all the sceneries working together... JustSim If one thing over the last few years in X-Plane that has made me slightly annoyed is the overall reception towards scenery. For years X-Plane was devoid of any decent scenery at all, we had a few nice developers and a lot of FlightSim scenery converted over to X-Plane, but mostly it was crap, not at all authentic and you had to use a lot of your imagination to sorta vision the place you departed or arrived at, so we complained and moaned about that aspect for years. Certainly in the last few years the scenery that has been delivered is finally a more realistic depiction of the real area. Many users note they are only in the simulator to fly aircraft, and good for them... and "yay hooo". But many users (myself included) also want the full block to block simulation experience as well, in that the airport I fly out of is then as good as the airport or destination I arrive at, personally only in the last year or so has that X-Plane experience finally been fully realised. The trick is to pick the right scenery and not waste your money on average scenery, and certainly Aerosoft (when they do deliver a quality scenery) is usually one to use as is GloballArt, and ShortFinal is another. But a team of developers that are really delivering in this area for X-Plane is JustSim. I admit JustSim's scenery is created to a price, but you get a lot of scenery for that price and certainly no other developers have used the X-Plane11 features more in their work than JustSim. Their work is slowly building the backbone of a great simulation, EDDF - Dusseldorf I used constantly in the last year, along with LFMN - Nice. LCLK - Laranca is now another regular and their LOWI - Innsbruck and ELLX - Luxembourg Findel are always worth a visit, and I have almost lived at their LEBL _ Barcelona for the last twelve months. So are you starting to get the point... The really annoying thing is X-Plane users are not buying this quality work even at these exceptional prices, or are just then waiting for the cheap sale option? So while you are processing through this review, then just keep one other thought in your mind... If you don't support them or only give them just your tit-bits of cash then this sort of quality work will stop coming to X-Plane, we will then get zero of this sort of quality scenery in the future and not much more other great scenery from any other developer either as well... v1.02 I noted in the original review that JustSim were doing an update to the release version, so here in this updated review the changes are now noted with the newer v1.2 version and the update points are shown. UUWW - Moscow Vnukovo All the major airports servicing Moscow are all in a ring around the outskirts of the city. UUEE - Sheremetyevo is to the far north, and UUEE - Vnukovo at 17mi is far to the south-west from central Moscow. (Google Maps) Vnukovo International Airport Международный аэропорт Внуково Mezhdunarodnyĭ aėroport Vnukovo IATA: VKO - ICAO: UUWW - LID: ВНК 06/24 - 3,060m (10,039ft) Concrete 01/19 - 3,060m (10,039ft) Concrete Elevation AMSL 209 m/686 ft First point to make on UUWW - Vnukovo is that the JustSim version replaces the DD lite version of the same airport, so your scenery loading has to be in the correct order or you will not see the JustSim version. As the Drzewiecki Design UUWW had their own modeling around the airport then also so does the JustSim UUWW. So this does make it hard in working out which scenery is which as JustSim are also very well known on filling out their off airport boundaries as well as the internal airport areas. The combined results are however extraordinary as it all becomes one large expanse of scenery and not just a patch work of one here and another set out in there. So that brings us now to another question on if you are running or loading all the three Moscow elements, then how good will it all run together, and this is no matter on how good each area is in their separate refinements. First on that is the JustSim UUWW is very good on its own and is very refined scenery framerate wise. But when combined together then no matter how powerful your computer is then there is still a going to be a compromise... I am however seeing a pattern with these extensive city sceneries and Moscow as is Drzewiecki Design's New York City scenery that was the same in context, and here you again have the same solution to the same issue. On arriving in Moscow and the loading of all this extensive scenery I started to get the framerate stutters. In most cases you usually reduce your objects (count) to relieve the processors, but that like with NYC didn't fix the stutters... The issue again is texture quality, and I found that at the Maximum setting (not the no compression setting) I was overloading my graphic card at 10,300mb were as my graphic card could only process 8K (7680mb) and hence the stutters. So I needed to go a notch down in Texture Quality to High, and that fixed my stutter issues, but did I lose too much in quality... overall no, but the textures are a little if now slightly blurry. All the images here are at the high texture setting so what you see here is what you get. I don't doubt that in a few years and another round of computer speed upgrades then you will be able to easily go back up a marker in the texture quality setting, but currently this is your current choice, if you only have a 4K Graphic Card you will just slide though, but you will still have however to make a few more compromises to get it under that 4K marker. The overall view of Vnukovo is that everything is simply perfect in the intergation in both the sceneries and then into X-Plane itself, it is all natural and totally absolutely realistic. My approach visuals tell the complete story... Arrival is via RWY01 from ESSA - Arlanda, Stockholm Notably the Moscow City XP scenery is mixed in with the X-Plane native autogen. The full Moscow city skyline is significant on the eastern horizon. One thing I look for in city sceneries is that I can't actually see the airport? If it really stands out then it is not doing its job in being realistic, here at a distance your only guide into RWY01 is the RAIL lighting far off into the distance. Closer in and Vnukovo finally takes on it's unique shape, this vista is a far, far cry from the crappy approach to Moscow of even a few years ago, then there was virtually no airports (or what there was, then just stuck out badly in a flat landscape) and there was not even much in the way back then of any waypoints either? The Kiev Highway M3 dominates the approach to the runway and the RAIL approach lighting is situated as part of the road, all approach lighting is excellent and detailed as is the main runway and taxiway lighting. There has to be the awareness that both major runways here in 06/24 and 01/19 as they crossover each other, and that both 01 and 06 are both shallow in a low X, and so that if the wind is coming in your direction then both runways are usually highly active. At the runway crossover point the runway textures are excellent in their wear, tear and the different types of complex surfaces, you are highly impressed. The grass is very welcome, realistic and dense as well. The full visual of the combined main terminal and the large cargo terminal greets you on arrival... and it is very impressive, and even that statement is an understatement of the impact the airport makes on you. ... all ground textures are reflective, and are beautifully created, they have the new built in wet surface capabilities as well in either if X-Plane uses that feature or if you use the xEnviro "wet" version (not yet functional). All ground markings, navigation and lineage is excellent. The aprons are simply huge and can be complex, so here so a ground chart is helpful in finding the right line around the terminal, as there is both an inner and outer taxiway line to follow. The aircraft bays are visually full of airport equipment and aircraft service gear, but they don't hinder you either when entering the bay or using any ground services. I particularly liked the Russian airbridge advertising and the extra large gate numbers that were very helpful in finding your correct bay. Animated traffic is heavy, but not overwhelming or too fast... Terminal glass is exceptional and reflective. Internal design of the terminal is also well done, but only in parts, as the main interior is still blank, but it works very well in the overall balance. V1.02: In the update the airbridges are now active! There isn't the mounted auto DGS system, but the ramp marshaller is now here to guide you in. The airbridge does work very well, but you have to pick the right gate for your aircraft. Even on taxi approach gate 22 looked like a single boarding airbridge, when it was actually a double, and once in the bay the A319 then felt a bit tight.... Some gates like 23 are a triple gate. Justsim have left Gate 30 not working as it is too tight, even a medium sized B737/A320 would be too big in this bay. Airbridge design even with the animation is just perfection. WorldTraffic and ATC ground routes are all completed, but more so JustSim supplies the corrected WT3 Grounds done and ready (in a folder) for install directly into the WT3 folders. So there is no need to generate your ground routes... more so the ground routes and all the WT3 actions are already tested and run absolutely perfectly from the moment you start up the airport, five stars and a big show of hands of applause from me for that. Brilliant. My arrival overall was simply one of the best I have experienced for a long time, and it was very highly realistic... Terminals There are Three Passenger Terminals at Vnukovo and one Cargo Terminal. Terminal A is the largest and futuristic the most modern dominates and the new design was opened December 2010. Modeling and the design is extraordinary in being both a clever combination of see through glass and images that creates a wonderful effect, and all the glass is reflective. Certainly up close the differences at this texture setting is certainly slightly noticeable, but your not going to complain at all about it one little bit... Terminal A night lighting is in the oh! .... level of amazing... stunning and the ramps are excellent to work on in the night turnarounds. Terminal A has airbridge stands 8 to 31A - Stands 38 to 66 are all remote stands spread out on all sides of the Terminal A complex. Terminal B Terminal B is the old Vnukovo original terminal that has been modernised. It consists now of both Terminal B and the Terminal D joined together although as noted then Ter D as domestic and Ter B as International.... in reality this terminal is the domestic arm of the airport. A concourse protrudes out of the front of the old Terminal that has six airbridges, 1 to 6 and there is a single stand in 7 in front of the old Terminal D. V1.02: here at Terminal B the airbridges are now also animated... very highly realistic and in the same tone as the original airbridges. Design is again excellent of the concourse that was competed in 2004 with the redevelopment of Terminal B. Night lighting here is again excellent, and beautiful. There is the DoubleTree Hilton hotel and carparking behind Terminal B... and a nice forecourt leading into Terminal A. But the hotel is dark at night with no lit textures, which is disappointing and I thought that in the v.1.2 update that Justsim would have corrected that, but no the Hilton is still dark? Mail and Cargo Terminal To the west of Terminal A is the huge Cargo terminal building. More a huge administration building the cargo hub is impressive, the forecourt is full of equipment and ready cargo. Stands 22 to 35A is a great cargo parking area. Back out from the Cargo Terminal there are various support buildings and parking areas for vehicles, it is all well done, but you would notice the compromise. The under laying ground textures are not photographic and there isn't a lot of detail in there, it works in an efficiency point of view, but not in a detailed photo aspect. These areas are all landside and there is no comprise on the airside, but it is noticeable if you like the full detail and walk-around realism. Russian apartment housing extends a fair way back from the Terminals, they are basic, but fine in context. Cargo Terminal lighting is again very, very good, and looks nice from the landside, but the well lit for working on the ramps at night on the airside is... first rate. Eastern Boundary The entrance to Vnukovo has a Tu104 Russian Jet on display. There are two main aprons over on the east side. One called Vnukovo 2 is a double building VIP reception center, with one (guess who) for the President... there is a waiting IL-96 sitting ready on the ramp. It is a perfect area to arrive by personal private jet, although you may not get the full uniform reception, the airport's miniature palace is however well done. There is a support and administration building for the same ramp that is very well presented.... Far north-east is apron Vnukovo 5 with stands 501 to 510 and a maintenance hangar. There is also a very good HS1 Helicopter landing zone. Western Boundary Most of the engineering and maintenance areas for Vnukovo is situated on the western side and along runway 01/19. There is a huge amount of infrastructure here in mostly huge hangars and maintenance workshops. The Vnukovo Gas Power Station also dominates the area. On the threshold of RWY19 is the UUWW airport's main fuel depot, and some warehousing. Then an apron area which I will guess as military. There are a lot of these sort of aprons that are not officially listed but mostly front large maintenance hangars, some could be for airlines, or for just general maintenance companies. Here all the buildings and hangars have been very well reproduced to reflect the area and there are quite a few if a lot custom created buildings located in this complex area. Using taxiway M which is alongside RWY06/24 you will pass most of this long and extensive area if arriving or departing from RWY06 Centre west is Vnukovo 3 the only officially noted stands on this western side and that area is split into four aprons. Apron 1 has a Small (LCC- Low Cost Carrier?) Terminal and the darker front apron with stands 32 to 34. The lighter larger apron is the inner Apron 2 with stands 1 to 11 and the outer Apron 3 with stands 12 to 31. Adjoining is the larger Apron 4 with stands 35 right through to 78, stands 90 to 98 front the large line of maintenance hangars far west. Lighting on Vnukovo 3 is like the rest of the airport in being sensational, nicely lit aprons and some lovely hangar lighting. Control Tower and Fire Station The Control Tower Is buried alongside RWY06/24, it is very modern, distinctive tower and it is well modeled and very nicely reproduced here. V1.02: Tower view was out in the release version, but now corrected and very good in the update, all the runways are now well covered... ... here is my approach (upper right) to RWY01. Fire Station is bright blue, and is close to the Control Tower but it is situated just across from the RWY hot spot of the crossing of both the active runways. The airport's navigation aids and radar towers are all very well represented and detailed, small stuff but it makes up part of a great vista when moving around the taxiways and using the runways... There are several off airport receiving freight/cargo depots and JustSim have created a lot of very good and realistic hi-rise buildings to fill out the landscape, overall the whole area is complex and highly realistic. Summary This scenery in the review is made up of three separate components, of which this UUWW - Vnukovo Airport is only one, the others are Drzewiecki Design's Moscow City XP and Drzewiecki Design's earlier UUEE Sheremetyevo scenery. Obviously you don't need all three to enjoy this excellent UUWW - Vnukovo by JustSim, but the three combined together is certainly the best option, if tight for cash then at least opt for the Moscow City XP component as JustSim has made a considerable effort to make sure that both sceneries work not only visually but also efficiently together. This opens up the prospect of more than one scenery developer contributing to an area in to then creating a single whole. Here is works brilliantly, but in other city areas some different styles of developers have clashed and the results of that has had been the very opposite impact than what you have here in Moscow. If using the full three Moscow sceneries then a compromise in texture quality is required, "High" is fine and workable, but the Maximum setting will certainly overload your Graphic Card. Design wise then JustSim have been extraordinary here at UUWW in the Terminals design and lighting, the airport layouts with excellent textures and dense grass. X-Plane11 features have also been used to the absolute full, and in v1.2 the airbridges have been also animated with active ramp marshallers. The provided WT3 ground routes and airport text gets your airport up and running instantly and perfectly. Visually it is excellent, but the noted landside ground textures not very detailed, detailed and in parts the roadways are not visible or join up correctly either, if you want ultimate photo ground detail then you won't find it here, okay from the air but grainy at ground level, but that is the compromise for efficiency and in the main areas you will not usually notice this or use them. In only a very few areas do you feel that JustSim missed something like the Hilton hotel lit textures Overall UUWW - Vnukovo Airport by JustSim is just simply amazing scenery for this cost factor, it is an extremely high quality scenery for a fair price, full of X-Plane11 active features and Vnukovo will give you years of enjoyment in that anytime you fly to Moscow, then you will have an excellent destination waiting ready for you... impressed, yes... very highly recommended. _____________________________________ Yes! UUWW - Moscow Vnukovo by JustSim is available from the X-Plane.Org Store here : UUWW - Moscow Vnukovo Price is US$20.90 Highly recommended with this scenery is Drzewiecki Design: Moscow City XP - XPR Review Moscow City XP Drzewiecki Design: Sheremetyevo Airport XP - XPR Review Sheremetyevo Airport XP Features: Detailed airport objects and vehicles Custom textured taxiways, runways and apron Custom surroundings Custom airport lights Compatible with X-Plane 11 features Shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on terminal and other airport buildings High resolution ground textures / Custom runway textures High resolution building textures Excellent night effects Realistic reflections on glass Animated Airport World Traffic compatible Animated ground vehicles (X-Plane 11 only) Animated Jetways (plugin by Marginal) X-Life traffic compatible Optimized for excellent performance New exclusive feature: Rain effects on ground. Effect will be controlled by xEnviro v1.08 (and higher) plugin. Requirements: X-Plane 11+ Windows, Mac, Linux 2Gb VRAM Video Card Minimum, 4Gb+ VRAM Video Card Recommended If running also Moscow City XP then a 6gb or 8gb Graphic Video Card is highly recommended Current Version : 1.2 (1st June 2018) Installation Download scenery file size is 875mb. With the full installation installed package is 1.90gb in your custom scenery folder. If using the above Moscow City XP/Sheremetyevo XP scenery then there is a priority order to be created to avoid conflict: - 1_UUWW_JustSim_v1.0 - DD UUEE Moscow Sheremetyevo XP - DD Z Moscow City XP - DD Z Moscow City XP Layer 2 ... - ZZZ DD UUEE Moscow Sheremetyevo XP Terrain - ZZZ DD Z Moscow City XP Terrain Note the 1_ on the UUWW_JustSim folder, make sure you keep this intact, it is complicated, but worthwhile to list in the .INI. Documents Description and Installation txt provided, also included is completed WorldTraffic 3 ground routes and airport data. ______________________________________________________________________ Scenery Review by Stephen Dutton 12th May 2018 Copyright©2018 : 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) Review System Specifications: Computer System: Windows - Intel Core i7 6700K CPU 4.00GHz / 64bit - 16 Gb single 1067 Mhz DDR4 2133 - ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 8Gb - Samsung Evo 512gb SSD Software: - Windows 10 - X-Plane 11.20 Addons: Saitek x56 Rhino Pro system Joystick and Throttle : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini Plugins: Environment Engine by xEnviro v1.09 US$69.90 : XPRealistic Pro v1.0.9 effects US$19.95 : WorldTraffic 3.0 Plugin - US$29.95 Scenery or Aircraft - ToLiSS319 (A319) by ToLiSS (X-Plane.OrgStore) - US$69.00
  17. Scenery Review : LCLK - Laranca International, Cypress by JustSim One of the great things about X-Plane is exploring, you can go to places that was never on your radar and then find something interesting there. The experience is highlighted more if you have good scenery to depict or simulate the real destination on arrival and that is why really good scenery is always great to invest in. I have noted that my X-Plane experiences are to create a network of going from one realistic airport to another realistic airport and any new scenery that I can add to that network and to be used within that network is valuable to me. Of course creating tight networks can also means not venturing or going outside your boundaries which in reality means flying mostly within the continental USA, the Australian Triangle and of course Europe. But in the last few years a few quality sceneries have pushed out those boundaries so to speak. One was to UUEE - Moscow Sheremetyevo by Drzewiecki Design with the addon Moscow City also by DD and another was to UBBB Baku Heydar Aliyev Airport & City in Azerbaijan also by Drzewiecki Design, and both are very interesting destinations. Cypress in reality wasn't really as a destination on my radar. But I found a really great A318 video on the Cobalt Air route between Zurich and Laranca (shown below) and I was smitten. So when JustSim released LCLK - Laranca International Cypress scenery I instantly wanted LCA to be part of my network, and what a great choice of airport that was. Cypress as a country is caught in a divided situation with the invasion by Turkey on 20th July 1974, This forced the closure of Nicosia International Airport and Larnaca Airport was then hastily developed towards the end of 1974 and subsequently as a military installation. The site on which it was built (near the Larnaca Salt Lake) had been previously used as an airfield in the 1930s but this was a new facility by British forces. Larnaca International opened on 8th February 1975, with only limited infrastructure facilities and a prefabricated set of buildings comprising of separate halls for departures and arrivals. The status of Cyprus as a major tourist destination means that air traffic has steadily risen to over 5 million passengers a year. This is double the capacity the airport as when it was first designed for. For this reason, a tender was put out in 1998 to develop the airport further and increase its capacity with a new terminal which was built some 500–700 m (1,600–2,300 ft) west of the old terminal with new aprons and jetways. Already completed elements of the expansion included a new control tower, fire station, runway extension, and additional administrative offices which are still there. Larnaca Airport is situated on the south coast of Cypress, 4km (2.5 mi) southwest of Larnaca and 49.4km south of Nicosia. JustSim I personally I like JustSim sceneries. They are not the most extreme in detailing and every single item is covered sort of scenery. But you do get a highly detailed scenery at a great value cost factor and they do use the X-Plane features to their best advantages. So the point is you can cover the required airports and destinations and that allows you to have more quality scenery for less. LCLK - Larnaca International Overview You can immediately see that there are extensive ortho-photographic images used in this scenery and the area used is quite large and not just confined to the airport's boundaries. The joins to the native X-Plane textures are well hidden as well and all in all it blends in together quite well. The only significant visual point is the sea colour cutoff that is quite abrupt and shows you the boundary of the orthos, a smoother transition would have helped here. The orthos are also little flat and not high, high resolution, but they work fine in context. JustSim are always very good at creating custom local buildings and then melting them directly into the native autogen and in that creating a seemless transition from the custom to the native areas. This is very evident here at Larnaca and very well done. You do have to run your object settings at the full mode, but in reality it doesn't matter as the autogen count is low here and your framerate is not overly affected. Yes the autogen housing is German but it still works fine. Larnaca International Airport Διεθνής Aερολιμένας Λάρνακας Larnaka Uluslararası Havaalanı (IATA: LCA, ICAO: LCLK) 04/22 2,994m (9,823ft) Asphalt Elevation AMSL 3 m / 7 ft LCLK comes with a single 04/22 Runway and the airport's facilities are situated all on the northwest side of the runway, central-northeast is the older terminal and far northeast is the cargo area... the newer terminal complex is situated to the far southwest. Terminal The central terminal area is excellent, the building construction is very well done and highly detailed, realism is the key here and it works very well. From the ground point of view it is very, very good with nice brush and grass to fill in the blank areas, It feels a bit like Aerosoft's KEF - Keflavik around areas of the terminal zone. Glass is excellent with reflections, but it is the extreme detailing in static items that are a standout, with everything from bollards, cones to safety barriers and a huge amount of ground service equipment makes any arrival a realistic event. The airport has dynamic animated ground vehicles as well to add into the environment. There is also the Visual Docking Guidance System (VDGS) that works with the stands around the terminal... but the guidance boards didn't work very well, I don't know if they are not set up correctly or just not working, so you have to guess and align the aircraft yourself to get the airbridge to connect. Another slight oddity is the carpark/rental parking area in front of the Terminal is empty? It makes it look like the scenery is unfinished, which is very odd considering so much effort has gone into the rest of the scenery with excellent 3d vehicles. There is a nice stand area southwest but adjacent to the main terminal area. This area covers stands 11-18 with stands 11, 12 and 13 having a B option. Around the main terminal are stands 21 to 48A but they are not in sequential order, so consult your charts. Surfaces and taxiways Surfaces are first rate, great textures and reflections as is the runway textures and taxiway markings. JustSim notes that the surfaces are set up to use the new xEnviro 1.08 rain (wet) feature which is not yet released, so I will be looking forward to trying that feature out. Northeast of the terminal area is the airport administration building and baggage trolley/catering storage area, this area is very active with baggage trucks going about their busy business... well done. Control Tower More central northeast is the original control tower and adjoining well detailed fire station... which both are modeled with a sort of 70's RAF feel, which it is as LCLK was originally a UK military base. Tower view is perfect with each 04/22 approach clear and with no visual obstructions. Between the central area and the far northwest cargo area is the Limassol salt lake and water feature... a nice touch is (to scale) is a flock of Pink Flamingos which are famous here in Cypress for their migration over the Mediterranean to Africa and return. The lake has been very well created with a depth of colour that gives you of a sort of 3d water effect. Old Larnaca Terminal area The original 1974 Larnaca terminal is still there, although now it only used as a VIP reception and private jet arrival area. It seems such a waste for such a iconic building to be empty, a so would it be a good terminal for LCC's? (Low Cost Carriers). The old airport infrastructure is also well represented, with warehouses and offices and storage areas to the rear, the detail is just as good here as in the other areas and that significantly fills out the scenery. Between the Control Tower zone and the older terminal area is some nice GA parking stands with static aircraft. Below is the full old airport terminal areas. LCLK Cargo Far, far northeast is the LCLK Cargo and maintenance area. The cargo area is quite large as most Island based airports are because of the logistical requirements of the area. Cargo freighters are represented with DHL the biggest operator. The large Bird Aviation Hangar dominates the far, far northeast of the airport. Stands 1 then Stands 61 to 94 covers this Apron 2 area with stand 92 designated a "Engine Run" (test) stand. Rear of Apron 2 is an GA parking area with stands G1 to G21, stands 65 and 66 are also noted as situated here. Lighting My dusk approach to LCLK - Larnaca was quite rousing. It looked really good from the air and that gave me a very good first impression of the scenery. Approach lighting to RWY 22 was visually very good and realistic... ... note the nice light reflections off the taxiways and Aprons. Overall lighting at LCLK is quite good with all areas covered and a lot of the ramp and aprons with spot lighting... Taxiway lighting and guidance lighting is very good, but not visible until close up (on the ground). Terminal lighting is very good and you have nice lit glass, but you also feel something is missing? Again that front of terminal carpark is in darkness and close into the terminal which is the inner vehicle roadway is very dark and it makes the whole terminal area feel slightly isolated and overall darker (far lower right) when it shouldn't be? Ramp lighting is not too bad and workable, but overall you feel it could have been better. Nice advertising sign in the unilluminated carpark stands out. Cargo area is just some (six) spot lighting, and feels a little underwhelming here also. Rear Cargo zone is quite good with some nice downlighting, and the old Terminal building is well lit up nicely, but a few outside overhead spot lighting would have lightened the view a bit more, instead it is another darkish area. Services Cobalt Air, Cypress Airways and Aegean Airlines are based at LCLK. And currently holds domestic, regional and international passenger and cargo services by over 30 airlines and notably that Gulf Air used to provide a non-stop service to New York/JFK twice a week. Most services are seasonal but Aeroflot services both St Petersburg and Moscow as RPT services. WT3 WorldTraffic3 notes. WT3 works here but not very well. Two generations (or retry) of ground routes created a sort of hotch-potch of activity. Too many aircraft disappear at the end of the runway and some even track all the way down the runway to turnaround to takeoff? which is odd as they don't have to. A few gates work around the terminal but most of the stands stay empty and certainly it is an empty non-active space down in the cargo area. I checked the JustSim ATC routes and they look fine, but do they have that minute detail that makes the flows work correctly? LCLK will need an outside helping hand to see its full WT3 potential. Summary Overall this is a very solid scenery from JustSim. If you have purchased their excellent scenery in the past then you won't be disappointed here either. LCLK make for an excellent destination and a great addition to your European network, yes flights from central Europe are three hours away, but Italy is only half that distance and so that makes Rome or Sicily great stepping off points. Basically the scenery design is solid and very well done, detail is excellent as is the use of X-Plane11 features in reflections and animations. The blending it to the surrounding native scenery is also well done except for the cut off water edges... But there are a few areas you feel that is unfinished, like the front terminal carpark and some lighting in the inner terminal areas and more lighting on the aprons and the non-working VDGS displays. These JustSim sceneries are great scenery fillers at a value price, but Larnaca adds in a more interesting destination as well. I believe you will more than likely find this airport a very interesting routing and enjoy the scenery, so it delivers on many counts including great value, so LCLK - Larnaca certainly comes recommended. ______________________________________________________________________ Yes! the LCLK - Laranca International, Cypress by JustSim is Available now from the X-Plane.Org Store here : LCLK - Laranca International, Cypress Price Is US$19.90 Features: Detailed airport objects and vehicles Custom textured taxiways, runways and apron Custom surroundings Custom airport lights Compatible with X-Plane 11 features Animated ground vehicles (X-Plane 11 only) Shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on terminal and other airport buildings High resolution ground textures / Custom runway textures High resolution building textures Excellent night effects Realistic reflections on glass World Traffic compatible X-Life traffic compatible Optimized for excellent performance Animated Jetways (plugin by Marginal) New exclusive feature: Rain effects on ground Effect will be controlled by xEnviro v1.08 (and higher) plugin. Cobalt LCA to ZUR is available as well : Cobalt Air Airbus A319 | Cockpit Flight Zurich-Larnaca | Cockpit View from Takeoff to Landing! Requirements X-Plane 11+ Windows, Mac, Linux 2Gb VRAM Video Card Minimum, 4Gb+ VRAM Video Card Recommended Current Version : 1.0 (Feb 22 2018) Installation Download scenery file size is 602.00mb. With the full installation installed in your custom scenery folder as 1.34gb. Documents There are no manuals or charts incuded with this scenery. ______________________________________________________________________ Review by Stephen Dutton 7th March 2018 Copyright©2018 : 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) Review System Specifications: Computer System: Windows - Intel Core i7 6700K CPU 4.00GHz / 64bit - 16 Gb single 1067 Mhz DDR4 2133 - ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 8Gb - Samsung Evo 512gb SSD Software: - Windows 10 - X-Plane 11.10 Addons: Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini Plugins: Environment Engine by xEnviro US$69.90 : XPRealistic Pro v1.0.9 effects US$19.95 : WorldTraffic 3.0 Plugin - US$29.95 Scenery or Aircraft - ToLiSS319 (A319) by ToLiSS (X-Plane.OrgStore) - US$69.00
  18. Scenery Upgrade to XP11 : LOWS-Salzburg XP11 by JustSim/Digital Design Here is an upgrade to Justsim's LOWS Salzburg to X-Plane11 status. The original LOWS was released just over a year ago in late June 2016 and it did bring to and introduce some great new features in to X-Plane. There is no doubt that LOWS is a dramatic airport, as much for Salzburg's position at the foot of the central northern alps as much as the scenery itself. As old X-Plane hands know that LOWS was the original X-Plane9 default airport (now KSEA-Seattle). This was because of the dramatic element to introduce users to the simulator, and that drama was created by any arrival or departure with the areas outstanding scenery. The JustSim/Digital Design scenery is outstanding, but the scenery is just as notable for using great placement of objects to create a complete visual experience around the airport as much as the airport scenery itself, you can see this and all the rest of the original scenery in the X-PlaneReviews release review here: Scenery Review : LOWS W. A. Mozart - Salzburg Airport by Digital Design Again notably in this area X-Plane11 changes the game to another level with better regional autogen and is used significantly throughout most European JustSim sceneries. LOWS- Salzburg Airport W. A. Mozart XP11 A large percentage of the changes in the LOWS XP11 version is in the textures. Basically the overall actual airport and facilities are not really changed from the older release version. So any first view of the LOWS XP11 may give you the impression that it is not really any different, but it actually is. All the textures have been given shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on the terminals and other airport buildings to X-Plane11 standards and it is certainly more highly noticeable in the quality and sharpness. Even if your computer is set at a lower resolution and anti-alias you know these textures are far better, they have been totally redone for performance as well. These changes can be highlighted by the ramp concrete textures... You notice and even feel the concrete slab effect on the ramp, and in the right lighting you can see the excellent grooving and shine on the material and in the right weather and rain conditions he wetness shine on all the surfaces. Reflection textures which use the X-Plane11 metalness feature have also been done to great effect. Reflective glass surfaces are excellent as highlighted by the secondary terminal building, at night there are extremely realistic. And brings more to life the "Hangar 7" which is the sponsored museum by "Red Bull" drinks. And the space age designs of the two half hangars that are positioned on the eastern boundary of the airport. More X-Plane11 features are used by using the X-Plane default ground traffic and equipment... ... so there is a lot of action and movement and with more placed static elements to make up the scenery. The LOWS approach and departure visual aspect with loads of objects was one of the big features with the release version. Again at first glance it feels and looks the same but it isn't. The objects have been replaced by the Germanic default autogen which looks fine in Austria and with that change you get a framerate lift as well. And the original version had a great placement of local buildings and factories to help in the correct local flavour. More of these specially created items have been added including... a nice football stadium (Red Bull Arena), Kaindl plant (flooring), IKEA and many more. The Salzburg "Old Town" (Altstadt) city centre area with the Hohensalzburg Castle is still in there as well with still many of the famous baroque churches also reproduced. Departure from W.A. Mozart, Salzburg via RWY15 (south) highlights the scenery in the actual airport and then later in the surrounding environs. Taxiway and runway textures are first rate, and note the excellent 3d grass. All included details are fully photorealistic, it is very impressive. Departure like arrival is spectacular at LOWS, more so if you are going north as you need to do a very hard 180º in the valley to clear the alps. Extended visuals are excellent, and the clever autogen works for you until the very good ground textures seemlessly then take over. You work for your money leaving Salzburg, but you love it really... Summary This LOWS-Salzburg XP11 does exactly what it advertises on the packet... updates to X-Plane11. The update however does also take full advantage of every great feature X-Plane11 has to offer in better autogen (Germanic), better high-texture quality, metalness reflections, concrete runway/taxiway textures, default animations traffic and static objects. All the textures in someway have been enhanced or processed to take advantage of the new version of the X-Plane simulator. Also added is more placement of 3d local items in stadiums, factories and buildings. Negatives, a few including still a strange tower view, it has been moved but the view is still not in the right place but now below the tower and to the side? and a little bit of texture thrashing. Nightlighting is good but not brilliant and unchanged from the original release ... and that is it. This is an upgrade and not an update and so any previous X-Plane10 owners of LOWS Salzburg can buy this new XP11 version for only $5 and to do so then check your original LOWS invoice at the store for the discount code that will be listed there for the offer. And this XP11 version obviously can only be used in X-Plane11. I do admire the way JustSim do totally take every advantage of X-Plane and certainly X-Plane11's features to enhance their sceneries and they do all this at a brilliant price. Always I am impressed by their work and their sceneries are the best to use in X-Plane and certainly in X-Plane11 if the scenery has been upgraded. Either way if you are upgrading or buying the JustSim LOWS scenery for the first time then you get a lot of scenery for your money, great value as well, and an even better dramatic place to fly too, so you can't overall ask for more than that... can you? ____________________________________________________________________________________ Yes! LOWS W. A. Mozart - Salzburg Airport XP11 by Digital Design (JustSim) is NOW available from the X-Plane.Org Store here : LOWS- Salzburg Airport W. A. Mozart XP11 Price is US$19.50 Note: Previous owners of LOWS Salzburg can buy this new XP11 version for only $5: Check your original LOWS invoice at the store. the discount code will be listed there Features Include: New X-Plane 11 version, designed for X-Plane 11 Shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on terminal and other airport buildings High resolution photo scenery near airport and city All autogen objects are manually placed New High resolution ground textures / Custom runway textures New Runway and taxiways reflection effect Custom apron, taxiway and runways lights High resolution building textures PBR materials on airport buildings World Traffic compatible X-Life traffic compatible Optimized for excellent performance Requirements: X-Plane 11+ Windows, Mac, Linux 1Gb HD Space Available 2Gb VRAM Video Card Minimum. 4Gb+ VRAM Recommended Current Version : 1.0 (last Updated July 27th 2017) Installation and documents: Download for LOWS - Salzburg is 478.10meg and the scenery is deposited in the "Custom Scenery" X-Plane folder at 1.05gb. Just deposit LOWS-Salzburg_Digital_Design_XPL11_v1.0 into your X-Plane Custom Scenery Folder A basic manual (3 pages) is provided. There are no charts, but a good LOWS download charts package is available here: VACC LOWS_Package_Complete Package ____________________________________________________________________________________ Review by Stephen Dutton 2nd August 2017 Copyright©2016: X-PlaneReviews (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) Review System Specifications: Computer System: Windows - Intel Core i7 6700K CPU 4.00GHz / 64bit - 8 Gb single 1067 Mhz DDR4 2133 - GeForce GTX 980/SSE2 - Samsung Evo 512gb SSD Software: - Windows 10 - X-Plane 11.02 Addons: Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini Plugins: JARDesign Ground Handling Deluxe plugin - US$14.95 : Environment Engine by xEnviro US$69.90 : WorldTraffic 2.0 Plugin - US$29.95 : XPRealistic Pro v1.0.9 effects US$19.95 Scenery or Aircraft - B737-800 X-Plane Default - Free
  19. Flyin Scenery Review : ELLX - Luxembourg Findel Airport by JustSim From JustSim to JustSim, or in English JustSim's EDDH (Hamburg) to JustSim's ELLX (Luxembourg). It was only a few months ago (late February) that I reviewed JustSims excellent EDDH - Hamburg scenery, and I was very impressed. Again only after a short time there is now another scenery from JustSim in the form of ELLX Luxembourg (boy do they turn them out!) and so it just felt right to fly from Hamburg to Luxembourg to check out this newer addition to our X-Plane scenery collection, our HAM - LUX service today is provided by FlyJSim's Dash 8 Q400. The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is crushed in between Germany, Belgium and France in the centre of Western Europe. It is only 2,586 square kilometres (998 sq mi) in size, it is one of the smallest sovereign states in Europe, and is about the same size as the US state of Rhode Island or the English county of Northamptonshire. For a small country it sure hits above the belt in a big economy in first the industrial sector, which was dominated by steel until the 1960s, but has now since diversified its industries to include chemicals, rubber, and other products. During the past decades, growth in the financial sector has more than compensated for the decline in steel production. Services, especially banking and finance, now account for the majority of economic output. Luxembourg is the world's second largest investment fund centre (after the United States), and remember it is also the base of one of the world's biggest cargo haulers in Cargolux. For me the arrival from the northeast towards ELLX's RWY24 feel vaguely familiar... It feels like Aerosoft's EDFH Frankfurt - Hahn of which is only actually 100km to the west, that scenery now feels like it was eons ago in 2013, but one I liked a lot if you recall. It is an interesting approach from the northeast and not an easy one as LUX is buried between hills, valleys and deep rivers and streams and very similar to Hahn's south approach and hence the recollection. But 2013 was early X-Plane10, this ELLX is in the new X-Plane11 and there are two download versions of this scenery for both X-Plane versions (XP10 or XP11) and the big picture view is different in the sheer detail you get now with X-Plane. One of the big features of JustSim's EDDH was the use of (German) default autogen adjusted to be part of the add-on scenery. Here again at ELLX that same technique is used again with a great benefit to the scenery. It is highlighted on both 06/24 approaches. An important note is required before using this scenery... You will "definitely" and "absolutely" need to have the checkbox ticked for the X-Plane item "runways follow terrain contours" (General Menu). The scenery uses multi-level layers to create great recesses in lower and high ground areas. On approach to RWY24 there is a concrete runway extension over the A1 motorway that is excellent when viewed from the aircraft As we will see is that most ground areas surrounding and part of ELLX are multi-level as well, so it is important to have the option on. It does also however make for a slightly bumpy landing as the runway is quite undulated. All trees surrounding the airport are a cross design, but they are well proportioned, this makes the scenery feel very full and realistic. To your right on final is the huge Cargolux facility. All very well modeled and with plenty of trucks and the ramp cargo gear to keep any hauler happy. Luxembourg's single main terminal is next and still on the right but a fair way down Runway 24's 4,000m (13,123ft) length. A prominent large building before the terminal area on a hill is the Luxembourg Investment building. Grass is a great way to break up flat photo-images and create a realistic ground effect. Here it works very well as JustSim are experts at this, with their perfect summer grass in full bloom. Note the huge Cargolux maintenance hangar on the top left The runway textures are really well done, with areas of tarmac that have been resurfaced and don't match the original surface. Control Tower is mid-field... All ground markings and signage is also top notch, all really well done and even down to the continuous water drainage grids along the sides of the taxiways and throughout the ramp areas as their detailing is really exquisite. Like Hamburg's EDDH the taxiways and runways have reflections that go wet in the rain, even in the semi-dry they look very realistic. Ramp textures are roughly detailed as well. Apron P3 is the main parking area offset to the terminal ramps, it is big and can handle even large aircraft, but is used mostly for regional services. Main aprons are P1 and P2, and these are set around the two terminals in the larger one (right) Terminal A and the L shape (left) Terminal B. Terminal 2 is all stands and as I am domestic regional I will park there at stand B6 Behind the terminals is a large elevated carpark. The different ground elevations have been really well done, as they are very (incredibly) hard to do in X-Plane... but here it is built almost seemlessly into the scenery. The view down to the ramps is excellent and highly real world in feel. ELLX Overview Luxembourg Findel Airport IATA: LUX - ICAO: ELLX 06/24 4,000m (13,123ft) Asphalt Elevation AMSL1,234 ft / 376 m ELLX is extremely well intergrated into the background of the standard X-Plane default scenery, almost a perfect fit, no boundaries or if there are then they are well covered with the extensive foliage. There are basically four areas that cover the scenery. Northeast is the Cargolux Cargo hub Southwest is the industrial zone and General Aviation parking and support. This area also has a large older style hangar that dominates the area. Southwest-south over the other side of the runway is the huge distinctively designed Cargolux maintenance hangar and facilities Main aprons and Terminals are centre northwest in the airport Apron P1 is left and regional and Aprons P2 and P3 are right with Terminal B (regional) and Terminal A (International). Terminal A is new as it was only opened in 2012 after the older 1979 building was demolished, the smaller TER B arm was opened in 2004. Main Terminal A The modern Terminal A is extremely impressive. This is scenery work at it's finest. Stunning work and highly detailed in features and ground signage around the airbridges which are animated with Marginal's docking plugin. The terminal's glass is X-Plane11 reflective and very realistic. Landside detailing is as good as Airside and all this with elevation changes as well... very impressive. Terminal B The small arm terminal is just as well done. Again great reflective glass and excellent fine detailing that even includes the metal stairs through the glass at the gates. All working areas have great vehicle animations as well... and they follow the different elevations as they trundle around... all top notch stuff. The northern landside approach to the airport has a lot of commercial buildings that include the prominent Luxembourg Investment building, Allianz Insurance, JP Morgan, ATOZ and the Hotel NH Luxembourg. All buildings have been recreated as is also the Grand Ducal de Luxembourg Golf Club behind but no club house? (it is quite iconic)... Now for the eagle eye flyers out there, do you notice the faint shapes on the horizon? This is the Cattenom Nuclear Power Plant and JetSim have done the nuclear plant's four cooling towers, and associated buildings, but the effect for the scenery with the towers in the distance is a great visual effect and in full view on RWY 24 departures. Ibis Hotel and a strange coloured building that covers some airport plant infrastructure. Control Tower Centre field Control Tower is excellent with great viewable see-through glass. Unusual for JustSim the "Tower View" works here at ELLX... ... but you do get a part of the roof intruding at certain angles, but overall you can see the runway approaches clearly. Luxembourg City is to the southwest of Findel, and so there is a lot of autogen, in both the adjusted autogen and the default OSM autogen. It looks really good, but so much autogen can also tax your processors as well, I found I had to go down a notch in objects to get better running, not in actual framerate (that stayed in the 40's) but for smoother pans around the scenery and for movement on approaches and around the airport. World Traffic and X-Life traffic compatible, and the airport is set up for X-Plane11 static aircraft use as well, which I used here. Lighting The lighting at JustSim's EDDH - Hamburg was a little poor, the scenery looked brilliant in the day, but only average at night... I was expecting the same here at ELLX. The game has certainly been upped here, ELLX's lighting is very good. All areas are very well lit, so the scenery bounds off the screen. There are great textures to the lower parts of the terminals, but the main larger building is to a point like the Hamburg buildings in being quite dark, why can't these huge terminals be lit up at night from the inside? The point is it can be done as with this great lighting here with the large hangar (below left) which looks magnificent at night. This point aside the lighting covers every area completely. Ramps and aprons are great a night as is all the approach, runway and taxiway lights and signage. Cargolux maintenance hangar is also beautifully lit and textured. A big advantage here is that the less important buildings and the smaller scale items also have really good window lit textures and downlighting... ... no cheap FS style coloured blank windows here, and it all looks extremely realistic at night. Services Luxair and Cargolux have bases at ELLX and regular services are used by airlines of Agean, Easyjet, British Airways, Flybe, Hahn Air, HOP!, KLM, LOT, Lufthansa Regional (Cityline), Ryanair, Swiss, TAP Portugal, Turkish Airlines, Volotea and Vueling. Here are some spectacular images of my RW24 departure to Munich that shows you the quality of this scenery and how great X-Plane11 now is... _____________________________________________________________________________________ Summary You do wonder how developers just keep upping the game. No doubt this ELLX - Luxembourg Findel from JustSim is sensational scenery, in every aspect it just simply delivers. JustSim keep on piling these very high quality airports out on an almost bi-monthly basis, and they are all just really great well made scenery, but ELLX - Luxembourg shows that the quality is also in there as there are no shortcuts here. You have also all the X-Plane11 features in here as well, with airbridge and vehicle animations, Glass and Ground reflections with volumetric ground effect textures and everything is shaded and baked to an inch of it's life for great framerate return. Only small nibbles are the inner lighting inside the main terminal which is too dark at night. And the roof showing in parts of the tower view So certainly put with this excellent scenery Luxembourg in as part of your European network, well worth using and you get a quality return. Better is that all this package is under US$20... that is UNDER US$20... at US$19.80. Great scenery, Even better deal... simply a no brainer! Positives: Absolutely everything!, Great Scenery, Well developed and highly detailed, Great features (even better in X-Plane11), Great Price.... on and on Negatives: Not much, More internal Terminal A lighting would lift the building at night, encroaching roof sometimes in tower view, you need a bit of power to cover all the extensive autogen, scenery is very good. _____________________________________________________________________________________ The ELLX - Luxembourg Findel Airport by JustSim is NOW available! from the X-Plane.Org Store here : There are two version of this scenery for both X-Plane10 or X-Plane11... review was done with the X-Plane11 version. ELLX - Luxembourg Findel Airport XP10 ELLX - Luxembourg Findal Airport XP11 Your Price: US$19.80 Features Custom taxiways and airport lights Shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on terminal and other airport buildings High resolution photo scenery near airport and city High resolution ground textures / Custom runway textures High resolution building textures Runway reflection effect Volumetric ground effect textures Compatible with X-Plane 11 features Animated gates (AutoGate plugin by Marginal) Animated custom ground vehicles (X-Plane 11 only) World Traffic compatible X-Life traffic compatible Optimized for excellent performance Requirements : X-Plane10 Windows, Mac or Linux 2GB VRAM Minimum - 3Gb+ VRAM Recommended X-Plane 11 Windows, Mac or Linux 2GB VRAM Minimum - 3Gb+ VRAM Recommended Framerate is excellent for the density of the scenery, but still subject to computer system standards Installation and documents: Download for the ELLX - Luxembourg Findel Airport is 450.34mb and the two unzipped files are deposited in "Custom Scenery" Folder ELLX_JustSim_1.0 (1.28GB) ELLX_JustSim_Mesh (20.24mb) Files must be set in this order or cut and paste the correct order in your scenery_pack.ini text file (In the Custom Scenery folder) You will need to have the checkbox ticked for the X-Plane item "runways follow terrain contours" (General Menu). This NEEDS to be ON. documents: Installation notes No charts are provided but these are good : JeppView _____________________________________________________________________________________ Review by Stephen Dutton 20th April 2017 Copyright©2017: X-PlaneReviews (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) 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 512gb SSD Software: - Windows 10 - X-Plane 11 and also used in X-Plane v10.52 Addons: Saitek x56 Pro system Joystick and Throttle : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini Plugins: Environment Engine by xEnviro US$69.90 : JARDesign Ground Handling Deluxe GHD plugin Scenery or Aircraft - Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 by FlyJSIm (X-Plane.OrgStore) - US$30.00
  20. Scenery Review : EDDH Hamburg Airport by JustSim You have to give JustSim credit, they sure can roll out their sceneries with regular efficiency. My last JustSim scenery review was LOWI - Innsbruck Airport only a few weeks ago and JustSim's LEBL Barcelona El Prat was only a few weeks before that... and now here is EDDH Hamburg. You would think with these very quick fire releases that the sceneries noted here from JustSim would be average at best, and to also reflect their value price pricing, but as to now all I am seeing is amazing value for excellent well created scenery, so does EDDH Hamburg still deliver again here for that same value pricing? Well lets find out. First Impressions I am not new to EDDH Hamburg as I have reviewed it before on another review publication and that version was an early X-Plane10 version from Aerosoft many moons ago in Nov 2012. So I am familiar with EDDH's layout and visual appeal. To get there I flew from EGCC (Manchester) to Hamburg, just a quick flight over the North Sea. The equipment is JARDesign's A320neo and this review is set in X-Plane11(b11). The Northern-Western approach to EDDH is via RIBSO waypoint (Runway ILS15 - RIBS4A) . The layout of EDDH is like an X but with the cross at a lower point and two runways going long out of the cross point with RWY15 to the slight northwest. This makes RWY15 an interesting approach but visually RWYs 05/23 are better if you want to see terminals and airport infrastructure and to use RWY05 if you want to approach the airport over Hamburg itself. Both RWY15 and RWY05 are also the best for arrival if you also want a small taxi to the Terminal area as both RWY05 and RWY15 will require a long taxi to each departure point or if using RWY23 or RWY33 for arrival, and certainly for 15/33 as it is very long taxi at 3666m (12, 028ft). RWY15/33 juts well out into the local area into more the countryside feel than an urban feel, although it is still surrounded by the local environs. This also makes it quite hard on the RWY15 approach to see the runway until it gets more defined, and so you have to rely more on your instruments more than a visual approach initially. One big feature of JustSim's sceneries is the fact that they are very conscious of not only the actual airport scenery, but the environs around it. They more than most scenery developers have pioneered the use of autogen to create the area around the airport and with X-Plane11 now being able to use regional assets and in this case German housing the areas around the airport you now have a very well constructed urban environment at no cost to your framerate... take note other scenery developers, it works and on the approach you have a really great Germanic feel and a great urban look on approach. If this is the future for all X-Plane regions then it is going to be brilliant. Of course the false add on scenery autogen will mesh in perfectly with the default autogen, giving you the perfect transition between the two areas although I do have my object slider a notch down here for framerate efficiency. Over the RWY15's threshold and you feel you are landing in a field more than an international airport is so long and so outwardly is the runway from the terminal area. It is a very long runway... and with a building in the EDHH Cargo terminal in your line of sight at the other end, so you don't want to over run the runway. JustSim do great grass effects and they are very effective here even if the grass covers up the runway direction signs, but it very good. The bonus of getting your arrival runway of choice in RWY15 and RWY05 is as noted it puts you right on the terminal area and so a quick turn off almost puts you directly on the ramp. Runway and taxiway linage is excellent, but can be very confusing with the amount of information on the entrance to the ramp in either B west/east or in my case I north/south... The huge terminal complex stretches away to the north from you, it is impressive and to the east is the cargo area. The ramp is filled with really great airport equipment, highly detailed and all very authentic, like these luggage trolleys and tugs, they make for a great entrance. You get a very authentic gate direction guidance system display, but it only shows the aircraft type and not the actual guides, so your first guess is that this is a static airbridge gate. It also means you have to guess were you actually park up correctly as well, but shut down the engines and the perfectly replicated gate does actually swing into action, the airbridges look perfect, beautifully done. On the ramp it is great view, very real in presence. So the arrival at JustSim's EDDH was very impressive. One thing to note. There are several options in filling out the ramps and stands with static aircraft. This JustSim scenery does have the X-Plane default routes done and that allows you to use the default static aircraft like I have done here, but you do get the wrong regional (i.e. a lot of N American) aircraft as part of the deal (currently). There is a set World traffic ground routes for EDDH but they are set for the Aerosoft version. Airport Overview. Hamburg Airport (Flughafen Hamburg) IATA: HAM - ICAO: EDDH 05/23 3,250m (10,663ft) Asphalt 15/33 3,666m (12,028ft) Asphalt Elevation AMSL 53 ft / 16 m As the main above image shows is that EDDH is beautifully intergrated into the X-Plane background, the realism is well done here. The focus is on the lower X cross area with the main terminal and cargo facilities to the east and the huge Lufthansa Technik AG headquarters and maintenance base to the southeast and both areas are joined together with the huge cargo facility at the start of RWY33. Main Terminal and Cargo Out of the main Terminal (upper) the A/B (27-40) gates have been stretched further southeast but there is only one autogate here, where as the real extension has autogates on all gates?, but it does give you some good stand positions. Set out behind he extension is still the cargo facility but it is now used from the side ramp or Apron South 1with several large maintenance hangars in F, G and H. The main terminal section has three sections (roofs) but it is only two terminals in 1 and 2 that merge into one large facility called the “Terminal Plaza” with gates C4 - C16, and D1-5 to the north and the noted extension A/B (27-40) gates going southeast. The main Terminal(s) are really highly impressive, simply outstanding detail, but more so with the new X-Plane11 feature of reflective glass that is very realistic and as we will see more of in the night lighting portion of the review. Roadways are a little blurry but there is a lot of 3d objects in creating a great fill and you don't really notice it that much in context. Note the excellent circular lift towers Airside and the (animated) autogates are perfect, with a lot of ramp fill of equipment, and building (terminal) detailing is simply first rate with high quality textures and modeling. There is also a lot of animated vehicle traffic wandering around the airport which gives it all a buzzy work day look. Landside is well done but the ground textures are a little blurry. Radar works (animated) as do all of the radar installations. North and there are two massive carpark structures and central landside there is an excellent Raddisson Blu Hotel (below). If you look closely there is a great mix of the original airport brick buildings that have have been overbuilt by the newer terminal areas. I really also like the good advertising on the wall of the P2 parking building for Aeroflot. Far north is the airport's own maintenance area but look beyond the airport boundary at the excellent default autogen. Situated adjacent to the rear of the north pier is the “Terminal Tango” which is an events space and convention centre. The airport is named after Helmut Schmidt who was Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) from 1974 to 1982. Overall the Terminal area is mightily impressive in detail. Cargo and Maintenance Hangars There is the cargo ramp called the “Luftfrachtzentrum”, that the layout is for the more medium and regional sized freighters than the bigger B777 or B747 size monsters, but if you wanted to you could still park one here. Modeling of the cargo area is very good and get the in joke of the "Meyer Fuel Service" truck. The big "Hamburg Cargo Center" joins the two areas at the start of RWY33. Lufthansa Technik AG headquarters The western section of EDDH is the Lufthansa Technik AG headquarters Base which is part of the Lufthansa Group. The This is a huge facility that covers aircraft servicing, engine overhauls, aircraft fitouts and the Cabin Innovation Center, and the base can cover all types of aircraft from A320's up to the large B747's and A380's. But to note in that not to get it confused with Airbus's fitout facility at Finkenwerder Airport to the south. The main servicing hangars and engine test facility are excellent as is the complex external rigging that holds up the open internal space roofs, as the smaller detailing is also very good with circular stairs and huge air-con units. The famous Café Himmelsschreiber which is part Air Hamburg is also situated in this northern section of the Technik base and so is the main apron control tower that overlooks runway 05/23. Detailing around the Café Himmelsschreiber is quite bare which is a missed opportunity as there is a seating garden there right on the ramp and the ramp tower is quite average and comes with only basic textures, the lower admin building however is well done. There are two huge aprons fronting the Lufthansa Technik base with one for remote parking (below left) including Air Hamburg or for the Lufthansa Technik base parking. The secondary remote apron is for General Aviation and Private Jet parking (above right) and is ideal for light parking and commuter traffic. Control Tower Because of the layout of the runways, specifically the long 15/33, there is a secondary control tower on the western side of the field. But the wasted X-Plane feature "tower view" is somewhere in the middle of the GA - Private Jet apron... so an "epic fail". As noted all radars do rotate and are clearly visible on landing. Fire Station and Museum To the North-West is the art deco styled Fire Station and the museum with the original Boeing 707-430 with the registration D-ABOD which was operated by Deutsche Lufthansa which is sited outside. You will get a great view of these buildings on taxiway D with either a RWY15 departure or RWY33 arrival. In the early years it was not aircraft that filled the skies above Fuhlsbüttel (hamburg Airport) but airships. The "Hamburg Airship Hangar Company" (HLG) in association with Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin was created here in 1911 and then some time was spent looking for a suitable site for an airfield, and finally 44.8 hectares of land to the west of Lake Alster and north of the Borstel racecourse were chosen as a suitable site. The airship company however soon had company in the arrival of AEG (Allgemeine Electricitäts-Gesellschaft) which set up a new firm called DLR (Deutsche Luft-Reederei, literally the "German Air Transport Company") and started scheduled flights on the 5th February 1919. KLM also was soon traversing through the airport as well on the route from Amsterdam to Copenhagen and in time the regular service fixed wing operations overtook the original airship operations. Hamburg's Fuhlsbüttel Airport also had a major part in the famous “Berlin Airlift” that started operations on 25th June 1948. And in the early1950’s the airport which was then now known as “Hamburg Airport” was then reverted back from the British into the hands of the German authorities. Nightlighting After the excellent day detailing and scenery work by JustSim, the night lighting is a bit of a disappointment? The lighting is mediocre at best with only a few spots lighting the gates, and with Hamburg's interesting lighting systems a real wasted opportunity. Equipment ramp zones have no downlighting at all, which is a totally missed chance to do some clever lighting, drop down lighting is limited. Terminal window texures are average and soft and nowhere as good as the Aerosoft versions and just a bland blue... Again it is a totally wasted opportunity as if you look at the new X-Plane11 glass reflection feature on the side of T2, as you see the reflections are excellent in the reflection of the surrounding airport lighting. It could have been so much better... Other buildings at least do have some good window lighting textures as also does the Raddisson Blu hotel, but overall it is mostly mediocre. Runway lighting is thankfully quite good with RAIL on some, but the taxiways are plain with only blue oversized taxiway edge lights and no centerline green guidance lighting. So you aircraft will need good lighting to navigate around the scenery after dark. Services Hamburg today is the gateway to Northern Germany with 60 airlines that service through Hamburg (Fuhlsbüttel) and fly out to 115 destinations worldwide. The airport is the hub for airlines Air Berlin, Condor, Lufthansa and TUIfly. Airlines Aer Lingus, Air France, airBaltic, Austrian Airlines, British Airways, Brussels Airlines, Corendon and Air Hamburg. Busiest Domestic Routes 1. Munich - 1,347,070 2. Frankfurt - 733,060 3. Stuttgart - 702,884 4. Düsseldorf - 452,750 5. Nuremberg - 221,544 Busiest European Routes 1. London, United Kingdom - 706,844 2. Palma de Mallorca, Spain - 694,302 3. Zürich, Switzerland - 528,726 4. Vienna, Austria - 479,062 5. Paris, France - 354,010 Busiest International Routes 1. Antalya, Turkey - 475,806 2. Dubai, UAE - 129,624 3. Hurghada, Egypt - 96,150 4. Izmir, Turkey - 65,530 5. Newark, USA - 44,840 Summary Overall this is stunning scenery, beautifully detailed and with some really great ramp equipment and detail. Those airbridges are excellent as is all the animated vehicle traffic and the great surrounding Germanic autogen and so using the JustSim Hamburg is certainly a great departure or arrival scenery... but. It is shame the lighting is so mediocre, and such is the wasted in the opportunity here to do something really great with illumination, so any flying at Hamburg after the sun goes down is a bit of a timewaster. ditto the poor "tower view" which is becoming a common occurrence lately. But what we are coming back to here is the value, if this scenery which is certainly worth in the upper twenties in the set dollar values was then just that, then the lighting would make you think twice about purchasing? But Hamburg Airport by JustSim is only priced at US$19.80 and at that price it is simply a total bargain, so you can easily look past the minor faults as the scenery is excellent at the really good things that make up totally realistic scenery. So overall it is a must buy, and the hope that soon JustSim do a quick revisit and update the lighting to the standard EDDH Hamburg deserves. ______________________________________________________________________ The EDDH Hamburg Airport by JustSim is NOW available! from the X-Plane.Org Store here : EDDH - Hamburg International Airport Price is US$19.80 Features Custom taxiways and airport lights Shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on terminal and other airport buildings High resolution photo scenery near airport and city High resolution ground textures / Custom runway textures High resolution building textures Runway reflection effect Volumetric ground effect textures Compatible with X-Plane 11 features Ready for Advanced Traffic World Traffic compatible X-Life traffic compatible Animated gates (AutoGate plugin by Marginal) Animated custom ground vehicles (X-Plane 11 only) Requirements X-Plane 11+ or X-Plane 10.50+ Windows, Mac, Linux 2GbVRAM Video Card. 3Gb+ VRAM Recommended This review was run in X-Plane11 (and a beta at that!). So the X-Plane11 features are not available in the X-Plane10 version of this scenery. Requirements: X-Plane 10 fully updated (any edition) or X-Plane 11+ Mac, Windows or Linux 2Gb+ VRAM Video Card 1GB HD for Installation ______________________________________________________________________ Installation The download package is 422.10mb The scenery is installed after unzipping in to your X-Plane "custom scenery" folder (EDDH_JustSim_1.0) at 698.50mb Documents: There is an installation document but no manual or charts. A good set of EDDH charts are available here: EDDH pdf ______________________________________________________________________ Stephen Dutton 27th February 2017 Copyright©X-Plane Reviews: X-PlaneReviews 2017 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 512gb SSD Software: - Windows 10 - X-Plane 11beta11 / Checked install in X-Plane10.51 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 by xEnviro US$69.90 Scenery or Aircraft - Airbus A320neo by JARDesign (X-Plane.OrgStore) - US$59.95
  21. News! - New X-Plane11 Scenery Version : LFMN - Nice v1.3 by JustSim Just over six months ago X-PlaneReviews did a comprehensive back to back Review of JustSim's LFMN Nice Côte d'Azur Airport and LFKC Calvi - Sainte-Catherine, Corsica by Aerosoft. (review). Both sceneries were excellent, certainly as a matched pair for point to point services. But already we have an update of the LFMN - Nice scenery from JustSim that is now X-Plane11 compatible. The scenery is also one of the first to take in and use the new X-Plane features so it is worth having a look at. LFMN - Nice Airport is on the French south Côte d'Azur just 3.7 miles west of the city centre of Nice. It is a very good scenery with great intergration into the X-Plane landscape. Service wise it is highly usable because of its excellent position for not only Europe, but the many Mediterranean destination and even North African ports also right on your doorstep. X-Plane11 Reflections The big new feature at LFMN from X-Plane11 is glass reflections, using "Physically Based Rendering" or "PBR". This new tool can finally give X-Plane real looking glass, which has always been one of the most hardest areas to get right from X-Plane scenery developers, many have been very successful, but in a lot of sceneries the glass areas have been woeful. The reflection feature works extremely well at LFMN, because of the large wall glass areas. But the real experience is as you move around the terminals as the reflections are excellent and they move with you. This is certainly nothing new in X-Plane as we have had cockpit panel reflections for years, but it is a new reality feel to use in scenery. The UFO saucer shaped T2 makes the most of this feature because of it's unique shape. So naturally this comes off better than most in the scenery. While still on terminals the LFMN scenery now has a many autogates (marginal) working, but you are required to have the plugin installed. Regional Autogen In the release version of LFMN. You had the option of downloading OSM (Open Street Map) w2xp scenery converted to 3d objects. I noted I didn't like it and mainly for the nasty framerate kill of 15-20 frames, it didn't look right either. In this 1.3 version the 3d objects have been dropped for the newer X-Plane11 autogen region system. Efficiency is the biggest benefit as the built in autogen is far (far) better better than the old OSM 3d object version, it looks better from the air as well. The X-Plane11 regional system allows terraced buildings and that has been put to great effect here, but the German autogen is slightly off, but still at least it is now European. A note on this regional autogen is that it is very early days yet on how good this visual tool will be, it is still quite basic, but I hope Laminar Research with external 3rd parties do put a lot of attention its way as it has the potential to be a great feature for X-Plane. On installing, make sure the old "- LFMN_Nice_JustSim_City" folder is removed before running the new version, if required the old w2xp-scenery is still available for download. X-Plane11 Parked Aircraft Static parked aircraft comes with X-Plane11 as well. And LFMN has been well configured to take advantage of the feature. The static aircraft feature works but only to a point? One is that here I am in the South of France, but LFMN is dominated by American and Canadian aircraft, and two there is a huge military DC-10 on the ramps. You can of course select the DC-10 out, but not the choice of liveries? I still use as in the review WorldTraffic by Classic Jet Simulations as it gives you more ramp control. And a very animated airport comes as a bonus. Wet (Reflective) Runways Another great feature is reflective runways. Bring down the rain and you get a wet look on the runway surface, it looks brilliant in the right light and conditions, be prepared to see more like this. All the rest of the features with this JustSim LFMN - Nice scenery are all still in there with excellent textures and lighting and great ground animations. X-Plane11 is already known for its great atmospheric feeling and that it is all highlighted here. In a few months most of which is noted here will be second nature in X-Plane11, even almost background noise. But it is exciting to see and use for the first time. It is an exciting time for developers as well in the way they can use these great new features, and no doubt they will to their utter most limits.... that is exciting as well. The LFMN v1.3 scenery is priced at great value at US$19.50, for earlier previous owners of JustSim's LFMN Nice Cote D'Azur you can buy this new XP11 version for only $5 or the cost of a cup off coffee: Check out your original LFMN invoice at the store in your account, as the discount code will be listed there. You can still use the scenery in X-Plane10 as well as X-Plane11 but without the above mentioned features. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Version v1.3 LFMN Nice Côte d'Azur Airport by JustSim is NOW available! from the X-Plane.Org Store here : LFMN - Nice Cote d'Azur Price: $19.50 Features: New version with support for X-Plane 11 (X-Plane 10 still supported) Support for Autogate Windows and glass have reflection (XP11 only) Shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on terminal and other airport buildings High resolution photo scenery near airport and city. All objects are manually placed. High resolution ground textures / Custom runway textures Runway reflection effect Custom apron lights High resolution building textures Optimized for excellent performance Animated custom ground vehicles X-Life traffic compatible Requirements: X-Plane 10 and X-Plane 11 Windows, Mac, Linux - 800Mb HD Space Available 2Gb VRAM Video Card Minimum - 3Gb+ VRAM Recommended Current Version: XP11, v1.3 (last updated January 10th 2017) _____________________________________________________________________________________ Review by Stephen Dutton 11th January 2017 Copyright©2017: X-PlaneReviews 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 512gb SSD Software: - Windows 10 - X-Plane 10 Global ver 10.45 Addons: Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini Plugins: JARDesign Ground Handling Deluxe US$14.95 : WorldTraffic US$29.95 : Weather Engine xEnviro US$69.90 Scenery or Aircraft - CRJ-200 by JRollon Planes (X-Plane.OrgStore) - US$49.95 : CRJ-200 Sound Packs by Blue Sky Star Simulations (X-Plane.OrgStore) - US$20.00
  22. News! - Scenery Released! - LOWI - Innsbruck Airport by JustSim Here is another Austrian Airport from JustSim. Already there has been LOWS - Saltzberg and LOWL- Linz and now the largest airport deep in the Tyrol is available. LOWI is unique because of it's position low in a valley and any approach to the airport is very difficult and technically up there with the best. This scenery comes with an optional pack of OSM 3d object scenery. which is a fully populated Innsbruck city! and the autogen covers a whole 1.1 degree square density. The images shown here is with the 3d object scenery installed. Features Include: Custom runway , taxiway and airport lights. Shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on terminal and other airport buildings High resolution photo scenery near airport and city. High resolution ground textures / Custom runway textures High resolution building textures. Runway reflection effect. Animated Marshallers. (AutoGate plugin by Marginal) Animated custom ground vehicles. (GroundTraffic plugin by Marginal) World Traffic compatible. X-Life traffic compatible. Optimized for excellent performance. Night lighting is very good, even exceptional with really good lit building textures. Requirements are: X-Plane 10.50+ (any edition) Windows, Mac, Linux 2Gb+ VRAM Video Card is highly Recommended! 1.5Gb HD Space Available (download size 1.1Gb) Note! in that the download is quite hefty with the included OSM 3d objects at over 1.3gb and that the airport was created in X-Plane 10.50, and you will have to upgrade to the 10.50 version to use it. ______________________________________________________________________ The LOWI - Innsbruck Airport by JustSim is NOW available! from the X-Plane.Org Store here : LOWI - Innsbruck Airport Price is US$18.00 ______________________________________________________________________ Stephen Dutton 30th August 2016 Copyright©X-Plane Reviews: X-PlaneReviews 2016
  23. Scenery Reviews : LFMN Nice Côte d'Azur Airport - JustSim and LFKC Calvi - Sainte-Catherine, Corsica - Aerosoft Two sceneries were released together quite independently but are perfectly aligned to go together as a perfect double point to point route. LFMN is on the French Côte d'Azur and LFKC Calvi - Sainte-Catherine, is on the island of Corsica which are only 94nm apart or just across from each other on the Mediterranean Sea. This makes for a perfect days flying in either a General Aviation aircraft or as I have done here with a quick hop regional service. (Google Maps) JustSim are the developers of the Nice Scenery which actually will replace the default Aerosoft scenery who are the developers of the Calvi Scenery. I have already covered a few of the excellent JustSim sceneries already this year and Aerosoft are well known for their excellent European scenery so expectations are that both of these airports are very good work from each of the developers. LFMN Nice Côte d'Azur Airport - JustSim LFMN - Nice Airport hangs out like a huge aircraft carrier deck on the French south coast just 3.7 miles west of the city centre of Nice. As noted X-Plane already comes with a default Aerosoft version of LFMN, but I have had a few if many problems with this scenery, so in most cases I have not used Nice Airport as much as I wanted to. The biggest issue with the Aerosoft version was under many of the surfaces the areas had not been covered correctly, and in most cases when taxiing or in my case when parking on the ramp west of the Terminal One (T1) I found the aircraft was going over rough ground and bouncing me and my passengers sick... not good. So my flights were mostly restricted to Private Jet or the odd UK-Nice Service, overall it was never on my flight lists. Which is a shame as it is this is great destination. So with the chance to replace the troublesome Aerosoft version with a workable one then I was not going to say no to the idea. And I am very glad I did as well. Nice Côte d'Azur Airport (IATA: NCE, ICAO: LFMN) 04L/22R 2,570m (8,432ft) Bituminous concrete 04R/22L 2,960m (9,711ft) Bituminous concrete H1 29.25x96 Asphaltic concrete H2 29.25x96 Asphaltic concrete Elevation AMSL 4 m / 13 ft JustSim has been very prolific this year with X-Plane Sceneries, with great quality at a great price. So how can they do that with most other developers taking three times as long to deliver the same content. There is a trick involved but a clever one. Most developers use a full 3d tool to create their sceneries which can give you great detail and quality, but there are downsides to this in the fact it can take a lot of time to create every 3d object and detail it and all those 3d objects have a very heavy load on your computer. Now in the main infrastructure JustSim still does just that and make 3d objects, but in many areas the developer uses also "facade" style buildings. The trick is that if the quality of the textures and cleverness in creating facade objects that are in tune with the 3d objects around them then you can easily fill out your scenery. You can't get around every item with facade as we know from tdg's work or most WED sceneries, but with great skill you can use many areas that are just really boxes or basic shapes, like warehouses or offices. By using this method you would think you are being short changed for what you are buying, but actually the opposite is true. With clever facade work it really lowers your loading time and the sheer frameweight on your computer compared to having all those bulky 3d objects, facades take a huge less time to build and like with JustSim's sceneries you can do a lot more objects and cover not only the immediate airport areas but a lot of the surrounding areas as well. And that is why these sceneries are great value at a lower price but you get more in there at that price, and that is great deal if the quality is in there and JustSim can turn out far more sceneries in a year than most do with one. There are two terminals at LFMN - Nice with T1 and T2 with a small terminal parking area on the west of T1. Terminal One (T1) T1 is the European domestic terminal at Nice and it looks the modern of the two terminals, but is actually the older building. The terminal has been really well recreated here with a lot of detail and shapes and the unique question mark style supports showing the great detail involved. The landside is a bit average as JustSim has relied on the ground images to do the road network and detail work for them, but they are too buzzy to be really effective. Airbridges are great but have too much thrash on them, there are no animated bridges in this scenery. But the detail and glasswork is excellent. Terminal 1 has 25 gates. It features flights to domestic, European and Schengen and non-Schengen destinations. It should be noted that there is a huge amount of remote parking at LFMN, and the areas between the terminals do overlap. As seen below there are no static aircraft with the scenery, and it is noticeable here. So you are going to have to get creative in either using X-Life, X-Plane 10.50 with the new static aircraft rules or hit the OverlayEditor big time... I used WorldTraffic and that plugin did the job very nicely. West of T1 is an area I like, it a small remote apron that is great for LCC's (Low Cost Carriers) and walkon boarding regional jets... I have used it for the odd VIP arrival in a private jet as well. The parking linage is extremely confusing? but it is a great place to park up. Terminal 2 (T2) T2 is dominated by circular bowl or spaceship terminal, with an arm to the west and a hall to the north. The terminal is very well done but the glass is a little more see through in the real version which is more grey and Terminal 2 is the newer and larger facility here at LFMN and has 29 gates . There is a lot of infrastructure connected to the cargo area is set out behind the terminal with the usual carparks and ramps landside, rooftop solar panels are well done and overall detail is very good. There is a small cargo facility in the nort-west zone and a radar tower, there are several radars and they are all animated. Centre field is a bright red fire station with animated fire trucks, in fact there is a lot of vehicle animations covering the whole airport including buses, trucks, vans and baggage trucks. Control Tower The control tower is extremely well modeled and is in with enclosed with the airports administration buildings, everything is not very highly overly detailed but all work together very well. Tower view is awful with chunks of the model blocking out all the views of the runways... Both 04L/22R and 04R/22L are well done with the outer runway more of the original concrete than the patched up inner runway, all lineage and signage is excellent. Nice has a huge transiant of (rich) passengers that fly on to the hot spots of the French Riviera and Monaco, so the helipads here are the best in the business, a few vehicles would have been nice. Far south there is also a working radar that is well placed. There is not a lot of off airport infrastructure, except for a cargo facility east and the excellent distinctive Parc Pheonix aviary. LFMN - Nice to LFKC - Calvi, Corsica The route is only 100nm between both airports and so you really don't have the time to do the full cruise routine, a good regional jet or prop is ideal for the run, but if you have the time then a nice GA would fill in a few hours. I'm using JRollon's CRJ-200. I am adding enough fuel to do the round trip back to Nice to save turnaround time at Calvi, at this short distance it really doesn't matter. LFMN lineage is very good, but you will need an airport layout and plan your route to the runways as not to lose any time as there is a lot of remote parking that looks like taxiway lines... LFMN is a busy airport and today is no exception, you just go when you get clearance and not look behind you. The view out of the cockpit and passenger windows is excellent as the airport looks very good and far, far better than the Aerosoft default version. The CRJ is the BlueSkyStar version with the uprated sound package and as the throttle goes up you feel the push and that really great sound behind you. Departure to Calvi is by Runway 04L using SID LONS6A Trans MERLU. And that departure means a hard right turn after you clear the airport JustSim provides a download of Nice City scenery in OSM with the package (see note at the end of the review) but it is not used here in this departure. On departure that southern Mediterranean French feel comes in really well visually, as you pull up and away from the French Coast Climb is only to 14.500ft and once you get there then the descent starts almost straight away, so the cruise section is only a few minutes of say ten to fifteen minutes. So there is no time to relax on the flightdeck. As one coast quickly faded into the Azur, another coast then quickly appeared through the mist under the hour, This was the northern-west coast of Corsica and LFKC - Calvi was just slightly inland inside a beautifully set valley. There is an ILS approach to Calvi - Sainte-Catherine which has only one runway in 18/36 and the ILS (freq 109.50) was set on the sea approach to RWY 18, Aerosoft do provide a nice few charts for the arrival and departure, but be warned in that the DME is a lock only in a horizontal centre focus on the runway, the vertical lock does not work (I checked via several aircraft) so you will need to do the descent yourself, if you wait for the lock then you will fly too high and miss the approach... The approach visuals are excellent from either up front or via the passenger experience, but it is a tricky landing that keeps you on your toes as RWY 18 is set slightly inland and you only see it through a gap in the trees. The village of Borgo is too your left. It is important to note that Calvi Airport requires your "Runways follow terrain contours" to be ON. If not you will get a lot of the off airport village buildings floating on contour edges and the airport itself is not set right. This "follow contours" creates a very demanding approach situation because as you settle the aircraft it goes over a contour change downwards (same for departing in that you are literally launched into the air like on a carrier skijump!) and get it wrong and your nosewheel will leave the ground again. With all these contour changes you bounce, bounce and bounce until you arrest the speed enough, on completing your landing and you will note the terminal and ramps are elevated to your right. To get up to the ramp you have to judge the incline correctly with enough power to get up and not stall the aircraft and to not then zoom across the ramp with too much thrust, tricky, but with practise you get it right. There are eight main parking slots with slot five taken up by a static Air Corsica A320. There are no airbridges as it is strictly walk-on or walk-off. Overall the approach was excellent with great scenery and a demanding landing, the Terminal is very good if a little blank in detail. Calvi Airport by Aerosoft Calvi – Sainte-Catherine Airport (IATA: CLY, ICAO: LFKC) 18/36 2,310m (7,579ft) Concrete Elevation AMSL 209 ft / 64 m The scenery is nestled in the valley and well intergrated the scenery is with the default X-Plane scenery surrounding it. But it is not perfect as the flat underlying ortho images are prone to show up in some areas and it is quite noticeable by their blurryness of what they are and spoiling the overall effect. However the mountain flowing streams on the east side of the runway are very visually great. There is no grass on the airport infield that Aerosoft do so well and here it would have made a significant difference to hide the orthophoto flatness, but overall the visual impact is good. The terminal is a single building is certainly well done, but is not overly detailed, detailed. Landside is great but like with LFMN the underlay ortho photos don't allow a lot of detail, and there is a lot of ground support vehicles and equipment and all around the airport the tree and foliage work is very good. Overall it is pretty good. Control Tower and Fire Station is great even if they have to work out of dismountable buildings... ... and the tower view is fine with all the runway approaches easily visible and with a 360º rotation Rear of the terminal has great support infrastructure with numumerous car hire depots (Europcar, Hertz), Undercover parking and a really well detailed Ford Dealership. There is a thing in the area for car dealerships? there are as as many as six on the google map. There is a little off airport buildings in Borgo and the "Citadel" a "Games of Thrones" style fortress in Calvi has been reproduced with a cruise ship, but the sweet town of Calvi itself is missing. Calvi is serviced mostly by Air France (Paris - Orly) and Air Corsica in regular services. Seasonal routes are very popular to many ports all over Europe. Italy is close and it is only 160 nm to Rome. LFKC - Calvi to LFMN The return service back to Nice was operated during the late hours, to highlight the night lighting. LFKC - Calvi has only average lighting at night. There is a few throw lights on the ramp and various lighting on certain places on the around the airport and that covers the airside. The poor lighting in the carpark would require you to use a torch to find your car, the Terminal is not much better. The Ford Dealership was the only highlight.. Lighting to runway is non-existent, but this a small regional airport. But even some lighting from the terminal would help you miss the A320... Watch that slope, a "feeling your way" to the runway workload. The edge lighting shows the runway's uneven pattern, you would need all your skill to land here at night... Mainland city lights come up over the horizon. X-Plane puts on a show as you get that "back in civilisation and I'm home" feeling. Arrival is by RWY 04R and LFMN - Nice looks great on approach in the cockpit windows, runways are clear and easily defined. The airport lighting looks great to the left and very realistic... The passenger arrival view is also excellent, the hills around Nice provide a great backdrop as the city lighting is in full view... The CRJ-200 does not have any runway turnoff lighting and that creates a small problem. The scenery has no centre green lighting strips? So you have to go slowly down the runway to find the yellow lineage turn off route, it is harder than it looks. It makes it hard to work out where the turn offs to the taxiways are, yes the taxiways have the lit direction boxes but you really miss those green strips and it makes it darker out here than it needs to be. You know the feeling when you have arrived and you are taxiing past rows and rows of brightly lit aircraft at the gates, it is a great feeling and it is replicated here. pull into the ramp and night turns into bright light... So in the context of arrival and working on the ramps you are going to like it here at Nice. The lighting is very good. The ramp lighting is excellent and so is most of the remote stands. The building lighting including the Control Tower is not as refined, it is good but not overly great as the glass is very grey and the terminals a just a shade of grey or blue. The T2 Terminal glows in a purple phosphorescent. At a distance LFMN as a collective works fine, but up really close the lighting it is a little average on the buildings. OSM The package comes with the optional download of NICE city scenery. This option is OSM (Open Street Map) converted to 3d objects to replicate the size and scale of the real buildings. I am not a big fan of OSM and decided not to use it in this review, one... because it kills your frame rate (15-20 frame loss!) and two... it has a loading error when you load up the scenery. But it is a personal choice. Summary In a strange way both sceneries are very much alike or even feel related, and that is why they go so well together. Both are well made, but also both use in areas the poor resolution orthophoto underlays. Lighting is better on LFMN but only over the ramp areas, if this was taken away you would find both sceneries have average building lighting, with LFKC being quite dark. Both don't have taxiway green guidance lighting and both really need them. I was just relieved to get a working Nice, compared to the Aerosoft default version, so JustSim's version of LFMN is a no-brainer for me. Now it will go more on my radar and be used regularly as the French Riviera is a great destination and positioned for many different routes not only in Europe, but North Africa, Spain and Greece are all well within the short route time zone. It looks good, feels good and the scenery is highly efficient with your framerate. You will however need to sort out the missing static aircraft. Aerosoft's Calvi Airport is not an airport you would use regularly, but it is in a very interesting position for great GA flying around Corsica. French and Italian coasts are also within easy distance and the odd Paris-Calvi flight would be interesting. It is a beautiful and technical airport as well, so there is a fair bit of value in here. Price is the key here as JustSim's LFMN is US$19.50 which is terrific value and Aerosoft's LFKC is US$18.99. No doubt you get a huge amount of more value out of NIce, but both together are certainly a worthy purchase. I really enjoyed the LFMN - LFKC route, and as all the route data is done will do a few more flights over the next few days without the pressure of a review to be completed. JustSim's LFMN - Nice and Aerosoft's LFKC - Calvi are a great double act, and are both well worth visiting, and a great way to fill out those lazy northern summer days. Dedication This Review is dedicated to the innocents that lost their lives in Nice on Bastille Day 2016 May their lives are not lost in our thoughts, because they did no wrong but be alive and were enjoying the freedom that the country they were celebrating allowed them that choice. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Both LFMN Nice Côte d'Azur Airport by JustSim and LFKC Calvi - Sainte-Catherine, Corsica by Aerosoft is NOW available! from the X-Plane.Org Store here : LFMN - Nice Cote d'Azur Price: $19.55 Requirements X-Plane 10.40+ (any edition) Windows, Mac, Linux 800Mb HD Space Available 1Gb VRAM Video Card Minimum - 2Gb VRAM Recommended LFKC - Calvi (Corsica) Airport Price: $18.99 Requirements X-Plane 10.45+ (any edition) Windows 7/8/10, OS X version 10.6.8 or later, Linux Ubuntu 12.04LTS or compatible 3 GHz, multi-core CPU (or, even better, multiple processors) 8 GB RAM - 3D graphics card with 2GB+ of on-board, dedicated VRAM Download-Size: 300 MB Features LFMN Shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on terminal and other airport buildings High resolution photo scenery near airport and city. All objects are manually placed. High resolution ground textures / Custom runway textures Runway reflection effect Custom apron lights High resolution building textures Optimized for excellent performance Animated custom ground vehicles X-Life traffic compatible LFKC Realistic rendition of Calvi St. Catherine based on real life images Photo real buildings Large Aerial image with 50cm/pixel in the surroundings and 25cm/pixel on the airport, carefully fitted into the default X-Plane landscape and colour-adjusted Customized terrain, runway follows terrain Realistic reproduction of ground markings including old, painted-over markings Animated marshaller (additional plugin Autogate™ required) Customized night illumination Custom made trees and forests Very good performance and implementation Animated bar on the entry of the parking lot Numerous details Changing static airplanes including wreckage to the south west Animated road traffic Recreation of the citadel of Calvi and vessel Installation and documents: Download for the LFMN Nice Côte d'Azur Airport is 506.90mb and the unzipped file is deposited in the "Custom Scenery" X-Plane folder at 1.21gb Install requires the scenery pack "JustSim_LFMN_Nice_terrain" to be below the main "JustSim_LFMN_Nice" folder in the INI order, if installed the "NICE-OSM" has to be below both of the above... If you are using WorldTraffic you can get the LFMN ground routes here: LFMN Nice GroundRoutes Download for the LFKC Calvi - Sainte-Catherine is 282.10mb and the unzipped file is deposited in the "Custom Scenery" X-Plane folder at 937.20mb Install requires that the "runways follow terrain contours" checkbox to be ON. Package comes with a full set of charts and Aerosoft manual _____________________________________________________________________________________ Review by Stephen Dutton 30th July 2016 Copyright©2016: X-PlaneReviews 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 512gb SSD Software: - Windows 10 - X-Plane 10 Global ver 10.45 Addons: Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini Plugins: JARDesign Ground Handling Deluxe US$14.95 : WorldTraffic US$29.95 Scenery or Aircraft - CRJ-200 by JRollon Planes (X-Plane.OrgStore) - US$49.95 : CRJ-200 Sound Packs by Blue Sky Star Simulations (X-Plane.OrgStore) - US$20.00
  24. Scenery Review : LOWS W. A. Mozart - Salzburg Airport by Digital Design You know that you are an old hand at X-Plane if you can remember the X-Plane9® default airport... Now it is KSEA - Seattle, but in the earlier days it was LOWS, at Salzburg. Throughout the run of X-Plane10 the airport once known as the face of the simulator has fallen into the past receding memory banks, but the reasons why LOWS was such a great entrance to the simulator is still there and more so now with the release of "Digital Design's" new scenery in LOWS W.A.Mozart Airport. First it is a good idea to clear up a little something in that "Digital Design" was JustSim scenery, the same developers that have released both LOWL - Linz - LEGE Girona scenery which I really was impressed with back in April. And this LOWS is another of the same developers scenery and so this is not a completely new developer for X-Plane. First Impressions Salzburg City is situated at the northern boundary of the Alps on the Austrian side. is internationally renowned for its baroque architecture and has one of the best-preserved city centers north of the Alps. The city was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. It is of course also well known as the birth place of that music maestro 18th-century composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart... and the musical the "Sound of Music" was filmed here. But from an X-Plane point of view it is one of the most picturesque approaches in the simulator with the Alps as a backdrop. Most approaches are on RWY 15 or from the north (with an ILS - OES 109.90). You can use RWY 33 but it is quite a difficult approach without some practice as it requires a very tight in radius approach path. Ditto in leaving on RWY 15, as any departures require the same to the left hard radius turn or if continuing south also an extremely tight climb up and over 6000ft to clear the Alpine mountain barrier, leave RWY 15 in a southern direction directly and you are faced with the flat wall of a mountain face! So if you arrive from the south like I do here, then there is a significant drop of altitude after clearing the Alps to do a sharp turn back to the LOWS airport for RWY 15. So you have to be on your guard to control the speed with the high speed descent to get that speed right to turn back (slowly) around for RWY 15, it sounds easier than it is to do, but it does make for a very dramatic arrival. First thing you notice is the huge amount of extra object scenery around the actual Salzburg Airport itself. I was very impressed by the visual complexity of the area. The scenery expands way out past the central airport scenery and covers most of your view of the approach, in so making the arrival very more realistic and very Austrian, and far better than relying on the X-Plane autogen to do that filling out work for you. Once over the airfield you have to remember your noted "Go Around" procedures as the wall of mountains to your right and front make the view unnerving and you will want to get out of there the right way and not the wrong way, for god knows what is like flying in and out of LOWS with a low overcast - low visibility scenario. Runway and taxiway textures are excellent and realistic... A note is required that your X-Plane settings "Runway follows terrain contours" is off! If not you will get a lot (I mean a lot) of floating objects as you land and floating objects all around the terminal areas. Salzburg Airport has a huge ramp area that is really well textured and marked out, animated vehicles do wizz past you and give the airport a bit of a buzz factor, but there are no static aircraft (I complained about the same emptiness with JustSim's LOWL - Linz - LEGE Girona as well). I would note the coming X-Plane 10.50 static aircraft feature will help here, but there is no small static aircraft detailing either? A few GA's or smaller aircraft would certainly help the cause, it is just too empty. Otherwise the arrival to Mr Mozart's airport was excellent and visually very interesting. Airport layout Salzburg Airport (IATA: SZG, ICAO: LOWS) 15/33 - 2,750m (9,022ft) Concrete Elev AMSL 430 m / 1,411 ft North or south views will distinguish the airport very well, but from the eastern or western point of view the central scenery is covered well with the excellent Austrian object scenery. LOWS only has one runway in 15/33. As noted the runways are laid out very well with great small detailing and very good textures. Good to excellent different surfaces give you a totally realistic feel to the surfaces and realism. Surface wear and tarmac cracks are evident, and all direction signs and paint markings are perfect. 3d grass is also well done and hides a lot of the flat surrounding ground textures. Overall the ground layouts are of a high quality as you would expect from a payware scenery of this calibre. The airport is dominated by that huge expanse of ramp area and over 40 parking positions, the main parking areas have 17 positions in front of the terminal (8 - W stands) or the remote stands (9 - E stands). Surrounding Environs What impressed me with JustSim's (Digital Design) scenery in earlier releases was the sheer amount of environ object local scenery. And LOWS takes that amount of extra objects to a whole new level. You get everything in here from shopping centres, factories, commercial outlets, churches and even glass farming houses. All are set out in the local Austrian flavor with wooded chalets and steep snow moving alpine roofs. More modern flats and housing are also covered as is the main icons of the Salzburg "Old Town" (Altstadt) city centre. The Hohensalzburg Castle is in there as well, but is positioned precariously atop the Festungsberg. There are many of the famous baroque churches, but most are buried in the X-Plane scenery elevation changes. But overall the full cover of external area scenery is excellent. "Hangar 7" is a sponsored museum by "Red Bull" drinks. And the space age designs of the two half hangars that are positioned on the eastern boundary of the airport. The hangar(s) house a unique aircraft collection that includes rarities such as the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, a North American B-25J Mitchell, a Chance Vought F4U-4 "Corsair" and a DC-6. A selection of Red Bull Formula One Racing Cars are also on display. The dome style buildings have been well reproduced here in the scenery, but the roof glass is more see-through in reality, but it is well done. On the eastern side is small cargo area called Frachtgebaude, but there is no apron parking as all freight is tunneled by trucks under the runway from the main airport ramps. There is a major road under the runways but it is not in 3d but flat, it looks okay but is not realistic from certain viewing angles. Terminals and Control Towers In reality Salzburg Airport is not a very large facility. The huge rear carpark and shopping complex behind the terminals dwarfs the main airport buildings and from most angles makes the airport look far larger than it actually is. The main central terminal (One) is actually quite small and the second terminal to the south is used only for seasonal overflow flights. Terminal Onet is split into Schengen and non-Schengen areas. There are no airbridges at LOWS and most passenger aircraft to terminal transfers are by bus (Neoplan) or walk on. The detailing on the terminal including the excellent signage which is very good and the highlight is the expertly well done cafe/viewing terrace above the main building with "Red Bull" sponsorship. The secondary terminal (Two) is more modern but also more hangar like in detail. A lovely detailed static Austrian Airlines DC-3 is on display and adds well into the overall feel of the airport. There is a lot of branded airport equipment set out all around the ramps, and many are animated as well. I used the LOWS livery "Ground Handling Deluxe" by JARDesign to add in a bit of even more local flavor. The rear of the terminal landside areas have that huge carpark/shopping complex and all is very well fitted out to fill in the landside areas with ground carparking and bus terminal areas. The wavy connection roofing structures is showing the attention to detail in covering these often forgotten important areas. The control tower is situated in the corner of the L with a smaller ramp tower sitting next to it. This area is also incorporates the airport administration building that merges into a freight receiving area and airport equipment storage building (well done) with fuel tanker parking areas to the north (or rear depending on your visual viewpoint). To the far north is the large general aviation, private jet reception and main ramp overflow parking known as the "GAC" apron with 17 stands. There is also here a great selection of five large storage hangars. There is also a fuel depot with three large storage tanks. Everything in the airport central area in textures and building detailing is excellent, very realistic and all is really well completed... ... so it is surprising that something as small as setting the control tower view was overlooked. Press the (T) tower view and you are somewhere in the center of the ramp, swing around and you do get a great view of the excellent tower itself... but that is not the idea, is it? So any approach or departure views of the 15/33 runways are not available. Lighting Lighting of LOWS is very good, but there is not a lot of variations in the different styles of light tones. The excellent X-Plane default traffic lighting really helps as it passes over the northern boundary and under the approach RAIL lights (Runway Alignment Indicator Lights, also known as ALS). I really like the looming dark Alpine mountains at the point of very first light and dusk, if you want a great arrival or departure viewpoint, then these points of time are the best to use. The aprons are well lit, but more lighting is on offer on the outer E stands, than on the inner terminal W stands. The LH Regional CRJ-200 was just under the lighting spread for boarding, and so a little more throw would have been nice. Terminal building textures are excellent, and look really great at night, from an arrival view then certainly a nightime arrival as noted is the best option. All lighting areas are good, but the standout is the airport equipment storage building which looks amazing at night from any angle. So overall the LOWS lighting is good but it is not exceptional. Services W. A. Mozart Airport has grown per year slightly since 2005 with 1,695,430 passengers to 1,819,520 in 2014. Most services are seasonal and charter, but I have listed below only the current scheduled services. LCC (Low Cost Carriers) are also very frequent at LOWS and Ryanair has been flying here for 15 years. Almost all destinations are European, eastern block or Russian. airBalticRiga Air Berlin - Berlin-Tegel, Düsseldorf Austrian Airlines - Frankfurt, Vienna British Airways - London-Gatwick, London-Heathrow easyJet - Berlin-Schönefeld, Hamburg Eurowings operated by Germanwings - Cologne/Bonn FlexFlight - Augsburg Ryanair - London-Stansted S7 Airlines - Moscow-Domodedovo Scandinavian Airlines - Copenhagen, Oslo-Gardermoen SunExpress - Antalya Transavia - Amsterdam, Eindhoven, Rotterdam Turkish Airlines - Istanbul-Atatürk Summary Airport runway and building textures here are excellent and so is all the ground line and signage, overall the scenery is very good, a great investment and certainly worthy part of your European airport network. Arrivals and departures from Salzburg are some of the most scenic and if you use the southern approaches for departure or arrivals they are very challenging to the skills of only the master pilots of the simulator. A few quirks still remain in that static aircraft are obviously noticeable by their absence, a few GA's or Private jets would help, and a few LCC airlines on the ramps would certainly help in with the overall view, the airport is of course ready for X-Plane static arrangements, but really anything would help in with the cause. The lighting overall is good but not above average, with a few more different varieties of light tones would add into the general feel at night. And a fix for that "Tower" view? I am certainly a big fan of (JustSim) Digital Design's scenery, as they give you a lot of quality scenery (and not only just the airport, but a large spread of the local environs) and all at a great price. All their scenery are great investments and are highly usable, and LOWS Salzburg is their best yet. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Yes! LOWS W. A. Mozart - Salzburg Airport by Digital Design is NOW available from the X-Plane.Org Store here : LOWS- Salzburg Airport W. A. Mozart Price is US$19.50 Features Include: Shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on terminal and other airport buildings High resolution photo scenery near airport and city All autogen objects are manually placed High resolution ground textures / Custom runway textures Runway reflection effect Custom apron and runway lights High resolution building textures Optimized for excellent performance Animated custom ground vehicles X-Life traffic compatible Requirements: X-Plane 10.40 + (any edition) Windows, Mac, Linux 600Mb HD Space Available 1Gb VRAM Video Card Installation and documents: Download for LOWS - Salzburg is 428.70meg and the scenery is deposited in the "Custom Scenery" X-Plane folder at 934.40mb. Just deposit into your X-Plane Custom Scenery Folder A basic manual (3 pages) is provided. There are no charts, but a good LOWS download charts package is available here: VACC LOWS_Package_Complete Package ____________________________________________________________________________________ Review by Stephen Dutton 17th June 2016 Copyright©2016: X-PlaneReviews Review System Specifications: Computer System: Windows - Intel Core i7 6700K CPU 4.00GHz / 64bit - 8 Gb single 1067 Mhz DDR4 2133 - GeForce GTX 980/SSE2 - Samsung Evo 512gb SSD Software: - Windows 10 - X-Plane 10 Global ver 10.45 Addons: Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini Plugins: JARDesign Ground Handling Deluxe plugin - US$14.95 Scenery or Aircraft - CRJ-200 by JRollon Planes (X-Plane.OrgStore) - US$49.95 (sale specials are always available on the CRJ-200, so watch out for them!)
  25. Scenery Reviews : LOWL- Linz Blue Danube & LEGE - Girona Costa Brava Airports by JustSim There is always a welcome to any new developer to the X-Plane Simulator. That spread of talent is spread wide from someone with great skills and the "have a go" attitude to the large team based developers that are in the business of creating a professional product and building up a portfolio of work. When I first came into the X-Plane simulator the X-Plane world was ripe with pickings and you would think that the established big Flight Simulator art houses would have easily dominated X-Plane scenery with their huge product bases. But the big surprise was that in most cases their product was average to only very good and the smaller more agile art houses have given these giants not only a run for their money, but also easily outclassing them in areas that are very simply just plain obvious. The biggest mistake is that they come into X-Plane with a very Flight Simulator point of view and expect that what works very well in the fundamentally very different style of Flight Simulator can easily work quite well in X-Plane, and with that attitude they can't be more far wrong. Another big mistake is that they are still very unwilling to use the great effects and animations that X-Plane users now require as standard in any good scenery. A few of the art houses are now catching on, but most FS crossover sceneries are still very sterile places with not much movement and with average orthophoto underlay textures. Which brings us to the latest new crossover developer in "JustSIm" that have released their first sceneries for the X-Plane platform. The first X-Plane release was Nizhny Novgorod Airport - Strigino (UWGG) in Russia and that was followed with here LOWL- Linz Blue Danube Airport in Austria and that was very quickly then followed by the third release in LEGE - Girona Costa Brava that is situated in Northern Spain. It was appropriate to put the two of the reviews together to compare the two later releases and how they look and feel in X-Plane and their worth in quality to the simulator, we will start by visiting the beautiful Blue Danube in Northern Austria. LOWL- Linz Blue Danube Airport First Impression LOWL - Linz is just a short 30min commuter flight from LOWW (WIEN) Vienna. And you can easily set up a route, but in reality it is just as easy as just following the flowing line along the Danube River westward as both airports are situated close to the same stretch of water. Blue Danube Airport Linz was formerly named Hörsching Airport and is a minor international airport near Linz, the third-largest city of northern central Austria. In a flyby to go into a circuit for landing (westwards) on runway 08 the airport really blends in well into the X-Plane scenery. So well in fact does it blend in I actually selected at first the wrong airport in LOLW Wels that is only a few more nautical miles to the west. It didn't look right to my LOWL VOR (LNZ 116.60 MHz) reading and I was smart enough to trust my instruments more than my eyesight so no arrival time was lost. Tracking RWY 08 I noted the ILS alignment was slight out to the right (now corrected) but as my speed was in the low 100knts correcting the aircraft on landing was quite easy. On sight you have the main civil commercial airport to the north (left) and to the south lies the second largest barracks of Austria as well as a military airfield named “Fliegerhorst Vogler”. The airport was also a significant Luftwaffe airbase between 1943 to 1945 with both fighter and bomber wings that were based here. There is only one single runway in 09/27 3,000m (9,842ft) Asphalt and three spaced taxiways to the civil aprons. The main aprons are huge... massive, so there is plenty of parking space. Linz Airport (IATA: LNZ, ICAO: LOWL) 09/27 3,000m (9,842ft) Asphalt Elevation AMSL 977 ft / 298 m The main runway is situated exactly east - west and from all points of view the airport is exceedingly well crafted into the X-Plane environment. Runway surfaces and textures are extremely good and are perfectly real. Taxiway detail is first rate as well with local cone lighting and signage. Apron textures are deep and again well reproduced with excellent linage that can be a bit confusing with a first arrival as there is acres of lines and parking markers to choose from. There is no 3d grass but the grass textures are very deep with very realistic with so many different kinds of different types of variety to make it all quite real. So from a ground layout perspective JustSim's LOWL is overall excellent. The civil area is quite large but the central single terminal with built in fire station is only a small part of the overall layout. Most areas are to the west of the terminal with a huge maintenance hangar and many smaller hangar facilities. Then further west is the huge (for this medium sized airport) the Air Cargo Center. Which is three cargo facilities in one. The standout is the huge DB Schenker & Co Logistics complex that has been extremely well recreated. The one thing that really impressed me about this scenery and in fact both of these JustSim sceneries is the way they have not just created the airport with the terminals and basic airport infrastructure, but also created a very complete environment around the scenery. So you have local housing, industrial, factories and all the other various items that make up a visual respective of the area and this is important if you want to give the airport a good representation. The point that if can recognise the local flavour then the complete idea and aim of the scenery is achieved. Fliegerhorst Vogler - Military Airfield The south boundary is filled out with the huge Fliegerhorst Vogler base. The six huge hangars and smaller maintenance hangars dominate the base, but it is the smaller base buildings and accommodation (Flats) that is impressive for their realism in a visual factor. Only negative is the overall sterile feeling the area has, as there is no activity or any military equipment on display. Central Terminal Area Central Terminal with built in administration building and upper level Control Tower is impressive. Great detailing on all areas including the fine aerials on the tower for added realism and small detailing like the carpark (portabin) mobile offices and carpark filled quality vehicles. Main Terminal detail is exquisite. Not only to the excellent glass work, but the gantry viewing platform is a place to wile away a few hours of fun. Landside terminal arrival roof could have been easily just a basic structure. But instead it is a masterpiece of structural lattice work. Overall here around the terminal it is so excellent in every area in detailing. Far east is the airport ramp storage and vehicles. There is a lot of nice static vehicles and equipment set out, but more on set out the ramps would have been a filler. Moving out west from the central control tower and terminal is the Fire Station and fuel depot, both are well detailed and complete. Far along the ramp is the huge Linz airport maintenance hangar and those close smaller hangar facilities. You have to be impressed by it all, but the real quality is in the detailed roof glasswork and this overwhelming quality detailing is throughout this scenery. Far east on the ramp is the offices for the airport cargo operators and it is very well reproduced in detail. LOWL - Linz Lighting is again first rate. Approach and the overall view at night is very good. Runway lighting is perfect and there is excellent variety and many different tones with all the lights. South Military area is dark at night, but the side barracks and accommodation are well done and realistic. Ramp areas are well lit, but the lighting is very on the spot and struggles to cover the huge acreage, overall it is very good. Tower and terminal night textures are excellent, but you do have to have them turned right up in the settings to get this sort of quality, anything set lower and they look more blurred. Personally I have not seen night textures this good since TruScenery created that excellent Tampere-Pirkkala back in 2013. So there is this great feeling around LOWL at night. Negatives, not much as LOWL - Linz by JustSim is pretty impressive scenery, but you have to get close in for the details. If anything it is a bit sterile on the ramps. No Tower view is slightly annoying and no vehicle animations are a surprise as the Flight Simulator version has a lot? and only one static aircraft is totally overwhelmed by the sheer size of the apron as nothing on the Military side make the area look empty... so you feel very lonely and with not much airport buzz around you while parked out there. ___________________________________________________________ LEGE - Girona Costa Brava If you had lived through the early 70's then the words "Costa Brava" was an infamous place to have a holiday or as the US cousin's say a vacation. Deals of amazing numbers of a week at Costa Brava with full accommodation, flights and food cost only £60-£80... this was the start of the cheap package Spanish holiday. Problem was when you arrived for your exclusive "package" holiday you were greeted with not only no hotel, but just a building site and few workmen... and it all went downhill from there. These days the "package holiday" is a very slick and profitable operation and thankfully Costa Brava has become the international resort that it sort of promised to be in the 70's. In fact the English outnumber the Spanish easily now in the area and to note that Fish and Chip shops easily outnumber the Tapas bars... LEGE - Girona Airport Costa Brava so became the entry point for now hundreds and thousands of package holidaymakers, and the charter operators with every LCC (Low Cost Carrier) you can list also are all very well known here. Now you can join in the tourism exodus and find the Spanish sun because JustSim has released as their second scenery LEGE - Girona Costa Brava. Girona–Costa Brava Airport (IATA: GRO, ICAO: LEGE) 02/20 874m (2,4007ft), Asphalt Elevation AMSL 143 m / 469 ft The airport was built in 1965,but early passenger traffic was modest until the package operators sorted out their problems. Then in the early 2000s you saw the passenger numbers grow spectacularly after Ryanair chose Girona as one of its (off beat) European hubs. In 1993, Girona Airport dealt with only 275,000 passengers; in the six years from 2002 to 2008 passenger numbers then increased by nearly ten times from just over 500,000 to more than 5.5 million. located 12.5 km (7.8 mi) southwest of the city of Girona, next to the small village of Vilobí d'Onyar, in the north-east of Catalonia, Spain. The airport is well connected to the Costa Brava and the Pyrenees resorts. In many ways the layout of LEGE is very similar to the above LOWL without the huge cargo facilities and with no military presence. Like LOWL you have a huge (and very empty) apron area, and again the Control Tower is central to the apron with the terminal the same just slightly again to the east. To the west there are a few minimal old hangars and a decrepit Fire Station. Runway textures are first rate with worn cracks and in the need of a bit of attention due to age, but LCC's don't pay much in the way of landing charges do they so don't expect a new smoother surface very soon... Taxiway surfaces are also well worn and very realistic with great texture depth. Grass is the same heavy texturing but also has nice light 3d grass. Notable here like LOWL are the area environs. JustSim has completely covered the area and for a fair distance from the actual airport boundaries with great local surroundings that creates a great Spanish ambience. Everything is covered here from industrial areas to houses, housing estates, townships and to the south farms. X-Plane's traffic feature is expertly intergrated into the whole landscape create a perfect environment of the area. Control Tower and Terminal. The central area is dominated by the Control Tower. This high base for the airport's operations has been faithfully reproduced. Detailing is excellent with great glass, structures and a mass of aerials on the roof. Highlight is the mesh cage stairs at the rear which is very hard to replicate realistically... all is really well done. Tower view of both runway approaches are excellent and with the authentic aerials as part of the viewpoints for realism. The terminal building looks quite old by today's standards, but well done and recreated here by JustSim. Again the attention to detail is very good, but not as perfect as the terminal building in LOWL as overall it feels here it is like older designed scenery and not as sharp or as perfectly realised as in the case of the Austrian scenery. Roof top cafes (one each end of the building) is great detail as are the lighting and telecommunication cell structures. Noted is the excellent carparking structures that are really good and intricately done, JustSim are very good at this sort of fine detailing. A rare strange misstep though is the roads set out behind the terminal and around the carparks are very vague? Looking more like a park oval for parking as the grass textures are far more prominent than the road textures and the faint roadway linage? It glaringly doesn't work and shows up the scenery's age? Fuel depot and cell mast is well done at the east end of the airport. Landside associated infrastructure and signage is excellent, but you will need your textures set to high to get the higher detail. Unlike LOWL you do get a few (three) airport vehicle animations which help (a little) in the sterile feeling of the ramps. Lighting at LEGE - Girona Perfect approach and taxiway lighting is very well done, and the area surrounding the airport is very atmospheric and look really great on arrival at night. Dawn and dusk arrivals or departures are simply excellent. Central terminal areas are well done, but again the empty aprons feel big and open. But you can't doubt the quality lighting. Night building and tower textures are very good, but the glass textures are a little soft even at full settings, but they are atmospheric in design. There are over white areas under the terminal that are either left over from the Flight Simulator version or trying to do the not needed job that the X-Plane lighting can do better. So they look here slightly out of place. Overall the lighting is great for working the ramps at night. Away from the central area the lighting is more sporadic but well done with some good spot work. Landside it is not as well lit as Airside, but still done well where it counts. Overall the lighting is excellent. Scenery negatives are few, but the missing rear terminal roads look odd as just grass textures and thus then creating island buildings in a sea of textured grass. You need the power to see the texture detail, but very worth it when the dial is turned up. As the dawn broke it was time to take another load of burnt, sunbaked, broke tourists home to Manchester UK. So the x737 was fueled up, filled up and we left Girona on time and not without the great overhead views of the LEGE scenery from the climbing aircraft. ___________________________________________________________ Summaries Before surmising the sceneries here then first think about the prices? US$18 for LOWL - Linz and US$15.50 for LEGE - Girona. Now add in the excellent high-quality of the work on offer here and I think you are getting great bargains for the money. Even with selecting both sceneries together is cheaper than some larger sceneries on offer. So for value you are getting excellent scenery at an amazing prices. LEGE - Girona does feel in design far older than LOWL - Linz so yes Linz is certainly the better scenery of the two on offer here. No doubt the high-quality of the work is excellent, and these are two great sceneries for your collection. You do however still feel the sterile emptiness of both of the huge ramps, as one large static and a few General Aviation aircraft does not make up for a buzzy airport, ditto the vehicle animations and as where as the FS version is full of movement then the X-Plane versions have only three animations at LEGE and a boring none at LOWL... could do better there. So if you want to bring in the tourists you are going to have to fill the ramps out more yourself. But for sheer quality then both airports are first class and very good, a major feature is the fact so much of the immediate areas surrounding the airports have had as much attention as well with local flavour and infrastructure and that gives you a great all over feel for the areas. First glance I thought both airports were good to just very good. But brilliant detailing and excellent close intricate work is simply overwhelmingly well done. So the value and depth of quality is when accessed in detail is certainly very evident. So am now a big fan of JustSim's work, yes certainly it is very good and X-Plane should certainly welcome their choice to develop for the simulator with these new releases of high standard sceneries. Yes! the both LOWL - Linz and LEGE - Girona by JustSim are NOW available from the new X-Plane.Org Store here : LOWL- Linz Blue Danube Airport Price is US$18.00 Requirements: X-Plane 10+ (any edition) Windows, Mac, Linux 600Mb HD Space Available 1Gb VRAM Video Card LEGE - Girona Costa Brava Airport Price is US$15.50 Requirements: X-Plane 10.40 + (any edition) Windows, Mac, Linux 600Mb HD Space Available 1Gb VRAM Video Card Minimum. 2GB VRAM Recommended Installation and documents: Download for LOWL - Linz is 343.50meg and the scenery is deposited in the "Custom Scenery" X-Plane folder at 963.90mb. Download for LEGE - Girona is 324.40meg and the scenery is deposited in the "Custom Scenery" X-Plane folder at 743.80mb. Both sceneries have sets of charts and ground layout charts. Note. You have two sets of folders with LEGE with : LEGE_JustSim_Girona_Terrain LEGE_JustSim_Girona_Airport You MUST put the "Terrain" folder below the "Airport" folder in your .ini X-Plane custom scenery list for the scenery to work correctly. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Reviews by Stephen Dutton 7th April 2016 Copyright©2016: X-PlaneReviews Review System Specifications: Computer System: Windows - Intel Core i7 6700K CPU 4.00GHz / 64bit - 8 Gb single 1067 Mhz DDR4 2133 - GeForce GTX 980/SSE2 - Samsung Evo 512gb SSD Software: - Windows 10 - X-Plane 10 Global ver 10.45 Addons: Saitek x52 Pro system Joystick and Throttle : Sound - Bose Soundlink Mini Plugins: JARDesign Ground Handling Deluxe plugin - US$14.95 Scenery or Aircraft - ATR 72-500 by Aerosoft (X-Plane.OrgStore) - US$32.05 - Boeing x737 by EADT x737 Project (X737 Project) - Free!
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