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Ok, I am
going to turn this review on it’s head by starting with the line “go get it
now”.
I do this
because I hope that by the time you have finished reading this review you will
see that you won’t want to delay getting your order in progress!
The product
on review here is Aerosoft’s
German Airfields 1-Island Hopping. This is the
start of a new scenery series from this acclaimed developer specifically
designed
 for FSX. Eventually the series will cover the whole of Germany and will
amount to 11 parts in total. Even though this series will cover just the smaller airports
Aerosoft say they are going to need eleven parts due to the amount of detail
they wish to pack in, and some detail it is..
The scenery
is based mainly upon the Frisian islands which stretch along the north east
coast of Germany and extend into the coast of The Netherlands. The German
islands are covered here along with a couple of smaller mainland airports too.
There are 15 airfields in total and a bonus landing strip on Pellworm, a nature
reserve.
Most of the
islands are protected wildlife areas and you can see when flying over them why
they would be attractive to birds, with marshlands and unpopulated areas as
habitat.
Enclosed in
this boxed version on review is the installation disc, a printed manual split
into German and English language and a book of AIP charts covering all of the 15
airfields on offer. What you also get is full update support from Aerosoft. I
mention this because I also have in my locker MyTraffic X and the support I have
had from Aerosoft has been superb. Installation was a breeze and took a mere 5
minutes to complete using the auto-installer routine. (I do hate software which
expects you to delve into file structures to get going).
The system
requirements specify you must have FSX Service Pack 1 installed and 600mb free
disk space. I am running it with FSX Acceleration installed with no issues.
If you own
any other Aerosoft sceneries for Germany there is no need to worry because
German Airfields is designed to run alongside those and if you install over
German Landmarks it will even enhance it by overwriting with a better version of
some of the objects.
Installed along with the scenery is an FSX mission
designed to take you through the islands. Unfortunately
this is offered only for German speakers. My German is
not up to scratch so I elected
to load up a Cessna, grab my trusty world atlas and go
for it. I got an unexpected surprise when choosing the
plane when I noticed an additional livery had been added
to my list. Very nice it is too, as can be seen from the
screenshot.
The islands stretch out along the coast so the best
route is to start at one end and fly along the chain.
They are close enough together so that the next one
comes into view before leaving the one you are over. The
beaches look stunning and you can make out the
marshlands and sand dunes, all of this enhanced by the
very detailed mesh included. Around some of the
airfields is what looks to be a flood barrier, a raised
bank of earth as protection.
Flightsimming is a great way to
enhance your knowledge of the worlds geography I must
own up to not knowing of the Frisian islands until
installing this package. Perhaps we could tell schools
to drop boring geography lessons on rock strata etc and
just let the students fly the world using FSX, I am
convinced more would be learnt that way.
The area is a great place to start this scenery series,
not just because the Microsoft default version is
practically non-existent but the size of the islands
allows the developer to include full photo textures as
well as accurate coastlines, individually placed autogen
and a plethora of buildings and other structures
specific to the area.
Look out for the sightseeing cyclists on the fence lines
at some airports, I put on a bit of an aerobatic show
for them but they didn’t seem overly impressed! You get
snow coverage on the mainland airfields but not on the
islands, this is realistic due to the warm surrounding
sea water. All this details adds up to a very convincing
“feel” to the islands which makes you want to reach for
the travel brochures.
There is a nice mix of airport types here, some with
tarmac and others with just grass runways. Taking off at
Wyk can be a challenge if you try it with anything
requiring a longer runway due to the pine trees
surrounding the field. On other islands there are
virtually no trees, the North Sea winds have kept the
islands fairly barren but Aerosoft have made up for that
with plenty of houses on view and harbors & marinas full
of tourist boats. There are a few gull flocks flying
around adding to the holiday atmosphere and you can even
hear them - a great inclusion because some of the
airport charts list this as a hazard to beware of. All
we need is some salt air now for the picture to be
complete!
The photo-textures are 1 meter per pixel resolution
which means they look great for VFR flight right the way
down to 1000ft altitude. This is a big improvement over
FS2004 and at 2500ft and above they are pin sharp. The
manual gives recommended display settings, which when
reading them makes you wonder what your frame rate is
likely to be. Scenery Complexity and Autogen is set to
max which is not usually a setting I would use to get
the best from FSX but seem to work perfectly well for
this scenery with smooth flowing action. This is
probably helped by the size of the islands and the lack
of trees. That said, even the airfields included on the
mainland work fine with frames in the low twenties or
above. I do notice an increase in texture load times and
when I zoom around the views from VC to outside then my
machine sometimes struggles to keep up, but this is the
norm when photo-textures are involved.
Local AI traffic has been included in the package too
with specific liveries for the area. I saw plenty of AI
action even at the smaller islands, probably more than
they would get at this type of field but it all helps to
bring the islands to life.
The scenery objects themselves have been expertly
crafted and stand up to close inspection well. There is
a mention in the manual that they were unable to get the
windsocks to work correctly but this is a minor thing in
my view.
I hope I have made you glad you
ordered first as I feel that German Airfields 1
represents excellent value for money. There is just one
last thing to mention. Now that you are eagerly waiting
for the box to arrive, make sure you fully read the
manual when it drops onto your doormat because there is
an Easter egg in there waiting for you……I’ll say no
more!
Keith Hackett
Keith.hackett@btinternet.com
System
Specification of PC used for this review
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Intel Core2 Duo E6600
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NVidia Geforce 8800GTX 768mb
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2 x 250Gb
HDD (one purely for FSX)
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2gb Ram
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24 inch Dell
LCD running at 1600x1200
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