| Aerosoft VFR London X |
| Tuesday, 30 September 2008 | |
|
Prepare to be blown away! This is the best scenery add-on I have seen for FSX; nothing else can come close to it. As the title suggests, this is a review for a new VFR scenery add-on for London from Aerosoft. What makes this VFR scenery different from all the others is that fact that it is 3D! Previously I have reviewed VFR scenery for this area which is available from JustFlight which was fantastic scenery whilst you were in the air, but when you got down to ground level the scenery was flat, the buildings weren’t actually there, but with this release from Aerosoft they are. With such a huge amount of data you would think that all this must come as a large download, and you are not wrong. The download file is a colossal 1.3gb, even with my fast broadband connection it still took close to an hour, it might be an idea to get the kettle on while this is downloading. The installation size isn’t small either, weighing in at 1.4gb, but with all the scenery which is added to FSX its understandable. Installation is quick and easy, you just need to follow the on screen prompts and enter your registration key and you’re done. Before taking your first flight in London after installation PLEASE READ THE MANUAL! it gives you some very important tips on how to set up your simulator in order to get the best out of the scenery. The scenery is a big resource hog and it took me a long time to get things set up just how I wanted them. After installation I had some major problems in that every time I took off from London City (EGLC) after around 20secs FSX would crash, even on the lowest scenery settings. After a few emails with Aerosoft the problem lies with how Vista accesses memory, I have 4gb of RAM, but Vista only accesses 2gb by default, so Aerosoft pointed me in the direction of an article which talks you through how to alter Vista so that it will use more RAM (http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/archive/2007/06/15/fsx-and-win32-process-address-space.aspx). Aerosoft do recommend that you use Windows XP for this add-on, but after applying this fix I have had no issues using FSX, infact I have been able to increase my scenery settings further for my regular FSX flights. If you do apply this fix to Vista, please make sure to create a back-up/restore point incase anything should go wrong. After loading up again after applying this fix I was achieving fantastic frame rates averaging at around 25fps.
After reading through the manual and adjusting the settings, I decided to save them so that I could tweak them as necessary until I found a good trade off between performance and quality. The scenery settings I created I only use for flying around London because the manual suggests turning the autogen scenery off and reducing the weather settings to increase performance. If you use these scenery settings somewhere other than London, the land will be very flat! OK, so everything is installed, the scenery has been adjusted, it’s time to go! The manual recommends that you use something small like a Cessna to explore the scenery as you will quickly pass it by in a large jet. Personally I thought that even a Cessna was too quick and soon found myself flying around the area in Helicopters. I think it is a far better way to explore the area as it allows you to get down really low and in-between the buildings to really have some fun, you can even land on the helipads on top of the buildings. Immediately after take off the views which you get are amazing. I was using my Track IR headset whilst flying so viewing the scenery was much easier than having to use the hat switch to pan around the cockpit; this is another add-on which I highly recommend for use with scenery such as this. The best way to start exploring the scenery after taking off from London City is to follow the River Thames through the city; many of the landmarks are alongside the river. As you snake your way past the Millennium Dome, Thames Barrier, Big Ben, Millennium Wheel and Battersea Power Station you will soon realise the amount of detail included in the package, nothing can come close to it. All too soon though you will come to the end of the scenery area, so just turn around and head back, but this time over the city itself. Fly over Buckingham Place whilst flying towards the BT Tower, turn around and head on towards the Gherkin with Canary Wharf just ahead in the distance. Down below there is a photographic scenery on which all the buildings stand, so you can follow the roads and railway lines if you choose. Don’t forget to stop off along the way at Charlton Athletic’s ground and The Oval Cricket Ground. As I was flying over the city I loaded up FSWidgets freeware GMAP program which connects to Google Earth and FSX to show you where you are flying. I was amazed that the cranes which are included on the Google Earth maps were actually there in the scenery in FSX! Speaking of the photographic scenery, this comes as 2.4m, 1.2m or 60cm per pixel to cater for users with lower end systems. I opted for the 60cm scenery for the pictures in this review, but to switch between them is very simple, you just need to activate and deactivate them in the scenery library. If you think the scenery is good by day, it’s just as good at night. To conserve the disk space this scenery is only included at 2.4m per pixel and it is fantastic to fly over the city seeing all the buildings lit up just as they are in real life. Flying over the area at night creates a whole new atmosphere and is a lot of fun. You wont see the extreme detailing as with the day textures, but the night lighting is very effective. I don’t think I will ever become bored of this scenery because it just has so much to offer. Microsoft boast that FSX is ‘As Real As It Gets’ and with this add-on Aerosoft have proved that FSX combined VFR London X, it is as real as it gets. The download size is huge, as is the installation size. You will need to spend a lot of time tinkering with your system to get everything set just right in order to get the best out of the scenery, and then going back and changing things again and again to get the best trade off between quality and performance. But in the end it just doesn’t matter as the end result more than compensates for the time and frustration it has taken in order to get everything set-up correctly. As you have probably guessed by now I love this add-on and highly recommend it, it only costs €32.95, and that price is an absolute bargain. Even if you are not a regular flyer in the London area, or have never flown there in FSX, this add-on will give you hours and hours of enjoyment. Please follow the link below to a slideshow of a selection of the screenshots I have taken of this scenery. http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v508/rob16584/Aerosoft%20VFR%20London%20X/?albumview=slideshow
Product Page: http://www.aerosoft.com/cgi-local/re/iboshop.cgi?showd,,D10806 System Requirements: Microsoft Flight Simulator X (Compatible with SP1 or SP2 / Acceleration Pack) |
