| Aerosoft Germany Bremem |
| Saturday, 11 November 2006 | |
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Aerosoft Scenery Germany Bremen Review Before I go any further with writing this review, let's get one thing clear from the start: This scenery does not cause a noticeable drop in frame rates. Now that that's over with....
Bremen is a port city situated long the river Weser, about 50km south from where it flows out into the North Sea . It was one of the main bases of American troops after WW2, and nowadays is famous for it's technical university. The population of the city is in excess of 500,000 with a large contingent of students making up that number (an estimated 25,000 in 1998). Many of the sights of Bremen can be found in the old town, which is an oval area surrounded by the river.
As usual with an Aerosoft product, there is an extensive list of features. The superb 39 page manual written in German and English is a great place to start. There are detailed installation instructions over the first few pages, and tips of how to get the best out of the product. The manual then moves on to give information about the 14 airports in the project as well as the glider fields. Only 8 of the airports are created in high detail,these are: • EDXQ Rotenburg/Wümme • EDWV Verden/Scharnhorst • EDWK Karlshöfen • EDWQ Ganderkesee / Atlas Airfield • EDWB Bremerhaven am Luneort And the glider fields: • Tarmstedt/Westertimke • Hoya • Nordenham Blexen There are also 5 heliports included for the whirlybird contingent out there. A helicopter would be a great choice of transport to explore this product! For each of the detailed airfields the manual gives a little bit of history about the airport, and then provides you with some information about the airport's location, services and facilities on offer. Sadly there are no charts included with the package. This would've been a nice touch to help people navigate around the airfields, but I had no difficulty in performing approaches when testing this product.
Many scenery add-ons are release with very little information as to where to fly in the area to see the sights on offer. You can have two views on this: 1) It's good as it encourages you to explore the region and find things for yourself or 2) It will frustrate you as you will set off into the unknown exploring the region, only to find out later that you have been flying in the wrong direction! Aerosoft have sorted this problem by providing a short flight tutorial for you to follow along just until you get to grips with the region. This is a nice touch and helps to set you on your way and doesn't have you wasting your time by going in the wrong direction. You've just got to bear in mind to watch those dials so you don't drift off course while you're enjoying the scenery. As always with any product, there are known issues that can cause the end user some problems, but the most common problems are listed at the end of the manual, along with the and explanation/fix to the problem. For any problems that you may discover that are not covered in the manual, then there is the excellent support service at Aerosoft to revert to for help.
After the first few hours of flying about the area, I found that the best way to explore it, was to just fly straight up the river. This route gave me hours of fun. I didn't set out to be in the air for hours, but each time I was thinking of landing and turning off for the night, something else popped into view on the horizon and drew me in to have a look at it. This is what makes this such a good product. It may only be small in terms of coverage, but the development team have worked their magic and it's one of those add-ons that you'll just keep coming back to for more and more. You don't even need to have a purpose to your flight when you take-off. Just head up the river and see what takes your fancy, and head off in whatever direction you want. No matter where you are in the region, there will be something that will catch your eye and draw you in.
Something that I really liked about this product was that the factory chimneys actually produce smoke, and the windmills on the wind farms are rotating as well. Another nice touch that just adds to the completeness of the product. The screen shots that are included with this review are only handful of what I actually took, there really is that much to see.
The port area immediately grabbed my attention as I flew over it, the variety of ships, buildings and cranes adds to the realism as it looks as though the port could actually be alive. Maybe as an update to the package Aerosoft could add in some AI boats moving about the port and river, and have the cranes loading and unloading them.
The buildings in the area are a vast improvement on the autogen buildings, as you would expect with a payware product. The buildings look great from afar, but loose none of their resolution as you get up close to them, which is great when you want to get up close to see what they are. For those of you who live in the Bremen region, or fly there lots, this add-on is a must. With the superb detail on offer for what seems like a cheap price, it wouldn't surprise me to see groups of people buying it and then setting up a virtual flying club operating in the region. During testing I never got bored of flying there, and with the 8 detailed airports, along with the glider strips, heliports and other airports, this package has a great lifespan to keep you coming back to it over and over again. Until Aerosoft decide to make another city that is.... Now go forth and explore PAY8156 System requirements: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 Windows 98/2000/ME/XP Pentium III from 2,4 GHz 256 Mb RAM 3D graphics card with 128 Mb RAM Download Size: unknown yet Install Size: 200 MB http://www.aerosoft.com/cgi-local/re/iboshop.cgi?showd,,D10101 |
