3. Active Ground Equipments and other 3D Objects

The scenery animations are what give life to the airport. There are plenty of support vehicles near the gates and cars cruising on the roads, which I think is a great addition to the photographic textures and moving gates. They serve no practical purpose, but if you system can handle the load they will make the airport environment much better. In this scenery is included an active set of ground handling equipments for the AI traffic. The equipments are automatically activated as soon as the AI aircraft reach the parking position and switch off the engines, and are removed when the AI aircraft is ready to start the taxi for takeoff.

The static objects of the airport (buildings, control tower, hangars, etc.) are designed individually and the texture's quality is similar to those of the rest of the scenery. There are lots of static objects on this scenery, and they generally look very detailed. I definitely like the animated and static objects!

4. Night textures

Night textures are something really important to me. I enjoy doing IFR night flights, and I need proper illumination in order to complete a successful flight. It's no fun flying in the dark!

  
 

This cloud9 scenery features adequate lighting, despite the fact that most of the spotlights are too big -- that gives a slightly fakeish look to the gates area. Another problem with the lights is that they are apparently activated by distance. You will only be able to see the lights at the end of the runway once you are in short final -- it's a little weird to see the lights magically going on as you approach the airport. I'm sure there is a reason for this limit, but I can't see why the distance is so short. In spite of the problems mentioned before, the ground is well illuminated and the airport blends well with its surroundings at night.

5. Performance

It's hard to say anything about a photographic scenery's performance, since it depends a lot on the simmer's hardware and software configuration. The best way to find out how the scenery will perform in your computer is to actually test it by yourself. This is made very easy with the cloud9's trial system, which lets you test the scenery for a limited time before purchasing it. I definitely suggest that you download the trial and give this scenery a try.

Generally speaking, I have found this scenery to perform significantly worse than the default scenery and even some of the payware sceneries on the market. This performance hit can be noticed even with no AI Traffic, which suggests that there might be an optimization problem with the textures. The performance is reduced at night, because of all the scenery and city lights that must be rendered together with everything else.

Conclusion

I love it. The ground textures are incredibly detailed, alike the animated and static objects such as service vehicles, buildings, gates and terminals. I'm sure that great effort was made in order to make the airport look as good as possible -- and they have definitely achieved that! The active gates were wisely programmed so that the gates will start moving as soon as you're parked -- this is something that I've never seen before and is definitely one of the best features of the airport.

Although there is no "special scenery" for the LAX surroundings, the airport blends perfectly with city textures and night lighting is adequate. The performance of the package was somewhat disappointing (specially at night), but this is true only for my system -- you might experience better performance depending on your hardware.

My ultimate recommendation is that you head over to cloud9's website and download the free trial of this Los Angeles scenery! See how it performs on your system, see if you like the textures and then make your decision to purchase it or not! The free trial looks and works exactly like the full product, so you know exactly what you are getting before purchasing!

The cloud9 KLAX scenery is priced at $23.99. Check the developer's website for more details: www.fscloud9.com

PROS:

// Photographic ground textures looks great!
// Active Gates and Active Marshalls -- my favorite features!
// The animated objects gives a realistic look to the airport
// Night textures are adequate for night flights.
// The airport blends well with its surroundings

CONS:

// Performance is significantly reduced in the LAX area
// The spotlights look too big at night, and you can only see all the airport's lights on short final

Final grade: 9/10

Congratulations, cloud9!