| Just Flight Real Scenery Airfields - Denham |
| Monday, 07 July 2008 | |
 This excellent scenery for Denham airfield, just outside of London Heathrow, is the first in Just Flight’s new range of highly realistic and atmospheric airfields for FSX. The airfield has been known as a training and general aviation airfield for many years and is also home to the London Air Ambulance Unit. The airfield has been developed by Just Flight’s in-house team and includes all the buildings and features that make the airfield instantly recognisable to those who have been there. Thanks to unique technology that is not available in any other product, you will see snow on the ground during the December and January months to add to the realism.
Installation is quick and easy, you will just need to run the installer and verify that you have a legitimate copy over the internet, all which takes a few seconds. Then you are ready to go! Check out this review's screenshots!!! The product comes with a short manual that gives you a brief description of the airfield and offers guidance on how to get the best performance from the add-on. This tool gives you the option of removing the static AI, animated people, flocks of birds, traffic around the airfield, select the enhanced terrain mesh and to be able to turn the snow on the ground effects on or off. The enhanced terrain mesh is high resolution (10m) mesh for the airfield and surrounding area. I decided to try the product with all the little extras and eye candy running with maximum settings on FSX, which had a significant hit on my frame rates, dropping to around the 12fps mark. After that I used the recommended settings in the manual and turned off the animations around the airfield and removed the static AI and my frame rates rose back to their normal level. The animations are a nice touch but I didn’t really notice them when I was flying around the airfield, but when on the ground they do add to the atmosphere of the place. A small criticism I would have of the manual is that there is no tutorial flight included that takes you on a circuit around the airfield and makes it clear to you which visual reference points to look for so that you don’t get lost, but finding out for yourself is sometimes more fun! This scenery will blend in perfectly with either Just Flights VFR Real Scenery packages (for which there is a separate texture set you can load via the configuration tool) and with the default FSX scenery. I was combining it with VFR Real Scenery London and it does exactly what it says on the tin and blends in perfectly. Thanks to the extended photo-real ground textures around the airfield it is very easy to perform VFR circuits around the airfield as there are so many reference points to begin your turns, real VFR flying! There are no charts included in the manual, but if you go to the Denham website (http://www.egld.com/airfieldinfo.html) you will find charts for the airfield. The scenery is so good you won’t even need to refer to your GPS when practicing your circuits. The first few I flew were a little erratic when I looked at my flight path, but after a few circuits they got better and better. Scattered around the airfield you will find many buildings and extra objects such as fuel pumps, helicopter landing dollies, hoists, cars etc…. All the buildings are based on up-to-date research and photographs which reflect the current state of the airfield. There are also other buildings around the perimeter which are closely associated with the airfield; the Air Cadets Hut, Biggles Restaurant and Aunt Mabel’s Cottage (from the children’s TV Program Come Outside). The ground and buildings also get their own custom night textures, and approaching the airfield at night gives a totally different atmosphere compared to the day as it all seems much quieter. Overall I think this package is a great opening airfield for Just Flight’s new range. It targets an area which is sometimes overlooked by developers and gives pilots who prefer a slower pace to their flying somewhere to enjoy FSX. The area covered is only small, but the amount of detail packed into that area is fantastic. It’s not an airfield that I would normally have ever considered flying around, but thanks to this scenery I feel I may be visiting Denham many more times in the future. If you have the VFR Real Scenery for the London area installed on your system then there is a massive area which you can practice your VFR skills and then return to Denham afterwards. Just Flight have once again done what they set out to do and created a highly realistic and atmospheric airfield for FSX Further screenshots of the airfield combined with VFR Real Scenery London can be seen here: http://forum.justflight.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=320
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