| Just Flight VFR Real Scenery - Northern England |
| Monday, 07 July 2008 | |
 Since the release of FSX there has been some breathtaking scenery produced by the various developers, but in my opinion the leaders by a long way are Just Flight. They have been producing incredibly high detail scenery for both large areas of England and recently individual airports, but with no impact on frame rates. In some cases they even increase. The most recent release in their VFR Real Scenery series is volume 4, which covers Northern England. This scenery is only available as a boxed DVD package, not surprising when you consider it takes up 10Gb on your hard drive. The price (currently) is £21.99/€32.95/$43.99 which is a very reasonable price when you take into account the amount of coverage you are getting from the package.
Check out the slideshow of this review!!! After receiving VFR Vol 4 in the post (with the box cracked thanks to the postman ramming it through the letterbox!) installation was quick and easy, you just need to click a few boxes and switch the DVD’s over when prompted. The scenery comes on 3 DVD’s, but only 2 are in the box as one of them is double sided. When installing I didn’t realise this at first and had the DVD the wrong way up, easily solved as installation will not continue until it is in the right way. Whilst the add-on is installing, take time to have a flick through the short manual which gives guides on how best to set up your system to get the most out of the scenery. I thought that because I am from the North of England I would be able to give a more accurate review of this package than most of the others I have reviewed, mainly because I know some of the areas very well and will be able to comment more accurately on them, mainly the West Yorkshire area. So what it VFR scenery? VFR stands for Visual Flight Rules, where pilots look at map and then use landmarks on the ground to work out their position. Doing this in FSX with the default terrain is near on impossible because real landmarks are only included in the cities which are covered in high detail by default. This scenery changes all that! Just Flight have used the very latest digital aerial images of the UK to develop this stunning scenery, and along with the superb 9.6m terrain mesh, flying over the areas covered by the scenery really is ‘As Real As It Gets’. If you live in the areas covered by the scenery, then the best way to start is be taking off from your local airport and trying to find landmarks which you know well. I departed from Leeds Bradford airport in the default Ultra Light as it gives a great field of view (especially when using TrackIR Ultra). Some of my family live around the airport area, so my first task was to pick out their house, which was even easier than I thought it would be. Even when flying very low the scenery doesn’t loose any of it’s sharpness, so when on short finals the scenery is just as good as when you are in the air. I found the best altitude to view the scenery was from around 3,500ft, but this is just personal preference. The next landmark on the agenda was Headingley Stadium, home to the Leeds Rhinos and Yorkshire County Cricket Club. When aircraft are on finals to rwy32 and Leeds Bradford, the ILS takes them straight over the stadium, so it was just a case of flying the runway heading for rwy14 until the stadium came into view. And again, the it was easy to pick it out as the scenery is so good! If you just glance to the right when you are over the ground you will be able to make out Elland Road stadium. It’s amazing how close they are to each other when seen from the air, it takes less than a couple of minutes to fly from one to the other. Loads better than the 30mins it takes by car! After my initial flight around the Leeds area I decided to venture further afield and try to find my house. At first this was difficult and was a hopeless task, so I flew back towards the M62 and used that as my guide, and after a while I found my house with ease. A problem, if you can call it that, which I noticed was that large buildings such as tower blocks and cooling towers appear to be a little odd in the scenery because they are just laid flat on the surface, this is more than likely a compromise that has had to be made with the scenery but not a major drawback. This was only noticeable when I zoomed really close into the object or was flying very low. So after successfully locating my house, I decided to fly over to Manchester airport flying true VFR. I have driven to the airport many times before, so opted to follow the route which I take by car, and I cannot believe how easy it was to do so! As I was flying along I had FSWidgets GMAP open to see if I could find any omissions from the scenery. There were none. Even the farm along the M62 when the motorway has had to be split in 2 to get around it was there. After landing at Manchester I thought it would be best to explore then country side and the northern part of the scenery. So I departed from Manchester and headed up the west coast passing Blackpool Pleasure beach along the way and ventured into the countryside where the new terrain mesh was all too evident. The Lake District has never looked so good in FS, the hills rise and fall and look great, all the lakes and rivers are included and the textures of the area are a enormous improvement on the default, which by comparison are poor. Just don’t get stuck out here at night as you may struggle to get home because the night lighting is as it is in real life; minimal. After spending some time exploring the Lake District I turned to the east and headed for Newcastle and followed the east cost back down to Humberside Airport and flew around the Humber Estuary for a while before landing. To sum up, I have spent many hours exploring and enjoying this scenery. If it’s there in real life then it will be there in this scenery. Initially I thought that I might have to refer to the GPS to get my bearings so that I knew where I was flying, but I didn’t have to do this once. That’s how good the scenery is. Of course it may have been easier for my to recognise some of the landmarks and know where I was because I am from the area, but I don’t think anyone will even want to use the GPS because there is so much enjoyment to be had when flying over this region. Even though Just Flight have release the area of Leeds and Bradford as a separate package, I think it may be a little foolish if you were to purchase just this area. For twice the price of that package, you can be enjoying the whole of Northern England in fantastic high resolution detail. System Requirements: FSX In a nutshell, if you normally get good performance from FSX, then you shouldn’t have any trouble running this add-on. |
