For those of you who live outside of the UK, you probably won’t have heard of the Isle of Wight. The Isle of Wight is an English island and county off the southern English coast, to the south of the county of Hampshire. It was a popular holiday resort in Victorian times and the summer residence of Queen Victoria. The island is well known for it’s natural beauty and is still a popular holiday resort today.

As you may have already gathered, if this outstanding beauty could be transferred to FSX, then the end user will be in for a real treat. Just Flight have kindly given me 3 of their VFR Real Scenery products to review, this being the first and smallest. It may seem an odd area to develop with it’s relatively small size, but this mini-package also forms part of the VFR Real Scenery Volume 2 (Central and Southern England), also available from Just Flight. So in some ways this is a great move by Just Flight to try and tempt users into trying a small and well priced (£9.75) add-on before jumping into the extended scenery. The small download size (100mb) is also handy for those on slower internet connections as this product is only available via download, but the VFR Real Scenery Volume 2 is available as a DVD Rom.

After the quick download installation was very easy, just click the installer and then verify online that the copy is genuine and you’re good to go. I like Just Flight’s way of authenticating their products as it is very easy and helps to combat pirate copies. After installing the product I would recommend reading the manual, it’s very short and gives you some valuable tips on how to set up your system to get the best out of the scenery. When you have done that, load up FSX and position yourself at one of the 2 airports on the island, Sandown or Bembridge. Both of these are small airports and are ideal for smaller sightseeing aircraft, perfect for exploring the scenery. Both of these airports are situated on the eastern side of the island, but because the island is so small, you can easily complete a circuit of the island in around 30 minutes.

Look at the difference in colours from the default in the distance

Immediately when you load up at the airports and move into spot mode the difference between the default scenery and the real scenery is noticeable straight away, the whole area is greener and looks more like a real place, and when you take to the skies the difference is extra-ordinary. I found that flying between 2500-4500 feet gave the best results, but the scenery was still well focussed up to much higher levels, although when flying over it in a jet at FL250 the area is very blurry, but this doesn’t matter so much as when you are flying VFR you wont be at FL250. The clarity when flying at lower altitudes is spot on even down to a few hundred feet, no blurries at all. As you explore the island more, trust me you’ll want to, the scenery is faultless. All the trees look real, the farmland is very realistic and everything blends together superbly. For true VFR flight between landmarks, it is very easy using this scenery. The scenery uses Inforterra’s 25cm aerial photographic data of England and Wales to create such high resolution scenery, which is optimised for 1m display in FSX. Also included is a 9.6m digital terrain data which vastly improves the relief of the area, so you can be certain that what you are flying over in FSX is as close to the real thing as possible.

As you venture towards to the western most point of the island you come across the famous Needles Rocks and lighthouse, all specially rendered in 3D for this package. The lighthouse also comes with a helipad on top of it. If I were able to fly choppers, then the Needles Lighthouse would be a great spot to practice those landings. When you move further around the coast the cliffs look great. The textures add to the realism effect and when coupled with the fantastic FSX water effects make for some great photos. But if you don’t want to have the FSX water effects, you can turn them off and JustFlight have included photographic water scenery to still give you a great experience. Continue your trip back towards the airfields and you pass over the built up areas of the Isle of Wight. Looking down on them it’s easy to make out the residential areas and the roads so that if you wanted to get from one side of the island to the other just by following a road, you can do. If you like to see the FSX traffic moving up and down the roads, it still does with this scenery due to Microsoft getting the placement of the roads spot on. When night falls the custom night lighting, where the light effects have been added individually to each part of the scenery for maximum accuracy and realism, makes the island look completely different, but at the same time very real. And because the scenery is real, you can easily make it back to the airport without the need to use the GPS so that you can fill up the fuel tanks and make the flight all over again.

To sum up then, this package from JustFlight is a great taster for what you can expect in the full VFR Real Scenery packages. It’s not an area that people will normally think to fly around, but the scenery has completely changed the way the island looks, The price is very good (£9.75) and the download size (100mb) very manageable for people with slower internet connections. Even though the scenery is incredibly detailed the frame rates of my system never dropped and remained high to give a very smooth flight. If you live in the Isle of Wight or regularly fly around the area, then this package is a must. A couple of things that I would have liked to have seen included are custom scenery for the 2 airports on the island, this would have really rounded of the package to make it totally complete, but this package is scenery only, and adding in airport scenery may have driven the cost up a little. Even though the area is small it makes it perfect for when you only have around 30 minutes to spare or just want to take some great screenshots for your favourite forum. If you are considering buying the full VFR Real Scenery Packages, take a look at the photos in the review and consider buying this small add-on. You will soon realise that it is money well spent.

PAY8156

http://www.justflight.com/product.asp?pID=251