With the current 45-50% off sales at various webstores, I decided to purchase a couple of Fly2High’s latest airport sceneries.
First off, this isn’t a review, per se, but rather a summary of how I’m finding their products. The intention is to try and offer some guidance if you’re considering buying this dev’s scenery. The airports in question are Harlingen Valley and Savannah Hilton Head.
To cut a long story short, there’s some potential here but there’s a lot broken. I’ll start with the bad:
Jetways not connecting to aircraft properly
A few awful terrain anomalies in airside areas
Lots of default satellite imagery left airside
Poor interior night-lighting
Very bare-looking outdoor terminal landside areas (no cars or people)
Low-res textures in prominent places
Large gaps in perimeter fencing
Lots of mirrored textures that read backwards
Wig-wags cast their light in the wrong direction
Very poor aircraft type stand markings
No modelling outside the perimeter fence
Some peripheral airside buildings barely look better than default
Broken AI aircraft paths
It’s not all bad, however — here are some positives:
Custom jetways (although it looks like some older airports use variations of the Asobo defaults).
Some great photoreal textures on jetways, aprons, taxiways and runways (think Flightbeam and Macus Nyberg)
Good custom ground lighting and signage
Decent interiors with animated people
I suppose the old adage ‘you get what you pay for’ comes into play. Harlingen Valley feels slightly more alive (and suffers from fewer of the above issues) so they do seem to be improving with each release. But there are just too many faults to put them up there with the big boys just yet. The airports feel rushed to me, with not enough care taken to get everything accurate.
As for value, that’s for you to decide. At the current sale prices, they’re probably worth what’s being asked. But I’d like to see this dev make the necessary improvements that could bring them in line with 2024’s renowned devs.
