It will be interesting to see how Axonos’ version runs as it will include custom GSE, and appears to feature at least some of the finer detail Technobrain included.
There is no way Axonos had as much original Japanese resource material as TB and it kind of shows in the scenery. Some details such as tile and glass textures on T3 are wrong, and the piers on the runway 05 platform are just a textured panel.
I shan’t disagree, which is why I’m considering getting the TB version ahead of Axonos’ release. As I said, I’m very familiar with RJTT and I’ve already been lured in by the precise detail in TB’s (which I agree, Axonos will not include). But for me, the lack of GSE is a bit of a showstopper — I’d rather sacrifice a couple of fps and have something akin to a big iniBuilds hub (easy for me to say, though, with a high-end machine).
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Well like I said, there will be a GSE mod for RJTT before long, I’m sure. Probably better to just wait for that. One of the Japanese scenery guys on flightsim.to is probably already working on it
yes, this would be great.
It’s not the FPS for me, it’s the lag and VRAM usage. I have a 9800X3D and my CPU can hang with pretty much anything MSFS can toss its way, but adding many thousands more GSE items will cause lag and will chew up VRAM. And although I do have a 16GB card, it’s a 4070 Ti Super, so rendering speed - while very good - is not up to current 50-series standards.
Yes, point taken. Micro-stutters/pauses (as I call them) affect all of us, even with 24/32gb VRAM.
In fact, there are already some early mods for Haneda on flightsim.to, although none for GSE yet. But yes, I’m also almost certain there will be some.
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Heard again from Technobrain in regards to my question about the T2 extension:
We are very pleased to hear that you are interested in our product RJTT Haneda Airport for MSFS.
At this time, the update for Haneda has not yet been decided.
Axonos meanwhile on their Discord: probably not bringing their RJTT to MSFS, are they done with MSFS airports?
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That seems a very odd response, especially from a dev quite local to the airport. I could understand their reluctance to add, say, custom cars to landside car-parks but a new terminal extension? Should be a prerequisite, surely?
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I suspect AXONOS is going to be done completely. I reached out to them about their KRIC and the response was not positive. It sounds like they’re hemorrhaging developers. Their exact words were, “…The market is super hard to find good developers at a cost we can afford”. That doesn’t leave a lot of faith that things are going well.
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Sounds like they’re about to become Exonos
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Cultural difference. That’s a very Japanese service response, not odd at all. ‘Maybe’ is not good service in their culture, so they don’t announce details until something already decided can actually be executed.
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I get that — my point is, something so important should already have been decided. Lack of commitment isn’t a good look, and the product is already more dated than its freeware counterpart.
When people are parting with almost $30, they want some guarantee of longevity. You have to view it from both sides.
Personally, I’m not too fussed about the terminal extension (for the moment, at least) — I’ll be getting it anyway as some of the fine detail is almost incomprehensible — but people will, perfectly reasonably, be asking why a brand new payware product isn’t as current as Karuchie’s older freeware.
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Sorry, I’m not following. No ‘lack of commitment’ indicated from what was shared upthread in the TB response. They simply can’t comment at this time. If you really understand Japanese business communication, that isn’t what non-committal sounds like.
RJBB is on v1.1.1 so it has been updated at least twice. I’m not that concerned.
The T1 extension just opened and has some unique features, so hopefully it won’t take too long to include. As for Karuchie’s scenery, I’m not sure what you’re referring to. The T1 extension is included? I didn’t notice in the latest update. Karuchie also notes that due to the default RJTT ground data many of the new parking positions couldn’t be included.
It’s not about understanding Japanese business etiquette; it’s about how the situation sounds to the average customer — many of whom won’t be Japanese.
I did think to check their previous work and from what I found, RJBB is v1.1.2, so that’s a good sign. I just find it odd that they’ve not yet decided whether to add a whole new piece of terminal. All I’m saying is, it will (and already has, judging by comments online) put a lot of people off.
According to some Japanese guys, Karuchie’s includes part of the new extension but not in its current, fully completed state. But there are other elements of the freeware they claim are more up-to-date. Therefore, many simmers will be questioning the value of a near-$30 scenery when a free alternative exists that’s more current.
Here’s a vid from a Japanese content creator…
Sorry that’s a bit unrealistic. TB is mainly concerned with how things sound to other Japanese. This is pretty obvious by looking at the TB website - he is catering to a Japanese audience. The design, presentation, etc don’t have much ‘global’ mindset, and the English information is perfunctory machine translation. I have lived in Japan for years, so maybe this isn’t easy to understand externally..
As for ‘not deciding’ it’s not odd at all in this context. A geeky Japanese dude will evaluate all of the available resources first, to ensure if the new airfield elements can be added at the same quality as the rest. Even searching in Japanese, available information on the extension is limited and detailed technical docs aren’t out yet. The terminal just opened this month.
2026年夏頃の供用開始予定の羽田空港第1ターミナル北側サテライト施設が木造・鉄骨ハイブリッド構造を初採用 - TECTURE MAG（テクチャーマガジン） | 空間デザイン・建築メディア
羽田空港に「木のターミナル」、サテライト施設など550mの巨大木造空間 | 日経クロステック（xTECH）
So, as I said, they won’t announce anything until determining an update can be done at the same fidelity as the existing models, is my educated guess.
I use RJTT many times per year and Karuchie’s is an approximation, not necessarily ‘up to date’. The real terminal extensions don’t look anything like the EDDF assets being used.
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Test machine specs: MSI X670E, AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX, 48gb RAM
Version reviewed: 1.0, FS2024
Add-ons: BATC, GSX Pro, GFX, Global Shipping '24
I know many people have been looking at this airport and wondering if it’s worth the price, given the obvious lack of GSE and its areas of low-res satellite imagery. As an immediate summary for those who don’t like to read lengthy pieces, I think the phrase “the good, the bad and the ugly” applies to this scenery more than any other I’ve reviewed. But does that translate as being overwhelmingly bad? Let’s find out…
DETAIL
Again, for anyone looking to whizz through this review without taking note of every observation, the detail is better than it might appear in the marketing images/trailer. This is a huge airport so, predictably, corners have been cut, and this mostly shows in the landside areas. This is clearly a scenery focussed on the airside experience, and in that regard, it’s actually very good.
Ground textures are about average for late 2026 (so decent), as are ground markings. That said, the area covering the southwestern portion of the bay runway (23/05) looks incredible. The airfield lighting is entirely custom, save for a few stretches of default taxiway edge lights here and there. The custom taxiway edge lights aren’t the very best quality (their stalks are garishly saturated (so they stick out a little awkwardly) and the LOD is poor) but they could’ve just stuck with default, so not too serious a complaint. There are some custom lights I’ve not seen before — they’re rectangular (when viewed from above) and spaced at regular intervals along some taxiways — I’m not sure of their exact purpose but, presumably, they are present in real life.
The terminal buildings are well done and by day, from distance, it’s often hard to distinguish between areas with internal development and those featuring basic 2D texture overlays. Internal development is kept to a bare minimum (airside areas only) but includes intricate carpets(!) and a few seats. From the cockpit of an airliner, it actually looks pretty good, despite the sparsity of the display inside.
The exterior detail of the terminals is excellent, with convincing, high-res roof weathering and numerous protrusionary details. The spectator terraces are particularly stunning, being perfect recreations of their real-world counterparts (right down to the tiling patterns on the floor). Ideally, I’d like to see more static people (those terraces are usually pretty busy, and packed at weekends) but at least there are a few examples. The international terminal seems slightly less detailed to me, overall — which is odd as it contains the most extensive interior (I doubt the non-existent window tint is helping),
Landside is where the wheels start to fall off, with some very low-res ground imagery (some of it uncomfortably close to prominent airside areas) and awkward transitions between it and the custom-modelled roadways. But it’s not all bad: the majority of the airport’s internal road system is properly modelled and some of the detail lining it is impressive. Every signpost, security booth, gantry, lightpole, road marking… it’s all been done, with love (some of the traffic signals are even animated). Having personally visited RJTT numerous times, for plane photography, I couldn’t help but notice how accurate some of the hand-placed vegetation is! I just wish they’d paid more attention to the roads serving the terminal entrances/exits, because they frankly look offensive. Speaking of offensive looks, the custom parked cars remind me of cereal boxes but they are at least plentiful, and they do populate multiple levels of every multi-storey car-park.
Peripheral airfield detail is good, although some of it doesn’t reach its full potential due to being placed atop poor ground imagery. There are various radar towers, hangars, offices, hotels, parks, and an animated docklands train. All company logos (such as those on the large airline hangars at the south of the airfield) have been omitted, presumably for copyright reasons (there is a mod that sorts this, though — more about that later). There is a custom perimeter fence (two distinct models) but, sadly, it’s a bit haphazard in places, leaving gaps through which joe public can simply stroll onto active areas of the airfield. It’s not going to be too noticeable from the flightdeck but there’s one section completely missing just south of the northern taxiways — given the proximity of these taxiways to the fence-line, I’d like to see it addressed in an update.
Night-lighting is a mixed bag but, overall, I find it pleasing. The sections of terminal covered by 2D texture overlays look worse at night than they do by day. I imagine it’s very difficult to get such overlays to truly resemble transparent glass — and I have seen worse efforts — but it’d be a push to describe Technobrain’s job as anything better than mediocre. The rest of the night-lighting, however, is excellent, with particular praise for the quality of the roadway lighting in the central area. Combined with all the little animations, it looks astonishingly realistic.
Finally, BATC compatibility. There’s a freeware mod that apparently improves things but, from what I’ve seen so far, everything looks fine. The only slight anomaly I did notice was incorrect use of the north taxiways, which have a certain operational pattern depending on wind direction.
Finally, let’s briefly discuss the various free mods that have found their way onto flightsim.to since the RJTT release. There’s one for improved BATC communication, one that adds the proper logos to hangars and other structures, and (undoubtedly the most impactful) one that adds custom GSE. The latter really does bring the airside to life.; however every time I install it (and every other RJTT mod, for that matter) I get conflicts on the central road system (odd road barriers appear perpendicular to the direction of travel, and the roads themselves are covered in excess vegetation). Furthermore, even without any mods, there are some green, semi-transparent cubic anomalies in the city proper, which point towards some kind of conflict with another add-on (I’ve not had time to fully test but perhaps Samscene’s Tokyo City Times? There are certainly some buildings close to Haneda that seem to be duplicated). I removed the Asobo RJTT prior to installing Technobrain’s, and also deleted my rolling cache; so I guess the only thing left to try is deleting the scenery index files. If that doesn’t work, something is causing a conflict.
PERFORMANCE
Ready for the shocker? Performance is excellent! It’s situations like this that seem to vindicate the dev for all the corners cut, however performance is so solid that I’m far from convinced Technobrain couldn’t have addressed the areas lacking fidelity. Even approaching from the south — with the entire Samscene city as a backdrop — frames were smooth and consistent.
VERDICT
It’s surprising that no one has, before now, tackled this key Asian hub. There’s another version allegedly on the way, from Axonos (who seem to be in a spot of bother lately with devs going A.W.O.L.), but based on their last project, I can’t see it ever matching Technobrain’s standard.
Don’t get me wrong, Technobrain’s is not perfect. But what is does do is give you immersion in the places that really matter. (and a few that don’t). It’s reasonable to argue that custom GSE would have contributed more to the experience than animated roadsigns landside but a lack of priority awareness isn’t something exclusive to this Japanese dev.
This scenery is WAY ahead of Asobo’s hand-crafted RJTT, and it’s largely due to the small (and sometimes quite unnecessary) details that aren’t obvious in the marketing images/trailer. The attention to the finer things is what makes this airport authentic, even if some of these ‘finer things’ aren’t immediately palpable. The airport feels like it’s a natural part of the city, such is the quality of the modelling/texturing.
If you value overall accuracy over consistency of detail, you’ll be more than happy with Technobrain’s Haneda. It’s definitely better than I expected. I just hope I (or Technobrain, if they’re at fault) can sort out the numerous graphical anomalies seemingly associated with the scenery.
IMAGES
To follow…
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Well-written, thanks for sharing
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Just an update on the conflicts…
I re-installed the airport, its third-party mods and the Samscene city separately (as in, started the sim, built the rolling cache, then closed after each installation) and all is now fine. The initial releases of the free mods were actually flawed, with several users reporting the weird road barriers and excess vegetation, but they were updated over the weekend. Not sure what the green cubes in the city were but they’re gone.
With the GSE mod, the airport actually looks amazing, although there is a minor performance hit. I actually think the GSE is a little excessive — they could decrease it by about 20-30% and the airport would still look fine.