Test machine specs: MSI X670E, AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX, 48gb RAM
DETAIL
This scenery was released almost four years ago and, as far as I know, hasn’t had any significant update since. Despite looking a little dated in places in 2024, this airport still holds up surprisingly well.
I’ll get the more negative stuff out of the way first. The terminal interior is very basic and repetitive. It’s landside is quite sparse, although a lot of it is well modelled and it does use some reasonable-looking custom assets. Detail in the peripheral areas of the airfield is noticeably less than in the primary zones, and in most instances is rather featureless and generic. In these areas I have trouble distinguishing custom building models from their neighbouring default counterparts (although the quality of the night-lighting tends to separate them as it’s typically worse for Asobo default).
On the brighter side, the ground textures across the board are perfectly fine, and the many ramps are littered with a good assortment of GSE and fixed clutter. The aprons, taxiways and runways seem reasonably worn, and the main terminal exterior looks pretty impressive, particularly the area that features the famous yellow and blue panels. The classic ‘Paris’ mosaic, adorning the landside façade, also looks great — as does the very distinctive ATC tower.
FSLTL behaves quite nicely with the product, however all arrivals and departures ted to use the northern runway exclusively, with only user aircraft ever being cleared for the south runway (I don’t think the third, cross runway is used any more).
PERFORMANCE
As you’d likely expect from an older, less detailed airport, performance is excellent, even with plenty of FSLTL aircraft doing their thing. I guess that’s the greatest advantage of these ‘vintage’ sceneries, released before this recent obsession to constantly ‘keep up with the Joneses’.
VERDICT
In spite of its age, this airport remains quite relevant in 2024. No other dev has offered a replacement but it doesn’t necessarily need one. While the modelling and texturing of many peripheral buildings falls short of this year’s standards, LFPO is a large international airport that likely wouldn’t see an enormous increase in detail if it were made today. The airside terminal interiors aren’t great — their night-lighting is particularly weak — but they offer just about enough to be believable. The ground textures aren’t exceptional but they feel average among today’s crop of airport sceneries; and at least a landside modelled to some degree is presented.
The main terminal’s airside has clearly been the primary focus here, and that’s where the majority of simmers would rather it be. Confining oneself to the flightdeck, there really isn’t too much difference between this four-year-old rendition of LFPO, and a number of far more recent airports. Each stand is decked out with a decent amount of clutter, and some of the exterior gate detail is actually quite nice.
There’s only this one LFPO available for the sim, and considering it’s ancient in MSFS terms, it still gets the job done. Orly is, for a airport its size, unusually close to its city centre, so one of the Paris city packs (from Orbx or Prealsoft) goes hand-in-hand with this scenery.
If you want a decent rendition of Paris Orly in your sim, look no further. An oldie but goldie, as they say!
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