Test machine specs: MSI X670E, AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX, 48gb RAM
Reviewed for: FS2024
Add-ons: FS Traffic, GSX Pro
Beautiful Model of the World (or BMOTW, for short) has been revisiting its older airports just lately, giving them FS2024-native cosmetic refreshes that in some cases amount to almost complete rebuilds. What’s more, these considerable updates are in most cases available to existing owners for only a modest fee. This review is based on the 2024-native version of LIMJ.
DETAIL
BMOTW are currently holding a sale on their entire catalogue at the in-sim Marketplace, and Genova (or Genoa, to us English speakers) is the best value, with 40% off. I was aware the dev was in the process of making its whole collection FS2024-native but apart from Valencia (which I bought a while ago), I hadn’t paid too much attention to how things were progressing, or what exactly the updates entailed. The sale prompted me to have a good look and I ended up adding several BMOTW airports to my wishlist (those that seemed to have had the most work done) — Genova being the selected purchase in order to evaluate the dev’s progress in the new sim.
The dusk arrival (in this case, in the Fenix A319, following a 40 minute hop from Rome) was absolutely stunning: sea on one side, city and mountains on the other, and the (modelled) port of Genova right under the final approach for RWY28. It was obvious well before I touched down that BMOTW has added several high-quality POIs to the city.
Runway textures are solid, although lighting is default. However upon vacating, I noticed custom taxiway edge lights (BMOTW are typically very good for this). Ground markings are superb: clear and convincingly weathered (more so than Glideslope’s, one half of which is BMOTW). The GSX integration seems fine and BATC instructed me to park a at the airbridge-equipped stand 301. What immediately struck me during taxi is how alive and cluttered the airport feels — this small spit of land, wedged between the mountains, the sea and the city, every inch of which used to its full potential — it feels kind of claustrophobic; almost chaotic. Rarely have I seen such a variety of quality custom clutter. It’s everywhere, on and off airport.
The terminal building looks great. Its quite unique in reality and BMOTW have done a fabulous job recreating it. There are even plenty of ramp workers (some animated), whose presence further adds to the feeling of life. I have in the past felt some of BMOTW’s texturing is a little sterile, despite being high-quality, but the weathering exhibited here is excellent. There’s a lot of fine detail, both inside and out (yes, it features a populated interior, although only the check-in concourse and a couple of airside areas — more than enough to enable to pilot to have as good nosy from the cockpit).
Moving landside, the quality continues unabated. The custom trees caught my eye first, simply because they’re so authentically modelled. Alongside the (probably imported IRL) African palms, there are trees I’ve personally seen in the Rome area, so I can safely say they’re native to this region. The parked vehicles are a mix of custom and default, with the latter being confined to areas further away from the seat of the action. All roads surrounding the airport and leading into the nearby city are custom (with streetlights), and there’s plenty of eye candy around the airfield perimeter, including a tennis court, restaurant, marina, the Sheraton hotel, a petrol station, large warehouses associated with the port, and of course the port itself. Nice to see the addition of the odd person placed randomly in these areas (including a young lady posing in front of the marina’s sign).
Obviously arriving at dusk, I got to sample a bit of the night-lighting unusually prematurely, and it really is good, with all the modelled POIs having their own custom lighting. There is perimeter fencing but since a lot of this airport is surrounded by water, it’s not all-encompassing (as you’d expect the reality to be).
PERFORMANCE
Genova isn’t in an area of PG but the default autogen is quite dense and there is a lot of detail here in a very confined space. Thankfully, performance is excellent for me, in spite of the very high quality modelling/texturing. The airport isn’t particularly busy (in fact, I was the only aircraft on the deck, confirmed by real-world schedules) so there’s little change of your system being overwhelmed by AI traffic.
VERDICT
Prior to acquiring Genova, the only BMOTW airports I had (apart from those co-developed with Amsim, under the Glideslope Pro brand) were Valencia and Bremen — both solid releases with recent updates, but neither being 2024-native. I have to admit, Genova stunned me… in a positive way. This developer is pretty underrated (likely not helped by the accusations against them a year or two ago) and these new 2024 updates really do greatly enhance airports that were already of reasonable quality. This particular scenery has it all: extreme custom airfield detail, a well-weathered terminal with decent interior/landside, high-quality ground textures/markings, a generous amount of surrounding modelling, and good performance to boot.
If like me MK’s LIRF gave you the inspiration to explore and fill out Italy a little more, BMOTW’s LIMJ is a worthwhile addition to your collection. It’s rock solid and offers far more than I imagined it would. I’ve reviewed a couple of airports this last week that have managed to cram a lot of fine detail into their airside areas and this scenery does it as well as any other (maybe even better). As I said earlier, the best way to describe how the airport feels is “chaotic”… and there aren’t many that can create such an atmosphere so authentically.
I will definitely be buying the remaining BMOTW airports on my wishlist at some point; but some definitely do look as though they’ve received more attention that others. For info, the others I deemed to have been very significantly upgraded are Catania, Venice, Abruzzo, La Rochelle and Santander.
IMAGES
