Aircraft used: LVFR 320, ATR, PMDG 738
Live weather: off
Every now and again I come across an airport scenery that has me conflicted: so much to love yet, conversely, so much to dislike. Orbx’ YMML is one of those airports…
DETAIL
A real mixed bag. I’ll start with the bad: the ground textures. Even airside they’re blurry and pixelated, as are the ground markings. The runways are slightly better — they do at least have some fairly convincing stains — though I’m not sure about their overly brown colour. The terminal landside is a similar story, however it is of course not uncommon for the ground in these areas to be closer to default quality and it’s certainly not the worst case I’ve seen. Some of the roadways, particularly the raised examples, are actually pretty well modelled.
The terminal building is a bit of a tragic story of contrasts: the airside parts, that the pilot sees, look a touch bland, not helped by the really poor draw distances. However the landside looks far better and is where most of the real detail can be found: animated advertisement screens and vehicles, plus the usual assortment of petrol stations, hotels, car-parks and peripheral buildings. All done in high-res to boot. In a clear case of misguided priorities, the landside is far more appealing aesthetically than the arguably more important airside.
The terminal features sections that sport interiors. They’re not the most detailed I’ve ever seen but they are pleasing to the eye, if not a little repetitious in places. We also get decent-looking static passengers.
In the more remote corners of the airfield the detail remains good, with all outlying buildings done in a resolution similar to the main terminal area.
Now, let’s move onto something I found exceptional: the animated ramp traffic. It’s really good and the only products in which I’ve see it done better are Limesim’s Nuremburg and Brandenburg. The ramp generally features a decent amount of custom clutter, making the place feel alive.
PERFORMANCE
The topsy-turvy priorities would be more palatable had performance been decent but it unfortunately isn’t. Framerates are about what I’d expect (reasonable given the size of the airport) but the draw distances are terrible, as mentioned, with detail not popping in until you’re practically on top of it. Why didn’t Orbx drop some of the landside texture resolutions to bolster performance? There are a ton of parked vehicles landside which are done to an incredibly high standard — but when your product is struggling with stability it would have made great sense to either downsize them or omit them completely.
Remain in cockpit and it’s largely okay but the moment you switch to external view, you’re on borrowed time. I have managed to depart from cold and dark in external view in the ATR but I’m not sure if I was just lucky or whether the ATR is a little easier on the Xbox’s resources.
Turning on live weather isn’t something I’ve been brave enough to try and I’m pretty certain it won’t make the experience any better!
VERDICT
This could have been a superb airport. And in some respects, it is. The landside areas are way above average and the cool animations there add to the immersion. There’s a good level of detail airside too, in the form of ground clutter. But the terminal buildings, from a pilot’s perspective, look bland, simple and almost cartoon-like. The relatively poor airside ground textures could be understood if they were clearly downsized in an attempt to improve performance but while you have so much memory-chewing detail in less important areas, it’s a meaningless and frankly useless effort.
To rub salt in the wound, the scenery appears to have some sort of exclusion file that disables LVFR’s static aircraft pack, resulting in Australia’s second-busiest airport resembling a ghost town. Admittedly I’ve not tried re-installing the LVFR pack to see if it overwrites the problem file but I’ve never encountered this situation before.
If Orbx can address the detail imbalance in some way, and get their priorities right, this will be a great scenery. No one on Xbox expects an airport of this size to be flawless but I do want something in which I’m not constantly in a state of nervousness in case my flight gets prematurely curtailed. There are similarly sized airports that offer much better stability, while retaining enough detail and resolution to maintain realism and immersion.
IMAGES
The only anomaly I discovered were these floating cars outside the Ibis Budget hotel.
