Aircraft used: LVFR 320, ATR, PMDG 738
Live weather: on
DETAIL
A real mixed bag here! Let’s get the bad out of the way first… and unfortunately there’s plenty of it!
The terminal landside is a complete mess. It’s basically the default satellite imagery with a terminal plonked on top! There’s grass where there shouldn’t be, there are poorly-modelled cars placed over 2D cars, and some of the peripheral buildings look like they’re made from Duplo Lego bricks!
I don’t normally place images part-way through my reviews but these will illustrate the issues much better than words…
Moving on, the runway textures are awful. No wear and tear — just a monotone grey with badly drawn areas of darker grey that are presumably supposed to represent tyremarks. Note in the second image how obvious the edge is between this scenery and the default.
They’ve clearly tried to give these windows a reflective effect but it just looks terrible.
I really don’t know what’s going on here but I suspect it’s not a feature of the real airport!
And what’s going on with these ‘dismembered’ jetways?!
Finally, the ground clutter is pretty poor, featuring a smattering of mostly default stuff. We do, however, get two static aircraft: a rather nicely modelled Falcon on the biz ramp, and a less detailed, derelict Mercure (the French 737-200) outside the flight school.
Okay. That’s the bad bits out of the way. Thankfully there is some stuff to like…
Apart from the diabolical runway, the airside ground textures/markings are actually very good, as are those used for the main terminal building and tower. All hangars and office buildings are included but the texturing randomly varies in quality, without any real logical reason.
There is a partial terminal interior but to say it’s basic would be an understatement! Still, it just about does a decent job of making it look like there’s something going on inside when viewed from a parked airliner.
We do get some terraforming but this part of the apron looks a bit odd — is this incline there in real-life, I wonder?
PERFORMANCE
It will come as a relief to learn that stability is top drawer — I’ve flown in a few times now and had the drone out extensively, with all screens in the cockpit still being active when I’ve returned to the aircraft. Framerates are super-smooth.
VERDICT
I really don’t know what to say! It’s hard to believe this is by the same dev who did Brest — which I reviewed extremely favourably just recently. There’s potential here but I feel the current experience is ruined somewhat by sheer carelessness. The landside looks mostly terrible and the runway being so bland when the taxiways and aprons are of a high quality makes little sense.
I picked it up today at better than half-price and I’m not utterly convinced I got a bargain. The regular price is just over £16 and I’d probably be going nuts had I paid that! Even a really detailed airport of this size would be poor value at £16!
But as I basically said above, it’s not all bad. The areas the pilot ordinarily sees look mostly fine and an approach to either end of the main runway offers some nice scenery to look at (particularly RWY30R) — although that’s obviously down to Asobo, not Pilot Experience Sim.
The bottom line? It’s just about okay at half-price. But at full-price, definitely one to avoid! Pilot Experience Sim have proved beyond doubt with their recent Brest that they’re extremely capable and hopefully they’ll revisit this airport at some stage to improve it. As I said, there’s potential here but a LOT of tidying up is needed!
IMAGES
There are quite a few of these blast screens around the main apron and thankfully they’re nicely modelled!
