Aircraft used: Default & LVFR 320s, ATR, PMDG 738
Live weather: off
DETAIL
Put simply, it’s gorgeous. The terminal building is stunning, particularly its roof which has been recreated in fabulous detail. Airside detail is excellent with many custom vehicles, including AENA (basically the Spanish airports authority) cars, vans and trucks and Iberia/Jet2 buses.
The terminal’s landside is every bit as impressive as its airside, with a similar level of custom detail that includes local buses/taxis, vegetation and even authentic Policia Local vehicles! Some of the ground textures here don’t live up to those airside areas but the modelling extends quite a way back from the perimeter fence.
Static people are included both airside and landside but there are very few of them.
Runway, taxiway and apron textures are superb and we see some great terraforming all over the airport (including landside). We get custom ortho that generally looks great, although when you’re right on top of it it does lose its shine a bit.
So is there a catch? Well… yes. There’s some really sloppy workmanship here that sees a number of objects floating in mid-air: cars and flower beds in the airside car-parks and a few items in prominent airside areas (see images below). There are also a couple of stands at which your parked aircraft is just off the ground.
Having accurate elevation profiles is all very good but a dev needs to ensure it doesn’t affect objects and buildings. Thankfully I’ve not found any of the latter suspended in mid-air!
PERFORMANCE
Here’s the next catch: performance isn’t great. Given the detail I’d say it’s acceptable, particularly with the A320s. Pre-SU13 I couldn’t even get the 738 to spawn or land here without an instant CTD, but while that has now changed I still need to be careful not to trigger blacks screens or a crash.
Another serious performance issue involves an elevation glitch on the taxiway to runway 28, which results in your aircraft suffering stress damage if you’ve got all the realism/failures turned on. As per the image below the glitch is visible to the naked eye as you approach it, although it almost constantly changes shape and position slightly.
One thing I must praise the scenery for is its framerate performance, which is good news since this airport lies in quite a complex photogrammetry area.
VERDICT
It’s a real shame this airport suffers some needless problems because it would otherwise arguably be among the best for the sim. The detail is fab, the custom terraforming very accurate (except for the taxiway issue mentioned earlier), and the approach to either runway feels very realistic, in part due to the quality of the photogrammetry in this area.
I and others have reached out to Pilot’s and they claim the taxiway issue can only be solved by Asobo. Whether this is true or not I don’t know but they’ve not attempted to fix any of the other issues I made them aware of.
I personally really wanted this airport and don’t regret buying it but I can’t hand on heart fully recommend it. There are just too many problems that could pretty easily be addressed. If the dev could optimise for Xbox and fix the floating objects this would be a ‘must’ product. But as it stands, it’s more likely a ‘must avoid’ for the majority of console simmers.
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