Airport 2000 Volume 2 by Wilco Publishing

Runway 15 at the newly detailed Boston Logan. The scenery is great. The frame rate is not. The good 747 is not from Airport 2000, but a favorite of mine from Abacus' Instant Airplane Maker program.

INTRODUCTION

A very bland 767 from Airport 2000, shown at BOS. Some 15+ frame rate areas can be found, but not many.

I am sad to say I no longer feel the same way. They have taken the approach that far too many scenery designers have taken. That is to design a densely packed scenery that pleases the artist, but may not please the flyer. What good is a scenery when you can not actually fly around in it? I hope I am speaking for the majority of users out there, but my having a PIII 500 should be good enough to fly almost anything - right? There are far many more simmers out there with less than a PIII, and they will not be able to use this scenery. The box says minimums require a P200 and 64 meg of ram. When FS2000 came out, people were outraged at the requirements MS said FS2000 would run on - a PII266 or something. Then everyone found out you had to have at least a 450 to run it, and a PIII to run it moderately smooth - with details only half way! Now, here we are faced with a scenery that will make FS2000 PCs fall to their knees.

FLYING THE REGION

Aaaahhh! It's a mummy! This is supposed to be a copilot. The real frightening thing is how laggy it is to get to this view. Each virtual cockpit view comes with at least a 3 second pause.

Dynamic scenery is nice - but once again, you'll pay for everything with frame rate. This is an Airport 2000 737. Again, very poorly detailed and poor texturing.

The 737 that comes with Airport 2000 looks silly. Not even up to the quality of an FS98 737. I don't know who designed these aircraft, but they were not the freeware folks who most of us have come to know and love for their splended creations. The virtual cockpit view was ghastly, with the nose cone showing in front of my front right view, blocking everything! There is no excuse for the cockpit position to have the nose cone and wings blocking your view!

Trying the Airbus A320 for a test flight around Boston was okay. The frame rate was only 10 to 15 when not looking at the terminals, and around 7 to 9 when looking at them. The dynamic scenery was nice and there was not too much stuttering from the scenery, which was good. But again, I can not enjoy the fluid motion of flying at 7 fps. I know this scenery is not meant to be flown around, just looked at right? I know, I know, it will be great in two years when computers are faster! :) Despite the details, it still did not even look as good as many freeware airports do, with docking gates, parking lights, alignment bars and marshallers. Airport 2000 just gives gates, and some photo textures of baggage cars on the walls of the lower terminal.

A very sad excuse for a King Air.

I was one of the few that didn't complain too much about the slow frame rates FS2000 gave us when I did my review. And, since the recent patches came out for FS2000, things have been pretty good overall. But now, you're stepping back into frame rate misery. I tried ORD, MIA, Barcelona Spain and Nice, France. They all looked nice with many details, but popping up the frame rate counter yielded a 5 to 7 most places. Not flyable. I could turn down my settings, but then all the rest of my FS2000 world that runs great, would have almost nothing to see.

Bouncing King Air! Bounce, bounce, bounce, CRASH! This one is almost impossible to fly, because it just bounces all over the place when you load it. I found this so frustrating, I never even got it to settle down.

The King Air bounces uncontrollably when loaded. Then it does a crash. Trying to load it took several attempts. But I didn't even want to fly it, because what will happen when I land? Was this even beta tested? And, why does this plane look so awful, with a tail on the back of it that is so huge, you could play tennis on it? The default King Air in FS2000 looks great. Where did this come from? And then the panel. What once was a great FS98 panel, doesn't do the trick here in FS2000. It looks two years old and doesn't compete to the resolution nor overall viewing scale other panels do. It's just with the release of nice FS2000 gauges and larger scales - even on a big monitor this stuff is too small to read at 1024x768. If you want to run higher, that will help certainly, but at even slightly less frame rate.

What once was a grand FS98 panel, is still an FS98 panel. Few changes and so large, even on a 21" monitor, I still can't read half the dials in 1024x768. At higher resolutions you'll be better off, but where's the runway? This scale panel blocks far too much of the view for my liking.

The Airbus has a nice FS98 panel as well. Grainy and too photoreal for me, it needs an artists' touch. And some of the gauges are right out of FS98!

The adventures might be good right? Maybe it will be as good as that great real ATC sounding sample that plays during the install? Wrong! Listening to Boston ATIS I heard, "Bravo, Oscar, Sierra, Tango, Oscar, November, ATIS...". I can understand that but trying to copy a clearance was nuts. "...you're cleared Lima, Oscar, Gulf, Alpha, November, six departure..." for Logan Six departure. Even for someone flying out of BOS in real life, I had no idea what the slow robotic voice was saying for the longest time! Listening to that slow robotic voice is five year old stuff. I know it might be the best we have now, but it is still the same adventuring we did five years ago. I think I'll just listen to ATC on the net again, as I always do.

CONCLUSION

An Airbus panel that's FS98 style. A frame rate that's for FS95. FS4 style ground scenery all around ORD! What's this green lawn turf everywhere? It's there alright, and at other airports too! 5 to 6 fps is all I got on the runway.

I know Airport 2000 is supposed to be a scenery add-on. But I do take seriously the addition of aircraft and panels if they are to be included. And they were, and I was drawn in by the screenshots and previews we've all seen in the last few months. I was worried all this detail might come of a frame rate price, but at the back of my mind I had hope. I am not trying to upset the people at Wilco. They have proven to us they are in this for the long term and have some good designing talent. I am only wanting to defend us flyers who want some new sceneries, built for the computers of today, and not to wildly mis-represent the minimum requirements on the box.

So, we've got some ordinary FS98 aircraft with FS98 panels (with a few cool GPWS features and systems) and some super-detailed airports that look awesome when standing still. Call me "The Frame Rate Nazi". I just wouldn't want you to pay too much for bad soup!

I'll give Airport 2000 Volume 2 a 63 out of a possible 100 points. In two years, when I have a Gigahertz machine, the scenery may be worth it all - but time will tell. If you're planning an upgrade soon, and want this package for the scenery, get it and wait. Unwrapping it in two years may just be the trick.

WILCO RESPONDS TO REVIEW

As a follow-up to your review of our title, Airport 2000 Volume 2, we wanted to send over our comments on a few points that we felt were not correctly addressed in your article. As you mentioned, we are not used to receiving reviews with such bad ratings for our products so we felt that it was necessary to respond. Your judgment as a flight sim specialist is very valuable to us and, we are certain, other sim enthusiasts.

1. Regarding frame rate problems: your review stresses far more frame rate problems than design issues. What we felt was lacking in your review was some kind of benchmarking. You have tested it on one computer but did not make any comparison between a very dense default scenery (including heavy panels, heavy dynamic traffic and lots of details) and Airport 2000 Vol. 2. It is an understatement that adding buildings, dynamic aircraft, and many levels of detail will affect the frame rate. The question is how would one use this scenery? One good comparison would be to try the title under FS98 and FS2000 in order to check the differences in frame rate. It seems that this has not been done. In your review, you say: "I was one of the few that didn't complain too much about the slow frame rates FS2000 gave...". You did not find this to be a major issue for you in FS2000, and many users are enjoying the title despite that issue. We believe the same could be said on Airport 2000 Vol. 2 which uses the FS2000 engine.

2. Regarding adventures: in your review, the only thing that is noted is some "errors" you've found in the ATIS of the adventure. Not any of the procedures are mentioned or are any adventures properly explained. Indeed, the ATIS has a robotic voice (not the other voices in the adventures obviously) because as you know, in many airports, ATIS have been digitized and you will get this kind of voice while monitoring ATIS. We have 737 and A340 pilots checking those for accuracy. Obviously, choosing between a digitized and human voice ATIS is simply a choice we made. Regarding the way LOGAN is spelled, this is done for the SIDS and STARS only, as referred from FAA regulations. We might agree that it is not always used this way, but it should be and this is the reason it is spelled this way in Airport 2000 Vol.2. As for the way Boston is spelled during the ATIS, we invite you to listen once again. We actually say “Boston” and not Bravo, Oscar, Sierra, Tango, Oscar, November (for your information: A2V2-atis-bos.wav).

3. Regarding scenery: You said "it still did not even look as good as many freeware airports do, with docking gates, parking lights, alignment bars and marshallers. Airport 2000 just gives gates, and some photo textures of baggage cars on the walls of the lower terminal." We are not familiar with many freeware programs with photorealistic scenery with as many details as there are in Airports 2000. It does not seem to be that common. But we could obviously add everything you mentioned. Would it hit the frame rate? No doubt! The choice is either to have detailed scenery or to add all the elaborate docking gates, marshallers, etc. It is a choice and we still believe our choice was the right one. About the "FS4 textures types on O'Hare". I do not doubt that you were having a problem (apparently a conflict of ground textures). We would be happy to help you to find where the conflict is coming from on your PC. This is not the case for the very large majority of users.

4. Panels: Our choice was to use photorealistic panels. Panels are from the Award-winning Ralph Tofflemire and have been adapted for FS2000. We believe they have not been looked at in-depth in this review (overhead panels, start up procedures) as they are a big part of the whole product. The discussion between photorealistic or drawn panels is an endless discussion and really a matter of personal preference. There are other issues that might be addressed that might round out your comments.

As a summary, you know that we are dedicated to make good flight sim software. Each time we release a new title we try to be innovative and bring something new to the entire community. From the first results of registrations recorded for Airport 2000 Vol. 2 we have had over 80% of users saying that they found the title to be either excellent or very good.

It is obviously your right as a reviewer to stress weaknesses of a product (like in any product, we realize that they do exist) but we believe that the good points that one might want to find in a product should be stressed too.

We believe your review has given the audience of FlightSim.com a wrong opinion of the product. We would appreciate a reconsideration and, if possible, another look at Airport 2000 Volume 2. If you are able to post these comments on your site, that would also be appreciated.

Thanks again for your attention,

Michael Renous Wilco Publishing

MORE PHOTOS

ORD at sunset. Looks great, but you know the rest...

ORD at daylight. The MD80 is from Airport 2000. Not even good looking enough for FS98.

ORD at night.

Visit our previous Airport 2000 Volume I review: Air 2000 Vol. I

For another opinion of Airport 2000 Volume II: Air 2000 Vol. II

Visit Wilco Publishing: Click Here

NOTE: For this test I used a PIII 500, 128 MB RAM system equipped with a Voodoo3 3000 AGP graphics card running in 1024x768. The new FS2000 patch #2 has INCREASED frame rates and overall performance since March 15.