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Despite its 'dangerous approach' label, Aspen has attracted little attention from FS developers, the only payware scenery I can recall being the Abacus 'Dangerous Airports' addon for FS98, which is no longer available as far as I am aware. When I included the airport in my instrument approach series back in the FS2000 days, I discovered that even Microsoft hadn't had their eye on the ball as far as Aspen was concerned, and had implemented the wrong course on the localiser for the missed approach. I have always thought this lack of interest more than a little bit odd, given that if ever there was an FS location that offered something for everybody, Aspen must be it, with its great scenery and such challenging VFR and IFR approaches. But at long last, Aerosoft have come to the rescue with an Aspen X addon for FSX, so let's take a look and see what they have come up with. Actually, there is one more thing... before getting onto the review proper, many readers will have noticed that despite FSX having been out for a while, there isn't as much addon scenery available for the sim as you might expect from the track record of development for previous versions. There are, I guess, a couple of reasons for this: first, every version of Flight Simulator prior to FSX supported a flat earth model and the change to a round one has caused all kinds of problems porting sceneries over, not to mention all the funnies that affect the default airports; second, Microsoft have written FSX to run on a generation of processors that most people haven't got around to buying yet and the default airports affect frame rates badly enough for many potential buyers to steer clear of buying addon sceneries altogether. The good news is that Aerosoft's Aspen isn't the frame rate killer you might expect it to be, having been carefully designed to be as realistic as possible without being so complex it reduces FSX to a crawl.
The package is available as a 324 Mb key protected download from the Pilot Shop. According to the blurb, you get a detailed scenery of the airport and surroundings, improved terrain mesh, custom autogen used to build the town, all the navaids and winter textures - which is a plus, given that large parts of the scenery have been created from photographic textures. System requirements are given as: a 2 Ghz processor or better (dual core recommend, which I second), 1 Gb RAM (2 Gb recommended), 256 Mb 3D card (512 Mb recommended), 370 Mb of hard disk space, FSX SP1 and Windows XP SP2 or Vista. I did the review on a 2.66 Ghz Core2Duo with 4 Gb of RAM, a 768 Mb GeForce 8800GTX video card and Window Vista, on which the package ran beautifully, so I would imagine that the recommended spec should do fine and the minimum spec ought to work as long as you turn the autogen off. Hokay, installation was no problem, with no need to do anything other than run the automatic routine and enter the registration code. When everything was done, there was a Aerosoft group on the Start Menu with an Aspen entry containing links to 28 page pdf manuals in English and German. The manual is excellent, apart from a typo early on which puts the runway 600 feet lower than it really is (the package itself gets this right, so don't panic). The scenery itself was largely developed by Matthew Dalton, which raised my expectations immediately, but although I was itching to see what the scenery was like, I read the rest of the manual, which contains some excellent advice on the operation of aircraft off high altitude runways in Flight Simulator and also provides a full set of approach plates, without which the product would be far less fun. There are a couple of advisories: first that there are no building shadows in the scenery; and second that the airport has no night lighting because the real one doesn't operate at night. The manual also draws attention to the fact that there are nine flight situations installed with the scenery, six of which are set up on the Roaring Fork visual in the Mooney, a couple of high density altitude demonstrations (interesting, try 'em), and one LOC DME-E approach.
The scenery isn't as detailed as, for example, the GeoRender packages, but it has been very cleverly done, as it manages to blend the central phototextured area seamlessly into the surrounding terrain - thereby avoiding the major downside of phototextured packages, which is the unsightly edges where the custom scenery meets the default tiles. With few exceptions, the developers of phototextured sceneries are content to leave users confronted with razor-sharp joins between the photo tiles and the area around them and there is nothing quite like it for breaking the spell of 'almost reality' that phototexturing brings. In the Aerosoft package, the photographic textures are confined to the area around Aspen and Starwood, but have been so carefully blended into the surrounding tiles that the joins are invisible - as long as you are using the default Microsoft terrain textures, of course. Outside this area, apart from the enhanced mesh, everything is more or less unaltered, apart from some changes to the Roaring Fork, which is not phototextured and strikes just about the only jarring note in the scenery. By choice, I would like to have seen the Roaring Fork and the Frying Pan phototextured out of Aspen and along the valley out to Basalt and Carbondale and up to the reservoir, given that these rivers are such a key part of the VFR approaches, but I guess the developers had to stop somewhere. Whatever, as you can see from the screenshots, the result looks extremely real once you have the runway in sight. The winter and night textures are equally good, although since the airport closes after dusk, you won't be doing any night flying from there. 
The airport itself is reasonably well detailed, with good texture quality and makes a great improvement on the default buildings, which bear little relation to what is actually there. The buildings are relatively sparse and so even with all the sliders maxed, the impact on frame rates isn't that great. There are plenty of static ground vehicles, but no AI ramp traffic and - as far as I can tell - no custom AI traffic, although if you have any of the major AI packages on hand, that should get taken care of anyway. All in all, the place looks real and if every scenery package that crosses my desk achieved this standard I would be a very happy bunny indeed. Verdict? A very nice package indeed, great choice of airport, considerably enhanced by the way the phototextures have been so painstakingly blended into the default terrain. Aerosoft's Aspen doesn't kill frame rates, comes with a full set of plates and some good advice on how to fly in the mountains. The package is good enough that it deserves serious consideration, hence the AAA.
Andrew Herd  Copyright © 2007 by FlightSim.Com. All Rights Reserved. |
spen is a popular resort, set in the Roaring Fork valley approximately 160 miles drive to the southwest of Denver, Colorado and is best known for its skiing, although other outdoor opportunities abound, ranging from fly fishing to four-wheel driving and hiking. The attraction of Aspen for tourists is that it lies in the most beautiful situation, nestled among the mountains; the problem for pilots being that that KASE is one of the highest airports in the world, with a threshold elevation of 7,800 feet, a runway that is to all intents and purposes one-way, high peaks all around, and a community that rightly insists on keen observance of noise abatement procedures. Even in good weather, operating out of Aspen has its challenges, as you will discover if you load the default Cessna 172 on the runway and try and fly it out of there; in instrument conditions,
