Barcelona 2002

By Robert Jubb (2 August 2002)

Today, we will be taking a look at Sim-Wings sixth Spanish scenery, Barcelona 2002. Up to two million British holidaymakers alone visit Spain each year, mostly to the coastal resorts of Majorca and Menorca, or the rave-capital Ibiza. (Read the review of Sim-Wings’ Ibiza 2001 Scenery by Dave Nunez). Barcelona is considered a holiday resort for people reaching their ‘golden years,’ and instead of beach after beach of people, holidaymakers make tracks to Barcelona to see the sights, most noticeably, the wonderful Cathedral.

The city does not cater for large amounts of tourists, and as a result, there are very few charter or ad-hoc flights into Barcelona El-Prat Airport. The most notable guests on the parking stands here are the old Spanish favourites Iberia, closely followed by British Airways, Alitalia and British Midland to name but a few.

The strength of the Iberia fleet here at Barcelona is very self-evident as from the screen shots we can see an array of Iberia aircraft as well as the Iberia Cargo Terminal. This adds emphasis to the Spanish flavor of this airport.

As well as this close attention to detail, there are both static and dynamic trucks and buses roaming the airport along the airport roads, pulling up to aircraft, and adding the required amount of virtual fuel, passengers, etc. Many people, especially in previous years, would say that this level of exacting detail would put an end to fluid frame rates. However, with the frame rates locked at 30 on our 1.4 Ghz Athlon machine, frame rates were consistently in the region of 25-27 fps. This is certainly a very encouraging sign for the scenery design and certainly increases the customer base for the product.

One very significant flaw in this product is the size of the initial download. Weighing in at a VERY significant 26 Mb, many people may be put off downloading such a large file after paying for the product. Whereas the product took little over five minutes on our broadband connection, it would put many 56k dial-up users well out of their two-hour connection limit, and as a result, these people may end up having to pay more by ordering the available CD version.

Once the product has finally been downloaded and unzipped, WinZip prompts the user to insert the password to unlock the file. This keycode will have been supplied to the customer via e-mail shortly after purchasing the product online. Entering the correct keycode prompts the installer which automatically installs the scenery into the correct location on the users hard drive.

Take note of the battered old-cargo dollies pictured earlier in the review. Look closer. Not only has the Iberia logo been imprinted on every single one, but they all carry an "AKH" number, meaning that all of these dollies are for the Airbus A32x family. A type of which is largely flown by Iberia.

Let’s take our attention away from the airside side of the airport and focus on the landside, what passengers, just like you and me, see every time we fly from an airport. From the screen shot here we can see that no detail has been skimped on. Landing on the road in the JetRanger allows for an overview of the landside of the terminal, and my how impressive it is! The only thing that appears to be missing are three dimensional cars. However, we can clearly see the covers in the car park, the palm trees, the adverts for British low-cost carrier EasyJet, and the clock on the terminal. YES, the clock does display the correct time as on the Flight Simulator clock. This, as far as I can remember, has never been seen before in such detail on the landside of a terminal building.

Let’s again shift our attention, this time from the airport to the city and its representation in the simulator. After departing the airport and making a gentle turn around the coast, the first extra feature we come to is the home of soccer in Spain, the Nou Camp stadium. In the same complex, there appears to be what look like tennis courts, another smaller stadium, two swimming pools and a baseball triangle.

From this screen shot we can see the wonderfully depicted bay and harbor area. The marina for smaller yachts with the breakwater is clearly visible to the right of the image. Towards the lower end of the sandy beach a ship on its way into port can be seen, as well as the docks and drydocks visible. This small scenery area has, apart from two of the ships and two of the buildings, been created completely in two dimensions. As well as looking great, the frame rate tally does not in any way suffer as it almost seamlessly blends in with the autogen background.

In conclusion, we can say that this scenery is certainly one of the best Spanish payware sceneries available at the moment for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002. The meticulous attention paid to every aspect of the airport, both airside and landside in astounding. The Sim-Wings have also dabbled with other well known buildings in the city and have certainly spruced up a city that was once just flat and ordinary in the virtual world. To view more screen shots, we strongly recommend visiting the Sim-Wings web site. Priced at just EUR19.00 (US$18.85), this scenery is certainly worth the small amount of money. This is certainly a scenery for all pilots serious about both their IFR and VFR virtual flights, and should be seriously considered. We highly recommend purchasing more airports from the series by Sim-Wings to further heighten your Spanish experience.

After careful consideration we award this scenery 93 points out of a possible 100. The product has many strong points, as outlined above, and the only noticeable flaw being the increased load times required by the scenery. However, if you own a hard disk drive set in RAID configuration, or faster than 7,200 rpm, you should not notice this difference.

Robert Jubb
rob@rjubb.co.uk

Please Note: The Iberia Airbus A321 used in the screen shots is payware and available from Phoenix Simulation Software. The British Midland Fokker F100 is freeware and is the ex-Euroflight model, taken over by the Fokker Project.

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Read the PSS Airbus A320 Pro Series Review by Andrew Herd.