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Belle Ile en Mer
By Roger Gaylor (10 December 2001)
here would seem to be more
creative scenery designers appearing on the FS scene creating some very
imaginative places to fly all these wonderful machines lately, or should I
say finally. Once Microsoft had increased the memory capability of Flight
Simulator, you could sit back and watch some real talent in the FS
community slowly begin to develop more and more realistic scenery. In the
beginning, you could see some very detailed airports popping up. And for
the first year or so that seemed to be mainly all you would see, except
for mesh types, but I'd say the last year more of us could see some great
talent emerging in landscaping and more realistic surroundings and cities
with lots of new objects and trees and just plain, things to see, not just
airports. Although in all due honesty, that's not to take away from some
of the imaginative creators before FS2000/FS2002.I have been visiting some French FS sites and have found some beautiful scenery of European landscapes and cities and areas of all types. One such scenery area is the scenery of "Belle Ile en Mer" island near Quiberon "Morbihan" Bretagne, France by a designer named Serge Favraud. Obviously a real location judging by the description of the author in the accompanying remade text file. It is a nice little island that has a little bit of everything for everybody. It has only one small landing strip (which shows up in the Airport facility listing) and is just that. A small strip and a few buildings but very realistic with a couple hangars, cars and a some very detailed houses. One even has a table and chairs next to the door if you'd like a cup of coffee.
As I said before, there is plenty to see...and you can put away your charts, GPS and all that and grab your favorite helo or small prop cause there's plenty to see with hotels, beaches, villages, lighthouses and monuments and even people walking around.
There's even a place where you can buy yourself a skiff if you don't happen to have one with you or can't rent one.
This is just the sort of scenery you'd expect to see in Maine; a cloudy rainy day with it somewhat overcast, the smell of fish in the air, seagulls flying overheard with fishing boats in the water it just puts you right there and in the mood.
There are two waterway inlands on the island. Both are very different and both are highly detailed. The picture shows quite detailed houses, walkways with some skiffs and sailboats tied up. The layout of the buildings look just like you might imagine they would in real life.
The second inland waterway has a built up knoll sort of like a watchtower as you might enter the inland always keeping a watch on comings and goings. Reminds me of days gone by a hundred or so years back when it was a form of protecting the local villages and harbors from intruders from the sea.
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Review system: P-4, 1.5 Ghz, 256MB RAM with a 32MB NVIDIA GForce2-GTS. I get between 16 and 22 fps on the most dense part of the scenery and only slightly more on the other areas with everything turned on to the max. The scenery unzipped takes up approximately 17 MB of hard drive space. |
So if you're looking for some great scenery to fly around with lots to see or just want to set the scene, try this scenery. I'm sure you won't regret it as it is well done and definitely a keeper. I'm not going to do a pros and cons on it, although the author did say it wasn't meant to be run on a slow computer. The author also suggests turning off MIP mapping for sharper viewing of the textures.
Roger Gaylor
Download
Belle Ile en Mer.
maddog@evansville.net
