hat
good would Flight Simulator be without scenery? Furthermore,
what good would it be without the available add-on sceneries
available from commercial, shareware and freeware sources? Let's
just say you wouldn't be able to give FS away. With that said, let's
begin.
First Impressions
When Aerosoft's Scenery Berlin 2000 (B2K for short) first arrived, I
examined the box and its contents just to see how well it was
packaged. As Aerosoft is a German company, nearly all the text on
the outside of the box was in German. No big deal, I wasn't
interested in the box but rather what was inside. What I found
inside was what I feel essential for commercial scenery releases: a
manual, the CD (of course!) and charts of the area. I was very
pleased that the charts were none other than Jeppesen. No one does
aviation charts better!
By using the manual installation option, you must use the FS98 Scenery Library to add the scenery to the database.
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Language Barrier
As I said before, Aerosoft is a German company. While the included
manual for B2K appears to be very complete, only those who can read
German will be able to benefit from it. Included are installation
instructions, information on the 25 airports included on the CD,
navaid information and Jeppesen instrument approach charts for
Tegel, Schonefeld and Tempelhof (in English thankfully!). The two
installation options have also been translated into English. The
user has the option of using the automatic procedure common in other
commercial sceneries or you can manually install the files using the
FS98 Scenery Library. Fearing that the automatic installation
on-screen instructions would be in German too, I chose to install the
"scenery" and "texture" folders manually using the same procedure
that is common for freeware scenery files.
The trees surrounding the airport look as if they need to be watered.
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The Scenery
The real reason to have B2K is for the detailed scenery. That's
exactly what you get. As I flew around Berlin, I didn't see any of
those awful default buildings anywhere. I'll go so far as to say
that they were all custom designed for this particular release. The
publishers included a VFR (Visual Flight Rules) GPS (Global
Positioning System) map of Berlin and the surrounding area. It is
extremely helpful in finding airports and navaids. The Aerosoft
website implies that this chart is an original. The chart that I
received was a photocopy of an original. What's more, it was not in
color, which made it hard at first to distinguish navaid names and
frequencies from other info. Frame rates were OK, about 8-10 in the
Very Dense setting on the ground, improving to 15 and above once
airborne (on a Cyrix 300MHz, 32MB RAM).
A nice thing to see is what looks like wildflowers growing in the grass at Tegel. Makes it feel like summer!
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All was not well, however. As you can see by some of the
screenshots, there are large patches of bland textures. The "grass"
around Tempelhof is also bland. To me, the ground textures resemble
those that surround the default London area with the latter being of
better quality. It's not every day you hear someone say the default
scenery is better than an add-on is it? Ground textures in B2K just
do not look real. I've seen better-looking textures in freeware
scenery.
I wanted to do some site seeing during my time over the skies of
Berlin. I succeeded instead at getting lost! I attribute this to
the lack of information on were to locate such famous landmarks as
"Checkpoint Charlie". Of course, that information may have been in
the manual, in German.
While ground textures were colorful, they were still bland. Compare this to the default London area to see what I mean.
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Closing Thoughts
I contacted Aerosoft to determine if they have or plan to have an
English language version of the scenery. As of this writing, I have
heard nothing. Not knowing German, I feel that I missed out on a lot
of information about the area's airports. As a result, I didn't
enjoy it as much as I could have. I knew I should have studied
German in high school!
The approach into Tempelhof. The good looking buildings can't hide the fact that the grass surrounding the runway and taxiways is bland.
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Is it worth spending money on this product? I would have to say that
there are better products to spend your money on. Great buildings
and Instrument Approach Charts are not enough. Aerosoft could reach a
wider audience if they translated the entire manual into other
languages, especially English. But since they are a German company
offering scenery of Germany perhaps they are only targeting a German
audience.
Phillip M. Overgaard
overgard@7cities.net
