FlightSim.Com Reviews: Melbourne Scenery

Colin M. Lock's Melbourne Scenery

By Marko Kovacevic (17 May 2000)

Intro

There is so much freeware scenery out there that it is hard to decide which ones are the best, but Colin M. Lock's scenery of Melbourne, Australia, and the surrounding area makes the cut. As I have lived in Melbourne for over a year this piece of scenery impresses me more.

Airports And Airfields

It's nice to see that all area airports have been added. But it's a shame that some of the important features like gates, docking systems, terminal buildings and taxiways could have been improved or added. It's also good to know that helipads haven't been forgotten and were added to most of the airports which have them, but they also could have been added on top of buildings.

The Scenery

This city portion of the scenery is exact in nearly every way. Most of the major buildings with signs on them have been reproduced as they are in real life and placed in their correct locations. Only a few have been left out. The special attractions in Melbourne haven't been forgotten either, like The Crown Casino, Melbourne Cricket Ground, Luna Park, the Palace Theatre, The Tennis Centre, Yarra River, Grand Prix, War Memorial and many others.

Also included is dynamic scenery. It has the usual aircraft landing and taking off from all airports but for more enjoyment there is a Goodyear Blimp flying over the cricket ground, helicopters buzzing round the city, ships with cargo and most importantly the city transport trams have been added near Luna Park. They look like the real ones and add a very nice touch. However, I really hate to say this but the frame rates are rather low on my system. The lowest I got with dynamic scenery turned on full was 4 and the highest was 26.

Flaws

There are hardly any faults in the scenery. One of few is that on some buildings their textures suddenly vanish. I'm not sure what's causing it, but it's not too bad. I also experienced dullness in 3D even though it says on the README that it is optimized for 3D.

Last Words

I consider this piece of scenery great and think it should be up there with buyware because it is so exact. My only recommendation is that you keep dynamic scenery low to improve the frame rates. I would give this scenery a 95 out of 100 for being so exact.

Marko Kovacevic
Email: hotdog@ezy.net.au

Download the Melbourne scenery

Response From Designer Colin Lock:

I really feel I have the right of reply regarding:

(1) "Airports and Airfields" above.
(i) "shame that some of the important features like gates, docking systems, terminal buildings and taxiways could have been improved or added." Melbourne's Tullamarine (which is the only airport in Victoria with gates/docking systems) has gates and a working docking system (optimised for 747's) in my scenery. Taxiways? All airfields have taxiways based on the specifications in the Australian ERSA publication. Terminal Buildings? Improve? Show me better depictions of the terminal buildings at Tullamarine, Essendon, Hamilton, or Darwin...
(ii)"helipads... but they also could have been added on top of buildings." My depiction of Melbourne is based on actuality, and there are no building roofs in the city used as helipads (apart from which, I don't know how to create top of building helipads, never having had to!).

(2) "Flaws" above.
(i)"...some buildings their textures suddenly vanish" is a classic symptom of not having the Microsoft Patch No.1 (FS98) installed, i.e., the scenery cache is only 256k not 512k - and/or - not having enough memory on the motherboard/video card to cope with today's scenery.
(ii)"I also experienced dullness in 3D...". I have had a lot of criticism of my scenery being too bright/colorful (my answer being 'open your eyes, and really look at the world!') - but "dull", never! I suspect the reviewer's video card/configuration, especially as the screen shots of Luna Park and the Casino (above) definitely do not have 3D activated. Also, while on the subject of screen shots, it is apparent to me from MCG (above) that something blue is "breaking through", see my comparable screenshot with arrows showing where reviewer's breakthrough occuring. Either something twitchy with his video set-up or, despite the requirement in my "Readme" that MS Oceania be activated, it is not...and "sea" breaking through(?)

(3) "Dynamic scenery" above.
"However, I really hate to say this but the frame rates are rather low on my system." Reviewers really should state their system statistics if readers are to come to a conclusion.
(Afterthought: my system is a rather ordinary Pentium 233 MHz MMX, 64M onboard RAM, and Diamond Viper V330, and my motto "Itsgottaworkgoodonmine".)

(4) "Recommendation" above.
"that you keep dynamic scenery low to improve the frame rates." My recommendation is keep the dynamics and take-out the shadows, that will have a better impact on your frame-rates..

Well, that's it, the reviewer reviewed!

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