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GeoRender 3 / Cessna Cardinal
By Ian Ritchie (8 January 2003)
GeoRender 3 Diamond Point
My first experience with Lago was with Emma Field - the scenery to start all sceneries. I say this because following Emma Field, all of the sceneries by Lago i own have got sounds, active scenery traffic patterns and all the other cool animations. After buying Bryce Canyon I was again, very impressed with the work of Richard 'GeoRender' Goldstein. So that settled it, the day GeoRender3 was released, I was right there, waiting for it. I went through the usual way of purchasing Lago products, which is to have a code sent to you and then you input that code into the into the installation module. The whole lot is about 21 megabytes, quite a feat if you use a dial-up modem.
So, I decided at long last to have a fly around the airfield and the
area. The first thing I notice is the sounds - I'm even more
impressed with these than the sounds at Emma Field and Bryce Canyon.
I fire up my Turbo RG Cardinal (which will be looked at later in this
review) and the first thing I have to do is start my own little
prayer meeting because animated AI Cessnas are coming towards me at a
great rate of speed! (That's one issue with active scenery tracks,
they don't care if you're on final approach, or sitting in their way
on the runway). OK, there's one thing to keeps my eyes out for.
OK then, at the end of the runway, full power, let's go! The runway is
very narrow, but there are 3 foot gravel overruns on the sides, so
keeping straight isn't 100% important, as it is at
Flying M Ranch
or Ranger Creek. Into the air - there are some strategically placed
trees at the end of runway 28, easy enough to clear in the
turbocharged Cessna. I hang a right, which is for noise abatement over
Protection Island, as suggested on the sign at the start on the
runway. The Cardinal zips right up to 2000 feet above sea level and I
take it around to see the area from up high. The textures located
close to the airfield are excellent, and with the visibility set down
to 5 miles, has a very realistic hazy look to them.
OK, enough of this easy flight, let's get down to tree level and
scare some of the residents. Yes, residents! Diamond Point is not an
airfield, but really an airpark. An airpark is, as defined in the
GeoRender 3 manual, a small community (village) built around an
airport. The houses there have hangars built in as garages, and
taxiways intertwined with roads. One buzz of the place has several
hangar doors open (Ooops! Looks like I annoyed someone!) and some
trees left splattered on my wings. I joined the circuit and made
quite a reasonable landing.
It's now time to have a bit of an explore around the field itself. Turning left off the runway, I clearly see a basketball hoop and a set of mailboxes. Well, that's OK, what should you expect in a small village? Come up to a stop sign with the warning 'Road Ahead' and on the flipside 'Aircraft Ahead'. As I taxied the Cardinal up to a house - any old house, the garage door opened. 'Excellent' I thought, a place to keep my toys out of the elements. I ran the Cardinal RG back out to the runway and got ready to review that.
There is one last thing about Diamond Point - It is made 100% in Gmax, which results in some excellent frame rates for such a complicated scenery.
DreamFleet/Flight1 Cessna Cardinal
There is a bar for payware GA aircraft, and DreamFleet has again
pushed that bar up several more notches. The Cessna Cardinal is
modeled on The Knoxville Flyers 84 Charlie
(www.knoxflyers.com),
and the instrument panel is true to every last detail. In this
aircraft trim is vital to take off, because if you leave it at the
starting setting, you are not getting off the ground until you hit
80-odd knots.The virtual cockpit is an excellent feature in this aircraft, and only seems to miss out the outside air temperature gauge and the trim wheel. Even missing these, it is still almost as detailed as a 2D panel, which does make it a little bit frame rate hungry, but none-the-less spectacular. The Cardinal has full moving parts, including sun visors and baggage doors! You are even able to put the chocks in place and tie it down.
The passengers onboard are Mikko Maliniemi (the aircraft's designer) and his father, both of whom fly a Cessna Cardinal. The aircraft has all the bells and whistles, from reflections to a custom programmed SL320 GPS. You can have three types of radio stacks, with older and newer instruments, and the one inside the real 84 Charlie. It, as per DreamFleet, has all the authentic sounds, down to a very obtrusive fuel pump!
It comes with the Text-O-Matic utility that is standard on DreamFleet
and Flight1 aircraft. It allows very easy installation of new paint
schemes, and gives you the opportunity to never have to fly the same
Cardinal twice.
Config-O-Matic for the Cardinal is more or less what the title says. It lets you change the options in your aircraft like the pilot and passenger weights, the radio stack you want, if you want the 2D bitmap views in place of 3D views when flying in the 2D cockpit, change the instrument and dome light color, set the hours on the tachometer (so you can have a 'new' Cardinal) and last, but not the least, assign key commands for features not included in FS2002.
Turbo RG Upgrade
The Cessna Cardinal now also comes with a turbocharged retractable gear version. For new buyers who buy the Cardinal from now on in, it will come included with the fixed gear aircraft, but for early Cardinal users, it's a free upgrade. The RG upgrade comes with an RG aircraft, complete with textures, its own version of Config-O-Matic, redone 2D and 3D panels, which has a gear handle, a turbine inlet temperature (TIT) gauge and updated fuel flow/manifold pressure and tachometer gauges. It is also compatible with current fixed gear repaints, but I have noticed this makes the gear bay (inside baggage door) go white, instead of the color that comes in the original aircraft you get.
I should add here this warning on the Flight1 web site: 'Due to the
nature of this upgrade, and the fact that changes are also made to
the Cardinal 177B fixed gear aircraft, installation of this upgrade
will cause the loss of any additional Cardinal aircraft you may have
previously created using Text-o-Matic. You will need to re-create
these aircraft again.' I didn't have this issue, everything went on
as the same, but I still HIGHLY recommend you back up you templates
folder in you Text-O-Matic directory. The Turbocharger is an
excellent addition to the Cardinal, as my previous height record was
13,000 feet in the FG version, I managed to easily achieve 20,000
feet, and it still wanted to go up.
The GeoRender3 scenery is 20 Euros, which equates to about 20 US Dollars. The Cardinal is $22.95 US, with a boxed version due to be released soon.
Ian Ritchie
coolian2@hotmail.comLinks
Lago
DreamFleet
Flight1
