Greece Scenery
By Bert Zengerink(18 March 1999)
ocated on the
southeastern tip of Europe lies the mother of our western
civilization: The Greek peninsula. It occupies an area of 131944
square kilometers, and consists of mainland Greece and the islands of
the Aegean and Ionian seas. Geographically, it belongs to Europe,
since it forms the most southerly extremity of the Balkans, but it
has another special link to Europe through the cluster of Ionian
islands which form a chain off Greece's western shores, in the Ionian
sea. The country surely is a challenge for creators of freeware
sceneries. Ted Katranas took on this job. We can find the latest
version of his Greek scenery on FlightSim.Com.
According to the creator of the scenery the coastline is accurately
modeled. It includes 2087 islands, 850 mountains, all rivers, lakes,
roads, major cities, as well as 74 airports, including the new Athens
airport Venizelos, which is under construction. The installation is
very simple and similar to any other scenery. Just follow
Katranas' instructions in the "readme" file.
The textures of the Greek scenery, which have to be extracted from a seperate file, look satisfactory. Like most other sceneries they also reflect seasonal changes, so flying in summer time looks very different from winter time. Greece is a dry country with a lot of mountains, which you can all find in Katranas' scenery. Flying in good weather with great visibility the textures really give you the feel of travelling over a land that's burnt up by the sun.
The airports, of which most are small to medium in size, are also
reproduced in a pleasing way, although I think that they could use
some more detail. Only a few airports have detail that make them look
extra nice, like trees and detailed buildings. On most of them
however we only find simplified control towers and the well known
FS98 blocks that represent buildings or terminals. The main field of
the country, Athens international airport Athinai, is very detailed
though. It is here that the scenery starts the consuming power of your
computer, resulting in a drop of frame rate. An advanced Pentium
shouldn't have any problems with that though.
I would recommend this scenery because of the simple fact that it offers simmers the chance to fly in Greece. It's a lot of fun to arrive at Athens international airport in your favourate airliner, take a break and hop into a small aircraft of your choice to tour the multiple Greek islands available in Katranas' scenery. Especially when you have a good map of the country VFR flight in the area is very challenging.