KDTW and KDEN from Imagine Simulation

By Phil Colvin (28 October 2005)

magine Simulation has two highly detailed airports in versions you can buy for either FS2004 or FS2002: Detroit Metro (KDTW) and Denver International (KDEN). There's definitely a lot to explore at both airports, including a really unique docking feature I'll get back to. Each one is full of details like accurate building architecture, service vehicles with flashing lights, personnel standing about, trains of baggage carts, lots of static aircraft (a few even in the midst of being loaded or serviced), lighting fixtures everywhere and fences and roadways all around the airport property. These complete packages also come with mapping files for AI aircraft (AFD's and AFCAD) and comprehensive manuals in Adobe Acrobat format, complete with instructions, diagrams and historical information about the airports.

Each is available currently only for download, so you'll definitely need high speed Internet. They come as .exe files so they're self-installing, and are ready to go without a hitch at the click of a mouse. If you want to find them, they appear in their own "Imagine Sim" folder in the main FS9 folder. To start flying, you can either choose the regular airport IDs when choosing your airport as you would anyway, or you can click on the add-on scenery button and numerous starting points will appear as options to begin your flights. The manuals recommend using slew mode to do some exploring, and there is indeed a good deal to see at each airport. Of course each has its own unique features, such as Denver's famous Jeppesen Terminal with its woven fiberglass "rocky mountain" rooftop, or Detroit's massive expansion under construction, complete with construction fences and giant cranes.

With so much architecture and so many static objects you really do get a sense that you're at real places, and the dusk and night textures on the buildings' windows are interesting too, looking as though you can see a little of what's going on within the terminals, etc. As you'd expect, taxiway centerlines and signposts et al are in place, and you'll see numerous airport fixtures as you taxi out. The airport runways remain visible for a fair distance as you depart, but the terminal buildings and objects disappear a good bit sooner, and conversely you have to get pretty close before they pop into view.

Speaking of viewing, there was one "bug" with both of these airports that I found pretty irritating, and was only able to fix on one of them - it's that all the extra roadways provided around the airports don't remain solid in appearance until you're almost right on top of them. At any kind of a distance they have sections that are there, then gone again. It happens about every quarter of a second or less, an unavoidable eye-catcher . Before calling this a "bug" I fiddled with graphics settings, video card settings, drivers and quite a few other things, and it made no difference, nor was I experiencing any similar malfunction on any other downloaded scenery, of which I have quite a lot. Maybe this scenery just doesn't like Radeon X800 cards, who knows. So you may or may not experience a similar problem, and even if you do it may not bother you as much, but it drove me to distraction.

Fortunately, as the included manual states, the .bgl files in the scenery subfolders are clearly labeled, and you can put any ones you don't like to "sleep" by changing the suffix "bgl" to "zzz". This worked like a charm for the Denver airport, and I thought the airport looked just great without the added roadways anyway - blended into the surrounding scenery a little better. However, no files in the Detroit airport scenery folder were labeled similarly. So the upshot is I was able to tweak KDEN to make it a welcome addition to my sceneries, but I find KDTW a mixed blessing, and will only be using it when I'm in a generous mood (admittedly, I'm pretty nit-picky). The Denver folder contained quite a few more files than Detroit, by the way, including a "parked cars" file that comes "sleeping" by default to give your system a break, but you can wake it up by doing the reverse and changing "zzz" to "bgl".

Oh, well, back to the totally positive stuff. Both airports have a really neat feature for all you heavy metal fans: automated guidance to the terminal gateways and automatic docking of the jetways for the passengers! The manuals will tell you which gateways to go to for which sized airliners, and as you taxi near them you'll notice lighted, color and word-coded signposts that will tell you which way to steer and when to slow down and to stop, and then all you have to do to make the jetway dock with your passenger door is to select 111.0 on your nav 2 radio. Watching the walkway dock with the airplane is really fun, and it worked just fine the few times I tried it with a couple of different planes. Of course to depart a gateway you can set yourself up to start with 111.0 selected, then deselect it and watch the walkway draw away.

Both airports are currently priced at €19.99, and while a great deal of work undoubtedly went into both of these I find KDEN the more impressive of the two, not only because I was able to tweak that roadway problem I had, but also because it's somewhat better detailed and in my opinion has better night textures. Nevertheless, both are impressive add-ons and those docking guidance systems and animated jetways are very cool.

Phil Colvin
gimpyfoot1@yahoo.com

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