SimFlyers KORD Scenery

By John Cantwell (30 December 2003)

imFlyers have been producing high-end airport scenery add-ons for a number of years, focusing on major airports in the USA but with some European airports and one Canadian destination also on offer. Although I've been a dedicated user of Flight Simulator for a considerable time, I have generally been satisfied with the default scenery provided for the larger airports within the simulation. For me, the enjoyment has come from planning a flight and executing it as realistically as possible from takeoff to touch down. I have usually been too busy checking the cockpit settings or trying to fly the aircraft accurately to worry too much about the scenery outside. That said, like many flight simmers I have shifted focus on to different types of flying over time. In my case, a longstanding attachment to general aviation and bush flying has given way lately to a preference for heavy-metal long-distance flights. This type of flying is much more likely to promote an interest in the airports at the start and finish of each flight, and recently I have found myself admiring the screenshots of the add-on airport scenery at the SimFlyers website. When I was offered an opportunity to review their rendition of Chicago O'Hare International Airport, it seemed like a great opportunity to take a closer look at one of their products and also to see what I had been missing out on all these years.

The download from the SimFlyers web site comes in three parts: the main scenery package (9.6MB), a separate static scenery package (8.8MB), and a short but well-written manual in PDF format (560KB) containing a short history of the airport and a useful guide to using the scenery. The separate static scenery package is offered for users whose computers might struggle with the many additional static scenery objects included. This sensible approach is echoed in the warning provided on the download page, which strongly recommends that the demo version should be tested first to avoid disappointment if the user's computer system isn’t up to the job of displaying this complex scenery add-on at reasonable frame rates. More on frame rates shortly.

Having unzipped the download files, I ran the main scenery executable file first to get a feel for how the add-on would run without the static scenery. The installer asks you to select which version of Flight Simulator should be used as the target of the installation, either FS2002 or FS2004. If you purchased the software you will have received the registration key by e-mail, which you enter at this point. By the way, the registration key sets a new world record for length - around 700 characters! Obviously, cutting and pasting the registration key from your e-mail program is the only way to do this accurately. The 5-minute installation, once started, went without a hitch.

With Flight Simulator fired up I was soon sitting on the active runway at Chicago O'Hare. My initial impression was that not much had actually changed in the scenery, when viewed from a distance. That impression was quickly dispelled as I got closer to the terminal. Details spring into view from every part of the scenery, literally - parts of the scenery and some textures pop up as you get closer, which was noticeable but not distracting. The buildings and other structures are all rendered beautifully, displaying clean lines and pleasing textures. They have been assembled carefully with no overlapping or missing textures to be seen. The jetways extending from the terminal buildings are very convincing and the overall effect is quite realistic.

Exploring beyond the terminal buildings exposes an amazing level of detail in the depiction of roads, street signs, light poles and other objects. The screenshots accompanying this review provide some indication of the level of detail. The SimFlyers website has many more screenshots which are worth a look if you are thinking of buying this package, or even if you just want to see what really high-quality scenery can look like. One small but notable feature I spotted was vehicle checkpoints, complete with guardhouse and striped boom gates – very nice. The level of detail is so high that it really rewards ground level exploration.

The only objects which detract from the portrayal of the airport are the large trees near the Hilton hotel, in the center of the airport. Like most FS trees these are constructed from two simple flat images joined at right angles. This usually works well but in this setting they stand out like sore thumbs compared to the realistic architecture around them.

I was also less than impressed with the night textures, which produce a slightly odd tan-colored glow on the buildings, even on surfaces which would not appear to be illuminated, while the transitions from lit areas to darkness on the apron are very rough, in both FS2002 and FS2004.

Back on the air side of the airport you'll find more meticulous attention to realism. The parking bays, taxiway markings and the taxiways themselves are all rendered in pin-sharp detail. At some of the parking bays, a couple of sections in the myriad of lines ‘painted’ on the concrete flicker occasionally; again, I didn’t find this to be a great distraction. Accurate taxiway signs are provided throughout the airport. Away from the main terminal, faithfully portrayed groups of vehicles, storage tanks, access roads, hangars, antennas and other structures are dotted around the airport. Further out, the whole airport merges seamlessly into the default terrain, unlike some other add-on airport scenery I’ve tried recently. As you approach the airport on final, it emerges smoothly from the surrounding terrain like it was meant to be there.

I next installed the static scenery, which also proceeded smoothly. I have become used to seeing lots of aircraft around my airports due to add-on AI aircraft (I use Ultimate Traffic in FS2004) but when I first rebooted the scenery I was immediately impressed by the piles of freight containers, mobile stairways, vehicles and other equipment scattered in logical places throughout the area, much of it with suitable hazard lighting. Together with the high-quality buildings, the variety of static aircraft and the precise airfield markings, the overall impression is of a realistic bustling airport.

Static aircraft of varying types, including some C-130 military transports, are parked at the terminals or near the hangars elsewhere in the airport area and they help bring the airport to life. However, while these look good from a distance, up close they are revealed as fairly basic in their construction, with the fuselages made from 10-sided tubes and the engines from crude 6-sided objects which I found to be pretty ugly, especially given the care that has been lavished on nearby airport buildings. AI aircraft available from freeware providers such as Project AI and AI Aardvark are much better than the static aircraft in this package. I also noticed that the static aircraft did not produce ground shadows for some reason, when all other objects in the airport did so. The lack of shadows tended to reduce the impression of the static aircraft being an integral part of the scene.

Both the documentation and the SimFlyers website devote a good deal of time to three special features of their scenery: the ‘jetDock’ interactive jetway docking system, the ‘serviceArmada’ interactive ground vehicle fleet, and the similar ‘de-icing’ fleet of vehicles and crew. I was intrigued by these systems, which aim to provide a more complete experience when parked at certain terminal gates (26 of them, spread across the 5 terminals). These gates can be distinguished by the parking guide light systems, which look a bit like the backboard of a basketball goal.

Using this light system is intuitive – the lights indicate how much further you need to taxi, show if you are off the parking bay centerline, and tell you when to stop. However, you do need to adjust the cockpit ‘seat’ height considerably (Shift+Backspace or Shift+Enter) to keep the lights in sight, depending on the size of the aircraft.

The jetway docking system works on the basis of selecting specially assigned radio frequencies. In the case of the jetDock system, this makes the jetway extend and attach to your aircraft to allow passengers to enter or to leave the aircraft. Different radio frequencies are provided for different airliner types so that the jetway adjusts its height and extension to suit. SimFlyers have come up with a logical frequency assignment for this system: for example, a B737 uses Com1 frequency 127.37, a B747 uses 127.47 while a B757 uses 127.57 with the last two digits being the key. Get it? This frequency 'requests' the jetway, while a special Nav2 frequency actually activates the system. Similar assignments are used for Airbus and McDonnell Douglas aircraft. The FS scenery settings must be set at Extremely Dense for this system to work.

The Extremely Dense scenery setting also allows a fleet of service vehicles to appear when the jetDock system is activated. This produces a half-dozen or so vehicles and crew to service your aircraft, including fuel, catering and baggage handling vehicles. These are not intended for close up viewing, according to the SimFlyers manual, but I liked the mobile conveyer belt which simulated tiny suitcases coming out of the aircraft hold. Different aircraft produce slightly different service vehicle sets, such as the catering truck which adjusts its height to suit the aircraft. In the winter months, the service fleet is joined by de-icing vehicles and their crews, who spray down the aircraft with de-icing fluid. The spraying fluid is simply but effectively animated.

I did have a few problems getting these attractive additions to work consistently in FS2002. The manual warns that the door positioning on some third-party aircraft might not allow the jetDock system to work accurately. I found that it actually worked well with aircraft from several different designers, but surprisingly I had great difficulty in using the system with most of the default FS airliners. While the system worked like a charm on the default B737, I found that with other default airliners the jetDock and serviceArmada vehicles tended to disappear if I altered my viewpoint in spot view. I spent a great deal of time trying to make this work properly, including uninstalling and reinstalling the software, but without success. The issue may have simply been a display glitch on my system because I noticed that my aircraft’s shadow was also strangely disrupted when parked at any of the interactive airport gates.

It was a very different story in FS2004, where the jetDock and serviceArmada features worked flawlessly with every type of airliner I threw at it, either default or third-party aircraft. While I was pleased to see these features working as they should, I also felt that the novelty might wear off fairly quickly.

The key issue with any add-on scenery is the impact of frame rates. The bad news here is that the SimFlyers Chicago O'Hare scenery is a real beast when it comes to pushing the capabilities of your computer. Bearing in mind that I have a pretty reasonable computer setup (a 3GHz processor with 512 meg DDR RAM, matched to a GeForce Ti4200-8X graphics card) my system still tended to struggle with this scenery. With almost all the FS effects at maximum settings I get around 28 frames per second when moving around the default KORD scenery in both FS2002 and FS2004. With only the main SimFlyers scenery installed, the frame rate dropped to between 12 and 15 fps depending on where I was in the airport. With the static scenery installed the frame rate dropped to an eye-watering 7 or 8 frames per second, which made for a fairly jerky display. The story was a little better during an approach to the airport, when the frame rate was an acceptable 15 fps until touchdown when it dropped back to around 7 frames per second. This could be improved by adjusting the flightsim display settings, but you are never going to get a high frame rate with scenery of this complexity. This is particularly so if you are flying an aircraft with a high-fidelity panel. For example, taxing a PSS Airbus 330-300 to the gate delivered a frame rate of only 9 fps, even with only the main package scenery installed.

This scenery displays without problems in both FS2002 and FS2004. However, the standard installation produces erratic AI aircraft behaviour in FS2004, with aircraft parking incorrectly and taxiing off the designated taxiways. SimFlyers are up-front about this problem, and their website recently published a new AFCAD2 file for their KORD scenery. With the static scenery uninstalled and the new AFCAD file in place, the results were very pleasing. My Ultimate Traffic aircraft were nicely aligned with the parking bays, and the AI aircraft taxied and took off perfectly. The AFCAD file was contributed by Brian Doney, who has done a fine job. This combination produced quite acceptable frame rates as well, generally hovering around 12 to 14 fps with high FS settings and AI traffic at 100 percent.

SimFlyers Chicago O'Hare scenery provides an extremely detailed representation of this significant airport. The designers have left few details to our imagination. The penalty for this visual treat is a heavy hit on frame rates, particularly with the optional static scenery installed. The package certainly provides a more detailed depiction of KORD than the default scenery, but I must admit that Microsoft has done a pretty good job with the default version of this airport and several other noteworthy destinations. The use of freeware or commercial AI traffic can make the default airports even more realistic. The compromise solution I used in FS2004, combining the main SimFlyers scenery with an appropriate AFCAD file and AI traffic, produces a very workable arrangement for users with a fast PC.

On balance, while I greatly admire the work of the SimFlyers team in this scenery add-on, at €18.50 (around $22 U.S.) and considering the degraded frame rates it produces, the package doesn't offer a vastly better overall flightsim experience than that provided by the default KORD scenery, especially when the later is enhanced with additional AI traffic. High-end PC owners will appreciate the benefits of mixing the excellent main airport scenery with suitable AI add-ons but, unfortunately, I suspect that owners of less powerful systems will be discouraged by the frame rate penalty of this package.

John Cantwell

Visit the SimFlyers Association website