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okyo, for me conjures
up thoughts of a dense urban jungle bordered by rolling green
countryside spotted with frequent towns, rail lines, roads and farms.
If you don't have LAGO's new Scenery Tokyo, you can use my
above description and your imagination and with any freeware scenery
available from various web pages. If you don't have that good an
imagination, take a walk to you local software and grab a hot off the
press copy of LAGO's Scenery Tokyo. Once you have it, strap on your
fastest Pentium and get ready to tingle. Let me tell you, were
getting awful close to airline simulator quality, if were not there
already!So sit back and let's have a look at LAGO's new release.
Let's go through what's included; First off, thank-you LAGO for
giving us a CD with a proper jewel case and not a throw away type
sleeve. The package includes the CD, 40 page manual in German,
Italian and English and a 16x12 inch map covering Tokyo and the
surrounding countryside and coast. The map includes NDB, VOR and ILS
frequencies, localizer/ILS frequencies, and a full airport directory
that includes Longitude/Latitude, runway headings and lengths. The
manual is 40 pages long, but out of that 6 pages are in English
covering installation and troubleshooting.
Installation is very easy and shouldn't pose any problems, so I won't
waste any time on it. The majority of the manual (17 pages) is
dedicated to navigation approach and departure plates (ya-hoo!).
LAGO also included the official STARS and SIDS for both Narita
International (New Tokyo) and Haneda (Old Tokyo). I still can't
believe that Microsoft sells add-ons like Hawaii, Caribbean etc.
without providing a chart or even complete approach charts. I applaud
LAGO for the documentation they have included with Tokyo and it makes
me wish LAGO would target some mainstream regions in North America.
The scenery includes 28 airports, with 16 of the major airfields covered by the included approach/departure charts. Out of the 28 airports, 5 of the included airports are on offshore islands to the south of Tokyo.
The scenery itself is 65 megabytes of incredible detail that covers 82,000 square kilometers. It was one of the first times that I wanted to be a passenger so I could gaze out the window. LAGO is using their trademarked REALTERRAIN technology which converts real world elevation data into scenery. Everywhere you fly you are flying over the actual real terrain elevations.
The scenery is designed using two techniques. The city of Tokyo was
mapped and photographed by aircraft and then transplanted and
overlaid onto the terrain. The downtown area of Tokyo is displayed
with a 7.3 meters per pixel resolution. The result of this resolution
is stunning and gives a sense of height I have not seen before. The
countryside was created using satellite images and is a little fuzzy
in some spots but still stunning. The small towns and cities are
incredible as they follow the landscape and possess all the
connecting roads and rivers. LAGO's claim is that the quality of the
scenery is so good, that you should get a good feel for the city even
if you have never visited Tokyo.
The scenery includes versions for all the seasons and an installation program that will install one season and take the other off of your hard drive quickly. This is a fabulous feature and shows that LAGO attempted to cover all the bases.
The coastline is well done and the water textures and shading are
some of the best I have seen. The rivers are detailed and include
bridges and shading that even shows silt spilling out of some rivers
as they enter larger bodies of water. I just love flying along the
coast and looking inland and seeing all that detail.
What about the airports? The airports are faithfully recreated and give you a real sense of being there. One of the things about the airports I really enjoy is the interesting collection of buildings and hangars. It was also a nice touch for LAGO to put other static aircraft at some of the terminal buildings.
The airport lighting and markings are just about as good as it gets
in terms of what is currently available. As part of the screen
captures I have included a landing shot at Haneda in Tokyo Bay. You
will see every little taxiway light, great approach lighting and the
lighted terminal area. The only thing really missing is proper
taxiway directional and warning signs while taxing.
A neat aspect was the detail presented in the satellite view when you pull up the map window. The resolution is so good it looks like a U2 SPY PHOTO! I did notice that the map converted to plain polygons of you zoomed out too far.
What about performance? Let's just say that the reason we haven't had
airline simulator type graphics on the home PC is basically
horsepower. But with the 300 MHz machines out now and 500 MHz Pentium
II's due out next year we are opening the door to smooth
photorealistic worlds to fly above. So how does Tokyo fit into the
performance world? Well according to LAGO the minimum requirements
for Tokyo is a Pentium 90 with 16 megs of RAM. I would think long and
hard before buying Tokyo with this processor speed. LAGO suggests a
Pentium 166 with 32 megs of RAM and 2 megs on the video board. I
would take note of this advice, because this is just about the most
processor hungry scenery I have ever seen. If you have a P166 or
above, you will be very happy!If you fly with the scenery on "NORMAL" or a higher setting the scenery automatically switches to "LOW RESOLUTION" above 6500 feet over Tokyo. This assists in getting better frame rates.
The CD also includes an alternative set of textures that can be installed if you are experiencing VERY slow frame rates.
So what is the bottom line and positives and negatives?I think there are only two negatives. ONE is just the basic fact that this scenery is so intensive that it is going to exclude those on the low end Pentiums from a true quality experience. The SECOND negative I experienced was that at cruising altitudes of 20,000 and above you can see ahead of the photorealistic scenery. I am not sure if this would improve for instance if I possessed 64 megabytes of memory. I found that the best scenery detail was present from 10,000 AGL and above outside the city and 6000 AGL and below inside the city limits and around airports.
LAGO says in their manual to clear some more space on your hard drive
because they are working on other areas using the same level of
realism. So, If you want to see the latest and get a taste of what is
coming to the flight simulator world or you are a big fan of
Trans-Pacific flights or the Orient, you better get to your local
software store and pickup a copy of LAGO Tokyo Scenery.If you are using a Pentium 90, 100, 120, 133 and are a flight simulator fan, TOKYO is a look of what is coming. You might want to stop at the hardware store on the way so you will be ready for the wave of new scenery that will follow LAGO's lead.
So bottom line, LAGO Scenery Tokyo is a good quality package with minor flaws that gets my vote!
Visit LAGO's Web site.