Screen shots by Bajasim
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Screen shots by Bajasim |
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La Paz is the capital city of the Mexican state of Baja California Sur, which is at the southern end of the Baja California peninsula. It's about 135 nautical miles north of Los Cabos, which is on the southern tip of this peninsula, and about 900 miles south of Tijuana, which is on the Mexican/U.S.A. border near California.
The economy of La Paz is predominantly eco-tourism, with tourists visiting its seacoasts, beaches, marinas, and inlets. There is also some agriculture and mining.
La Paz is arid tropical. Averaging about 300 days of sunshine annually, it is dry and warm most of the year.
Air transportation is through the Manuel Márquez de León International Airport (MMLP), which is southwest of the city. With its 8,202-foot runway (18/36), this airport handles more than 558,000 passengers annually.
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SCENERY LOCATION
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Bill Stack |
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Bajasim says its rendition of this area features:
Bajasim says its La Paz scenery is the result of "tons of hard work hours trying to get the most realism" while keeping frame rates friendly. They say every airport building has been modeled "with great detail and optimized at its best."
Two main features are the airport and the surrounding areas. Bajasim rendered the airport very accurately compared with photos I found on the Internet, and it rendered the surrounding terrain far beyond the airport.
My comparative screen shots were made as follows: I made a series of shots with Bajasim's scenery activated. Then I went to precisely the same vantage points with Bajasim's scenery deactivated (FSX default). Any differences in positions of objects results from differences in the depictions, not from faults in the viewpoints of my screenshots.
| AIRPORT COMPARISONS | |
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Bajasim |
FSX Default |
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Bajasim |
FSX Default |
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Screen shots by Bill Stack | |
The depiction of Manuel Márquez de León International Airport (MMLP) is very realistic compared with photos I found on the Internet. All buildings, signs, and surface markings are true to the photos I found. Frame rates around these objects are naturally lower than in other areas, but they were never a problem. I saw nothing to criticize about this airport.
Bajasim placed "semi-static" aircraft depicting currently parked DC9s from the former Aerocalifornia airline. "After airline [went] broke," Bajasim's project leader Luis Zaragoza said, "the aircraft were grounded there and never moved." The aircraft is an AI Aardvark model with Carlos Lopez repaint, he added.
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Screen shots by Bill Stack | ||
Bajasim's depiction of the entire La Paz area is basically realistic compared with the photos I found on the Internet. Terrain and coastlines are more like the photos than the scenery depicted by FSX. Scrublands, farms, and dry riverbeds are all depicted by Bajasim, whereas barren desert is shown in FSX. Waters in the bay appear more realistic than FSX default. The largest example of this is the dry riverbed leading from the mountains to the bay at the La Paz urban area. An urban area near the coastline southeast of the airport is also depicted, as are farms and agricultural buildings north of the airport. Buildings outside the airport area are autogen representations instead of exact replicas.
Bajasim explained that it used the landclass method for the surrounding areas because there was no affordable satellite imagery in the market. "They are just too expensive," Luis Zaragoza explained in response to my question. "Using Google or Bing maps images even for the airport ground, as many payware developers use illegally, was not our choice," he added. The scenery area appears to extend about 20 miles from the airport. Comparisons with FSX default show how much area Bajasim's scenery covers.
Generic buildings were hand placed in the area north of the airport to depict large residences. While cropfields and small towns around the airport are generated by autogen, Bajasim made "a great effort" placing pavements, roads, dirt roads, highways, and cropfields and town polygons, Luis Zaragoza said. The realism of these objects and areas is evident compared with real-world photos. Shores were reworked in a very accurate way, he added.
| COMPARISON OF SURROUNDINGS | |
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Bajasim |
FSX Default |
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Screen shots by Bill Stack | |
In addition to airport vehicles moving around the movement areas, automobile traffic on highways around the airport and in the La Paz area are included. These moving vehicles give flight simmers a sense of what real-world pilots experience when they taxi around airports and fly low on their circuits and approaches.
Bajasim offers more realism with general aviation traffic that can be added separately by downloading from their website. This extra feature uses FSX's default general aviation aircraft such as the Beechcraft King Air and Cessnas 172 and 208s. "It will bring life to general aviation ramp," Bajasim said.
Bajasim's night effects are realistic within FSX limitations. Light casting and shadows are true. The "moonlit" waters are FSX default, whose nighttime waters are not realistic.
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NIGHT VIEWS
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Screen shots by Bill Stack | ||
This scenery is ideal for recreational flights around this peninsula, over its mountains, and along its coastlines. It's also perfect for short flights to San Jose Los Cabos on the southern tip of the peninsula. Any simmer who already has Bajasim's scenery of San Jose Los Cabos will enjoy such flights even more. Long-range commercial flights to and from other Mexican cities would also be enjoyable.
Visual flying around the coastlines, over the mountains, and across the deserts of Baja California is much more realistic with Bajasim's scenery. Finding the airport visually isn't difficult in clear weather because it's south of the bay and southwest of the main urban area. The sparseness of the areas south of the airport leaves visual pilots few landmarks for navigating, but as long as they head north and keep the mountains to the right, they will eventually see the airport ahead. (If they reach the bay, they've gone too far.)
Instrument navigation is a bit more challenging because Mexico doesn't publish standard instrument airport procedures. Using GPS or the VOR at the airport for navigation should suffice, however.
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FLYING LA PAZ
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Screen shots by Bill Stack | ||
A 10-page manual in Adobe Acrobat format with text and photos describes the scenery overall, provides installation instructions and recommended settings, and includes an airport diagram. It also says: "Log in into our support forum and look for available charts for downloading." This manual is available in English and Spanish versions.
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THE MANUAL
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Screen shots by Bill Stack | ||
This product is for FSX. It is compatible with Windows XP and Windows 7, and Bajasim says it will work on "low-end" computers.
Purchase and installation from the Pilot Shop are very easy. Downloading and installation are quick.
The installation program installs the scenery files into the FSX Addon Scenery folder. The scenery must be manually activated, and the manual explains how to do so.
No special settings are required. Bajasim says it designed this scenery with "normal PCs" in mind. Bajasim says its tests on a "low end" computer without a 3D video card produced frame rates of 13 to 25 per second. Users with faster computers could advance the settings if desired, Bajasim says.
Frame rates are good. They are mostly in the teens and 20s and a bit slower near the scenery objects, as typical, but they were never burdensome.
Technical support is available via an email address in the documents. Response was very quick and clear.
Readers with technical questions not answered in this review should ask the developer. Using the links below, go to the Pilot Shop page where the product is listed and described, then click on "Manufacturer Tech Support" in the right column.
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Information about La Paz Mexico and its airport is available from several sources:
Bajasim recently released scenery for San Jose del Cabo, Baja California Sur, Mexico.
La Paz was chosen for development because Bajasim saw it as "a perfect match" for its previous scenery, San Jose del Cabo, about 80 miles to the south. These two sceneries give possibilities for general aviation flights between them in high-quality sceneries, Bajasim says. A new enterprise, Bajasim says it is using these smaller airports to build their scenery-making skills for more complex sceneries in the future.
For a new developer who admittedly is using these small airports for scenery-building experience, Bajasim has made another remarkably accurate and detailed airport scenery. Terrain enhancement that extends many miles beyond the airport adds greatly to the simulation experience because it can be seen from altitudes typical of aircraft that would be using this airport on departure and approach. The scenery also melds nicely into Bajasim's first entry, San Jose del Cabo at the southern tip of this long peninsula. The developer's consideration of various computer and simulator capabilities is welcomed, as frame rates are not seriously diminished near their scenery objects. Offers of free AI traffic and aviation charts from their website are generous.
Bill Stack
billstack@flightsim.com
Learn More About Bajasim's La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico for FSX.
Bill Stack is author of several books about flight simulation, a regular author in flight-sim magazines, and a contributor to Flight Sim Com. His website is www.topskills.com