Malta
By Bert Zengerink (17 November 1998)
lying
gives you a sense of freedom, even though as simmers we are confined
to the limited spaces of our computer rooms. This sense of freedom
gets even greater when you are flying to an island. Who needs boats
when you can fly? Many creators of flight sim addons choose an island
or groups of islands. Microsoft was one of the first with its
Carribbean scenery addon, which is now included in the default
scenery in FS98. The same can be said about their Hawaii scenery. In
their footsteps Wilco released the very accurate Tahiti scenery.
Also 'amateurs' are appealed by islands. One of them is Mark Grech,
who created a scenery of Malta. Among a few other files that contain
the same scenery, in my opinion his MALTA98U.ZIP is the best on the
net. The scenery is easy to install. It consists of a couple of zip
files that contain the scenery BGL files and the texture files. The
required VOD textures and Airport textures are included. Grech also
inluded a JPG file with all the navigational aids you need to fly in
the scenery.
Malta is a very small state which consists of a few islands in the
Meditterranean, just below Italy. Grech created two larger of these
islands, Malta and Gozo, alongside a small inhabited one. Both
islands are made with very nice ground textures that are so detailed
that you can almost fly VFR. The villages look very Meditterranean
and you will even find some historical buildings on both of them. The
islands also contain a number of tourist hotels next to the seductive
beaches.
Gozo, the smallest of the two islands, only has a heliport; it's
very detailed however. Because after a couple of years I still can't
master the Bell in FS98 the closest I'll ever get to it will be
buzzing it in a more user friendly aircraft. On Malta you'll find the
main airport, which is very detailed as well. You'll find a lot of
stuff we want to see in our FS98 airports. There are detailed
taxiways, static aircraft and a very nice looking main building.
Although the scenery looks very detailed it runs pretty smoothly on a
Pentium 200MMX with 32 MB RAM and a Monster 3D card. I would still
recommend the installation of the FS98 patch set 1 however.
For those of you who like flying to or from an island Grech's Malta
scenery is a must have. Fly in tourists from the European mainland
in your commercial airliner, or give them a tour of the islands in
your favorite sports plane. You'll find the scenery a welcome addon
for FS98.
Bert Zengerink
Download Malta
ajzengerink@castel.nl