The Netherlands. A small lovely country, well known for its landscapes with tulips and windmills. Here you will also find the Europe's 5th largest and the world's 15th largest airport by total passenger traffic. Schiphol is located 15 minutes southwest of the nation's capitol - Amsterdam. Schiphol is placed in the municipality of Haarlemmermeer, and the name "Schiphol" is actually taken from a lake there used to be in the area. What is means is unsure. Most likely is taken from 'scheepschaal', a canyon where ships were pulled from one lake to another.
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (ICAO: EHAM) is the Netherlands' main international airport, which also serves as the primary hub for Holland's Royal Airline Company - KLM.
Schiphol Amsterdam airport is placed 3-5 meters below sea level, which makes it the lowest located larger airport in the world. Schiphol has been rewarded several time for "world's best airport". The British business newspaper "Business Traveler" has called Schiphol the best airport in Europe 22 times since 1980.
Mega Airport X comes as a 220 MB download that contains a version for FSX and FS2004. The installation is straight-forward, even if you haven't got that much knowledge about computers; unzip the downloaded file, choose your version and click "install". From here you just follow the instructions in the install setup menu and "bingo". You just constructed a new virtual airport.
After the installation you will find a folder in the startup menu, which includes the manual, airport charts and some tools for setting up various features like season, active runway and an AESlite traffic configuration tool. Here it's possible to toggle the traffic in the different part of the airport and the surrounding roads and highways, which could be handy in to improve performance on older systems. In the manuel, you can find the recommended optimal display settings for the add-on. I followed these recommendations during this review.
The enhancement of the Amsterdam's main airport is obvious from the first view of the new scenery. The default version of Schiphol only gives you the gate section and some random buildings here and there, including the runways. The real layout of the gates in Schiphol airport look a bit like a bug viewed from above, with five legs and a mouth. In the center of the airport, Aerosoft added the whole check-in and secured area to the gates section, to complete the passenger area. Looking at a map, there is some kind of community located very close to the arrival of the airport. I'm not sure, if these buildings is residential area, hotel or something else, but these building are added as well. A large modern airport is almost like a small "city" and has many building around the airport area, that handle the logistic and infrastructure of the airport.
That is where you will see the other major improvements from the default version. Many more buildings are present in this scenery. You will find terminals, hangars, control towers, office buildings and as far as I can tell from a real map, everything looks to be in the right place.
When I explored the airport area my eye caught the fire and rescue station. Beside the fire station, Aerosoft added the airplane dummy for the training of the fire and rescue teams. This kind of small detail is fun and makes the feeling of being in a "real airport" so much greater. As far as I can tell, Aerosoft added every building inside than actual airport area, including some of the main highways that connect the whole region with Amsterdam's main airport. All the added building and highways makes you realize that Schiphol actually is location at a large urban area in one of Europe's larger capitals. Aerosoft didn't put anything into the buildings, but everything is very nice and realistic. Even when you go close, you will a high level of detail. You will find yourselves spending a lot of time exploring around.
Another significant change is the jetways, that have a major work over from the default version in FSX. They now look very realistic and many of the gates now have a twin jetway to be able to handle different size airplanes at the same gate. Everywhere you go in the airport, you will come across dynamic animated objects like baggage trucks, fuel trucks, cars and other vehicles. This makes the airport very much alive and believable. One thing you will notice when you load the scenery is that you will not find your center at the active runways threshold. Instead you will be holding short of the active runway, so you wouldn't suddenly block the way for an approaching aircraft. At first it's weird, but for the realism, it actually makes good sense to place you here. As a serious sim-pilot you must ask ATC before entering the runway.
The ground textures such as runways, taxiways, and lawns are enhanced and look excellent with hundreds of taxiway and runway signs. Around the airport you will find these green areas that separate the runway from the taxiway. These areas come with a rather blurry texture. No matter which setting I used, the texture stayed dull and grainy. In most seasons, you will only notice this at close view as on approach or taxiing, but in the winter season you can see this even at high altitude. This small flaw makes it difficult to blend the airport area with the surroundings in a natural way.
Mega Amsterdam X comes with a improved high resolution night texture, but the thing I like especially is the improved lighting of the airport. Aerosoft added lights to more areas in the airport, like around the gates and on the taxiways. But they also managed it to look very realistic. It looks awesome when you take off in the dark hours and the airport lighting blends nicely with the rest of the city.
During the test I used some default helicopters and Wilco's 737-400 aircraft. If you consider the amount of added data from this add-on, you would expect some kind of frame loss. I did experience a loss of frames from 28-35 fps to 15-22 fps from the default version, during taxiing and takeoff. I run FSX on a fairly old system, so I would assume you wouldn't feel any significant frame problems on a newer system.
Mega Airport Amsterdam X will give you a serious improvement of the overall airport environment. If you yearn for a more realistic and living airport experience, Mega airport Amsterdam gives you exactly that for a decent price. It's truly awesome in its detail, features, and realism.
This add-on will affect frame rates, but consider the amount of improvement on the airport scenery, it is more than acceptable. Even if you run an older system, you are able to configurate the add-on scenery to your needs. Mega Airport Amsterdam X isn't perfect. I did come across some flaws here and there, but Aerosoft truly done their research and created an excellent version of Schiphol - Amsterdam's international airport.
Ricky Petersen
r.petersen@net.telenor.dk
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