Did you know that the most beautiful sight in the world is located in Norway? Neither did I. On the west coast of Norway, just east of Norway's second largest city of Bergen, Hardangerfjoren (the Hardanger inlet) cuts 179 km into the landscape. If you travel all the way to east side of the country, close to the Swedish border, you will find, less beautiful, but more important, Norway's largest airport - Gardermoen.
Oslo Airport, (ICAO: ENGM) is the principal airport serving Oslo, Norway. It acts as the main domestic hub and international airport for Norway, and the second-busiest airport in the Nordic countries. A hub for Scandinavian Airlines and Norwegian Air Shuttle, and a focus city for Wideroe, it is connected to 25 domestic, 27 European and 5 intercontinental destinations. More than 19 million passengers traveled through Oslo Airport in 2010, of which 8.6 million were domestic, making Gardermoen the sixth-busiest domestic airport in Europe.
The airport is located at Gardermoen in Ullensaker, 19 nautical miles (35km; 22mi) northeast of Oslo. The airport has two parallel roughly north-south runways 3600 metres (11,800 ft) and 2950 metres (9,680 ft) long, 71 aircraft stands, of which 34 have jet bridges. The airport is connected to the city center by the high-speed Gardermoen Line served by mainline trains and Flytoget (Flight train). The civilian facilities are owned by Oslo Lufthavn AS, a subsidiary of the state-owned Avinor. Also at the premises is Gardermoen Air Station, operated by the Royal Norwegian Air Force. Oslo is also served by the low-cost Sandefjord Airport, Torp and Moss Airport, Rygge.
The area was taken into use by the Norwegian Army in 1740, with the first military airport facilities being built during the 1940s. Gardermoen remained a secondary reserve and charter airport to Oslo Airport, Fornebu until 8 October 1998, when the latter closed and an all-new Gardermoen opened, costing 11.4 billion Norwegian kroner. An expansion with a third pier is scheduled to open after 2012.
The download version for FSX comes as an 84 MB Zip file. Unzip the file and run the installer. Follow the instructions on the screen and you are done. If you have a slight experience in using a computer, this part wouldn't be a problem. After installing the add-on, you will find a manual, setup tools, airport charts and scenery switch in the start menu.
The manual covers the technical details and gives you a recommended setting for the add-on scenery. Since some simmers run FSX on an older system, the scenery switch and traffic tool allow you to customize the add-on scenery according to the current performance of your PC system. Actually I like this option from Aerosoft, because it allows you to purchase and run the add-on, even if your system isn't quite ready for it. You can just throttle down the scenery until you get a newer computer system that can handle the add-on at full speed.
Load the scenery and you will find yourself at the active runway. Layout is very accurate to the real Gardermoen airport with most of the buildings located between the two long runways. The terminal is a big square with the gate area as two "fingers" going out from each side of the terminal. With some imagination it looks like an airplane from above. From above you believe that this airport is supposed to be here. The integration with the surrounding scenery is very nicely done. From a distance, there isn't any appearance of an overlap to see anywhere along the "edge" of the airport. At a closer view you will see some road ending blind and poor overlap between roads at the edge of the scenery.
Even it doesn't ruin the overall appearance of the airport integration, I wondering why Aerosoft didn't bother to finish these small details. You may consider it as an unimportant issue, but as a simmer I want to be fooled to believe that this scenery is real - and details helps a great deal to enhance that experience.
Inside the airport you get a taste of the details I'm talking (writing, I know) about. Smooth surface on the runways and realistic markings around the taxiways. When you are taxiing around, you will meet "runway ahead" markings on the runway with white flashing lights to warn you that you are about the cross an active runway. This is a very nice detail.
The smooth surface from the runways continues through the taxiways to the gate area, where black tire marks on the concrete around at the parking, prove to the simmer, that this is a busy airport with many aircraft arriving and leaving these gates every day.
The default Gardermoen scenery isn't as bad as other minor airports in FSX, however Mega Airport Gardermoen Oslo X wouldn't be much of an add-on without actually adding some more to the scenery - and it really does. The existing buildings got a facelift and more buildings have been added, including a new arrival area, hangars, parking area. Aerosoft also added some more appropriate and nicely modeled residential buildings along the edge of the airport. All the buildings are solid with no transparency.
The biggest addition to the scenery is the arriving area in the center of the airport. A large highway is added and some parking facilities and hotel buildings.
Mega Airport Gardermoen Oslo X adds lights to the gate area and runways in the nighttime, compared to the FSX scenery that only provides light on the runways.
The lighting Aerosoft added to the scenery is as usually very nicely done, with not too bright, realistic looking lights, but I still get the feeling of this airport must be closed in the night time. The arrival area is a dark ghost town with no light at all. It would have suited the scenery with some added lights to the arrival area and perhaps on the big highways that lead to the airport from Oslo City.
I used Aerosoft's recommended settings from the manual and to my surprise the add-on cut quite deep into my frame rates. When flying from the default Gardermoen I get some off the highest frame rates in all larger airports in FSX. I don't know if that's the reason for the large drop in frame rates I get from the Mega Airport Gardermoen Oslo X. With some tweaking with the tools Aerosoft added with the scenery I was able to run the scenery smoothly.
Mega Airport Gardermoen Oslo X is an overall nicely done add-on. With accurate layout Aerosoft created a very detailed and fantastic looking airport add-on scenery. The airport scenery is very believable and Aerosoft managed to create a great realistic feeling of being in a small, but still quite busy airport, when you are parked at the gate or taxiing from the runway - especially in the daytime.
It is a bit hard on your frames, but Aerosoft provided some great tools to adjust the scenery to run on even older systems. I actually like this add-on. What I like the most is the great job Aerosoft did adding all the stuff to the scenery and still remain the sensation, of this airport supposed to be a part of this foresty landscape. I will definitely departure from Gardermoen in the near future.
Ricky Petersen
r.petersen@net.telenor.dk
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