Nice is the fifth largest city in France, and one of the largest Mediterranean destinations for beach-goers. With its famed film festival, the town is a popular destination for tourists and celebrities like, and proves to be a large center for French, and Mediterranean commerce. Its location on the French Riviera, and a spot called the Cote d'Azur, or 'Azure Coast' in English, is famed for its sunny beaches, beautiful water and for us aviation lovers, its nicely-named airport. The airport itself is named Nice Cote d'Azur Airport, and due to its proximity to Monaco, is the official airport of that principality, thus, regular helicopter service is provided to connect the two cities.
Nice Cote d'Azur Airport is located 3.7 miles southwest of the city of Nice. In the year 2010, the airport served 9,636,548 passengers, with 161,355 movements (round trips) occurring during that year. The airport has four runways, 04L/22R and 04R/22L with the runways running 8,432 and 9,711 feet long, respectively. It officially serves the cities of Nice, Monaco, Cannes, Antibes, and St. Tropez; it is a popular destination, along with Barcelona, for starting cruises and Mediterranean travel. The types of aircraft normally serving in this airport are narrow bodies like Boeing 737 and 757 or Airbus A320 series aircraft. However, larger international carriers, though few, operate from distant places, like Delta and Emirates, who fly wide bodies like Boeing 767, 777 and Airbus A330 aircraft into that airport. Most travel however, is from Europe, the coastal Middle Eastern nations, and North Africa (like Morocco and Egypt). The only American-based airline that flies into this airport is Delta, which is on a seasonal summer basis.
This airport has extremely well modeled and textured taxiways and runways, that look like the real thing, with skid marks, paint, lights, and signs all in their right places, and that have easy to read, and high quality textures. There are lights at taxiway hold short points, down the runway, fully modeled ILS approach lights, with their physical structures. I have not yet been to this airport, yet it matches the real thing when comparing photographs. Runways and taxiways seem fundamental, yet they are very important! Please note: when using REX 2.0, its airport surface textures interfere with the photo-real Aerosoft ones, and cannot be eliminated entirely.
As in the real Nice Airport, all the gates, terminals, ramps and grounds are in their according places. This airport was made from photograph imagery, both taken in person and satellite, and is highly accurate (I for one, was in Barcelona's Airport in late June, and after reviewing it, it looked just like the Aerosoft product [that's vice-versa though!] so they get things done right).
AES or airport enhancement services allows the airport to have fully functioning AI ground vehicles travelling around the airport, for cars to be driving outside of the airport, as if entering the terminals, plus tugs and the whole lot. It is a great step up from the default AI services, and makes this an entirely new and realistic experience.
All the buildings in Nice Cote d'Azur X are custom buildings, made to look exactly as they appear in real life. From terminal shapes, to the control tower, and company buildings, and static aircraft, these are all well modeled objects that make a fun experience and great destination for flying.
I am more than impressed with this airport, it has features that are top-notch, with high-quality textures, great custom buildings, AES lite operations with realistic and 'smart' ground traffic and a complete, and amazing package. For those who fly Air France, Easyjet, British Airways, Lufthansa or even Emirates or Delta in FSX, or those who just adore the French Riviera, or reenact their past careers, this is one of the finest airport add-ons for flight simulator, and is a definite go-to destination for international travel. Add-ons like this are what make FSX better than its predecessors are; with the most realistic features, and well though-out design.
High Quality taxiways, runways, buildings, and vehicles, awesome satellite scenery with great clarity, quality and a full set off innovative features
Issues with REX 2.0, some fuzzy taxiway spots, and this product only covers an airport instead of all France!
I'd like to take this time to tell you all about the aircraft you've seen in this review. I have featured the Captain Sim 777 and 757 as well as the Aerosoft Airbus X.
Peter Carlson
petersnoopy@sbcglobal.net
Learn More Here
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