 |
|
|
|
|
Desirable system requirements are given as:
The development team say that V3 can be run on a 2.0 Ghz system with a Gig of RAM and a 128 Mb video card, but I did the review on a 3.0 Ghz Pentium D with 4 Gb of RAM and there were times when I could have done with more power, particularly on the approach to EHAM, when frame rates went into single figures with all the scenery options enabled. As ever, faster is better. Once you have finished installing the package, the next stage is to run the 'Feature Panel', which configures the scenery for you and has so many features that it deserves a review in its own right, as well as providing links to the documentation and the NL2000 website. The first page of the Feature Panel will gladden glider pilots' hearts, because it lets you install thermals in three different places in FS2004. The next page is devoted to AI traffic, which is a big feature of NL2000 V3: you can install helicopter AI; custom airliners; military AI in the form of F-16s; and ships, ferries and barges. Page three turns on and off GA AI touch and goes at thirteen different airfields and can also be used to active GA traffic throughout the Netherlands. Page four starts with 'educational scenery' which turns on place name boards throughout the scenery - with this option activated, banners pop up over every town you fly over, telling you where you are; it can also be used to activate the night scenery, which imposes a frame rate hit; corrects various FS2004 scenery options which cause problems in the Netherlands; and activates all the different sets of NL2000 V3 custom objects, which is useful, because, apart from the AI, these are the major drain on system resources when the package is running. Page five focusses entirely on the rather wonderful NL2000 EHAM and allows you to activate/deactivate various ground markings and to turn on multi-use runways. Page six has a miscellany of stuff, ranging from adjusted navaids and water textures to replacing the FS2004 runway lights with more realistic ones and the final stage provides log facilities; there is also an option to reinstall the default FS2004 files from CD, so you can't really go wrong.
I tested the scenery by enabling all the options apart from the night textures and then spent many happy hours flying around. The screenshots came from a flight made from EHMZ northwest to the coast, before heading across to land at EHAM after a change of plane (one of the best features of FS being that you don't have to finish a flight in the plane you started it in). The first thing to say is that for a freeware scenery, NL2000 V3 is absolutely oustanding and that in terms of its scope and presentation, it provides a lot of payware with a serious run for its money. The one comparable product is Horizon's VFR Netherlands, which is payware and lacks many of the features that NL2000 offers - in particular, you don't get anything like the Feature Panel and there are no thermals, or custom AI, nor are there so many custom buildings or detailed airports, but what you do get are generally more consistent textures and the whole thing arrives in a box, so if you don't have broadband, VFR Netherlands is worth considering. I liked the product when I reviewed it a few years back and I still like it now, but NL2000 V3 has many advantages, not least the fact that it is under continuous development and new features are being added on a regular basis - and it doesn't cost $27.00, which is what Horizon were asking for VFR Netherlands at the time of writing. Having brought up the consistency of the textures, I guess we had better go there next. NL2000 V3 provides replacement textures for the entire Netherlands area in FS2004. Regular readers will understand that these are locked into their correct geographic positions, so that wherever you 'fly' in the country, you will pass over 'ground' that looks identical to what you would see from the air during a real flight. Phototexture sceneries like this are subject to a couple of limitations in FS2004, which are that they are prone to attacks of blurring if you fly over them at more than about 150 knots and that they pixellate if you descend to less than 2500 feet above ground level. Otherwise, photosceneries impose no performance hit whatsoever on Flight Simulator, the reason for NL2000 V3's challenge to frame rates being the large amount of custom scenery and AI that the developers have provided - the FS2004 version doesn't make much use of Autogen.
Flying over NL2000 V3 is an impressive experience, given that it is the only freeware scenery I am aware of that has attempted to do what it does on such a large scale and so well. Given the history of its development, the quality of the detailed airports varies, but the general standard of coding is pretty high and many of the fields put payware packages to shame - EHAM alone deserves some kind of award. The combination of a country-full of custom airports, together with phototextured terrain is unique in that it leaves virtually nothing visible of the default FS2004 graphics apart from the clouds and you can't even see those in the screenshots, because I used Flight Environment. But if there is a weakness in NL2000, it is that the phototextures do have noticeable joins between them in places, although they aren't so obvious as to be annoying and it must be said that the quality of the phototextures is as good as anything else I have seen for FS2004. One reason for the large size of the download is that NL2000 V3 is a one metre per pixel scenery, although it should be noted that FS2004 can only display at a resolution of approximately 5 m per pixel. The placement of custom scenery objects is spot-on, as you can see in some of the screenshots. As you fly around, there are hours to be spent admiring the many windmills, bridges and industrial scenes to be found within the scenery - the best way to do this is in a light twin, which offers an acceptable compromise between getting places and going so fast that you are out of the Netherlands before you realise you are in it. The AI traffic really makes the small fields come alive, while EHAM is packed with heavies; the one downside being that unless you have a very powerful system, and I would suggest a dual-core, the combination of a large multi-runway airport and as much AI as you can eat translates into a slide-show. This is particularly obvious on the approach into EHAM, where a combination of FS2004 'features' and the NL2000 V3 addon conspires to generate an annoying ten second stutter exactly 15 nm out, regardless of the direction in which the approach is made. On the 3.0 Ghz system that the developers suggest, a sensible compromise can be found however, as long as you are prepared to tolerate seeing some empty stands. Holland is largely made of water, so there are plenty of ships to see, especially around the larger ports, like Ijmuiden (of fond memory, we once blew in there on the wings of a gale and boy, was I glad to see the calm water inside). The coastlines are extremely accurate, as far as I can tell - this is a simulator after all and I didn't sit down with a chart and tracing paper, but I sailed around the Netherlands a great deal in the seventies and the place looks real to me. The coastline is done less than absolute justice by FS2004, which makes navigation around the country much more difficult than it should be, but with NL2000 V3 installed, what you have is a real - and completely free - country that you can fly around armed with the correct sectional, or a road atlas, come to that. And... I am told that the team are working on a redesign for FSX, the main changes being that the scenery will use Autogen for trees and houses, the code will be generally cleaned up to optimise frame rates, and the texture files may well be updated. This will amount to something like a 6 Gb download - as usual, we will keep you posted, but it should be available mid-year and there is talk of the new version being modular, so that users can download whatever feature set they require. Outstanding.
Andrew Herd  Copyright © 2008 by FlightSim.Com. All Rights Reserved. |
L2000 is one of those projects that you can hardly fail to be impressed at - the 37 Mb
