Orcas Island

By Andrew Herd (7 April 2004)

t isn't often that the word 'masterpiece' occurs to me when I am reviewing an FS addon - in fact it hasn't ever occurred to me before. But Orcas Island, designed by Richard Goldstein and billed as the first in the FSAddon.com 'New World' series would appear to be exactly that - a masterpiece.

Although FS planes inherit any beauty of line their real world counterparts possess; addon scenery is often less than totally satisfying. We all like planes, or we wouldn't have anything to do with this hobby - but scenery is more often something that we tolerate, rather than actively enjoy - and I have always thought it is one of the more interesting puzzles about flight simulation that we will happily accept shortcomings in scenery that we find completely unacceptable in aircraft. As far as I can see, one of the main reasons why people buy addon scenery is to get away from the sameness of Microsoft's default airport buildings, which make it kind of tough to work out if you are in Kathmandu or Kansas.

It isn't all bad news, though and the better quality addon sceneries rise an order of magnitude above anything Microsoft has to offer - inevitably so, since the developers get to concentrate on doing a small number of airports really well, rather than trying to simulate the whole world in a single package. When you get down to looking at it from that sort of perspective, you have to admit that the default scenery is pretty good. I have reviewed other flight simulators for the aviation press (stuff like Elite, ASA On Top and X-Plane) and believe me, there isn't anything which even comes near FS2004 when it comes down to the global quality of its scenery. Sure, it could be better; for one thing I would like to see rivers better executed and properly matched to the mesh, but when it boils down to it, Flight Simulator isn't half bad. Every version is better than the last and although we won't ever get to the stage where you can land the R22 in your back yard, walk into the house and shake hands with yourself, I am sure we ain't seen nothing yet. But for now, the scope for improving the scenery is almost infinite.

Now if there is a problem with FS sceneries, it is one of getting the balance right between speed and detail. The bear trap yawning in front of all scenery designers is that Flight Simulator is not designed to be at its best when the user's point of view is near ground level and neither is it particularly well optimised to handle the high polygon counts that are the inevitable result of coding a detailed scenery. This means that as you approach short final, the ground textures start to break up and (if you are unlucky) the frame rate plunges as the display engine gets constipation trying to deal with all the vertices. At best, short final to the threshold of a complex scenery will slow the sim down; at worst, the process can result in a slideshow. The trouble is that the people who go out and spend their hard earned money on sceneries also like to buy complex planes, which soak up more processor cycles... and compound the problem. Pity the poor developer, huh?

There are two ways around the frame rate conundrum. No, there are three. The third one is not to have anything to do with scenery development, which is one of the reasons why most software houses only do planes - which are easier to sell anyway. You can take a plane anywhere, but sceneries tend to stay put and users tire of them quickly.

The first practical way a scenery can be speeded up is to reduce the polygon count, which either means taking stuff out, or expending a great deal of time and intellectual effort designing complicated looking structures out of simple basic parts - which is one of the reasons why sceneries take so long to develop. The second method is to use Flight Simulator's ability to 'disappear' the more distant bits of the scenery, which is harder to do than you might think and accounts for why some addon sceneries suffer so badly from 'pop-ups', when structures suddenly appear as if by magic. Kind of distracting if it is a building between you and the threshold.

Taking all of that into account, I guess it probably isn't surprising that developers don't always get it completely right. What makes it worse is that their products are frequently installed on FS setups which are being driven to their very limits and whose users can't understand the 'straw that broke the camel's back' situation that they have got themselves into. As it happens, one of the first Richard Goldstein sceneries I ever installed did exactly that to my system - it was his freeware Flying M Ranch for FS2000 and while it was graphically gorgeous, it had too many trees for my poor old 700 MHz Pentium. Since then, Richard has refined his techniques and I have bought more powerful systems and as each of his sceneries has been released, I have installed it and enjoyed it and marvelled at the way he can create such convincing airports without bringing my system to its knees.

As far as I can recall, the first commercial package Richard had any serious involvement in was Escalante and Hurricane for FS2002, which was followed by a payware Flying M Ranch, the classic Emma Field, Bryce, Diamond Point, Darrington and Forks and Sultan Field and Sky Harbor. It really is quite a list and while Richard was by no means the only person involved in the design of these addons, his touch is so distinctive that he might as well have his name written in lights along all the runways. Over the years I have come to the conclusion that the unique 'Georender look' is created by Richard's skill at hand over-painting of digital textures. Now we have Orcas Island, which is the best of the lot.

All the sceneries released under the Georender label are based on careful photographic surveys of real airfields and they are united by the way most are in the Pacific Northwest within easy flying distance of each other. One complicating factor for anyone interested in collecting all the sceneries is that three different publishers are involved, Escalante and Hurricane originally having been marketed by Flight1; Georender 1 to 6 by Lago; and Orcas Island by FSAddon.com at SimMarket, but I guess variety is the spice of life.

Georender sceneries have - in the main - been distinguished by offering what amounts almost to a 'micro-environment' within Flight Simulator. Instead of the default runways just being enhanced by somewhat more accurate buildings, a large area of surrounding terrain is included, which has the effect of making the addons look as if they belong where they are, instead of having been plonked on top of a contrasting layer of FS default terrain and please ignore the joins. So instead of arriving to find a field whose boundaries are marked by billboard hedges and razor-sharp texture discontinuities, it is often difficult to work out where a Georender field begins and ends - because they blend seamlessly into the landscape.

Widening the scope like this has an important advantage in that it becomes possible to add in the kind of landmarks that are part and parcel of finding airfields in real life. To give you an example, when returning from the west, we locate our home field by identifying an industrial chimney to the south of a quarry, and then pick up a park full of bright blue containers which leads the eye to a road which conveniently marks the path of the downwind leg. Now think of an FS scenery which lets you do anything as natural as that. Yep, there aren't many - but virtually all the Georender range let you something of the sort, which is one of the reasons I like them so much.

Another thing that makes Georender sceneries feel more real is that it can be quite tough to find them in the sim. To be fair, FS2004 represents a vast improvement over FS2002 in which airports could be identified from so far away that some simmers must have wondered how on earth real pilots ever managed to get lost. Georender fields hide, just like real ones, so you have to become adept at recognising natural signposts to them, although in the cause of making life a little easier Richard has cheated and put an NDB on the strip that isn't there in reality. Fly around this scenery enough and you will find yourself using the VC more and more as you learn how to navigate the circuit purely on visual reference, rather than the traditional head buried in the cockpit which course should I be steering now, wow there's the threshold right under me we'll just slew down a bit and avoid a go-around FS method. Instead of default terrain tiles butting up to the edge of the field, you get generous areas of custom landscape that exhibits seasonal behavior, so you can't always rely on a particular field having a particular crop in it - just like reality.

Finding Orcas Island isn't that tough - it is in the San Juan islands, Washington State, 56 nm northeast of Vancouver, or alternatively, 68 nm northwest of Diamond Point, if you have that. The package which makes it come to life in Flight Simulator is available for download from SimMarket at a price of €22.95. The download is just over 50 megs and once you have got past the usual copy-protected installation routine, you will find the scenery has been installed in FS and a new program group has been created, containing a 25 page pdf manual and various web links. A CD version is also available by snail mail. There is no detailed minimum system spec, but I think I would want a minimum of a 1.5 GHz Pentium with a good quality video card to run this, though I am sure the addon will load on any machine that can run FS2004 and run after some kind of fashion. After installation, the field can be found by typing 'Orcas' or KORS in the go to airport dialog. Be aware that some of the ramp spots are so close to the fence that it isn't possible to turn planes around without hitting it, so you may want to turn some of the collisions options off. Otherwise, the developer's only suggestions are to use 2 x antialiasing and 2 x anisotropic filtering if your card supports it.

There are a few gotchas with the scenery. As the (excellent) manual points out, conflicts with addon meshes are a possibility - the addon uses the default mesh, which is pretty good in this area. Second, if you are not using the default FS textures, all the careful blending Richard has done around the edges of the scenery will be for nothing and the addon will stand out like a sore thumb. Third, some addon planes cause the scenery's textures to go fuzzy. I can testify to this, because my favorite taildragger (the RealAir Decathlon shown in the shots) makes it happen. After some experimentation, I discovered that the fuzziness is triggered by changing the viewing distance in spot plane view, or by changing FS from windowed to full screen mode. In the first case, changing to another aircraft makes the problem go away, in the second, the solution is to press the Alt key and then click anywhere on the screen, or at least it is on my PC.

The runway is 16/34 and all circuits are to the east, which means that they are left handed on 16 and right handed on 34. For a relatively isolated strip, there is the unbelievable luxury of a VASI at one end and a PAPI at the other, though I guess the vis frequently leaves something to be desired. Though there are trees in the vicinity, neither of the approaches are anything like as tough as Diamond Point and once you have got a picture of the place in your head, getting lined up is no problem, as final for 16 is turned overhead the distinctively shaped Sucia island and going the other way all you have to do is fly down the sound shown in the screenshot above and avoid hitting the hill. Justin Lamb has even created an NDB approach for Richard's spurious navaid, which should provide a challenge for IFR fanatics. Every time I do an NDB approaches at Teesside I seem to come out facing in a different wrong direction, but some people must have figured out how to fly them in a wind (-:

The field itself is the best one Richard has ever done and the buildings are so real that they make most other developers' efforts look amateur. Take a look at the FBO in the third screenshot down - not only does it have a detailed interior, but the guys inside walk around in a pretty convincing fashion. The same happens at the pump, where I half expected the old boy in the chair (see the top screenshot) to come on over and ask how much Avgas I needed; he actually does get up and take a good look around, but fortunately his AI isn't smart enough to let him ask for a major credit card. Clever and convincing animations abound elsewhere in the scenery, ranging from planes and boats to whales surfacing in the sound.

As is usual with Georender fields, there are a lot of custom trees and as you taxi you will spot houses hidden among them and planes parked outside waiting for flying weather. At the northern end of the strip, there is a small harbor full of boats and it is possible to taxi an amphibian into the marina and up the ramp onto the field if you are careful. On the way in, you might like to check out the fisherman who must be a persistent cuss, because he is out there rain, hail or shine.

Nine situations are supplied with the package, including a couple for floatplanes. One of the extras included in the addon is a nice mini-scenery of Rosario harbor, which has some great seaplane berths and a buoy which is large enough to be worth avoiding on the way out. The flights in from Diamond Point and Vancouver are a great way of appreciating what the surrounding area has to offer, and if you like a challenge, you can try flying the default 172 out of Waldronair, which is a short, tree-lined strip to the east of Orcas. There isn't much there beyond some runway markers, but getting in and out in a fully loaded 172 on a hot day is kind of interesting - I suggest using a little bit of flap (-:

Fly out on a course of 150 degrees from Waldronair and after a minute or so you will come across yet another small airstrip on an island, with a house about half way down and a yellow Cessna parked outside. This, according to the manual, is where the developer lives; I guess Richard must fly to work.

Just to add to the atmosphere you buy with this addon, the manual provides various links to webcams in the San Juan islands, to the resort websites and even to Kenmore Air, who operate schedules in the Seattle/San Juans/Victoria Gulf Islands/Inside Passage area. Looking at their site might inspire someone to set up a VA based around the scenery, because they fly an interesting combination of routes and their timetables are pretty easy to figure out from the site. Some enterprising repainter might do an FS2004 'Kenmore collection' as they operate piston and turbo Beavers, Turbo Otters and a turbo Cessna 180, all of them on floats. By some fortunate chance, John Woodward has already released an FS2004 Beaver in the Kenmore livery on both wheels (BEAV2K4W.ZIP) and floats (BEAVE2K4.ZIP) which could be used to run some of the flights; and a while back the FS folk hero Fred Choate did Kenmore's seaplane base in Seattle, but this was for FS2000 (KENMORV2.ZIP) and hasn't been updated as far as I know. On the other hand, given the way Richard favors this area, the next move he makes might be to do some complimentary scenery so that we build up a little world in which we never have to visit a default FS field ever again.

Right at the start of this review I said I thought this scenery was a masterpiece and having been playing around with it for days on end, I don't see any reason to change my mind. Before FSAddons published this one, if you had asked me to nominate the best small field addon for FS2004, I would have unhesitatingly said Emma Field, but Orcas elbows it aside to take the crown. I don't know what it is that makes Richard so good at doing this kind of stuff, but he brings real artistry to Flight Simulator and if this one doesn't clean up on the awards front, I will want to know why. It would be good to see a fix for the texture blur with the Decathlon, because it makes such a great pairing with this scenery, but I wasn't overly troubled by the problem and I am waiting with baited breath for the next installment. One day, all sceneries will be like this.

Visit Simmarket to purchase Orcas Island