FlightSim.Com Review: Polynesia 2000

Polynesia 2000

By Selmar Spijker (23 July 2001)

Me having some fun! The amount of detail that can be seen has no words.

guess that many of you have heard of Polynesia 2000 by FlightWorld. Well what is it like? I have desperately tried to find people to see if they have it, but it seems to me that no one actually knows how GREAT this product is. Even though the product has some flaws, over all, as you will see, this is a great package of scenery.

Installation (8/10)

Installing the scenery consists of two parts. The first part is all very straight forward and during that installation no problems occurred. After the first installation is complete, you are not exactly finished with installing the product, because it needs to be registered in the scenery.cfg file. The only unhandy part about the second installation is that the window does not automatically come up, so you have to go into Windows Explorer, find the folder, and then click on the install program, and install the scenery. I don't think that this is very easy to understand especially if a person is new to computers. The second part of the installation went easily, but when I launched FS2000, it gave me an error that it cannot find ...scenery/Polynesia/scenery. I quit FS2000 and opened the scenery.cfg file and saw that the path was not complete, so I changed it and then it worked in FS2000. The reason for this error is because I installed the scenery not in the recommended directory, but in a different directory. Even though I did this, it should still not be the case that the program registers it wrongly in the scenery config file.

Trying to keep on course in this PC-12 in some bad weather. Rain or shine this scenery never lets you down.

Taking off of Tahiti FAAA; notice the amount of detail.

What Does The Package Include? (10/10)

The package includes some very nice features that make the product that extra something. The product comes, of course, with scenery covering the whole of French Polynesia (every single island of it) in great detail and in photoreal textures. The package does not come supplied with a manual, but on the CD there are airport charts and various texts pertaining to the islands. Also, a handy dandy program is included that shows the whole area covered by the scenery and, while moving your mouse on the islands, you can get a brief explanation of the island and an FS2000 screen shot of it. With the program you are also able to see all the navaids, VOR's, ILS's and NBD's in a chart form. This function is very good, and I think that it really makes finding the navaids of areas much easier than in a plain old word document. I give a thumbs up for FlightWorld for including this program.

Flying at night is just as fun as at day time. I don't believe that I have seen any scenery yet with so many lights.

Passing over one of the many islands; this scenery is great for island hopping.

The Scenery (9/10)

The scenery is as great as it can get. Every island is rendered in photoreal quality and the island looks really great from the air. Every island has houses scattered on it, and trees are also present in between the houses. Let's take Tahiti as an example; the Tahiti airport itself is rendered in top quality with every little detail present. The night effects of Tahiti FAAA airport are also very impressive. The city around the airport, and the towns on the island, are all scattered with different custom buildings and palm trees; this effect looks a lot like the AutoGen that will be present in FS2002. Believe me, this large amount of houses on the islands really improves the overall quality of the product.

Also at the beaches one can find many resorts and many static objects like boats, jetskis and tankers (ships). I know you people are wondering, well does it have an impact on the frame rate? And I have to say...no it does not have a dramatic impact on the frame rate. The objects are made so that they appear only a few miles away from you, so you avoid having a large amount of buildings present at one time, thus not drastically decreasing frame rates.

Here you can see one of the problems; the water is going up hill and you can see the lines that separate the scenery.

The night effects gone wrong. Only Tahiti has this problem, but it sure spoils flying at night in certain areas.

The islands all have that tropical feel and this makes your flying in Tahiti much more pleasant. Now I have only commented on the good stuff, well what about the bad stuff? Yes there are flaws in the scenery, and one of them is that some of the water areas seem to be elevated into the terrain, so the sea goes uphill with the mountain. This can be seen on some islands, and I think that FlightWorld had to finish the product in a rush, because this problem could have easily been solved and is a very careless mistake. Another small problem is the fact that when flying fairly close to the ground, one can see the lines that separate the textures from each other (I know that this is not a very big problem, but it is noticed when flying around the scenery) but there can't be anything changed about this problem. One last problem, that I encountered (I am not sure if it is only my problem or a problem in general) was when flying around Tahiti FAAA during the night, the textures around the airport flicker from their day to their night texture and so on. I contacted FlightWorld about it, but I still have not gotten any response from them, and this worries me that FlightWorld does not contact their customers immediately.

Performance (8/10)

Yes and yes again, this scenery does not run very good on slow computers, but over all the frame rates are really good compared to the amount of detail that is present in the scenery. Here is a chart showing my FPS (1.5 GHz PIV 128 RAM Nvidia TNT2 1024x1280 and all sliders set to full)

	Default	Tahiti
Flying	38-50	20-26
Ground	30-36	15-22

Pro's

Great photo real scenery
Many objects
Very good looking airports
A handy dandy program included
Has fairly good frame rates for a scenery of its detail

Con's

Unhandy second installation program
Ocean going uphill with the mountains
No response from FlightWorld about my question

Even the isolated islands have not been left out! Notice the crates with the textures on them.

Reverse thrust and trying to keep the aircraft on the runway while looking at the magnificent detail speed by.

Overall Impression (9/10)

Overall this is a product that lives up to what it says on the box. If you have been thinking of buying it, well then buy it; you will not regret it. This product is well worth the money, and despite the few problem that the scenery has the Polynesia 2000 scenery will provide you with the thrill and shear fun of flying in the tropics. So now if you will excuse me, I am going to order a fruit punch, relax and enjoy the view from my hotel in Bora Bora.

Selmar Spijker
selmarfs@hotmail.com

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www.flightworld.org

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