Visual Flight RAF Fairford for FS2002/FS2004

By Andrew Herd (3 September 2004)

isual Flight are rapidly gaining a reputation for releasing very high quality flight simulation products that are innovative and interesting in equal measure and their RAF Fairford scenery is another winner. Many detailed single airport sceneries have been released in the past, though few incorporate the level of detail and artistry that this one does - but what makes Visual Flight's new product unique is that it is a representation of a single weekend in the airfield's calendar - the Royal International Air Tattoo (RIAT) in July 2003.

As you can see from the shot above, RIAT Fairford is not an average addon - it is packed with static aircraft, trade stands, marquees, beer tents, burger stands, amusement arcades, balloons, big wheels, coaches and crowds of people come to visit. The developers tell me there are also simulated toilets, but I drew the line at doing that full an investigation.

I lost count of how many animations there are in the scenery, but believe me, the simulation is nearly as big a visitor attraction as the the real thing. Every time I run it on the PC, I have to fight my way to the keyboard in order to get the screenshots (-:

The Royal International Air Tattoo has been running since '71, at North Weald and then Greenham Common, before its 1985 move to Fairford. Greenham Common was less than ideal as a venue as it was full of cruise missiles and Fairford's facilities, which included the ability to stage a static display a couple of miles long, must have looked very appealing. The RIAT is held every year and qualifies as one of the biggest airshows in Europe, so there is always plenty of interest and visitors are guaranteed a viewing of a wide range of the most modern military aircraft.

2003 was, as it happens, one of the best shows Fairford has ever put on and apart from the inevitable Red Arrows display, there was wide international participation. The Luftwaffe attended with a team of Tornados in eye catching paint schemes, the Latvians brought a pair of Mil-8s, there was a Hungarian MiG-29, a Swedish JAS-39 which took the solo aerobatic trophy, a spirited display by the Polish AF team, an F-117, a B1 (and B2), the Patrouille de France - you name it, it was there. And of course, there were balloons, so nobody could possibly complain, apart from the many thousands of people who waited in the queues that built up at the entrance.

The Visual Flight Fairford is an 18.2 Mb download that is available at the bargain basement price of £14.99 (€22.74, $27.40, $CAD 26.47, $AUS 38.94) for the download version. A CD version can also be ordered, although this costs a little extra. I tested the download version 1.1, which was just over 18 Mbs in size and installs using an automatic routine into either FS2002 or FS2004. The main choice to be made during the installation, apart from which version of FS you want to install it in, is which version of the scenery you wish to use and I would advise thinking carefully about this, because although the addon will work on any machine which is capable of running FS, slower systems are likely to struggle if all the options are checked. I have a 3.0 Ghz Pentium and opted for 'frame rate' friendly shadows and no crowds - three levels of crowd are available, filling the airfield with up to 25,000 people. I tried using the default FS shadows and maximum crowds in FS2004, which gave me 10 fps at the very worst using the 'extra crowds' setting and 12-14 fps without crowds. These figures were measured on the runway threshold using a not particularly well optimised system; approach and departure frame rates were in the high teens/low twenties, and I am sure most users will do far better. Out of interest, while doing the review I discovered that FS2004 seems to deliver better frame rates using 1.33 ratio screen sizes (e.g. 1024 x 768, 1600 x 1200), than it does with 1.25 ratio screens (e.g. 1280 x 1024).

The package is compatible with both the VFR Photographic Scenery and VFR Terrain, and according to the manual will work perfectly well on systems which have Gary Summons UK2000 Part 5 installed, as long as RIAT Fairford is installed after Part 5, or is moved to a higher position in the scenery library.

To be honest, the addon is so good that I don't think most users of lower specced systems will miss the crowds at all, although they do look great, thronging the runways - see the top screenshot - but there is so much else to look at that I decided the people got in the way as much as anything. One potential issue is that the only way to alter the crowd size and shadow setting is to uninstall and reinstall the scenery, but this was a quick exercise that the installer carried out flawlessly, so although I support the developer's advice to start with the less power hungry settings and work up, it isn't too much of a problem experimenting. There is an excellent manual which has a comprehensive section on preserving frame rates - Visual Flight's suggestion about reducing visibility to 20 miles is a sound one given that during high pressure periods in the UK we frequently have much less vis than that.

One of the reasons I got excited about the package is that it reminds me very strongly of a very large GeoRender scenery. Carl Edwards is credited with the design and all I can say is that I am seriously impressed. If you take a look at the screenshots, you will see that there are numerous custom buildings and instead of the usual slightly blurry stock statics with inappropriate registrations, every plane I checked out was a mini masterpiece of texturing that has been designed specifically for the RIAT scenery. The marquees are extremely well executed and apart from the fact that their candy-striped exteriors lend a great deal of atmosphere to this entertaining package, they are the most convincing canvas structures I have ever seen in FS.

Then we have the balloons. Cameron almost single handedly started the craze for in your face balloon art and boy, did RIAT '03 have its share. Not only do those guys knock your eye out, Carl has animated them, so they all bob gently up and down. This is the kind of feature that makes the addon so special, because it kind of creeps up on you - I had been testing the package for some time to get the optimum frame rate setting, when a movement caught my eye, and it took a while to realise what it was. And not only do the balloons bob, the ferris wheel turns... but there is no AI traffic.

What?

Yep, there is no AI traffic, as a result of a positive decision by the developer. I guess that sooner or later, Carl knew that someone was bound to fall prey to the temptation to provide a freeware addon, and judging from the Visual Flight forums, that is just what is happening right now. A Red Arrows formation and an RAF Nimrod flypast are currently under development, but the simmers involved were being careful to get everything exactly right, so no release dates were available at the time of writing. Just run your finger down the main runway and you can count more than fifty different types of plane, ranging from a C-5 to a Spitfire; which means that when AI traffic does appear for this addon, it will not only have to be of a high enough standard to match the statics, but also do rather more than arrive and depart - this is supposed to be an airshow, after all. There is every sign that that is exactly what is going to happen.

Regular readers will know that I rarely write rave reviews of FS scenery, the reason being that too much of it verges on the second rate. While addon aircraft have come on in leaps and bounds, scenery has lagged behind very badly, which is reflected in relatively poor sales, which deters developers from expending more effort on their products than is absolutely necessary - and has led to a vicious spiral where apathetic buyers expect little and get less. Fortunately, there are some packages which break the mould and the list has been getting longer with every new version of Flight Simulator (browse back through our scenery reviews to see the pick of the pack), but even the best addons still have a tendency to lack atmosphere, a feature which is about as tough to define as it is to design into a scenery.

If I had to list package which have lots of atmosphere, I would at one time have started and finished with the GeoRender series and Orcas Island, but RIAT Fairford has elbowed its way onto center stage, not least because it disproves one of my longer-held theories, which is that it isn't possible to build a large scale FS scenery that has character. If you own any of the GeoRender stuff, just scale it up about ten times and you will know what this addon feels like. Taking off from the main runway there really does make you feel like a display pilot and I am looking for a jet with smoke effects to see if I can fly an accurate run and break (-:

Fairford easily qualifies for an Armchair Aviator Award - there is no doubt that it does place demands on processor power, but given its massive scope, RIAT must be one of the most frame rate efficient addons of its kind I have come across. If I had to come up with a reason for buying this package apart from the fact that it is the best airfield scenery I have seen in a long, long while, it is that Visual Flight donate a portion of each sale to the RAF Benevolent Fund, which provides assistance to widows, widowers and dependents of RAF personnel, including those of associated Air Forces. I have a sneaking suspicion that we are going to see a lot more from Carl Edwards.

You owe yourself this one - go get..