Scenery Spain 2

By Andrew Herd (31 July 2003)

while back I took a look at Sim-Wings' Scenery Spain 1 (the Balearic Islands) and Islas Canarias (Scenery Spain 3) both of which are marketed as part of the Aerosoft Spanish Airports series. Both sceneries struck me as being good value for money and ran well on my 1.7 GHz Pentium, so I dropped a heavy hint that I was curious to see what Scenery Spain 2 was like... Manfred Spatz of Sim-Wings has had to wait for this review, but if you liked the other two packages you will love this one and the good news is that a fourth scenery is in the works.

Scenery Spain 2 retails at 39.95 Euros, which is $34.79 and is optimised for FS2002. Minimum hardware requirements are Windows 98/ME/2000/XP; a Pentium III 600 MHz or higher; 256Mb RAM; 250Mb free hard disk space; and a 32Mb graphic card. As usual, I think this spec is a little hopeful and I don't think I would burden FS2002 with add-ons if I was running anything slower than a 750 MHz Pentium, because lesser machines struggle to run the base sim, let alone any extra scenery.

However, that aside, Manfred has kept to his usual standards and not only do you get five detailed airports, you also get landclass files for large parts of the northern and Mediterranean coastlines of Spain, and should that not be enough, there are numerous pieces of off-airport detail. As regular readers will know, I think this kind of thing is vital, because VFR flight in FS2002 is hard enough without any visual reference points to go by and anything extra in this department is a help. Most GA pilots fly by using landmarks to navigate and most add-on airport packages would be far more popular if they followed Manfred's example.

What you get is:

• Alicante (Mediterranean coastline)
• Barcelone (Mediterranean coastline)
• Valencia (Mediterranean coastline)
• Pamplona (Northern Spain)
• Santander (Northern Spain)

Installation is a straight forward matter of putting the CD in the drive, selecting a language, choosing whether to install the landclass files (nothing to lose unless you have some of your own already) and then waiting for the finished button.

Whil the drive was chuntering away I tipped out the box on my desk, which didn't get much attention over the last few months and is beginning to resemble an archeological dig. Unless the contents of Scenery Spain 2 got mixed up with some other package, there are two manuals, the CD and a registration card. The installation manual is in four languages (German/English/French/Spanish) and contains some sensible advice about frame rates, which should be read early on if you have a marginal system. Manfred has taken care to design the scenery so that adjusting the complexity level progressively knocks out frame killing detail, though setting it to 'very sparse' will leave you with not much more than the buildings. In testing, most of the airports ran reasonably fast with the exception of Barcelona, which is no surprise, because El Prat is big, busy and very detailed. The manual gives you a potted history of each airport which is well written and adds to the interest.

The second manual contains the charts and plates, in Spanish, but perfectly understandable. There are some interesting approaches in there, particularly Pamplona, which has to be worth a try or three.

Turning to the scenery itself, well, I found it as enjoyable as the other two in this series were. The developers have settled for a good compromise between detail and frame rates, though if you max out all the sliders, Barcelona will definitely give the average system a run for its money. However, there is nothing like the overkill that some recent Gmax sceneries have perpetrated and Sim-Wings are to be congratulated for resisting the urge to go over the top and producing something that the average user can use. If you take a look at the screenshot opposite, you can see that you get reasonably detailed, though non-moving, gates and some smart stuff like dynamic vehicles that drive along the road under the passenger walk way. The textures are fine unless you get really close, in which case a few get a little blurry, but all the taxiway lines I checked lined up with each other and the signeage appears to be complete. There is a complete set of night textures and the sceneries are compatible with FS2002's AI traffic, so you should not come across jets taxiing on the grass and if you do, you can report them.

As I mentioned, there is some neat stuff beyond the airports: for example the Gaudì church in Barcelona, the bull ring at Pamplona and the port area at Valencia are all worth visiting; and if you install the landclass files, then you can make a stab at navigating VFR with a sectional, though you will probably end up following the coast most of the time.

To my absolute delight, David Garwood released a freeware DeHavilland Rapide just as I began the review and I used it for my initial tour of the airports - so thanks, Dave, it was a trip down memory lane. I flew a scheduled flight in one as a kid and never forgot the experience. As you can see from the first screenshot, it has the most superb visual model, including two liveries, the BEA one shown and a private plane; the flight model is fine and all it really requires is a new panel with some FS2004 instruments in it and I ain't gonna fly anything else.

Actually, I take that back. I won't fly anything else except AFG's NAMC YS-11, which was released as freeware what seems like a long while ago now and still has no rivals in the twin turboprop department, beyond the PSS Dash 8, which is payware. The NAMC is an extraordinarily nice package, if a little complex to install, given that a full installation means downloading quite a range of packs, upgrades and patches. Nonetheless, it is well worth going to the trouble, because the end result is a georgeous looking plane with a great panel, VC, flight model and soundset - all for free.

There is a long list of repaints on the AFG website, reflecting the popularity of the package and I chose to install Tom Everitt's Aboitiz One livery, which kind of knocks your eye out. There are one or two traps for the unwary during the installation, not least the fact that quality control (who? what?) has missed the fact that Tom hasn't pasted in part of the default aircraft.cfg file, with the result that if you just decompress the Aboitiz plane into the \aircraft folder it won't show up in the list when you come to select it. The solution is to install another plane which does appear, copy the missing section and paste it into the Aboitiz .cfg.

The other gotcha is that the panel uses xtml gauges, so on no account decompress the file containing the gauges - just copy the whole thing into the \gauges folder. Failure to do this can lead to some exceedingly strange results; I know, I tried it. Once you have the plane up and running, you will want to download the updates to the panel, which currently take it to version 2, which includes a fully functional autopilot. Though this is a relatively simple plane to fly, there are a few tricks to learn, so read the manual before you take it for a trial flight - noting that ctrl-E engine starts are disabled, forcing you to do it all the hard way, though there is the attraction of being able to select water-methanol boost at take off. This is probably the most accurate Rolls-Royce Dart TP simulation around and as long as you adhere to the rules, you should have a ball, though if you don't the plane has a few surprises in store...

The downloading doesn't stop with a few liveries, because if your system can take it, there is a 32 bit VC and an upgraded sound set, though the files total around 28 meg for the pair. AFG are still tinkering around with the plane and I look forward to using it in FS2004, if I can get it to work, because it really is a peach and it should be fun flying it in the 'new' weather.

I know a lot of people are going to think, 'Well, yeah, why review this stuff with FS2004 newly available?' but there are two arguments for keeping the faith with FS2002. The first is that everyone isn't going to upgrade absolutely immediately and there is always a substantial after-market for add-ons to old versions - FS98 shrinkwrap still makes sales. The second is that developers don't usually toss good software on the scrap heap every time there is a version change and though there are no guarantees, I would expect all three packages mentioned here to be upgraded in due course. The third is that the FS2004 development team have gone to some trouble to make sure that add-ons transfer smoothly across and I found that the NAMC worked fine in the new version of the sim. Where upgrades are needed, they may not happen immediately, but there is so much work invested in the better add-ons it is unlikely to be left to go to waste.

I have a few packages left in the review pile for FS2002, so my plan is to work my way through them before passing on to FS2004 add-ons as they arrive. It is interesting comparing the two versions of Flight Simulator and I can't help noticing how tired the old version looks by comparison with A Century of Flight, but there is still plenty of life left in it, so don't give up on FS2002, because there is plenty of life left in the old dog yet.

YAMC YS-11 - freeware from AFG