Screen shots by BajaSim

San Jose del Cabo is a city in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur, which is at the southern half of the Baja California peninsula. These are major tourist areas, especially for Americans and Canadians. The area is served the Los Cabos International Airport (MMSD). With three terminals, four concourses, and two runways (16/34), it handled 2.7 million passengers in 2010, making it Mexico's eighth busiest airport. It is served by numerous domestic and international airlines.

This scenery by BajaSim focuses on the airport and includes surrounding commercial and tourist areas. The developer highlights these among many other features of their scenery:

• Breathtaking ground textures
• Realistic buildings placement
• Custom vehicles, vegetation, and signs
• The most amazing and realistic night textures
• Landmarks and hotel area modeled

LOCATION MAPS
Screen shots by Bill Stack

The Scenery

BajaSim's rendition of Los Cabos Airport and San Jose del Cabo is realistic in most aspects.

• Airport: The airport is well depicted, both in locations and facilities. All terminals, hangars, fuel tanks, and other structures are accurately shown and where they should be. Even an airport building under construction seen in the satellite photo is depicted in the scenery. Airport vehicles, signage, and pavement markings appear accurate and detailed. Pavements are more detailed and accurate than FS2004 default, replete with tire marks on the runway and grasses and weeds sprouting from cracks in concrete. The cacti and scrub bushes in the vegetation areas between pavements give the area a realistic sense like I have never seen before.
  
  
• Surroundings: Areas surrounding the airport, especially in the flight paths north and south of the airport, are depicted. A penitentiary and an industrial area north of the airport and a golf course and beachfront hotels south of the airport are represented. Their positions are accurate according to the satellite photos I saw, even though their renditions are not absolutely accurate. These large scenery items serve as good visual references for simulation pilots flying visually in, out, and around the airport. They also provide interesting scenery when simulating commercial flights using the airport (if there's time for looking). I have said many times that such items are much more useful to simulation pilots than small items that can be seen only from close up or only from areas were an airplane would never be.

My screen shots below comparing BajaSim's Los Cabos Airport with FS2004's default scenery were made as follows: I made a series of shots with BajaSim's scenery activated. Then I went to precisely the same vantage points with BajaSim's scenery deactivated (FS2004 default).

SCENERY COMPARISONS
FS2004 Default	BajaSim
FS2004 Default	BajaSim
Screen shot by Bill Stack

SCENERY FEATURES
Screen shot by Bill Stack

AIRPORT DETAILS
Screen shot by Bill Stack

Night Views

BajaSim says its night textures are "most amazing and realistic." They are definitely more realistic than default FS2004 and even more so than I have seen in other scenery add-ons. I wouldn't go as far as to say they're "most amazing," but they're definitely superior.

NIGHT VIEWS
Screen shot by Bill Stack

Technical Features

This product is for FS2004 only. A version for FSX is promised. BajaSim offers a free FSX upgrade for all registered users of its FS2004 version when the FSX version becomes available.

Purchase and installation from the Pilot Shop are very easy. Downloading and installation are quick. Neither acknowledgment of copyright nor license keys are required.

The installation program is available in several languages with the desired language chosen during installation: English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish.

A nine-page manual available in English and Spanish provides information about the airport, including a rudimentary airport diagram, and minimum system requirements for using the scenery.

System requirements are a Pentium 4 @ 2.0 gigahertz processor, one gigabyte of random access memory, a 3D video card with 256 megabytes of memory, and Windows XP. "These are the minimum but not the recommended requirements," according to the manual.

The installation program installs the scenery files and manuals into the folder named "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Flight Simulator 9\Addon Scenery\Bajasim SJD."

After installation, the scenery must be activated in FS2004, and instructions appear upon successful installation.

Frame rates are excellent considering the amount of details in this scenery. They ranged from 30 to 60 frames per second with the higher rates experienced while flying about and the lower rates while using the airport, including taxiing near the buildings. Neither slow nor fast aircraft affected these rates up or down.

Removing the product (if desired) can be done using an uninstall program included with the package.

Technical support is available through an email address available in the manual.

Readers with technical questions not answered in this review should ask the developer. Using the links below, go to the Pilot Shop page where the product is listed and described, then click on "Manufacturer Tech Support" in the right column.

PURCHASE FEATURES
Instant download from the Pilot Shop	Yes
Installation program	Yes
License key required	No
Copyright acknowledgment required	No
Manual included	No
Uninstall program included	Yes

More Information

• Los Cabos International Airport official web site
  
  
• Los Cabos International Airport by A-Z World Airports
  
  
• Los Cabos International Airport by Wikipedia
  
  
• Los Cabos Tourism official web site
  
  

BajaSim develops flight simulator sceneries "using the most advanced 3D design with ultra realistic photoreal textures that will bring your flight experience to the top," the developer said. "Either in FSX or FS2004 our sceneries will give their best to maximize your flight expierence with the best FPS available for this kind of high end scenery." This scenery was chosen because the developer saw sceneries for Mexico "a big hole to fill" and because medium-size, internationally known area was an obvious first choice.

Summary

Overall surface textures in the enhanced areas are more realistic than FS2004 default, which is obvious when the two are seen adjoining each other. Airport grounds, buildings, and equipment are very realistic and accurate compared with photos I found. Vegetation is more realistic than most I have seen in other add-on products. Large landmarks in the flight areas north and south of the airport provide perfect reference points for visual pilots. Frame rates are very good even close to detailed scenery objects. These features make the simulation experience in this area much more enjoyable. The free upgrade to FSX promised by the developer is an unusually generous offer. All these aspects make BajaSim's San Jose del Cabo for FS2004 a worthy product in many ways.

Bill Stack
billstack@flightsim.com


Learn More About BajaSim's San Jose del Cabo for FS2004.

Bill Stack is author of several books about flight simulation, a regular author in flight-sim magazines, and a contributor to Flight Sim Com. His website is www.topskills.com