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It's a rare thing for me to cover an entire country in a review and it's just as rare for companies to make products which cover such an area. Switzerland is small, yes, but incomparably large compared to some of the island packages Aerosoft has made. So, we have a rather expensive scenery of one of the earth's most beautiful areas; the Swiss Alps have the makings for an incredible scenery, but did Aerosoft do justice to the region's beauty?
Attractively packaged in a large DVD case one finds five separate DVD's--that's right, three more than FSX had and for only one country. The first four install the FSX version, which is being covered here, and the last is a bonus FS2004 version. Once installed, the product takes up well over 15 GB on your hard drive; I recommended defragmenting before and after the installation. The product includes a short manual in several languages and also installs a similar document into your Aerosoft folder in the start menu. It has some useful tips for setting up the scenery, but naturally you won't bother with this until you've flown at least once or twice.
One must keep in mind that Switzerland Professional X is, by its very nature, a GA scenery. Since it covers a large area you can fly an airliner on short hauls and never see default terrain, but that is not what this scenery was made for and doesn't have any appeal for me. No, this scenery is made for small, puttering aircraft wending their way up canyons and over fields--for the discerning eye to take in the custom buildings, green fields, and bright waterways glittering in the sun.
The scenery's core component is the photoreal scenery upon which it is built. This imagery is taken from satellites, edited, fitted together, and placed upon the 19 meter mesh which Aerosoft included in the scenery. The resolution is at 1.2 meter/pixel which is good, but not great; certainly it is a far cry from the outstanding detail seen in their Madeira X. With this resolution one can discern broad objects such as houses, but other objects are largely blurred into the scenery. Mind you, this is perhaps a bad description as I have been rather spoiled as of late with other add-ons, but it is not practical to use any higher resolution with such a large scenery. So, this is a good balance and I can't complain over it. Depending on your own tastes, you may wish to fly at 100, 500, 1000, or 10000 feet as dictated by how much detail you'd like to see, or, conversely, how much blurriness you will accept. I usually stuck to around 2000 above ground level.
For the most part (and any Swiss reading this may be unhappy with me for saying) this scenery can largely be divided into fields and mountains; naturally there are large cities, but they are often surrounded by farmland and they hardly resemble the vast urban sprawl here in the US. In the cities one can find many custom objects which, for the most part, are placed very well--that is, they match up properly with the photoreal scenery. They are all very nicely detailed and realistic, and from cathedrals to statues there is a lot to see. One particularly neat little feature can be found on some water near Geneva--a large fountain spraying a stream of water into the air from a walkway. Other than this, the autogen (discussed below) is placed acceptably well. Since it is such a large area, it is impractical to make sure each apartment is not overlapping onto a street or that all of the trees are firmly fixed to the ground, but the system the developers use of placing objects is largely effective. Naturally, one finds some poorly placed objects, but from normal flying elevations (or at least normal for me) this is hardly something that detracts from the scenery.
I have heard one native of Switzerland comment that 'the colouring is all wrong'. The greens do seem fairly light, as does the water, but I think that the color will only bother those who have visited or live in Switzerland as the rest of us, quite simply, don't know any better. There is a different scenery included with each of the four seasons. I flew during summer for the most part and didn't find a lot of difference between summer, fall, and spring, but the winter season is very different and equally interesting.
The mountains are, in this aviator's eyes, the only reason to buy this scenery. The Swiss Alps have always been regarded for their beauty and, in a way much different than my much loved Madeira X, they have captured both my eyes and imagination. The harsh, rocky peaks covered with surprisingly clean white snow are beautifully rendered--this is the result of, firstly, a beautiful area, and secondly, a talented team of developers. Since Aerosoft included a 19M mesh, the mountains are portrayed in much greater detail than default and the textures lay surprisingly well on the terrain. One notes surprisingly few 'stretched cliffs', a phenomenon caused by the textures, which were taken from above, being displayed on a surface which is often quite close to vertical--it's difficult to describe, but since I didn't find it to be much of an issue in this scenery, fortunately it doesn't matter too much. Oddly, the cliffs in general are much better than the cliffs of Madeira X, which uses both higher resolution imagery and is a smaller area. I did note the occasional blurred surface, but this was never in a large, conspicuous area. However, I did notice perhaps three spots where there was a cloud in the sky when the photograph was taken and didn't get edited out.
For the bulk of my flying, I enjoyed the Lucerne area, which is home to some startlingly wild and barren crevices and peaks right next to lush valleys. Former mountain peaks have been crumbled to boulders and it's quite a delight to fly over such areas. I could almost swear that some mountain areas are made of high resolution imagery than the plains, but this is just a figment of my imagination.
In the mountains, one does notice the occasional issue. For one thing, odd spikes of land protrude from some areas--these are covered in blurry textures and are definitely not there in real life. These are sporadic, but cause a bit of a start when you do spot them. Additionally, I noticed one area in which the tiles of textures didn't match up perfectly--there was a white strip between two tiles, which I only noticed in one area. This may have been a unique glitch caused by my computer being low on memory, but it still merits discussion. One rather odd thing that I noticed is that the trees are a different shade of green than the photoreal textures. This prompted me to fly without autogen when in the lower mountainous areas because it looks rather odd.
Aerosoft uses a variety of their own objects and that of default FSX. Their own creations reflect European houses much better than default and are welcome additions to the scenery. As I said above, these are all placed fairly well, and in the case of the custom objects they are often nearly perfect.
It should be noted that this product maintains the default airports and buildings, but repositions them so that they match up properly with the scenery. They seem to have done a very good job of this as, although I can't say I've flown over all of the scenery, I didn't notice any airports that were substantially off. I also have FS Dream Team's Geneva airport installed and the two products didn't have any compatibility issues.
Switzerland has many lakes, rivers, and streams, which have all been given attention by Aerosoft. There are many areas in which bridges cross these, and unfortunately some areas have a 'double bridge' where a default bridge has been laid twice over a river. These are ugly from the beginning, and two such objects make it even worse.
Most of the water has been covered by what's called a water mask, where textures have been placed over the water to make it appear that there are details such as banks of sand and changes of depth while not taking away effects such as shine, reflections, and waves. These are, for the most part, very attractive and nicely done but not nearly as striking as those of the VFR Germany series. However, one notes that many lakes and rivers have an unnaturally light strip of blue water on the banks. This is odd and is perhaps meant to convey shallow water, but I don't find it attractive or realistic. Additionally, if you have a third-party water texture modifier, you'll find that it has no effect on Switzerland's water. This is rather odd as the texturing is very light blue to start off with and I feel that, for realism, it ought to be darker.
The scenery also includes a unique form of night scenery. Many sceneries include photoreal imagery taken at night for this, but Aerosoft simply used a dark version of the daytime scenery--that is, the same thing, but not lit up at all. However, to give a better sense of realism, they included what appears to me to be large numbers of streetlights. These are simply floating points of lights which aren't tethered to an actual pole. In theory, this would be perfect, but they don't cast any light on the ground. This is most suitable for higher flying as it looks very odd below 1,000 feet. These are scattered somewhat sporadically, often following streets and in other logical locations, but sometimes in the middle of a field.
I have a decent computer which was pretty good several months ago and middling now, and I am quite happy with it. Switzerland performs well and I found myself getting the same performance as I do with default scenery. It was very good in the mountains and rural areas but somewhat stuttery in city areas. Photoreal terrain is particularly partial to becoming blurry and it's necessary to reduce other settings in order to maintain crisp textures as these are, more or less, the most important aspect of the scenery. It is appropriate to fiddle around with the settings as described in the included manual so that you get the most enjoyment out of this product as possible.
This is not a cheap add-on and no one will argue with that. One compares it to some other products (view the list below) and it's obvious that it's quite expensive. However, they did include a custom mesh, which ads more detail and cost. On the whole, I can't tell you if it's worth the money; it depends on your own circumstances. I, for one, could not have afforded this outside of reviewing. I daresay, though, that you won't get tired of this package quickly if you do buy it and, for the most part, you'll consider it money well spent should you choose to make the investment.
Aerosoft Switzerland Professional FSX = 0.85 cents/square mile
VFR Germany 3 = 0.13 cents/square mile
Megascenery Earth Washington State = 0.16 cents/square mile
Megascenery Earth California = 0.09 cents/square mile
Horizon Generation X (UK) = 0.13 cents/square mile
Thanks to Mr. Jon Silk of VFR Reviews for this pricing information.
What can I say--it is a large, expensive, photoreal scenery with custom mesh which will afford the GA flyer many weeks of enjoyment. The resolution is middling but the object placement and custom objects are quite above average--the last object to overcome is definitely price, and I daresay this must have been very expensive to produce or Aerosoft didn't expect many sales because I have never known them to price an add-on exorbitantly. On the whole, I enjoyed it immensely, largely for the beauty of the mountains, and perhaps the best compliment that I can give the developers is that Switzerland Professional X truly captures the essence of the magnificence of the Swiss Alps.
Kevin Glover
kevin.glover@hotmail.com
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