RSB Production's Texas Scenery
by Iair Arcavi (24 Mar 1998)
The installation, as I got it, is as any other 3rd party scenery installation. Inside the Texas folder, bgl's go into the scenery folder and all the rest into texture, and once the FS98 setup is done, one has a very long list of airports in Texas to choose from.
Coverage:
This scenery includes far too many airports to review each and every one. The author says it includes 381 airports throughout Texas, ranging from small ones to large international airports, and including the imaginary "ZBlevins airport". The author of the scenery also claims that this is the largest single state, single designer, project ever attempted!
Graphics:
Many of the airports have static planes. Even though their quality isn't the best there is
(can you spot the difference between the FS and the static at DFW?),
it still gives a much more ralism sense by eliminating the "taxiing through a deserted airport"
sensation we are all too familiar with.
The "Rio Grande" area is made quite well, enabling brave pilots to test their skills, following the river, maneuvering
between the high cliffs which reach 1200 feet and sometimes get as narrow as 1000 feet across. The imaginary "ZBlevins
airport" is located just north of the narrows, so all one has to do is take off from there, head south, and start sweating!
Fortunately, there are no special frame rate problems with this scenery. On my P166 (64 RAM), all went pretty well. I didn't encounter any major "slow-downs" in the frame rate.
Bottom Line:
While reviewing this scenery, I was pondering on the difference between it and freeware scenery.
Graphics-wise, this scenery is good, complete with detailed airports, static planes, etc. But I have seen freeware
sceneries that have better graphics, and better static planes.
So, how is this scenery better than any freeware scenery? Well, if one would like to download a scenery of Texas from the net, one would most
likely find many versions, and each covering smaller different areas, that might overlap, causing problems.
This product provides one large scenery package covering all of the Texas area. This way, if one likes Texas, or really wants to fly in it for any reason, this scenery
provides him with the whole of the state, in a comfortable style uniformity in the airports and scenery.
RSB Productions
Ronald Blevins
1052 Springmeadow
Beaumont, TX 77706
A trial version is available for download:
Download FS98 version.
