• Chris Wilkes' Virgin Islands Scenery

    by
    FlightSim.Com Staff
    Published on 02-25-2000 09:00 AM

    Chris Wilkes' Virgin Islands 2000 Scenery

    By FlightSim.Com Staff (25 February 2000)

    Vacation Guide? Well, almost. This shot is a temptation many can't refuse. Take a helo tour around nestled harbors complete with sailboats, seaplanes and warm breezes. The Bell 206 is a must for exploring!

    INTRODUCTION

    Chris Wilkes' Virgin Island Scenery for FS2000 has been getting lots of attention lately. As the new group of sceneries start coming out for FS2000, I can tell you based on my experience with the Virgin Islands, we're all in for a real treat. However, all is not perfect in paradise. I will go out on a limb here and say that this shareware available from the 4CDs Download Store is worth the $19.00, but just barely so.

    Upon seeing screenshots on the Virgin Islands I knew this is a "must have" or at least "must try" scenery. I have never installed any new scenery for FS2000 as of yet, being previously so happy with the default. Until now, nothing had tempted me. Past experiences with scenery glitches, frame rate requirements and scenery layer management has somewhat soured my zeal for any add-on sceneries of the past. My very favorite add-on scenery of all time has to be Wilco Publishing's Tahiti for FS98. The detailed tropical paradise was one that gave you that "I am really there" feeling like none other. So I couldn't resist hoping to compare that commercial scenery with this one. My expectations would be based to some extent on the Wilco production.

    The Extra 300 is another great way to get around. Here, I was flying just under the tropical skies. The real weather in FS2K does a great job of creating those tropical buildups and "chaotic sky" that is typical of the region. The entire effect is beautiful in all directions.
    Upon first arriving at the St. Thomas International airport via 777-200, I was greeted by high frame rates on the descent all the way into the landing. On my PIII500 frame rates remained around 12 to 15 all the way in on the landing rollout, despite the details that began to unfold. My taxi back to the gate was most enjoyable with the feel of the tropics all around me. I could see cruise ships in the harbor to my north, smaller sailboats around as well as lush tropical vegetation. The trees are great! Then I passed by the general aviation ramp, complete with Exxon station, fuel trucks and baggage carts. The main terminal has no jetway but lighted parking hardstands. There was easily enough room for the big 777 as I nuzzled in to the big T stripe. As my engines wound down and the flight attendants opened up the doors, a sweet semi-humid air mass rushed into the flightdeck. Out my perch I saw the fuel truck moving toward me! There was so much to see and gawk at! I really liked what I saw so far. All the custom buildings and stuff made me realize I have not spent enough time looking at the great scenery everyone out there has been developing.
    Passenger view of the taxi-in towards the gate. The GA ramp is filled with nice details.

    FLYING THE REGION

    After staying the night in St. Thomas, the next day I toured around using the Bell 206 which I can hardly attest to being able to fly! I crashed once onshore, once in the water and once into a hillside. I basically destroyed all the islands' helicopters and have a huge multi-million dollar rental bill awaiting me when I get home. It's a good thing that when on an assignment like this, Nels will pay for any damage that occurs. I discovered nice harbors, inlets, animated boats, and airport details. The overall scenery is very well done with great coloring and texturing. However, as you'll find out, most of the details are limited to the big jetports or the smaller Beef Island airport. In between airports, there is not too much to see. I was sorry that areas that tempted me to fly in lower or closer, revealed only blurry textures and no structures or objects to investigate. In fact the blurriness of the scenery was the major detraction to the entire thing.
    What a sky! On final in the 777-200 to St. Thomas International.
    At night time the islands do come alive with pretty lighting at the airports. Runway lighting is excellent as well as parking areas, light polls that shine on the ground, terminal buildings and some residential areas. There are cars on roads per FS2000. As I went to fly out of the St. Croix airport I was hit with fatal lockups after dark. There is something wrong with taxiing eastbound at night at this airport. There is a nice animated 182 taxiing toward you, but as soon as he gets near enough to go around you, whammo. Reboot is necessary. During the day this is not a problem. After 3 attempts at this, I had to depart under sunset or earlier in order to avoid this crash bug. Turning off dynamic didn't solve the problem. I asked Chris Wilkes about this, and he can not recreate the error.

    Another fatal error is departing St. Thomas southward. There are two places where I got fatal exception errors due to missing ground texture files. Win98 gave me no choice but to ignore or cancel the message, or something like that. Whatever I chose blew FS2000 to desktop. Having this happen twice during a flight is unacceptable and evidence of either poor beta testing or a non-complete scenery. I don't know about you, but when you're on a serious flight and something like this happens, it's mentally devastating! This really upset me, and is a problem I would hope not to find on a commercial product. Now, I fly in fear it will happen in other places. In my testing I had this scenery glitch ruin two flights in two different areas - so I believe there could be more incomplete zones.

    On the ramp at St. Thomas with ground crew buzzing around the ummm, 777.
    There are areas where the scenery doesn't seem level or on the surface. Trying to land the helicopter on the ground was useless as I sank underground. My layer was correct according to the readme files, so I suspect another error. Much of the mountainous areas are "see-thru" with some flashing and distant scenery appearing thru. In addition all night lighting such as parking zone lights, taxiways and runway edge lights can be seen thru your aircraft's tires, wings or other solid parts.

    I asked Chris Wilkes about these errors, and I learned it's a scenery designer's enigma. Chris was kind enough to report "... you are referring to the fact that the elevated mesh terrain is transparent to other 3D objects. This is a known problem and inherent with sceneries using the scasm "TexRelief" command that this scenery uses. All 3D objects have been coded with minimal visibility ranges to reduce this effect. No solution, except to re-code the scenery completely, or if MS would issue a scenery SDK, scenery designers should be able to re-create FS2000 type terrain without this effect. Similar to above, this is inherent with "TexRelief". Bear in mind that we are no longer working with a flat world. Most everywhere now has elevation and to place a scenery of this type over default scenery requires that the default be completely flattened and covered. It is not possible to utilise the default "hard" terrain. To prevent floating runways the elevated mesh terrain must reflect airport elevation and where this is close to coastlines there is some "over spill" of that elevation creating small areas of beach and ocean above sea level." I then asked him why lighting shows through the airplane or objects and he responded "This is beyond my control. This problem has been documented by several scenery and aircraft designers and is IMO a bug in FS2000. Until an SDK is available, our present design tools and compilers provide no solution that I am aware of."

    I really am glad Chris explained some of the problems to me. I feel better knowing that limitations do exist, rather than thinking anything was left out. I guess FS2000's advancement can bring some added problems we didn't have with FS98.

    Obtaining the scenery was rather cumbersome. From the 4CDs Download Store there are at least 10 files to download and each and every time I tried, I would get disconnected or downloads would just stop. Sometimes the file would stop downloading about 80% of the way. I can't blame my ISP for this, everything else I get off the net goes much faster. It took me about 12 hours to get all of the files, having to download each file two or three times. I could not leave the computer alone to download. Installation is not completely automatic either, you must edit your fs2000.cfg file to activate the region.

    CONCLUSION

    The lockups and terrain errors knock down the higher score I'd like to give. At the same time I know Chris will work on any problems reported and that he's dedicated to the end product. Until MS releases an SDK for scenery and all new releases take advantage of that, we may have to be wary that there will be some problems with sceneries as complex or as detailed as this one. The scenery is sold at $19 and I'd value it at that price. Often I'll review products that I'd be willing to pay four times the going cost because they are so good. The value in this scenery is worth the $19 but sadly I don't feel I'd want to pay more. You'll no doubt have a great time flying around the Virgin Islands but after a few hours there seems to be no more desire to explore. There just isn't much to see. I classify it as a good jet stopover, but not as great a "low and slow" place to visit as I had previously expected.

    I'll give the Virgin Islands Scenery for FS2000 a 79 out of a possible 100 points.

    MORE PHOTOS

    Beating the air into submission is a great way to look all about.
    Coptering around one of the many inlets, thinking of where to set down, or at least I'll attempt to if my skills allow. I spied one of the several dynamic Beaver seaplanes below.
    Mooney high over the island chain to the northeast.

    Beef Island is a great getaway. This shows the friendly parking area at the end of the runway, allowing easy access to the beaches. Notice the fine details just from ground level!
    747-400 receives servicing from the ramp crew. The 7000 foot runway allows for low fuel takeoffs only, and this flight will proceed to Guadaloupe before continuing to further destinations. The 747-400 is an outstanding model from Abacus Publishing's Instant Airplane Maker for FS98.
    On climbout passing Beef Island around 12,000 feet. I don't know about you, but this picture will end up on my desktop!

    Visit Abacus Publishing for the 747-400s featured (Instant Airplane Maker): Click Here

    The 777-200 is a Camsim ProMax 2001 model, available in our downloads area.