Introduction

Cologne Bonn International Airport isone of the largest cargo hubs in Germany, home to UPS and FedEx hubs,as well as the hub for passenger carrier Eurowings. Cologne Bonnairport was first established at a former artillery training range inthe Wahner Heide nature reserve in 1939 by the German Luftwaffe. SadlyI was unable to find any more info regarding its use by the Luftwaffeduring the war besides its name, Wahn airbase.

After the war it was named RAF Wahn and used by the Royal Air Forcewho built a new 1,886m long runway, a new control tower, and a fewhangars. The airport was opened for commercial service in 1951 and hasgrown ever since. In the 50s and 60s the longer 14L/32R wasconstructed and the Boeing 747 made its first flight from Cologne toNew York in 1970.

Today it is the 6th busiest airport in Germany, seeing 142,500aircraft movements, 12,354,398 passengers, and 814,600 tons of cargoin 2019. If you would like to see an incredible aerial photographichistory of this airport, check out this web site with a wonderful setof photographs! Koln/Bonn Airport, Germany - Military AirfieldDirectory(mil-airfields.de)

A Small Prelude

Cologne Airport holds a special place in my heart due to myflightsim history. It is the first airport I flew out of with thePMDG 737 in FS2004 back in 2017 to Frankfurt. It was only a short 35minute flight with my good friend from Germany so he could show me howto fly the aircraft. We pushed from what was at the time Gate D7 (nowgate D18) and departed runway 14L. That flight would forever change myflight sim experience, going from a 9th grader that flew freewareaircraft with no systems, to someone who cannot now fly an aircraftwithout a good VC and a full/mostly complete set of aircraftsystems. The scenery I used and still use in FS2004 for Cologne is byAerosoft, and it is the coolest opportunity for me to come full circleto review this special airport in MSFS 2020. With that, let's start thereview!

First Look

So as not to bore you with my FS2004 experience I will not say muchmore about it, but I did have the smallest of hesitations when firstloading this airport. I have a good amount of the Aerosoft airports inFS2004 and I always thought they looked the same and used a lot of thesame textures, and I had that same thought in my head while the simwas loading up (which was quite fast surprisingly). As soon as theflight loaded, every single one of those thoughts left me. Thisairport blew me away from the first second I saw it, and continued todo so for the entire time I was looking around at all the details. Iwon't spoil much at the very beginning, but the attention to detailAerosoft has put into this airport is incredible. It makes use of thelatest textures, including parallax textures for the upper TerminalOne windows, while the main parts of the terminal are rendered in 3Dwith the most amazing details. The quality does not drop for theentirety of the airport, and throughout the whole experience there wasan incredible sense of immersion I have not experienced in any otherMSFS scenery.

Exploring The Airport

Like most trips to the airport, I started off at the entrance toCologne Bonn where I was greeted by an interesting sculpture. Movingto Terminal Two I am met with perhaps the nicest model I've seen inthe sim to date. It is absolutely stunning in both texturing andmodeling. The interior, roof, gate areas, and gate side are so welldone. The concrete on the terminal is weathered, with rust streaksrunning down the textures, giving it a more lived in feeling,something which gives it character. Moving to the cargo area, and theusual amount of airport clutter is seen. The building models are amasterpiece, and Aerosoft has made great use of the PBR and nativetexture abilities MSFS 2020 can offer. On the far side of the airport youcan still see the pads where the RAF aircraft were once housed, aswell as the closed taxiways to get to them (really cool to see)! Theoriginal footprint of the airport where the RAF tower and hangars oncewere is again made with the same level of detail, and I found no areaswhere Aerosoft lowered the quality.

Some of the best detailing was on areas you wouldn't really noticeat first glance but which added character to the airport. The cautiontape stretched between cones isn't a flat texture, but rather twistedjust as it would be in real life. The signage isn't always vertical,and can sometimes be slightly bent showing a hit or damage from thepast. It truly feels like a living airport and has a unique characterthat every airport exhibits.

Textures

I was blown away by the level of detail in the models Aerosoft hasbrought to the table, but a model is only as good as its textures, andAerosoft did not disappoint. The taxiways and runways all displayweathering to a degree and make taxiing at the airport an amazingexperience. The parts of the airport you normally don't see from theflight deck have been given a lot of attention, and much of thesignage inside the terminals and on the roadside is easily readable.

Lighting

Aerosoft did a great job with the night lighting at Cologne, and itlooks good from most angles. I love the lighting at the terminals,with its warm glow cast upon the apron. The cargo terminals are litwith the same warm light and look good with no issues. One oddity Idid notice was the presence of random white orbs floating around theterminals and cargo ramps. I'm not sure why they were there, but theypresented a white glow in stark contrast to the orange glow of theother lights. Moving to the taxiways and I was originally disappointedto see how dark they were. I thought this may have been an issue, butafter a google search and sifting for the right video, I found this tobe just like the real airport, the taxiways are lined with reflectiveposts about a foot tall.

Conclusion

Reviewing this airport brought back a lot of memories and it wasgreat to see Cologne in such detail! It has amazing performance and Ihad no issues running it on my PC. This airport will certainly be partof my frequent fly list for MSFS 2020, and one which I believe wouldmake a great addition to any flight simmer.

Joshua Moore

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