Introduction

Hello there everyone, my name isMrYorkiesWorld, and this is going to be my review of Aerosoft's MegaAirport Zurich v2 Professional for P3D V4 and P3D V5. I'm extremelyexcited to be giving this product a review, and I'd like to thank mygood friend Dom Smith from FlightSim.Com for giving me the chance tocheck this scenery out.

Zurich Airport (ICAO: LSZH) is Switzerland's largest airport,serving the city of Zurich, and most of the country itself. It'salways been an airport I wanted to visit in real life, and certainlyone I've been looking forward to testing out inside the simulator.

Simulator Compatibility

As the "Professional" in the title suggests, this scenery iscompatible with both P3D V4 and P3D V5, and the buildings and someother parts of the scenery have been optimized for P3D V4.

Addon Compatibility

For those of you who have Orbx scenery installed and trafficadd-ons etc. this scenery should work great for you. Personally,I've been using Orbx FTX Global, Open LC Europe and Orbx Trees HD. Ialso use add-ons such as Ultimate Traffic Live and Pro ATC X, all ofwhich have had no issues in terms of functionality or recognisingtaxiways, gates etc. for this scenery.

The scenery also comes with its own config tools which allow you tofurther customize things to work well with the add-ons and setup thatyou have.

Installation

As expected with most Aerosoft products, this scenery was veryquick and easy to install, taking around five minutes or so. This will bedependant on your system specs, however.

You're asked for your email address along with the serial numberyou got when you purchased the scenery, and that's literally justabout it - nothing too strenuous involved which is always nice to seewith any scenery.

In my case, the process of installing the scenery also involvesupdating the scenery data for my add-ons such as Pro ATC X andAivlasoft's EFB V2, which I'd highly recommend you do if you own theseproducts because it will help to make sure everything works in harmonyas it should.

First Impressions

After initially installing the scenery into the sim, I went throughthe usual process of loading up the sim and checking the sceneryout. I noticed all the runways were there, and they are correctlynumbered as they should be, and the ground and terminal textures lookvery crisp and sharp.

A lot of attention has been given to the ground markings such astaxiways and signage, and even the runway textures look amazing whichis something you don't always get with scenery from otherdevelopers. I was sort of expecting to see great buildings and groundtextures, but poor runway ones, so this was a nice surprise as everfrom Aerosoft.

The terminal building is very well designed, and the jetways looknicely modelled. The apron area also seems to be really high qualitywith plenty of static and animated vehicles driving around and addingto the realism.

Night Lighting

Night lighting is an important part of any scenery in thesimulator. For me personally, I don't do many night flights, but whenI do occasionally decide to do one, I like to see a well-lit airportwith realistic night lighting.

I was quite impressed with how well this scenery actually looks atnight time. A lot of sceneries from different developers struggles tocapture the right balance, but Aerosoft seem to have done it prettywell.

As you can see from the screen shot above, the textures still lookquite detailed and don't lose a lot of their quality. This issomething you might find with certain scenery items where the textureshave more of a grainy effect happening at night, and I'm happy to saythis particular scenery doesn't have this issue.

Although you don't get the grainy textures as much here, I havenoticed the coloring of the ground textures seems a little off atnight. Maybe this is just me or my setup, but I don't think it reallyaffects the scenery in a negative enough way that I'd be put offbuying it.

Performance

Performance is actually really good. I noticed in the daytime I'mgetting a good, smooth experience with around 45 - 55 fps, and that'staking into consideration the fact that I use Ultimate Traffic Live,as well as several other add-ons such as the PMDG 747. Outside thevirtual cockpit I usually get 60 fps, but this is completely normal ineven the most complex airport scenery if you're not in the virtualcockpit view.

Performance at night time might drop a little, but that can beexpected due to the way P3D works with dynamic lighting, etc. I don'ttend to do much flying at night as a rule, so this isn't somethingthat really bothered me overall.

Graphics

As mentioned earlier, the textures and models in this scenery lookreally good. They've been optimized for P3D V4, which has then beencarried over to P3D V5 as well, and everything looks really nice andcrisp.

Daytime textures look fantastic, and night time ones have the smallissue I mentioned earlier with the color looking a little off, butagain, that could just be my personal setup and opinion. I don't thinkits worth complaining about too much as it doesn't affect theusability of the airport itself in the simulator.

Bugs / Issues

One of the issues I did notice, which might not even be down to thescenery itself, is the accuracy of the ILS frequencies. I comparedthem with the real-world frequencies for one or two of the runwaysafter encountering some issues with an ILS approach in the 747, andnoticed some discrepancies, however with any scenery I think itsperfectly acceptable for there to be one or two imperfections, andagain, these might even be down to something else in my setup, and notthe actual scenery at all.

Final Verdict / Pricing

So altogether I'm extremely impressed with this scenery. It looksgood, performs well and seems pretty close to the real thing overall,and I really enjoyed taking my own custom livery over to Zurich toexplore this airport and its surrounding areas virtually.

I'd highly recommend the scenery to anyone who, like me, wantssomething new in their simulator, and wants an accurate and realisticrendition of Switzerland's largest airport!

If you want to pick up this scenery, the price at the FlightSim.ComStore is currently $29.95 (around £23.67) which I think is areally reasonable price for what you get.

Finally, thanks again to my friends over at FlightSim.Com forproviding this scenery for a review!

MrYorkiesWorld

Purchase Aerosoft - Mega Airport Zurich Professional v2