Introduction

Hello again everyone, my name is Jay -AKA MrYorkiesWorld - welcome back to another review. Today I am goingto be reviewing MK Studios Dublin Airport (ICAO Code: EIDW) for P3Dand Microsoft Flight Simulator.

In my case, this review is going to be focussing on the MicrosoftFlight Simulator rendition of the scenery, as I currently don't haveP3D installed, but I assume the scenery will more than likely look thesame in each sim regardless, apart from maybe one or two minordifferences which can be expected.

Dublin is quite a popular destination, both in real life and in theworld of flight simulation, and so I'm really excited to be reviewingthis scenery. As always, I'd like to thank my good friend DominicSmith over at FlightSim.com for providing me with this scenery. Dublinhas always been an area I have loved to fly into and out of in thesimulator, so let's see how MK Studios rendition performs.

The Airport

As mentioned, Dublin Airport carries the ICAO code EIDW, and is themain airport serving the city of Dublin itself, which is the capitalof Ireland.

In 2019 the airport saw over 32.9 million passengers passingthrough it, which marked the busiest year the airport itself has hadon record.

Airlines such as Ryanair, Aer Lingus and British Airways are just afew which usually frequent the airport bringing passengers in and outof Dublin from the UK and other countries.

Features, Graphics And Modelling

MK Studios have gone into quite a bit of detail with thisparticular scenery, especially in terms of the graphics, models andfeatures.

One of the features was the internal modelling of the terminalbuilding which I found to be quite a nice touch. Although we don'treally spend a whole lot of time inside terminal buildings whensimming, it's still nice to see that they have been modelled andincluded for extra realism and immersion, and I have to say that for astandard set of models and textures, it's actually pretty goodlooking.

The layout of the ground, such as taxiways, stands and gates, seemto be pretty accurate. The signage throughout the airport is reallyclear and legible, even when viewed up close, and makes for an easytrip between your departure gate and the runway (or vice versa). Inormally use an external EFB program which includes the calculation oftaxi routes to the runway or gate, but even without that I was stillable to use the signage and visual queues around the airport tonavigate easily.

Details such as the fire training area on the airport groundsappear to be accurate and nicely designed as well. It seems no detailhas been left behind when the scenery was designed, which is alwaysnice to see.

When we get up close and personal with the drone camera, we can seehow detailed the terminal buildings and other ground models reallyare. They seem to be really crisp and sharp, and only get grainy orpixelated when you get unrealistically close.

The car park areas seem to be well modelled as well. The carsthemselves seem to have realistic models, or at least as realistic ascan be expected. It's important to remember that this is not reallife, and the scenery itself is intended to be used in a flightsimulator, not a driving simulator, so the accuracy and modelling ofcars and other vehicles in a carpark are really not that important,well not to me anyway.

As ever, we can see various pieces of ground equipment scatteredaround as well, including some cargo crates with airline logos on,pushback equipment, stairs etc., all of which add to the atmosphereand makes things just that little bit more immersive.

Performance

So how does Dublin perform in the simulator? Rather well actually,as I was able to get pretty smooth performance out of Dublin. Forreference, I'm using an Intel Core i9 9900k CPU, overclocked to 5GHz,along with an RTX 2080 Ti GPU, and 32GB of RAM. With these specs I wasable to get anywhere between 30 to 50fps depending on the time of day,weather, aircraft, and other variables that can affectperformance.

One of the things I found impressive, was just how well optimisedthe terminal interiors were, especially when you consider the amountof detail on show, along with the high-quality textures. I think MKStudios have done a great job, and I honestly wouldn't say performancein my case was anything less than perfectly acceptable.

Performance at night is always a little less than daytime in anyscenery, but I was still able to hit that 30fps minimum.

Night Lighting

Night lighting is also an important thing to consider whenpurchasing scenery as it can affect a great many things. In my case,the night lighting at Dublin looks really good, especially during anearly-morning sunrise or a lovely evening sunset. The apron, runway,and taxiway lights all seem to work well and look great, and thegeneral lighting around the airport grounds appears to be accurate aswell.

I didn't have any issues navigating around the airport at night orin poor weather conditions, and I was able to get safely to the runwayfrom the gate, or vice versa which is obviously a bonus.

If I had to be critical on something regarding the scenerylighting, I would say that although it looks great in the simulator asit is, maybe it could be fine-tuned on the runway in which to make thelights a little brighter or larger. However, this is just me lookingfor something to be critical on, and it doesn't really cause any majorissues at all in the simulator itself, so it's more of a personalopinion if anything.

Accuracy

I might have touched upon this earlier in the review, but in termsof accuracy, this rendition of Dublin Airport is pretty close to itsreal-world counterpart. All of the gates and taxiways are there andeach one seems to have just the right amount of detail and modellingpresent, including signage.

The runway numbers are obviously correct, and the ILS systems forthe relevant runways seem to work well. I didn't meet with any issueswhen performing an ILS approach in the A320, and the aircraft was ableto catch the glideslope and localizer without any issues.

Not all of the runways at Dublin have an ILS system (which isaccurate), so if you wanted to do non-precision approaches, you'd beperfectly able to do so.

System Requirements

In terms of system requirements, you need to have:

• Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020
• OS: Windows 10 64 bit
• Processor: Intel i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 1500X or better
• Video Memory: 4 GB
• Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 970 or AMD Radeon RX 590
• Memory: 16 GB
• Disc space: 1 GB

Price And Final Verdict

As per the Orbx web site, the product is currently priced at around$20.04 USD, or £14.49 GBP.

In my opinion, MK Studios rendition of Dublin Airport is anaccurate and well-designed piece of scenery with a lot of differentfeatures. It matches perfectly with its real-world counterpart andhelps add an extra layer of immersion and accuracy when flying intoand out of Dublin.

I really enjoyed this scenery, and I am sure you will too.

MrYorkiesWorld

Purchase MK Studios - EIDW Dublin Airport For MSFS