Introduction

Hello again everyone, my name isMrYorkiesWorld, and in this article I'm going to be reviewing Orbx'Hollywood Burbank Airport (KBUR) for Microsoft Flight Simulator.

It's been a while since my last written or video review as Idecided to take a few months out of the flight sim world and focus onsome more important, family orientated issues of my own. Suffice tosay though, I'm glad to be back again and ready to go with thisamazing piece of scenery from Orbx.

I'd like to thank my friends over at FlightSim.Com for providingthis piece of scenery for review purposes, it truly is a great pieceof scenery for Microsoft Flight Simulator.

So, Hollywood Burbank Airport, also known as Bob Hope Airportcarries the ICAO code of KBUR (Kilo, Bravo, Uniform, Romeo).

Now as per the Orbx web site, Hollywood Burbank Airport is one ofthe primary airports of the Los Angeles area, with mainline carriersflying to destinations across the US. As the closest airport todowntown LA and the major film studios, it is also highly popular withcorporate traffic, as well as being a major cargo hub for FedEx andUPS.

It really is a great looking airport with some amazing surroundingscenery and I'm very excited to get into this review.

Performance

Performance-wise, this airport is actually pretty good. I loadedinto the simulator with the FlyByWire A320 at different times of day,and was able to get anywhere between 35 and 55 fps, which is perfectlyacceptable in a simulator at least in my opinion.

Everything was really smooth minus the obvious issues that FlightSimulator is having right now in terms of micro-stuttering and sceneryloading, and this was the case across all weather types and times ofday as well.

When loading into the scenery itself with the A320 Neo, it onlytook around 30 seconds or so for me, although this can obviously varydepending on what else you've got running on your computer at the time,etc.

Some of the shots taken with the drone camera did seem a littlechoppy but again this might be down to the performance of thesimulator in general right now, and not necessarily this particularpiece of scenery.

For those of you interested in what hardware I'm using here, I usethe 9900k overclocked to 5GHz along with 32GB of RAM and the RTX2080TI. All of the drives on my PC are also SSD and so it's importantto factor this in when comparing my performance to that of yourown. I'm also using High - Ultra settings in the simulator on a 1080p60 Hz display.

Overall though I was really impressed with the performance thatthis piece of scenery has in the sim. It's definitely playable andmanageable, nice and smooth overall.

Graphics, Textures And Models

When looking at the visuals I was really impressed with thisscenery. It's such a beautiful area of the world anyway, but Orbx havedone an amazing job at getting Hollywood Burbank to look the partinside the sim alongside the existing real-world scenery data.

I did notice a few things with some of the textures however. Someof them appear to be overlapping or flickering on certain buildingsbut this only really affects one or two of the buildings in theairport grounds (not all of them). I suspect this is something that isrelatively easy to resolve from Orbx' end over time and it's notreally that noticeable unless you're specifically looking for it.

The runway textures as well as the building textures look reallyhigh quality, as do the taxiway markings and airport signage aswell. Everything looks really sharp and easy to see, and the shadowsand reflections that go on in the world really look nice against thedifferent surfaces in the airport.

Features

As this is an Orbx piece of scenery it's always nice to see whatfeatures come as part of it. Orbx always go above and beyond in myopinion to give us the very best feature-rich content, and HollywoodBurbank is no exception. As per the Orbx web site we can see thisscenery features:

• Custom modelling throughout, with complete PBR textures
• Unique GSE and static aircraft fleet unique to Burbank
• Custom vegetation, grass and non-airside detailing
• Implements state-of-the-art optimization techniques to ensure best performance
• High detail, weather influenced ground poly

It is clear to see the custom models, vegetation and buildingdetails in particular are very well put together in this scenery. It'salso nice to see that Orbx have taken the time to make sure thisairport fits perfectly inside of the photogrammetry-based area ofBurbank in Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Night Lighting

Usually in P3D I don't do a whole lot of night flights, althoughsince moving to Microsoft Flight Simulator that has sort of changed,and I was stunned to see how amazing this airport looks among theexisting terrain and scenery in the area. Everything from the lights,reflections, shadowing and weather effects all looked great, and I wasamazed by what the airport looked like among the gorgeous city oflights surrounding it at night.

The runway lights along with the apron lights look great, and thebuildings seem to have a nice glow to them at night as well whichgives it a more realistic and authentic feel overall.

Accuracy

As far as accuracy goes, Orbx have done a pretty good joboverall. Taking a look at Google Maps and comparing it to thisscenery, I can't really see many differences. In fact most of what wesee in Google Maps or Bing Maps is also there in the simulator so it'snice to see a good level of accuracy and attention to detail.

The runway numbers are correct, as are most of the taxiways aswell. As far as the ramp goes, we can see they've done a great job attrying to replicate the gates and stands as best they could aswell. Even the buildings around the airport itself look to be prettywell modelled when compared to their real-world counterparts.

The ILS frequency for Runway 08 also appears to be correct which isalways a bonus.

Price Point And Marketplace

You can pick up Orbx Hollywood Burbank for MSFS from Orbx for just£13.69 GBP ($18.24 USD) which I think is a reasonable price forwhat you get. Orbx appear to be lowering the prices of their MSFSscenery like many other developers, but luckily for us, their qualityhas not been lowered.

Final Verdict

Overall, I have been extremely impressed with Orbx HollywoodBurbank Airport. It has everything you'd expect from a great piece ofscenery for MSFS, and it looks stunning against that gorgeous terrainfeatured in the Burbank area as well.

The performance is great considering we are dealing with ahigh-photogrammetry area in the simulator, and the scenery isfeature-packed, with great attention to detail and high-qualitytextures.

In my opinion this has to be one of the must-have pieces of sceneryfor Microsoft Flight Simulator, and I would highly recommend that yougo and purchase it for yourselves.

I'd like to thank my good friends over at FlightSim.Com forproviding this piece of scenery for me to review, and I hope you enjoyit just as much as I have done.

MrYorkiesWorld

Purchase Orbx - KBUR for MSFS 2020