Hello fellow flight simulatorenthusiasts and welcome to my latest scenery review. In this articleI will take an in depth look at the new Grand Amazonia - Part Onescenery by HSimulators.

Scenery Description

Being a keen VFR pilot, I was extremely pleased to have theopportunity to review this scenery. With this package, you are treatedto the vast region to the extreme north of Brazil (on the border withVenezuela) in which to explore. It was full of isolated indigenousvillages and gold mines and where the only access to them is byaircraft or in some cases, by river (it really is an explorersdream).

Rather than just a single airport, HSimulators have supplied noless than ten airports to discover, and these are as follows:

Boa Vista International Airport and Air Base (SBBV)

Length 2731m - HDG 62 - 08/26

Alt 83m Asphalt

Hlaikato-u (SJLE)

Length 642 - HDG 80 - 09/27

Alt 301m - Grass

Tucuxim - (SDYT)

Length 540m - HDG 135 - 14/32

ALT 304m - Grass

Palimi-U - (SJMH)

Length 680m - HDG 135 - 18/36

ALT 317m - Grass

Parafury - (SJMI)

Length 710m - HDG 30 - 02/20

ALT 606m - Grass

Uraricoera - (SJNC)

Length 601m - HDG 200 - 18/36

ALT 277m - Grass

Aratha-U - (SJYJ)

Length 470m - HDG 91 - 08/26

ALT 474m - Grass

Uaicas - (SWAE)

Length 800m - HDG 190 - 18/36

ALT 327m - Grass

Erico - (SWAQ)

Length 700m - HDG 126 - 14/32

ALT 189m - Grass

Auaris - (SWBV)

Length 1.150m - HDG 111 - 12/30

ALT 757m - Asphalt

Boa Vista international Airport

A Brief History

The airport was opened on the 19th February 1973, and underwent itsfirst renovation in 1998. The runway, terminal and the apron were thenenlarged. On the 14th September 2009 a second major renovation wascompleted increasing the capacity of the airport to handle 330,000passengers per year. The airport is located 4km (2mi) from downtownBoa Vista.

Airport Layout

Looking first at the main airport terminal, I found it to be verygood in terms of detail, relevant objects, vehicles and theirassociated textures.

Moving away from the main terminal and it was great to see that thedevelopers had also modelled some of the buildings of the Boa VistaAir Force Base.

Unfortunately the quality of some the more remote buildings andobjects were disappointing, as it seemed less care had been given tothem. I'm not sure why the developer chose to use such low qualitytextures here, but it's a real shame they did. Even using the highesttexture settings in X-Plane made no difference.

Another issue I found with this part of the scenery was therepetitive use of some of the buildings. In my opinion, it justdoesn't work here and diminishes the credibility of the scenery.

However, I have to give credit where it's due, and I must say thatmany of the other objects found at the airport were done very well.Another feature of the scenery was the roadway system with itsanimated vehicles, and this I thought was of excellent quality!

I really did like Boa Vista Airport, it was just a shame that someof the textures on the buildings let it down.

Moving On

Our next destination was Hlaikato-u (SJLE). As you may have noticedin the list of airports, I quoted the runway length for eachdestination as this would give an indication to the size and type ofaircraft required. In the case of SJLE, the runway is just 642 metresin length, so a light aircraft or even a helicopter would have to beused. The fact that there were trees at both ends of the single runwaydidn't make things easier.

The approach into the remote strip proved a little tricky at first,but after a few practice goes, I managed to nail it (much to thedelight of my passengers). Once down, I took some time in surveyingthe scenery. Apart from the copious amounts of trees, there were onlya few buildings present which I must say left me feeling ratherisolated!

As you can see from the images, the buildings all looked authentic,and modelling and texturing was mostly good. On a few of the buildingsthe textures did start to fall apart as you got closer to them, but onthe whole, they worked well.

Ever Onward

Our next location was Palimiu Airport (SJMH) which was situatedalongside the Uraricoera River. This was one of the most scenicairstrips I had seen for a while, and flying over the river justbefore touchdown really was quite something.

Once down, I noticed that the scenery swept round to reveal a smallcommunity with various buildings and boats (the latter lookingespecially impressive). These were all placed relatively well and fromabove looked pretty good. However, on closer inspection I noticed thatquite a few of the buildings were similar to those I had seen before,and that a few either floated slightly off the terrain or had lowresolution textures.

Final Destination

To look at each and every one of the airports in this package isbeyond the scope of this review, so my final destination is Tucuxim(SDYT).

As I looked around Tucuxim, it was plainly obvious that thisairport was built up using the same buildings and objects seenpreviously in the review. Whilst they all seemed to be placedaccordingly, it was a shame to see there were no unique buildingspresent. A bit of variety here would not have gone amiss.

Performance

Considering that I only have an Intel i5, 16GB of RAM and a 4GB1050Ti graphics card, I was extremely impressed by how the sceneryperformed.

Evaluation

Well...that concludes my whistle stop tour of Brazil, and so nowit's time to sum it all up!

Positives:

• Large selection of airports
• Boa Vista International done really well
• Low purchase price
• Excellent performance (even on lowers spec machines)

Negatives

• Low resolution textures used in quite a few objects
• Floating objects at sceneries
• Repetitive use of objects
• Three of the destinations have no objects whatsoever

Putting it all together, and I have to say that on the whole, Ireally did enjoy using the scenery. Flying into some of these remotestrips really was a challenge, and unlike some locations, the Amazonreally does make you feel small.

If you're up for flying into and out of challenging locations, thenI would say to give Grand Amazonia by HSimulators a go, especiallywhen you factor in the low purchase price.

Hope you found this review informative.

Paul Mort

Purchase HSimulators - Grand Amazonia Scenery for X-Plane 11

See other scenery by HSimulators