Introduction

In 2000, Ron Ackerley released some of the best remote scenery for FS2K including places like Beaver Lodge, Karras Lake Saskatchewan, Kjelgaards Cabin Alaska. What would be the next logical project? How about Minneapolis-St. Paul International—the 7th business airport in the United States.

Ron’s latest project took his impressive scenery talents from the isolated beauty of nature the sprawling concrete and steel of a major hub airport. I asked Ron what prompted the change of direction. Ironically Ron’s initial involvement was taking pictures for noted scenery designer Shehryar ‘Shez’ Ansari (whose projects include LGA, SNA and DCA.) Shez was working on another project, so Ron started to build and the next thing you know Ron had completed a masterpiece.

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About MSP

Minneapolis-St. Paul International originated as the Minneapolis Aero Club in 1920. In 1926 Northwest Airways (now Northwest Airlines) won a commission to provide mail service. Northwest began passenger service in 1929. The airport has grown steadily ever since. Fewer hubs in America are identified with a single airline more than Minneapolis-St. Paul International is identified with Northwest airlines. Northwest controls 60 of the 76 gates and is responsible for 76% of the air traffic.

My first trip to MSP was during the Northwest Airlines strike in 1999. I flew in on a Vanguard flight from Chicago Midway and got immediate sense of how much Northwest dominates the airport. Almost every gate had a shut down Northwest airliner with engine nacelles covered. 80% of the airport businesses were closed. The rental car counter looked deserted. The terminal was ghost town. (Somehow my luggage still took 45 minutes to get to baggage claim – but that’s another issue.)

In 1996 the Minnesota legislature passed the MSP 2010 Plan. Over the next 15 years, 2.6 billion dollars are being poured into the airport to improve the airfield, terminal, parking and roads. Landing fees, parking revenue, concession charges and passenger facility charges will foot the bill.

Installation and Documentation

The original MSP2000 file was a 18.9MB download. Ron released two small updates in early March. The first update improved frame rates. The second update provided static aircraft.

Installation is straightforward. You’ll need to make a directory with the standard scenery/texture sub-directories. There is one manual flatten command. Likewise the updates are easy to install. Documentation is everything you need and expect from a freeware scenery file. Ron made a lot of improvements in the update and wrote an excellent performance.txt document on how to remove specific textures to improve frame rates.

Test System

Athlon 1.1 Gig Windows ME 512 Megs RAM GeForce 2 MX HP 9100 CD-RW SoundBlaster Live! Value CH USB Yoke CH USB Pedals KDS 19" Monitor Flying Time: 6 hours over 4 days

MSP2000 Scenery

Ron covers all of the small details of MSP. The terminal and parking areas are original textures. All of the gates are accurately reproduced including gate number and airline placard. The Northwest Airlines maintenance facility is right where it should be, and includes the mural on the side of the building. The perimeter of the airport isn’t neglected either. The jet-blast barriers are along 12R/30L, the trees around the airport, even the perimeter fence are all included.

The volume of static scenery is perfect. There are aircraft being serviced at about 50% of the gates. Too often I’ve seen designers try to cram too many airplanes onto an airport. At best it looks like my visit to MSP during the strike, at worst it looks like the deck of an aircraft carrier.

The concrete textures for MSP2000 are unique. They provide a much more realistic effect than the default scenery. On approach, the concrete looks perfect. The textures tend to look a little blurry up close, but this is a limitation of Flight Simulator, more than a scenery design fault.

Ron also includes FSTraffic Tracks designed by Frank Wavra. This gives you a nice sense of ground traffic with your own mix of aircraft.

The benchmark of quality scenery is that it makes you believe you are really at that airport. Ron’s MSP2000 definitely gives you that feeling.

Performance

There’s always a balance between detailed scenery and good frame rates. The original version of MSP2000 punished CPU’s. Even on my Athlon 1.1, frame rates barely held double digits. To his credit, Ron quickly released an update that improved frame rates substantially. The quality of the scenery doesn’t deteriorate at lower settings. While you may have less eye candy at the ‘Normal’ setting, the quality and realism of the are excellent. The performance.txt document gives advice on how to remove specific non essential texture files to improve performance. If you want to see all the bells and whistles, you'll need a top end system.

The biggest frame rate hits stem from the terminal building and static scenery. Fortunately most of the terminal textures don’t load until you are fairly close to the airport. Frame rates while landing are good.

I did have one minor complaint with the static scenery update. The static objects are installed in the same directory as the scenery. I appreciate when designers make the static planes a separate scenery library entry. This makes it much easier to remove if they are too much of a frame hit. Ron’s alternative is to adjust the static scenery through the display settings. Personally, I don’t like changing from extremely dense to dense/normal for one scenery area.

Future of the Project

MSP is going through major renovations through 2010. Ron plans on continually updating MSP2000 to include some of the upcoming changes. Below are a couple of screenshots of some goodies Ron has in store for us.

National Guard Hangers

Air Force Compound on east end of Airport

Conclusion

For his first foray into a large airport, Ron did an outstanding job. The new terminal and parking structures are meticulously designed. Likewise the jetways, static aircraft and ground traffic are outstanding. The main airport buildings are all original designs. The night lighting for the entire airport is first rate.

This has quickly become one of my favorite airports. Some of you may have downloaded the original airport and felt the frame rates were too low for your system. If so, do yourself a favor and download the update and give it another try. Between the update and the tweaks in the performance.txt file, you should be able to get this scenery to run on your system.

Ron was already a heavyweight in the scenery design arena. MSP2000 establishes Ron as one of the top-notch airport designers in our hobby. You can download msp2000.zip here.

 

What I Like About Ron Ackerley's KMSP Scenery
Highly detailed terminal with accurate buildings, gates and signs Night lighting effects Concrete textures FS Traffic Tracks

What I Don't Like About Ron Ackerley's KMSP Scenery
I’d like to see the static scenery install as a separate scenery option.

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