Introduction Budapest Ferighey International Airport was opened in 1950 for the predecessor to the current Malev airlines. Originally opened with one terminal, runway, and hangar, Ferihegyy was only a shell of what it was destined to become. Over the next half century or so, improvements were made to Ferihegy including the opening of the new terminals, Terminal 2A and 2B, and an accompanying 12,000 foot runway. In addition, Terminal 1 was renovated and reopened and dedicated to low cost carriers. Today, Ferihegy Airport encompasses two runways, three terminals, and its own cargo center. It is the hub for the national airline Malev, and low cost carriers Wizz Air and Sky Europe. Ferighey is also the only airport that serves Budapest along with being the largest international airport in Hungary, serving slightly more than 8 million people in 2005. It is capable of taking in large freighters such as the An-124 and the 747 series. Installation and Documentation The install procedure was not a very happy one for me to be quite honest. The download files are 300 megabytes large and are located online on Aerosoft’s server, which downloaded at a rather leisurely pace of 90 kilobytes a second. Installation was accomplished via Aerosoft’s auto installer which involves clicking and some copying and pasting. A very simple affair. However, I was less then pleased to spend five minutes trying to figure out how I was copying and pasting my serial code wrong. In the end, it turns out that the first letter of my email address was not "Capitalized" thus resulting in the rejection of the code and preventing installation. To add injury to insult, the installer quits itself after a given number of wrong attempts! After that slight delay, installation was smooth and without error. As usual, user error was the cause. Thankfully, there is a good security system in place at Aerosoft. Documentation is accounted for in a very comprehensive 86 page PDF file with the majority in both Hungarian and English. Included in the manual is a short introduction along with a list of features and accompanying FAQ, various airport procedures, and a plethora of airport charts and approach plates. The manual was very impressive to say the least. Scenery The scenery itself was very impressive and made the most out of a smaller airport. In addition, Budapest 2007 was modeled using 3DS Max providing for future developments such as in FSX. Personally, I am always impressed by the little details and Aerosoft has not held back in this aspect. One detail I can never seem to have satisfied by any developer, is the gate markings. It might seem comical, but some developers either leave the markings alone or use a generic set throughout the whole scenery. Budapest 2007 has spread my beloved gate markings throughout the whole scenery leaving me very pleased with the airport.
Speaking of the details, the ground and building textures were all very sharp and pleasing to the eye. Both building and ground textures in the airport were sharp and lacked the blurriness that some sceneries have. In addition, there is a great deal of animated traffic around the airport.
Also modeled around the airports were the automated guidance systems for the gates. Very nicely modeled but sometimes not quite accurate.
Budapest 2007’s detail doesn’t stop with the airport, the detail extends to the city with the entire area being covered in a photoscenery with new terrain mesh. One drawback of the photoscenery is that sometimes it will clash with the default. But this is all but inevitable, so no foul there. However, some winter textures tend to have a purple tinge to them, which isn’t very aesthetically pleasing.
AFCAD An AFCAD file is provided for the scenery and it does its job like it’s supposed to. The one included in the patch is an improvement over the original file but adds new problems. Some people might like the illusion that the plane is lining up on the jetway door, but to others, such as myself, find it weird that the pilot parked a few degrees off the line. These are rather easy problems to correct using the AFCAD program but should have been addressed in the original package. A good AFCAD could go a long way here.
Performance At first, I was slightly dismayed over the performance of Budapest 2007. It seemed to be slightly below the average benchmark set by other developers with much larger airports. I was only maxing out in the mid teens while testing with a variety of popular payware and freeware aircraft. However, the newly released patch seemed to do wonders for me in similar conditions. Frame rates remained about the same with slight increases, but it was very smooth without the jerkiness of the previous version. With that being said, performance suddenly became as smooth as comparable airports. Testing in different weather and day times seemed to yield little difference. Summary / Closing Remarks Overall, Budapest 2007 left me with a very good impression. I was very impressed with the attention to detail. It has to be one of the better sceneries that I have seen in terms of accuracy and details. Even if Budapest is not the hottest, biggest hub that the entire Flight Sim community has been clamoring for, Aerosoft has executed Budapest 2007 very well and has given us another wonderful scenery. Although there were some quirks with the scenery, a solution has been presented to most of them (see below). And to top it off, a brand new FSX version is out and free of charge to all owners of the FS9 version. While reviewing this scenery, Aerosoft introduced their new AES (Airport Enhancement Services). This little package adds numerous sound and visual details along with animated jetways. It is now available for Budapest and can be purchased via Aerosoft’s website. Although, there is no doubt that AES will add plenty more fun to Budapest, it still comes at a small cost and is something which I feel should have been included in the first place. |
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