It's probably a tough call for most people to decide if they should buy scenery for one single, solitary airport. However, if there ever came a product that justified such a purchase, this is it. Without a doubt, this is the most detailed, most complex airport scenery I've seen anywhere. This is the first scenery add-on for FS2000 that really takes advantage of what the new scenery engine can do. Scenery designer Andras Kozma has really outdone himself with this one! While this may sound like an over-hyped introduction, you really have to see this scenery to believe it.
The scenery
LAGO has released this product electronically, meaning you'll download one zip file for the scenery, and another for the documentation. Until you register the scenery, an ingenious copyright protection scheme works as a reminder: 2 out of every 8 minutes, all of Schiphol becomes transparent. I thought it was a bug at first—the most egregious bug I had seen. When I read the docs and figured out what was going on, I had a good laugh. If you aren't convinced by my review, go ahead and download the scenery and give it a peek yourself. Just beware the copyright protection!
The scenery has a nice automated install procedure, which is helpful because it's a pretty complex installation due to the inclusion of LAGO's Active Scenery technology, which controls the static and dynamic aircraft that you'll see. That Active Scenery puts a .dll in your FS2000/Modules directory and adds a menu item to the pulldowns in FS2000. If you use other third party modules (I use DP-GPS), you may not get them to work properly with the Active Scenery in use. A simple work-around is to rename the LAGO .dll file to a .bak anytime you'd prefer to be using your other module. One you get things setup, you can either select EHAM from the usual Go to Airport... menu, or there are several flights you can select, each of which places you at a different gate around the airport. The included flights have you using the FS2000 737 and 777, which aren't my favorite planes in the world, but they'll do.
I thought the excellent documentation for this product deserved at least a paragraph at to itself. The collection of charts, maps, and procedures included with this scenery is incredible. It's in one comprehensive .pdf file, and it contains everything you would need to know to take off, land, taxi, park, and find your way around this complicated airport. There are over 30 high resolution diagrams for approaches and departures, gate placements, and every other piece of information you might need. This might be the best documentation ever included with any scenery product—and it's not even in print form.
As you start taxiing around this airport, it quickly becomes clear that there is a lot to see. If you like to fly into an airport, taxi to the next runway, and take off again, save your money. However, if you like to explore even a little bit, you won't be disappointed. There are hours' worth of gorgeous custom buildings, signs, hangars, and other details to look at. I even found a few of the easter eggs hidden in the scenery, such as a picture of Andras playing a sitar, and another picture of him holding a fish. I probably should take points off for realism, as I'm sure the location in question does not have those pictures... he he he....
Surprisingly, even on my modest P-III 450, frame rates weren't completely in the dumper. I managed to stay around 5-6 even with lots of dynamic scenery and complex buildings in the scene. If you compare this EHAM to that found in Airport 2000 Vol. II, frame rates are a tad higher here, and this scenery is far more complex than A2kV2. I was pleased to see that the system requirements for this scenery are much more realistic than that for FS2000 itself, calling for a P-II 350, 64 megs of RAM, a 16 meg 3D accelerator, etc. Microsoft really ought to be kicked for having such phony system requirements. All software package screenshots should be required to indicate the configuration of the system they were taken from. But, I digress.
I flew several flights in and out of Schiphol at various times of day, and I never got tired of looking around the airport. It's especially impressive to see the glow of the lights as you come in for a landing in the evenings. When you taxi to the gate, the flood lights cast a realistic cone of pinkish-orange light that helps you keep from smacking into the terminal (or another plane!). There's really so much detail in this scenery, that you end up not flying a lot of the time; you just end up exploring the airport, which is probably not what you buy a flight simulator for. Maybe it would be helpful to download a non-aircraft, something by Jerry Arzdorf perhaps, and go driving around to see things. Sadly, the flyovers are not hardened surfaces, so you can't drive up and around and down—I already tried.
The nice thing about Schiphol is that it is a huge, busy airport, and you can reach it easily from the east coast of the US, from anywhere in Europe, as well as Africa, parts of Asia, and beyond. Even if you're not impressed geographically, the sheer quality of this scenery ought to convince you to give it a look.
Another thing I noticed about this scenery is that it lacked the little imperfections that I had been growing accustomed to in other sceneries: taxiway lines that don't line up, gaps in taxiways, signs that are slightly out of place. If those annoyances are here, I couldn't find them. I'm sure there are some little things wrong with this scenery, but the only real flaw I found was a dynamic aircraft that tried to pass another one by veering off onto the grass near runway 19R. The first 737 was rolling slowly, when another one came speeding up behind it, and sort of "nudged" it along.
Conclusion
I could have spent several more days, taxiing around, looking for screenshot opportunities, but the weeks I spent with this scenery are convincing enough. This scenery has truly raised the bar for future FS2000 compatible scenery add-ons. There are a lot of really nice products on the market, but this one is truly great. Even though it's just one airport, it's one airport done the way every airport should be done from now on. (We can only hope...) If you'd like to find out more about this product from its publisher, click here.
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What I Like About Amsterdam Schiphol 2000 |
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