AVSIM Commercial Scenery Review

Rating Guide
	Publisher: Lago Designer: Andras Kozma
	Description: A scenery package that reproduces virtually every building, every landmark, every point of interest that Venice contains
	Download Size: 42MB	Format: Download or CD	Product Type: FS2002/FS2004 scenery add-on
	Reviewed by: Craig Wyzik, AVSIM Sr. Reviewer
	Possible Commercial Rating Score: 1 to 5 stars with 5 stars being exceptional. Please see details of our review rating policy here.

Venice is a city that is unlike any other in the world. Founded some 1500 years ago by refugees fleeing the invasion of Atilla the Hun, the citystate of Venice has long been a desirable destination for travelers, traders, and the curious alike. With its millennium and a half of continuous history wedged onto the many islands of the Venetian Lagoon, there is a density of buildings and landmarks that flight simulators have long failed to represent. Now, courtesy of Andras Kozma and the folks at Lago Online, we have a scenery package that reproduces virtually every building, every landmark, every point of interest that Venice contains. Indeed, this is the first scenery to attempt to model every building in a city of this size—there are no default buildings used in the city of Venice. Whether or not you've been to Venice before, you should definitely be impressed by what this scenery accomplishes.

Test System Intel 2.4GHz Pentium 4 C Processor Asus P4P800 Motherboard 1GB Kingston HyperZ DDR Memory 120GB WD SE Hard Drive MSI GeForce 4 Ti4200 128mb AGP Video Sound Blaster Live CH Products Flight Sim Yoke USB CH Products Pro Pedals USB Sony 17" Monitor San Marco to the left, Rialto to the right Venezia Santa Lucia Station and Piazzale Roma Left-side view of Piazza San Marco Flying down the Grand Canal Low over the canals Rooftops

This scenery is downloadware from Lagoonline.com, with a file size of 42MB. There are separate versions for FS2002 and FS2004, but I am focusing this review on just the FS2004 version. The scenery uses an automated installer, so you won't have problems installing things. Once installed, you can use two different airports as a base for exploring the lagoon-Venice Tessera (LIPZ), or San Nicolo (LIPV) which is located on the Lido island. Tessera, commonly known as Marco Polo, is where most commercial flights arrive for Venice. Venice has a third airport out at Treviso, where the low-cost airlines operate, but it is not modeled in this scenery package.

One of the most distinctive features of arriving at Tessera is being able to ride a boat into the scenery. A small inlet of the lagoon curls right up close to the terminal area. There is a dock and ticket booth right on the water, so that you can walk out of the terminal, buy a ticket, and step right onto a boat heading for the city. Sadly, that geographic feature is not represented in this scenery. Perhaps there will be an update to modify the shoreline so that we can see the connection between air travel and sea travel. Tessera is a couple of miles north of the city proper, which is itself a cluster of islands connected to the mainland by a road/rail causeway. If you are approaching Tessera from the air, and there is any doubt in your mind which islands make up the city, just look for the causeway—it is expertly modeled here.

I'm not Italian, I don't live in Italy, I've only been to Venice a half-dozen times. Still, it's pretty obvious to me that everything you might be looking for in the scenery is here. Any building, any church, any large square or open space, you should be able to find it. It's rather difficult to explain how thorough this urban scenery is, simply because you have to find something that isn't here in order to draw a contrast. How about people? There are few people located in the scenery, but that's not to say there aren't any. If you look at the ACTV boats (public transportation) that are in the canals, they have people on them. There are gondolas, motor boats, cruise ships—all of the kinds of boats you can see in the real Venice. For people who have never been there, keep in mind there are no cars in Venice. If you are driving to Venice from elsewhere, you have to park in large garages at the end of the causeway. Venice is a city for walking or boating, not driving. Speaking of boating, walking, driving, and flying, there is a lack of dynamic objects in this scenery currently. Once we have AFCAD compatibility for FS2004, we should get gondolas puttering around the canals, ACTV boats dumping backpackers off at Piazza San Marco, and other kinds of interesting dynamic traffic.

Anyway, let's focus more on the scenery. Every building is here, and every building looks great! Frame rates stay remarkably high throughout your explorations. If you make many passes over the city at various times of day and with various weather conditions, you will notice that the water in the canals doesn't quite have the same color as the water in the surrounding lagoon. That is a compromise that had to be made in matching up the default water textures (as used in the lagoon itself) with the custom photoreal water textures inside the canals. It doesn't look terrible, but you will probably notice it and wonder why it was done that way.

This is truly amazing scenery, even if it is not 100 percent absolutely faithful to reality. While the shoreline around Tessera isn't quite accurate, that doesn't subtract from the flying experience into and out of that airport. The terminals themselves are well-modeled, complete with jetways, hangars, lighting, and signage. The smaller outlying islands of Murano and Torcello are not modeled like the rest of the lagoon, but the features that 99.9% of people want to see are included. (Can you see how hard I'm working to find things to criticize?) Anyway, if this scenery serves to kick off a new trend in scenery design, I'm all for it. Who would have thought that you could have this level of detail without adversely affecting performance? Whether that's due to the skill of the programmer, the efficiency of FS2004, or both, I'm very happy with the outcome.

Departing LIPZ

Panorama of the whole city

The causeway and the garages at Tronchetto

If you are interested in learning more from the publisher of this scenery, or if you're ready to buy this Venice Scenery for FS2002/2004, visit Lago's website. The price for this scenery add-on is €24.99.