Introduction I admit it; flying the ‘backwaters’ is not my forte. Take a look at my collection and you’ll see a bunch of aircraft and scenery add-ons that’ll support that notion. Almost without exception, my hangar is filled with planes that require 5,000 ft of paved runway, which is a good thing considering that’s the smallest strip for my commercially purchased airports. The things you would associate with bush flying – low and slow aircraft and unprepared fields out in the boondocks – just never held my interest. So it was somewhat of a surprise, even to myself, when I decided to take a look at Louisiana Wetlands Vol 1, a freeware scenery created by the well known designer Captain Keith. Perhaps it was the challenge of doing a different kind of flying for once, or maybe it was the curiosity of trying out a scenery from a person that I’ve heard quite a bit about in the past. At any rate, it was time to do away with my trusty 727, strap on something that was decidedly smaller, and pull out a pair of galoshes as I ventured out into the swamplands of the Bayou. Installation and Documentation Louisiana Wetlands is available from a number of sites, including Captain Keith’s own website as well as here at Avsim.com, and actually requires two individual downloads. One is the baseline package that contains the files that make up the bulk of the scenery, and the other is required to correct some deficiencies that were noted with the first. Installation is strictly a manual affair, requiring the user to unzip the files and send them to the appropriate MSFS directories. Anyone who has any level of experience working with Windows Explorer should have no problem (for those with zero experience, it’s a lot easier than you might think). Upon starting MSFS, the scenery should auto-initiate, requiring no additional action at all. The two page documentation is fairly bare bone, but does the job of outlining what the scenery is all about and, more importantly, how to install it on your hard drive if you need a little guidance. The Facelift The focus of Louisiana Wetlands is Lake Maurepas Airpark and T-Bob Field (I couldn’t have begun to make that last one up), two fields that supposedly existed once upon a time, but fell into disuse, were abandoned, and were eventually swallowed up into oblivion by the elements. I say supposedly because in all my research, I never found any evidence that they ever existed. So obscure were these places in fact, that no ICAO codes were ever assigned to them by the FAA. We’ll just have to take Captain Keith’s word for it that they were once very much real. The two airfields were developed through the personal memories of the Captain. Representing their appearance in the early 90s, a period in which they were already falling out of favor, but were still usable. Captain Keith assigned them identifiers LF1 and LF2 for Lake Maurepas and T-Bob respectively. Lake Maurepas Airpark is the larger and (relatively speaking) more modern of the two. Sitting at the northern edge of the lake for which it is named, it has a 1,850 ft dirt runway oriented due east and west, and is big enough to sport a dedicated ramp area for planes to park. T-Bob Field is decidedly smaller and more basic; 1,200 ft of mud running north and south atop Lake Pontchartrain, and plenty of places to park your plane as long as you don’t need a designated parking spot (in a nutshell, any clear space will do). Both also have a dock or two which you could use if flying in by amphibian. Aside from the structures and objects that were included with the scenery, that’s about it. No taxiways, no pilot centers, no tower. They are as basic as airfields get.
As to the structures and objects, I couldn’t help but be taken by them. Maurepas and T-Bob are in the heart of Bayou country, and these items definitely bring forth a given appeal that can be associated with few places outside the swamplands of Louisiana. Whether we’re talking about the ‘hangars’ at Maureso or the shack directly next to T-Bob’s muddy strip, they just look appropriate enough, providing a certain Cajun-zest that’s so visually authentic that you might catch a whiff of jambalaya on the breeze.
Other than those, count on newly created trees, a few static airplanes (Cessnas and Pipers), pickup trucks, boats in the water, a boat on the blocks, campers, tents, other items spread out in the immediate vicinity. Again, I can’t praise these objects enough for their looking like they just belonged. No BMW’s, no modern buildings, no Learjets; what you see is what you’d expect somewhere far off the beaten track. All items are far superior in appearance to the MSFS stock, and look just as good at night. And speaking of night, be prepared for some low-tech lighting at Lake Maurepas. Why bother with lightbulbs when you can simply fill a bakers-dozen worth of metal drums with kerosene, line them up on the sides of the runway, then toss in a match? (PS – T-Bob field is a decidedly ‘unlit’ airport; the drum or two you’ll find there are more hand-warming devices than anything else)
Animation Details When I associate the word ‘freeware’ with ‘scenery’, I don’t expect much in terms of added bonus features. I consider myself lucky if the visual quality of the rendered place is up to snuff, and am frankly shocked if it’s quality is excellent. So I guess I should consider creating a new word to describe my reaction when I came across a certain type of item in Wetlands. During my first flight in and around Lake Maureso Airpark, I departed out of Rwy 9 in a Piper Cub, flew a left pattern, then came back in for landing. Admitted, my airmanship was sloppy, at one mile out, I turned inbound at a 20 degree angle for landing. As I neared the strip, something caught by eye; tiny little specks hovering in front of me, maybe a half a mile out and right in my flightpath. I immediately dismissed them as dust on my screen, but the closer I got, the more I started to doubt my assessment. Dust on a screen does not grow larger the closer one gets to the ground, nor does it move up and down. Wait a minute… Movement? Half a mile out came an experience that I’ve had once before in real life. A flock of birds (you heard me correctly… B-I-R-D-S), and rather sizable ones at that, hovering right off my nose all happy and chipper, and not getting out of the way anytime soon! By reflex, I firewalled the throttle and threw my Cub into a climbing right turn, simply incredulous at what I had run into here. I actually paused the simulation and took a look at that space from an exterior view. Considering what I just run into, any less would be inexcusable.
Animated wildlife is not something I’ve ever encountered in MSFS. The closest I’ve ever gotten to that was a reported birdstrike in FS Passenger. I’ve read that an expansion to Level-D 767 also models this (and adds a busted windshield to boot), but neither renders a physical bird that you can see with your own two eyes. These critters happen to occupy numerous areas in and around Lake Maurepas and T-Bob (sharp-eyed observers will have spotted it in at least one other screenshot), and while I found later on that hitting them is not something to worry about (MSFS never registered a collision), it was a huge improvement overall. This breath of new life into the simulation has been long coming, and I was very happy to have finally experienced it. The Swamp Flying Experience The rest of the Wetlands experience comes from actually flying from and into these fields. Eye-candy is nice and all, but if you have been spending all of your flying time in and around the major airports (hmmm… like me), then you’re in for quite a treat. It’s really great that Captain Keith modeled two fields that are so close together; a single flight is sufficient to take in the aura of both fields in any plane in the library (save perhaps the Wright Flyer). If your short field technique is rusty, you might want to brush up on it. I opted to take these places on with a default Cessna. Starting off at Lake Maurepas Airpark, I chose to use Rwy 27. With the winds calm, I though it would be more prudent to takeoff towards the Lake, where no obstructions lay beyond the strip. With LP2 keyed into the GPS, and takeoff flaps set, I pushed up the throttle and let her fly. Upon liftoff, I edged the plane slightly to the left (that dang flock of birds were still off the departure end of the runway), then peeled off in a right turn for T-Bob Field.
At a groundspeed of no more than 110 kts, it took all of 10 minutes to reach T-Bob. It certainly is the more intimidating of the two, with it’s smaller strip and trees so closely set to the mud, it borders on claustrophobic. Still, as I passed over at 2,000 ft, I committed myself to an approach from the north. Louisiana Wetlands was made with bush flying in mind; what better way to experience that than to come in from the more difficult direction. With flaps at full, I settled in on final with my speed right at 65 kts, carefully controlling the angle with fine power and pitch adjustments. What makes the approach so much more interesting from the north is the foliage; trees are set out perhaps 400 – 500 feet away from the approach end of Rwy 18, making it that much harder to utilize all 1,200 ft of T-Bob’s available landing space. It takes careful speed management and good timing to pull off a landing with this small amount of room. Tunnel-visioning dead ahead and staying right on the proverbial centerline also helps; it takes off the edge of those trees whizzing by your wingtips. My landing there certainly wasn’t anything to brag about. Slowing further to 60 kts, I chopped my power once I was certain I was past the treeline. The C172 fell like a brick, and the only things that saved my landing gear from snapping was a firm tug on the yoke and a hastily applied smidgen of power. It was a rough landing to be sure, but if that old adage is true (a good landing is one that you can walk away from, and a great one is one where you can use the plane again), then I have no need to hide my face in shame from present company. Hey! This is bush flying!
On one of my latter flights, I broke out the C208 Amphibian, something I have not done in a long time, and just had at it at both fields, splashing-n-going along the coastlines. The ambiance and customized surroundings made anything less, a crime. Before long, I realized that I had gone back and forth between LF1 and LF2 not once… not twice, but three times. It had been a while since anything has kept my interest this long and so well as to keep me away from my usual jetliner. Shortcomings I’m not even sure if this was truly a shortcoming, but as it exists, it warrants being mentioned. Despite having collisions with ground objects enabled, rolling or flying an aircraft right through a good majority of newly added custom objects without harm was entirely possible. Such items included some of the structures, trees, vehicles, and boats. Note though, before you go running around thinking you’ll be ‘invincible’, running the scenery with autogen on does mix in some ‘rather-solid’ trees amongst the ‘less-solid’ ones (you have been duly warned). In my personal opinion, this item was not a major issue. It’s something of a reflex for me to avoid any object right in front of my plane anyways.
Performance * Baseline Tests Parameters: res – 1280X1024x32 locked @ 35 FPS, detail/autogen levels – MAX, traffic – ON (50%), no weather * Runnng at the aforementioned settings, Louisiana Wetlands struck down the FPS meter an average of about 3-5 FPS. It wasn’t a complete surprise considering the small area in which this scenery covers and that no AI traffic visits these fields. Still, it was a pleasant one nonetheless, further ramping up the score for Captain Keith’s latest release. Final Thoughts I wouldn’t go as far to say that Louisiana Wetlands is for everyone. People with a preference for flying heavy metal or going to places with two mile runways certainly need not apply… but then again, this is freeware! That means zero out of your bank account to explore the possibility of whether or not a little short-field daredevil exists inside you. How much could it hurt to try? Moving beyond all that, I found it very difficult to fault this package in the slightest. It delivers what it promises, and does so in exquisite detail, and throws into the mix an animation that is sure to delight simmers from all over. Perhaps there is that issue of objects that don’t register a crash if you run into them, but I’m the type that would pretty much slap myself stupid if I was dumb enough to run into something, even if the coding was forgiving enough to let me get away with it. Compared to the excellent marks Wetlands garners on it’s own merits, this whole collision with objects thing kind of slides into the background. For bush-flying types out there in the MSFS community, Louisiana Wetlands Vol 1 would make an excellent addition to your scenery library, and for all others is a great entry into that rather peculiar yet fun world. Author’s Note – Just prior to submitting this review, the developer notified me that Louisiana Wetlands Vol 2 is in the pipeline. Keep an eye out. |
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