Introduction:

Toussus-le-Noble is a municipality in the French county of Yvelines and the region Île-de-France. The airport is about 10 miles south-west from Paris, near Versailles. Toussus-le-Noble Airport is a major General Aviation airfield hosting on-demand air transport companies, aviation schools and many private aircraft ranging from Cessna 152 to the Citation 500. The small town airport has two runways (3300 ft each), one is equipped for night flight and "all-weather" approaches.

So let’s now sit back and explore this latest release from FranceVFR ‘Airport Toussus-le-Noble’.

Installation and Documentation:

There are two options available during purchase, the airport as standalone and airport scenery along with the Paris Scenery base package and Autogen. During this review I have explored the Toussus-le-Noble Airport as a standalone package without the Paris scenery base package.

 Toussus-le-Noble uses an automated installer that allows you to select your language (English or French), you then need to enter your product key received at the time of purchase to activate the installation. Once started, the installation lasted about 9 steps and took less than a minute.

Installation is straight forward with simple to follow windows

The package comes with a manual in both English and French as an Adobe Acrobat file. The manual is not an extensive document but contains about 4 pages of vital information such as:

• Technical Specification: I wouldn’t think it is very technical, contains only a few of the standout features of this package, such as extremely detailed airport, Autogen coverage, compatible with any mesh, etc.,

• Installation: Provides information on minimum configuration and also details of various sub-directories created by the auto-installer

• Recommended Display Settings: I would have thought this is the most important part of the document unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be in English, hence for non-French speaking fans, would have to decipher what it means.

Not too difficult decipher but does add to the discomfort factor	I have setup FSX with these settings during my review

This section also contains some important tips for optimization :

• Strong recommendation to de-fragment your hard disc to obtain the best possible rendering of the loaded textures
   

• The usual disclaimer we now get to see in most of FSX add-on “……..Setting these parameters to values too high, might considerably damage the display performance. So it is up to you to proceed testing and figure out the best optimal setting of Quality/performance …..”

Flight Charts – The package comes with the

• Arrival/ Departure Chart

• Instrument Approach Chart

• Visual Approach Chart

To conclude, not an extensive documentation but I guess has enough for users to get the scenery working. More care should have been given during translation to English. Another dampener for the non-French speaking users, the developers’ website is fully in French and no English translation is currently available.

Overview:

Let’s start this review with a quick overview of the Airport. This airport has two parallel runways heading east and west. Moving to the south section of the airport, this is where you will find the general aviation parking, hangars, tower, fire station etc., which we will soon check out in this review.

Before we move into the detailed review, let us compare the bird’s eye view of the airport:

Real Life Image of Toussus-le-Noble Airport (Picture courtesy of Wikimedia)
Screenshot of Toussus-le-Noble Airport from default FSX... Looks more like an abandoned Airport!	Screenshot after installing  Toussus-le-Noble Airport FSX Add-on FranceVFR has managed to add more life into this Airport and now looks more like a real world Airport

Someone once said, "A picture paints a thousand words"..... I couldn't agree more!

The Scenery:

I set out to explore this new scenery from the seats of an airport bus. I know it is a little funny but in my view it was the best option to bring everything about the airport. There is no doubt developers have put in a lot of effort to make this airport as realistic as possible. I was impressed with the level of perfection in the design of the hangar buildings, static vehicles, name boards, air traffic tower, streetlights etc. The scenery is extremely detailed including the detailed building textures, high-definition ground textures.

Tud Air Hanger and Crew Vehicle on Standby	Other Aircraft Hangers	IX Air Hanger and vehicles	Factory in the neighborhood... Note the huge truck on the background!
Air Traffic control and Parking	Fire Engines on Standby	More Emergency Vehicles	Air France Hanger

Air France Generators	Cargo Terminal and ForkLift Truck

FarMan Aviators, nice building….they built some memorable aircrafts around the World War

Surrounding the Airport:

As I was exploring the airport, I deviated into the corners of the airport where a normal simmer wouldn’t go and I was happy with quality there too. The attention to detail is something I got to see even around the roads of the airport. Additionally, the scenery extends past the airport to the adjacent buildings and factories. FranceVFR has not only brought the airport into life but also the area surrounding the airport. I was amazed with the level of detail on particulars outside the airport, which would normally go un-noticed.

The trees, roads, surrounding fields and steady flow of traffic on the roads. You will also not miss the smoke from a nearby factory, during the day. This vanishes in the night presumably since the factory is closed at night.

The street outside the airports, amazing detail	Another street outside the airport, heavy traffic and nice trees. Notice the smoke emitted from a chimney of a surrounding factory
A busy factory just outside the airport	The car parking area of the airport. Great work!

At Night:

So far under the Sun this scenery has been great, as the sun set and the airport now began to glitter under the lights. Although in some instances it has been overdone, for instance at the car park area all cars have the headlights turned on. The area around the main terminal and air traffic control tower looks great.

Car parking area under lights. Not sure why all the headlights are turned on?	Hangar looks amazing under lights
Top view of the airport, runway looks ready…	The main terminal looks bright…

Performance

Performance is an important consideration of any add-on scenery. What is the use if one has the best textures, auto-gen, etc, which then takes a toll on the frame rates and as a result the scenery would be un flyable. During this review I have maxed out almost all settings, I had an average frame rate around 10 fps. But I am confident with a little tweaking and more realistic slider settings would go to increase the frame rates. The manual also provides some recommended settings for optimal use of the scenery. I would rate the performance of this scenery above average.

Summary / Closing Remarks

This scenery comes at a cost of Euro 19 (including VAT), a temptation for a budget simmer could be to spend the additional Euro 5 for popular/ busy airport sceneries instead of owning a scenery of small airport near Paris.  This add-on covers about 60 Square kilometers around the Toussus-le-Noble Airport. This photorealistic scenery is extremely detailed, with 3D building objects and also packed with realistic road traffic and autogen. The scenery also includes VFR landmarks. The quality of work in and around the airport is amazing.

Overall I am more than satisfied.

What I Like About Toussus-le-Noble Airport

• Easy and automatic installer
• Nice and handy visual and instrument charts
• Detailed scenery with realistic buildings, VFR landmarks and road traffic.
• Great textures at night

What I Don't Like About Toussus-le-Noble Airport

• English translation of the user manual needs some improvement
• Unfortunately the France VFR website is in the French language, which is difficult for foreign visitors
• Slightly on the expensive side considering bigger airport sceneries are available for around Euro 25