Orientalsim - Jomo kenyatta intl airport

[Benjamin J 751]

Guys,Just a heads-up. Ever since I made plans to go to kenya next year (volunteer work in the Mombassa area), I was looking around for a good rendition of Jomo kenyatta intl airport near Nairobi, but didn't find one. And, just yesterday, it seems Orientalsim released one at simmarket. I have it on my computer now. Performance is a bit lacking to be honest, but overall it doesn't look bad at all. With the LDS767 I get about 22FPS, with the PMDG 747-8 I get about 18-19, so not that good. But, flyable for as far as I'm concerned. Here's a link:http://secure.simmarket.com/orientalsim-nairobi-intl.phtmlI'm doing a review of it for simflight.com. If interested, I'll post a link here when it's done.

[Chock 17,769]

Looks okay, nothing spectacular, but certainly better than default and not bad for the price. You might be able to squeeze some more FPS out of it by playing around with the resolution of the textures of the ground, which appear to be satellite photorealistic ones. Not normally a big fan of that approach on airport sceneries, as although it certainly helps the developer to place stuff with reasonable accuracy when creating the thing, it tends to look a bit rough if they don't retouch shadows and parked cars out of the texture, which then jars horribly with the 3D models plonked onto it, although that too is something the end user can address with a bit of Photoshop fun.18-19 FPS is not stellar performance of course, but it is enough for taxying around and even for an approach or take off so long as you ain't doing it in an F-104 with a barrel roll as you go over the perimeter fence.And it is nice to see a developer going for creating a location other than the usual major US or European cities, so that is definitely a welcome aspect of the thing, especially since we would only be able to realistically fly older aircraft such as the 727 and DC-8 from places like that, as they are all but banished from Europe and the US these days. Cheers for the heads up.Al

[CoolP 283]

I'm doing a review of it for simflight.com. If interested, I'll post a link here when it's done.

Would be great. As Alan says, leaving the major routes always is a welcome but rare thing and if another dev steps into those less lucrative waters, he surely is to praise for this. Looking forward to reading the review. :(

[FlavioSSA 44]

Very well done scenery. i got it. Very low fps hit and many details. A nice companion to the freeware african airports available thru avsim and others sites.

[Benjamin J 751]

Done some touch and goes now. It really is quite a nice scenery. Especially when you compare it to their previous scenery (Baghdad intl.), the have made a huge step forward in scenery quality. I'm not sure why the FPS is on the low side, but all in all, I'm quite pleased. It'll be nice to fly into this airport.

[7107delicious 0]

Interesting - something LatinVFR and TropicalSim will have to look at!

[Benjamin J 751]

I promised to link to the review when it came out, so here it is: http://simflight.com/2011/05/22/review-orientalsim’s-nairobi-jomo-kenyatta-international/

[CoolP 283]

Benjamin, that's a pretty good review there. But it names the biggest downside of every remote location, the surrounding area.Thanks to the Avsim library there's some more freeware around, but maybe you can follow up on that current review with one for the payware landclass product you've mentioned. This would be highly appreciated since a "complete" buy of some African area with some detailed airports in it (the mentioned freeware and the tested payware) would make sense to me while the one spot solution doesn't attract me much, to be honest.

[Chock 17,769]

Might want to take a look at the general terrain scenery which gets added in African Airstrip Adventures - there's a lot of it.Al

[Benjamin J 751]

Benjamin, that's a pretty good review there. But it names the biggest downside of every remote location, the surrounding area.Thanks to the Avsim library there's some more freeware around, but maybe you can follow up on that current review with one for the payware landclass product you've mentioned. This would be highly appreciated since a "complete" buy of some African area with some detailed airports in it (the mentioned freeware and the tested payware) would make sense to me while the one spot solution doesn't attract me much, to be honest.

Thanks for the comments. However, I never intended to mention the surrounding scenery a "downside". It's simply a part of FSX reality that the detail in such locations is quite mediocre. As such, I won't do a follow-up for this review in which I mention ways to enhance the default Kenya scenery. However, since I anyway have to alter the review a bit so that it's not too similar to the simflight one when it gets published at Avsim, I might add something about OpenVFR and SceneryTech. Do not expect more than a few lines and a few shots however. The review never intended to look at more than the airport.All in all, I'm not surprised that the airport doesn't really attract you. It is typically a place that's only really interesting for locals or people that visit the country. It's the same problem with Hong Kong to be honest, with two exceptions: the old Hong Kong airport has a spectacular approach and Asia is being more and more filled with addon airport sceneries. Nairobi doesn't have a spectacular approach, nor are there any nearby quality airports to fly to and from. So, all in all, I do not expect many people to find it interesting. What I do find important, is that people know about this addon, precisely because it's such a FSX remote location.Chock: Interesting, I have been looking at that since that scenery seems to be based around Kenya as well. Any idea what the exact coverage is of that addon? If I buy it, I'll probably mostly buy it for the scenery, not so much the included mission system thingy.

[CoolP 283]

Oh, don't get that wrong. The downside comes from FSX, offering close to no African scenery representation, which then leads to your mentioned scene, a detailed airport with sharp boarders to that low detail FSX default. Not a problem of the airport.Your lines and pictures regarding the other scenery enhancements would therefore be of great use.Thanks to Alan too, those mentioned adventures might be interesting then. I'm already using some freeware fields and landclass, so that continent isn't empty, but far away from the detail level of other places in FSX so far.There are some fsxworx (or AEROWORX) sceneries in the Avsim library. Very good things, like this one. http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?DLID=&Name=&FileName=fsxWorx*&Author=&CatID=root

[Chock 17,769]

Re African Airstrip Adventures terrain: You should be aware that the scenery in AAA is largely intended to be a terrain background for the fictional small bush airstrips that are part of the game (and African Airstrip Adventures is indeed a game in the true sense, rather than simply a series of missions, as it has a persistent career mode that is great fun).Because of that, the terrain is not a photorealistic factual representation of the real terrain, but rather a 'convincing impression' of the terrain using a custom landclass that improves upon what FSX gives you by default. It's very good, and I recommend it, but bear that difference in mind. Here's a map of the area it covers, which as you can see, is north of Nairobi:If you want to see some pics of what the terrain looks like, there's a review of AAA here on Avsim which I did, and it has a few screenies on it. Look in the Avsim Commercial Products review list and you'll find it. It got an Avsim Award, and it deserved it too. If you have a decent bush aeroplane for FSX, this scenery is made for it.Al

[CoolP 283]

Looks interesting, so the review comes in handy. Thanks. :(

[Benjamin J 751]

Looking at the screenshots, it seems as though the resolution of the included ground textures is rather low. Is this really the case, or are the settings of your FSX installation set lower to cope with performance issues?CoolP; It's a pity that there's so little stuff available for Africa. Some of the most beautiful places on Earth can be found there. It's good Aerosoft goes "off the road" with regards to some of their scenery choices, since they are filling voids in FSX scenery and they do so very well.

[CoolP 283]

Well, Australia shared the same fate, years ago. In pure FSX, it's still a desert country. So maybe some bigger name takes the lead and goes for Africa, in this or the next sim, filling up the areas while leaving room for smaller airport releases.