I would like some opinions from the community, regarding the quality of TropicalSim FSX sceneries.

 

I am interested only in jetliner (not GA) airports.

 

Usually, for developers that I own nothing coming from them, and have more than one scenery, I'm a little reluctant to invest money on them, especially if screenshots from their products (ie on SimMarket) do not seem of enough quality to me.

 

For comparison, to help the community give me recommendations close to my personal taste, I will mention (in random order) developers/publishers whose sceneries I have more than one, and I'm happy with their quality:

 

- FlyTampa

- Aerosoft

- SimWings

- FSDreamTeam

- LatinVFR

- Pacific Islands Simulation

- UK2000

- ImagineSim (valid only for packages of 3x€15 - not individually)

 

Also, developers (in random order), that I have only one scenery from them, and consider it to be of enough quality:

 

- Armi Project

- A_A Sceneries

- Overland

 

So the question is:

 

I like (consider to be of enough quality), airport sceneries from the above developpers/publishers.

 

Would you recommend for me, FSX airport sceneries (only jetliners, not GA) from TropicalSim?

 

Thank you in advance for your time.

I admittedly only have one Tropical Sim scenery and it is an old one: MYNN Nassau. It was the only one of MYNN that I could find at the time I did a search. There may have been others, but I couldn't find one. I vacationed in Nassau and desired to add the airport to my scenery library.

 

Overall, I was not pleased with it as the jetways looked far from reality and with aircraft shadows enabled in FSX, none of the WOAI aircraft I had in my AC folder would show up at all. To get them to show you have to disable AC shadows. There is an update available for MYNN, but it didn't fix that problem. So using ADE, I rebuilt the airport on my own. However, they have released KDCA and from pics I've seen (I don't have it) it looks to be quite good. Maybe someone who does have it can comment on it.

 

One vendor you forgot to list is Fly Tampa. An excellent creator of airports for FSX. I have KBOS which is a great piece of work. Accurately constructed and detailed. Don't forget FT VHHX. A superb rendition of the Hong Kong airport and city as noted in a previous post on this web site.

In my opinion, Tropical Sim has improved with time. They are also very responsive when it comes to customer service. I currently live in the Washington D.C. area, and they incorporated some of my suggestions for their KDCA patch. I love to fly commercial in Latin America, and Tropical Sim complements my Latin VFR and Virtual Col collection. Also with the recent releases of the updated SBGL and TNCA products, you can tell they are moving in the direction of developing scenery around the airports. Finally, their products are compatible with AES, so you will see moving gates and ground crew.

cptawson,

 

I own the TropicalSim 32 Airport Bundle for FSX. Overall I am happy with the quality of the sceneries. Quality wise I would say they are on par with the Pacific Island Simulations sceneries of which I own most of as well. I also own all the FSDreamTeam Sceneries, Fly Tampa Sceneries, most Orbx sceneries and sceneries from many other developers.

 

As I said overall I am happy with the sceneries. However, I did have one issue with an airport in the bundle that would cause FSX to stutter immensely and put FSX into single digits for FPS with any aircraft. This was TDCF Canefield Airport in Dominica. I found the problem to lie with the CANEFILED2x.bgl file provided with the scenery. If this file is removed the scenery works fine. I'm not sure exactly what all is lost with the file removed. I sent many emails to the developer regarding this issue and if you search the internet you'll find many others complaining of the same problem.

 

The developer NEVER responded to any email that was sent to them. You cannot ask for support in their forums either only via email. Any support request posted in their forum will be deleted. This level of support or lack there of did/does not sit well with me. Even though for the most part I like their sceneries, I will not look at future purchases of their scenery due to their perceived lack of support.

 

Regards,

 

Bob

I have owned many TSim sceneries over the years and I have always received good support from the developer. For example, I can think of a few instances where I wanted a mega pack deconstructed so I could install some, but not all of the airports. In each case, they sent me custom installers for want I wanted.

 

The newest product I have is DCA and I think they did a pretty good job. I think the quality of their products has improved quite a bit over the years. I'm sure I will be picking up TNCA 2012 and SBGL 2012 when AES support is released next week. As you can see, TNCA is an updated version so many of their older products are a bit outdated. Another example is their MMUN. I used it for years but when AMS released their version for FSX, I replaced it. Overall, I would put their newest stuff in the same category as LatinVFR and Taxi2Gate - good but not FlyTampa, FSDT, Simwings good.

 

Watch out for the bundles. Most of them contain old sceneries so the quality will vary from airport to airport. Still, if you want to fill a bunch of airports that don't have options from other developers, they can still be a reasonable option.

I own the TropicalSim KDCA and I am impressed so far. I think that they did a good job modeling the airport and all of the ground textures are very crisp. FPS also are very good.

I own their Caribbean airport bundle, and mostly I am happy with it. Some of the airports (apparently older releases) aren't that impressive and have no custom textures or anything, just airport buildings and some other surroundings and accurate taxiways / parking areas. However some newer ones seem to have nice photorealistic surroundings and all. Overall I am happy with their airports, though not as good as Taxi2Gate in my opinion still decent and worth the money.

Your input has been very useful so far, and thank you.

 

Now, I would like to ask the same question about another developer's airport sceneries:

 

Taxi2theGate

Taxi2Gate is very good, I have all their Cuba sceneries and they are in really good quality. Nothing to complain.

I'm surprised you don't have FlightBeam listed. Their KSFO is excellent and they're close to releasing KPHX.