Luton Xtreme

Introduction

Whenever I get a new review assignment I always talk about it with my wife. “So honey, let me tell you about this airport in the English countryside! It’s really cool and…” and that’s about the time I see her eyes glaze over. So, I’m telling her about this particular airport and I am pronouncing it loo-TAWN, in something of a French accent when she snaps out of her bored stupor and asks, “Why are you pronouncing the name with a French accent when this is an airport in London?”

Well, that’s a great question and I have no idea but it did give me the impetus to go out and find the correct pronunciation. I was glad to have that behind me but it did make me wonder if I was butchering any of the other scenery titles I’ve reviewed in the past.

In any case, the Luton London Airport is located in Bedfordshire, England and is the United Kingdom’s fifth largest passenger airport with 9.6 million people using its facilities in 2012. The airport is a major base for low-cost or “no frills” air travel and indeed, is the home headquarters for easyJet. It’s also home to a great many ‘Bizjets’ which is great because I love seeing all those different liveries parked around my airport. The airport has a single 2,160m runway (which can cause some issues which we’ll talk about later).

Installation and Documentation

Installation is a snap; simply click on the 161MB executable and you will be walked through the process via the Windows Installer. You can choose to add the scenery layer to your library. There’s also a small update to version 1.01 that you can download that contains some minor fixes that you will want to run. As usual, you’re presented with some great options to select when using UK2000 scenery.

There are many options to choose from to suit your FSX setup

I’m a glutton for punishment with my FSX setup so I like to choose all the options that give an FPS hit. These tend to make the scenery look great, so why not? I mean, who doesn’t want to see 3000+ cars and service vehicles moving about their airports? I love these things and their addition; probably as much as someone else appreciates the ability to turn them off.

One of the things I don’t typically choose to activate is the statics. A big part of my FSX experience is all of the AI that you can use to populate your world. Again, I know lots of folks who mainly, or in part, fly multiplayer so the statics are nice to have.

You’ll find the documentation under the start menu and it contains all the usual stuff. You’ll find a brief history of the airport; install help, tips and tricks, etc. I like to review the manual before diving into a title and I recommend always taking a look before enjoying new scenery.

Background and Afcad

Fall

Spring

Summer

Winter

You can see that the airport blends very nicely in the warmer months and less so as the year turns colder in the default setup. As a user I really don’t expect to see different seasons outside of the “traditional” winter countries so this is no worry for me.

As you zoom in closer I find that, for the most part, the Afcad meshes well with the background. Sometimes there’s a bit of fuzziness but it doesn’t take away from anything. The modeled buildings seem to be placed in their correct spots and where there are no buildings, everything still looks fine.

Buildings line up well with the background

The view from this side looks great as well

Vegetation looks good on the poly. This is near the entrance to 08

The Airport

 Luton is a rather small airport and not some kind of shining beauty with all glass and steel modern terminals. The layouts of the buildings are certainly functional and flight sim enthusiasts like us will certainly see its attractiveness but it’s not the kind of place we’d show off to our mates. That being said, the terminal is dominated by the orange easyJet terminal. This place really stands out especially given the fairly drab design of the remainder of the terminal.

The busy arrival area at Luton

These areas remind me of something you’d find at a military field but I’m not quite sure what they are used for

I just love this big, loud, orange hangar

Gulfstream and Thomson Airways hangars

A secured area in the GA part of the airport

Signature Flight Support hangars with the previously seen GS and TA hangars in the background

A great little scene. Not sure what these little towers are for but I’ve seen them at other UK airports. Some help??

The flymonarch.com areas

The hangars surrounding the main terminal complex is a mish-mash of designs that are all modeled and painted very well by UK2000. Areas for companies like Gulfstream, Thomson Airways, flymonarch.com, and many others can be found.

Again, not a drop of conformity can be found in these hangar designs but there is certainly a bit of charm here that makes me smile! And I hope that you do not think I am denigrating the airport or the designer…from what I can see of the pictures available on the internet, UK2000 has produced a faithful (and fun) reconstruction of Luton. I’m also sure it’s a very fine airport in real life.

Afcad

One of the things this airport suffers from is a long runway with entrances/exits that sit away from the beginning/end. What happens is that planes will taxi a good distance down the runway and turn around before beginning their takeoff roll. When they land, they also have quite the run to where they can exit.

If you have a great deal of AI aircraft installed on your system then you can see some gnarly traffic as they land and takeoff from the one runway. I’m certain there are Afcad gurus out there who can alleviate some of this but out of the box you could have some issues.

I don’t expect any vendor to know each of our setups and number of AI aircraft so this is certainly no slight to the product. The Afcad works just fine but there are limits to how FSX handles traffic and that’s why we have some problems.

Night Lighting  

As usual, UK2000 does a great job with the night lighting. Everything, to me, appears understated and isn’t “in your face”. I like that and to my untrained eye it looks more reasonable and realistic. You can see that the light pooling on the apron is soft and diffuse. You don’t see a hard block of light which, in my opinion, never looks good. I think the runway and taxiway lights, in particular, look great.  

A shot of the beautiful taxiway lights. There’s something about airport lighting that makes me wistful!

That green lighting around the tower reminds me of Independence Day

Thomson Airways at night. Oh, to have FSX be able to properly light our AI aircraft!

A view of the runway

Another shot of the apron

Performance  

Alright, with all the sliders to the right and a great deal of AI in the area my frame rates were consistently in the teens which I find respectable. Even nicer was that I experienced no stutters so really there was little impact to my flying.  

When I cut back the AI to about 50% and made sure the sliders are at their recommended settings I get anywhere from 20 to 35 FPS and obviously everything is much smoother. Maybe I should pay more attention to recommended settings???

The Holiday Inn Express. My home away from home. Not happy to be a Platinum Elite customer

A Ryanair jet coming in for a landing

I love lots of cars in the parking lot!

AI parked at the gate

More parking areas

You may want to make some adjustments to your AFCAD if you have GA parked at your gates

Sky Chefs truck with terminal in the background

I really enjoy when designers can add things like tunnels and overpasses!

Summary / Closing Remarks

So, there are some developers whose products I can’t wait to get a hold of and UK2000 is one of them. Matching my excitement is the increasing quality of their sceneries from a “looks” point of view as well as performance.

The real-life airport itself doesn’t have the “WOW” factor of an LAX or Heathrow but I always enjoy flying in and out of these smaller spots. Luton Xtreme is another in a long line of top notch airports in the United Kingdom and I think you will be happy with the purchase.