The Best European Airports for the Queen?

[charlie130 196]

So which add on European airports are Captains using for our Queen?

It struck me today that we have a superbly detailed simulation of the mighty 747 here. Yet I only have one European add on airport that actually looks like it deserves the Queen of the Skies.....Fly Tampa Schiphol. The "others" all look like fs9 port overs made to work in P3dv4 and re named "mega"?  

I know Flight Beam are all high definition and very worthy, however there is none for Europe. At the moment my eye candy is all USA! KIAD, KDEN, KLAX, KSFO, etc....

Seemingly the devs are catching up with the 64 bit technology, which opens the door to some super high resolution. It's so nice to fly around Orbx California with high definition add on airports in the Queen of the Skies and not have a VAS worry!

Best regards.

 

 

[Chock 17,769]

UK2000 stuff is currently discounted in a Christmas sale, several airports on that list where the 747 operates:

http://www.uk2000scenery.com/

[Olympic260 415]

Fly Tampa LGAV

Orbx ESSA.

[downscc 1,327]

My impression of the UK2000 scenery is that it is functional (which is more than I can say for the bloated aerosoft mega sceneries) but it is not as good as anything by Flightbeam.  The nicest European airport suitable for the Queen in my opinion is T2G LFPG DeGaulle.  Beautiful..., and also FlyTampa EHAM Schipol.  T2G also has a fine EDDM but it's not really a B744 destination, nor is Aerosoft's EDDF or LIRF in my opinion.  So yeah, basically just Amsterdam and Paris.

[charlie130 196]

14 minutes ago, Chock said:

UK2000 stuff is currently discounted in a Christmas sale, several airports on that list where the 747 operates:

http://www.uk2000scenery.com/

Thanks Chock, I will take a gander.

I use Orbx, doesn't everyone? But it occurred to me that flying the Queen at FL 380 I don't see much of any scenery, save cloud art! The scenery I do see is my take off and destination airport. So stepping out of a superbly highly detailed simulated aircraft into scenery of a lower resolution seems disappointing! 

Many older sceneries developed for fs9 and FSX were shoe horned into 32 bit VAS space. The devs made compromises with high definition graphics and objects in order for the 32 bit sim to "stay up". 

In P3dv4 we have no such limitations. I hope we can get some of those Flight Beam sceneries in Europe. I looked through a plate glass terminal window and through the reflections saw shopping malls and ATM's! Unfortunately it wasn't Heathrow, Zurich or Paris. 

Innsbruck lovely...can even stop the Queen on the runway, unfortunately I can't park her anywhere!

Best regards.

 

[charlie130 196]

4 minutes ago, downscc said:

My impression of the UK2000 scenery is that it is functional (which is more than I can say for the bloated aerosoft mega sceneries) but it is not as good as anything by Flightbeam.  The nicest European airport suitable for the Queen in my opinion is T2G LFPG DeGaulle.  Beautiful..., and also FlyTampa EHAM Schipol.  T2G also has a fine EDDM but it's not really a B744 destination, nor is Aerosoft's EDDF or LIRF in my opinion.  So yeah, basically just Amsterdam and Paris.

I have to agree with you about the "mega" sceneries!  I succumbed to Heathrow and Zurich.....Unfortunately these were identical to my FSX/fs9 sceneries, absolutely no improvement, merely able to load in P3dv4. I get nasty flickering artefacts at Heathrow and the Jetways at Zurich remain frozen to the ground! To say a scenery is for P3dv4, I have learned, means sure you can load it, but it's not necessarily been developed with high definition graphics that can really exploit a 64 bit simulator!

I watched the Jetway at Fly Tampa Schiphol connect to the Queen, that flexible cuff actually animates so perfectly it suspended disbelief. Not like some Jetways (when they do move) that ram there way through the fuselage and into the center aisle before stopping!

Cheers.

 

[Christopher Low 5,332]

Any airports with long enough runways and large enough parking spots are 747 destinations. What about FlyTampa Copenhagen Kastrup? It should be super detailed like Schiphol.

[ms2 184]

11 hours ago, Olympic260 said:

 

Fly Tampa LGAV

Orbx ESSA.

 

+1

[G-RFRY 1,707]

UK2000 Heathrow, Gatwick , Manchester, 

Taxi2gate LFPG Paris 

Flytampa EHAM Schiphol 

More to be added soon.

[weeksy 45]

Justsim's ELLX for those simulated Cargolux freighter flights.

Agree with the others on Flytampa EHAM and UK2000 EGKK

[Chock 17,769]

If you like a lot of detail and some slightly souped up airports France VFR's Isle de France is worth a look since it adds about 5,000 square miles of photorealistic terrain around Paris, realistic autogen for that entire region sat on top of the phototerrain, including the city of Paris, and some tarted up airports in that region too, about 20 airports in total are improved over the default (not to individual airport payware standards, but certainly better than default, giving you a fairly decent LFPG and LFPB as well as making the surrounding region look great), so it's a lot of bang for your bucks. However, it doesn't have night lighting for that region when you put the phototerrain in there, so I'd recommend also adding Taburet's Taburet - Night 3D France installed with it too (currently discounted at FlightSim Store incidentally). See pic below for the result of this combination.

You should be aware however that with all that going on, it can bring even a decent PC to its knees, especially going into either Le Bourget or Charles de Gaulle (not Orly, which could handle a 747, but Orly is for domestic flights only, so 747 flights are unlikely). With all that scenery lighting, autogen, and AI traffic going into three airports in very close proximity to one another (Orly, de Gaulle and Le Bourget), it'll really let you know whether your hardware is up to the task, but you will be hard pressed to find a more visually pleasing experience in P3D:

 

[daguerreotype 5]

Hi, I vote for EGNX, East Midlands, for the B744F, as a cargo hub. ;-)

[HighBypass 2,339]

UK2000 East Midlands here  . Just bought EGGP and EGLL yesterday - early present from one of my friends! 

[soerennielsen 35]

5 hours ago, Chock said:

 (not Orly, which could handle a 747, but Orly is for domestic flights only, so 747 flights are unlikely).

 

Actualy Corsair serves ORY to (MRU) Mauritius and  ORY to (RUN) Saint Denis de la Reunion with the 747-400.

[Chock 17,769]

1 hour ago, soerennielsen said:

Actualy Corsair serves ORY to (MRU) Mauritius and  ORY to (RUN) Saint Denis de la Reunion with the 747-400.

I think the French still regard those as domestic operations in a bit of a colonial hangover, even though they are over water, because Saint-Denis de la Réunion is a Département d’outre-mer, so it is essentially French. However, whereas Mauritius has independence, the French Govt still has a bit of a weed up its @ss about that historically, because Mauritius was the French colonial possession named Île de France taken around the same period as Réunion and originally named Île Bourbon for obvious reasons. The French lost Mauritius to the British in 1810, but it remained largely French-speaking, so they regarded it as spiritually still being part of France.

You can kind of understand why too, because the French actually won the battle of Grand Port which was the Brits' attempt to take Île de France, but the French kicked the British fleet's @ss in that battle, something which is actually commemorated on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris since it is one of the few French naval battles where they bested the Royal Navy. However, the Brits came back with more ships later the same year and that time they successfully took it, thus it was eventually grudgingly ceded to official British control in the Treaty of Paris in 1814, which sorted out the Napoleonic War, and whilst France regained control of many previous territories lost, thanks to that treaty's agreements, including a lot of the Mascarene Islands, the Brits kept Mauritius until 1968, when it gained its independence.

The Brits called it Mauritius, that being an Anglicised version of Maurice, since the Island had been named after Maurits van Oranje, the Dutch head of state when the Dutch took possession of it in 1598, that is until the French took it off them in 1715. So the French beef is that the Brits 'gave it away' to independence, which the French were not inclined to do with similar territories in the region, although it's more of an historical sore than a practical one since the reason all of those countries were fighting over those places was largely for the slave trade and sugar plantations principally made so profitable by those slave workers, thus it's not exactly a very noble period in any of the countries histories involved in that squabble.

Anyway, if you ever get to go there, you'll notice it is unmistakably very French in its legacy since much of the infrastructure was built when the French were in control of it, a bit like lots of places in Vietnam, which the French were also narked off about losing to the Japanese in WW2 and not regaining control after that war.