After installing Airworthy Designs great version of TNCM I found the island in general to be lackluster without extra attention.  Coming in for a landing the mountains have sparce trees sticking out of them and they seem to be not as defined as I remember in real life or our other sims.  Another thing is outside of the well defined Bing areas in the sim generic default scenery can be quite the eye sore in more familiar locations (The French Riviera comes to mind).  The island of St. Maarten needs allot of help with proper road and building positioning. There’s somewhat of a high rise building over on Kim Sha beach which is totally wrong to name one of the glaring issues...  You can’t just slap an airport on this island and expect it to work no matter how good the airport is.  I got spoiled with FlyTampa’s ships moving about in the water as you approach to land and other cool elements added.  This is one of those rare areas in FS2020 (South of France and Monaco are other areas) that needs more work done on the surrounding area than we needed in previous sims. This is for the simple fact of how popular and familiar these locations are the world over.  In FS2020 valid or not your expecting to see a higher amount of detail in popular areas in the world and it’s compounded by the fact you know the sim is capable of it.  Another thing is the weird wavy lines in the ocean as you approach.  Asobo has some weird patterns in the ocean that kills the essence of flying over the ocean.  Things look great down low close to the water but higher up it goes down hill in how it looks and especially kills the essence of the approach into TNCM. 

So if FlyTampa is reading this it looks like the whole island needs attention not just the airport in your upcoming project.  Not trying to be difficult but after this release what’s the point of another well done airport when the whole island is off.  

Edited November 4, 20205 yr by Dillon

I wouldn't be surprised if the Caribbean will be a world update some time in the future.

Interesting.

It was being pushed yesterday. Plenty of enthusiasm.

T45

19 minutes ago, Treetops45 said:

Interesting.

It was being pushed yesterday. Plenty of enthusiasm.

T45

He's talking about the low quality textures of the island & maybe the water masking and not the airports themselves. One has nothing to do with the other.

ASOBO will more than likely add some enhancements to the water & Caribbean. WIP

I'd like to add that looking at what ASOBO did with SABA, they should have shown some love to St. Marteen.

@DJJose 
 

Jose- both SABA and TFFJ are very good already... hence my TNCM purchase. Island hopping has been a perennial favorite pastime of mine, and an evening flight in over short stretches of water with a Sundowner in hand is an altogether civilized way to shed the dust from the Salt Mines :).

Hopefully v1.1 isn’t their last update, and they give the rest of the island some needed attention.

C

4 minutes ago, cavaricooper said:

@DJJose 
 

Jose- both SABA and TFFJ are very good already... hence my TNCM purchase. Island hopping has been a perennial favorite pastime of mine, and an evening flight in over short stretches of water with a Sundowner in hand is an altogether civilized way to shed the dust from the Salt Mines :).

Hopefully v1.1 isn’t their last update, and they give the rest of the island some needed attention.

C

This is a good developer. If we ask, they might even improve the island textures. BTW, I was wrong, I still don't see the updated version on my account. V_1 is still the one that downloads.

1 hour ago, DJJose said:

He's talking about the low quality textures of the island & maybe the water masking and not the airports themselves. One has nothing to do with the other.

ASOBO will more than likely add some enhancements to the water & Caribbean. WIP

Perennial problem for developers - where to put the boundaries of their efforts?

Create a really nice airport, but the approaches are sometimes over lesser quality scenery, which may detract from the overall fight experience.

T45

I was doing some tests flights around Orbx Orcas Island.  Now this is how an airport and the island around it should be done.  If Orbx just did the airport it wouldn't be the same.  

Concerning the look of the Ocean I just figured out what it looks like.  At altitude the sea looks like it has an ice sheet over it.  That would be a better way of describing it.

Edited November 5, 20205 yr by Dillon

11 hours ago, Dillon said:

So if FlyTampa is reading this it looks like the whole island needs attention not just the airport in your upcoming project.  

100% agree. Spent a lot of flights (in real and) in MSFS at St-Marteen and St-Barth. Even if St-Barth airport buildings are well designed, the autogen houses and poor ground texture quality is a killing immersive experience. The outstanding (statue at Col de la Tourmente Roundabout) is near sparse floating villas and poor trees placement in hills.

Not to mention the lack of water masking and the need to put strong winds too have a water/sea which look like real instead of a flat synthetic and artificial texture.

Please post a pic so we know what you're talking about. 

At this point we all need to post on the Airworthy Designs FB page and request NICELY that they should consider enhancing the island.

It's in their best interest to do so.

@DJJose

Jose, I don’t FB so please ask nicely twice, once for me 🙂

C

I asked nicely and the response I got was that it's going to depend on the number of sales. I've done everything I could for this unknown developer and have received nothing in return. All I wanted to do was share my enthusiasm with like minded members of the AVSIM community. Threads like this one are misleading and do nothing to help improve the add-on.

BTW, I abhor Facebook.

48 minutes ago, DJJose said:

All I wanted to do was share my enthusiasm with like minded members of the AVSIM community.

I'll probably buy later today, now that they have fixed some issues in the original release (PAPI lights issue was a deal breaker). Also shows that they stand behind this and are ready to fix what needs fixing. The fix was issued quickly too.

Perhaps what they could do is offer two packages - one for the airport and one for the general island scenery improvement. It would be unfair to expect them to charge a reasonable price for an airport scenery but have to do the entire island. As it is they have done two airports on the island pretty well by the looks of it. As Treetops45 noted, you have to draw a boundary line somewhere.

Or just maybe there are already freeware developers giving of their time, working on this island now.

Edited November 5, 20205 yr by RaptyrOne