I am curious to know which AVSIM members use UK2000 airports. Which ones do you have? What do you think of them? Are there some that you prefer over others? Do you use the UK and/or US airports in the UK2000 product range? Are there features/details that you would like to see improved? Are there any specific airports that you would like to see developed by UK2000?

What about the latest releases? Gary has been testing some new animation techniques over the past few months, and the latest airports have been selected with this in mind. The list below indicates the airports that I am talking about.....

• K74V Roosevelt Municipal

• EIWF Waterford

• KLPR Lorain County

Have any of you purchased some/all of these recent airports? How do you rate them when compared to the rest of the product catalogue? They are cheaper than the other UK2000 airports, so do you consider them to be good value for money?

As a long term beta tester for UK2000, I would be more than happy to try and answer any questions you may have about UK2000 airports 🙂

Sorry, I don't currently have any of the newer ones. The above are not really places I fly..

Give us the option to disable static aircraft. Almost every other developer have a toggle these days or a staticaircraft. bgl one can set to OFF in the scenery folder. In 2026 with BeyondATC, Say Intentions its no longer that fresh. Gary seem to like them very much at Big Bear in California it just looks crazy and I could just imagine how bad it would look with said ATC addons own traffic. I have some of his airfields but I am not buying anything more from any developer not offering the choice.

I don't have any of those most recent addons.

In general, I have all of Gary's UK releases and about 3 or 4 of his US releases (in the Chicago area, where I have a virtual flying base).

I would describe quality as mixed. Some are at a really high level and others (like Isle of Man) are a bit lacking.

Still, he's a good reliable source for UK airports, especially mid-size fields where I fly to/from a lot.

I don't see UK2000 as being 'top drawer' but they're perfectly acceptable to me and performance is always not an issue.

Edited Saturday at 04:10 PM2 days by JYW

I think that EGNS Isle of Man was one of his first airports for MSFS 2020 (considering that there is also a version for P3D), so it may be a case of him learning how to use the new SDK (which if I remember correctly was missing lots of functionality for quite some time). However, it would be useful to know what features you consider to be lacking in that airport, so that I can get an idea of what UK2000 customers are looking for.

Don't think I've ever purchased a UK2000 product, but 74V is absolutely in my wheelhouse. Will have to take a second look!

Scott

I have Belfast and Indianapolis Executive. I need to fill-out my UK airports a little better, but haven't been flying over there too much.

I should get Lorain Ohio though, in fact in the sim I just flew there recently (Burke Lakefront, and then around that whole Cleveland area).
The hangar door sounds good.

Speaking of new animation effects....this may already be a "thing" but I'm not sure....what would be neat to see would be code that would randomly place certain animations around an airport. For example, you load the airport one time, and there are two mechanics working away in an open hangar. But the next session you have at that airport, there might instead be an owner preflighting his plane in the same spot. There could be several possible animated objects in various spots. I don't know if that's possible in the SDK or not but it would make for a lot of variation each time the scenery is loaded, almost like no two loads are the same. Immersion City.

I only have Flagstaff and Henderson.

14 minutes ago, Mace said:

I have Belfast and Indianapolis Executive. I need to fill-out my UK airports a little better, but haven't been flying over there too much.

I should get Lorain Ohio though, in fact in the sim I just flew there recently (Burke Lakefront, and then around that whole Cleveland area).
The hangar door sounds good.

Speaking of new animation effects....this may already be a "thing" but I'm not sure....what would be neat to see would be code that would randomly place certain animations around an airport. For example, you load the airport one time, and there are two mechanics working away in an open hangar. But the next session you have at that airport, there might instead be an owner preflighting his plane in the same spot. There could be several possible animated objects in various spots. I don't know if that's possible in the SDK or not but it would make for a lot of variation each time the scenery is loaded, almost like no two loads are the same. Immersion City.

That's a cool idea...and should be possible with simobject XML flags controlled by WASM scripts. But it also sounds like a ton of trial and error to get right...so whoever makes that, have fun!

I recently purchased KLPR since it is in my general area. I have no issues with it. I wouldn't put them up there with the Burning Blue type GA airfields, but they are still solid quality. I'm not familiar with KLPR but the addon seems a little... bland? Although I checked Google Earth and it seems fairly simple in real life. There's people around which is nice, but there's not a lot of "things" around like trash cans, etc you'd expect to find. Again though, I'm not familiar with the real life one and maybe it is just like that.

I usually wait for marketplace sales to pick up GA airports. I rarely pay full price, especially for smaller fields.

I don't own a ton of UK2000 stuff, mostly because their airports aren't in regions a fly a lot, but I'm fine with their quality of the few I have.

I have a few like JYO. I think @JYW described them like I would - not the highest end but not the lowest quality - reasonable for my flights though - I like GA airports in the USA. I honestly forgot which ones I have... I might have a slight addon problem LOL

My only request would be for ANY payware airport developer - please use FAA all orange windsocks for USA airports!

Don't think I've seen any of them since FSX days

For MSFS and 2024:

EGAC - Belfast City.

EGJB - Guernsey.

EGJJ - Jersey.

EGNS - Isle of Man.

EGPD - Aberdeen.

For Prepar3D:

Belfast City.

Belfast Xtreme.

Birmingham Xtreme.

Edinburg Xtreme.

Gatwick Xtreme.

Glasgow HD 2020.

Heathrow Xtreme.

Jersey Xtreme.

Manchester V2.

Stansted Xtreme.

It’s a shame I haven’t seen any more updates to my scenery add-ons for MSFS 2024.

I've had UK2000 airfields since FS9 I think. The VFR collection of more than 80 UK small airfields was brilliant. Now, I have all the UK fields that I need and don't have any interest in anything non-UK recently published, so I don't know where we go from here. Always been happy with the quality.

I would be interested to know your thoughts about the MSFS 2024 versions, JetClipperJR. Do you enjoy flying to and from them? Is there anything that you would like to see improved? Any features missing that you would like to see implemented?

I only know my own thoughts regarding what I would like to see in UK2000 airports, and I make suggestions on a "per airport" basis when I see them for the first time during beta testing. I may suggest adding models of specific buildings, or adding some clutter in areas that seem a bit bare.

Since I have asked the question here, it only seems fair to say what "improvements" I have requested over the past couple of years.......

• Parallax Textures - these can look good if they are used properly (and are of good quality), but the parallax textures that have been used at some UK2000 airports (and EGPD Aberdeen is a very good example) do not (in my opinion) look good at all. They have been used far too extensively on the main terminal and tower building, and they look very basic, repetitive, and low resolution. Fortunately, Gary seems to have switched from these to much higher resolution "photo" textures of windows recently, and these look vastly superior. It is worth noting that I have actually removed a lot of parallax textures from quite a few UK2000 airports. I would rather see black windows than poor quality parallax textures.

• Internal Modelling - Gary does include some basic internal modelling (generally in the terminal and tower), and this makes a big difference to immersion for me, even if it is not all that extensive. I would of course like to see as much as possible, but the combination of internal modelling and higher resolution window textures that he has used for more recent airports seems to work well.

• Museum Exhibits - this is one area that disappoints me in those UK2000 airports that are affected. If there are museum exhibits (static aircraft/bits of aircraft/other display items) at an airport, then I want to see them. This includes accurate replicas of the exact aircraft that are there. I do not like to see default Microsoft assets of aircraft/helicopters that look nothing like the real world exhibits. Even worse, many of those Microsoft default assets are of very poor quality. Certainly nowhere near good enough for a flight simulator in 2026. To be fair, each of these models would take additional time to build, but I frequently see this being done in other airport products. It reduces the immersion for me when I see basic default assets being used for this, and it is frustrating.

The reason I became a beta tester for UK2000 in the fist place was because I wanted these airports (and airfields) to be the best that they could be (with due consideration for Gary's financial model). It must have been around 2011 when I asked him if I could become a UK2000 beta tester. This was when I used FSX, and all of my flights were restricted to the UK only (because I was only interested in photoscenery, and I had the Horizon VFR UK photographic scenery installed, which Gary's airports were designed to blend with). The vast majority of airports that I used at the time were from UK2000 (the standalone larger airports, and also the VFR Airfields packages that covered a total of over two hundred smaller regional airports/GA airfields/military bases), so it was important to me that they were "visually acceptable" (for want of a better term) 🙂

I have really enjoyed beta testing for Gary over these past fifteen years, and hopefully I can continue to do so for many more years to come. It has to be noted here that Gary has gone out of his way to tweak and modify quite a few of his airports over the years based on relatively minor personal requests, and that is greatly appreciated. I would love to persuade him to come to the UK Flightsim Show in 2027, if for no other reason than to actually meet him!! 😉

Edited yesterday at 11:58 AM1 day by Christopher Low