It is not often in these days that you get a chance to look at something new when it comes to add-ons for Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X. Of course, an add-on can give you a new aircraft or an add-on can cover a scenery area in much greater detail than ever before – but new? No, that’s not new – that’s just exploiting the possibilities new hardware and experience present…
- PNG Holgermesh Papua New Guinea $0.00 AUD Orbx is happy to release this freeware mesh package covering the Papua New Guinea region. The AYPY & Kokoda package are built around this mesh and is a must have if you do not have any 3rd party mesh for this area installed.
- So I needed another Orbx team member to continue where Russ left off. And we found that person in Jorge Amengol who is a recent graduate living in beautiful Brazil. Jorge has won us over with his enthusiasm and prowess at pushing the boundaries of the FSX animation system, and indeed extending it far beyond what it was designed for.
- Orbx True Earth England South - Episode 3 - Cornwall - Duration: 11:27. Filippo Nesi 3,778 views. Former CIA Officer Will Teach You How to Spot a Lie l Digiday - Duration: 47:47.
Palm Springs was designed for ORBX by Jarrad Marshall (who’s Juneau I have recently reviewed).You can find the scenery description on a product page – ORBX Palm Springs International Airport.Buy Now! Button will redirect you to the FlightSimStore where you can buy Palm Springs for 32.95 Australian Dollars (21 Euro or 24 U.S. Dollars – at current rates – October 2015).
Looking at ORBX’s Airport Scenery for Fall City (1WA6), however, suggested that finally something new might have come around. In this case, it was what ORBX is calling NatureFlow (next to it’s PeopleFlow which I also have not seen yet).
Purchase & Download
I have purchased the scenery right of the Flightsimstore Website at a price of 32.95 AUD. Not knowing the exact conversion rate yet, I am thinking this will turn out to be just around 25 EUR.
The download of the roughly 620MB and the emailing of the registration information was quick and easy – the download was finished in some very few minutes (less than 5).
Installation
The installation is quick and easy – the wrapper requires the usual data around your purchase, then the installation runs through smoothly.
The only important thing to note is that you must the latest patch for ORBX’s Pacific North West Scenery installed which you can download here.
Finally, from the same page, make sure to have the latest version of the ORBX Libraries on your system.
Location & Default View
This little airport, Fall City (1WA6) is located some 26 miles east of Seattle. The terrain around the airport is scattered with hills, you can already see the Cascade Range to the East (and to the South).
The airport itself is located east of Fall City, in a bend of the Snoqualmie River. It comes with a single runway bit interestingly seems to follow the concept of an Airpark with housing area to the south of the runway.
The default (or rather ORBX NA PNW default) does not really stand out by any means – just another airstrip in nowhere with some refueling and hangar facilities…
But that is going to change…
Configuration
If you want to be fair with the developers (and the product), its a good advice to read the manuals first (I know, most of us rarely do but if you don’t, you cannot complain about bad performance or odd behavior). So here are the changes to the settings based upon ORBX’s user manual:
- Level of Detail Radius: Large
- Mesh Complexity: 100
- Mesh Resolution: 5m (which is marked as the required setting)
- Texture Resolution: 15cm
- Scenery Complexity: Extremely Dense
- Autogen Density: Normal (based upon ORBX Recommendation)
A first Flight
I have parked my Cessna 182 at the backside of the only hangar in Fall City. Something that needs to be done manually as the scenery does not offer any parking positions.
What catches the eye first is the intense care the designers have put into the design of the airport – at least in those areas that you would see under “normal” operations. All textures are crisp. The trees and the grass now moving in the wind add to the atmosphere of the airport – so do the obviously stacked crates and boxes on the hangar behind the aircraft.
But at the same time, it becomes obvious that that area around the hangar and adjoining buildings is about the only area of the airport that you usually would see – and then, the details which at first glance produce this “Wow, look at that…” effect will quickly become obviously confined to the area.
If you compare the scenery in Flight Simulator X with the aerial photo provided by Google Maps, you can quickly see which buildings are meticulously recreated and where default autogen objects (default as in “not following the actual building in form and shape”) have been placed.
In the image above, the red square area is what I would consider the “central part” of this scenery – the hangar building, the two storage buildings south of the runway and the one north of it. These are solidly rebuild with extreme care and very well-defined textures. This is also the area where there placement of additional objects (cars, crates, etc.) as well as people (animated with PeopleFlow Technology) have been placed.
Outside this area – marked by the orange boxes – are buildings that have been custom-built to follow the original building in shape and form – but while their textures are carefully done, they are not loaded with the level of detail the hangars have been treated with.
Fall City in Real Life and ORBX Representation
The biggest difference between the ORBX Representation and Real Life is not by any means the availability or lack of specific buildings. It is not even the animations with NatureFlow and PeopleFlow. In real life, Fall City is a privately owned landing strip attached to an Air Park. In FSX, the essence of this project – the ability to taxi from your very own house with your very own hangar to the runway and then take off into the skies… it is lost! If you want a taste, I have found one property being on sale as this post is written… check www.aviationacres.com for more examples.
While the airport itself with the hangars is very cleverly and nicely captured, the airpark area is not. Some of the neighboring houses are present but merely for the visuals – there are no taxiways to the homes you can use, there are no homes you can park your aircraft in front of – in short: there is nothing that would ultimately take this scenery above any other given airport (unless you live in Fall City and want to land “home”).
To me, that is a chance lost – that would be the story around the scenery that would have (or at least could have) separated it from the general airport sceneries we see every day. Without it, it just stays another airport, extremely well done but just another airport.
Seasons at Fall City
Because Fall City is not a photo scenery but a truly built FSX scenery, seasons are not only available but also make a difference in the scenery display.
The left image shows spring time in the hangar area – the grass is green and fresh, people are moving around, birds are chirping. The right picture represents the summer time: the grass has dried our a bit and taken more brownish look.
Left is Fall – the trees start to take a colorful look, the sun starts to draw longer shadows and finally, in Winter, everything is covered in snow.
Up where we belong…
Taking my Cessna 182 out of the hangar area (which requires some caution because the taxi way is pretty close to the hangar) and towards the runway, you will (at latest) notice that there are no taxiways at this small airstrip. You actually have to taxi on the runway so please make sure that you have the traffic monitored carefully at all times!
The runway is unmarked with the exception of the center line and the highly visible PRIVATE marking – guess, someone really wants to make sure that the people here stay amongst themselves…
With about 2000ft of runway (or roughly 600m) you are good to go with Cessna and similar aircraft – given the width, I would already feel a landing in a Baron or anything bigger a bit of a challange.
Finally airborne, you can enjoy the surrounding area which is only covered in the immediate vicinity of the airport.
The coverage here ends (to the west) at the city limits of Fall City – the city itself is not covered anymore!
To the east, the covered area includes the Snoqualmie Falls area with the parking lot, building and bridge.
So all in all, once you have taken your aircraft to the skies, most of the surrounding area is provided by ORBX’s Pacific Northwest Scenery – and not necessarily the airport scenery.
Conclusions
Given that my system – an Intel Core2Extreme 9650 running at 3MHz with 8GB of RAM, an nVidia GTX560 Ti and Windows 7 64bit is not the latest and greatest in computer technology, I have to attest that the performance – always between 15-20 FPS and above – is more than adequate and provides for a perfectly flyable scenery.
Technically, the scenery is solidly designed and in those areas that have received special care (e.g. the hangars) far above average. Beyond that, I would say it is a scenery like any other professional scenery – nothing to complain about but also nothing that sticks out. I personally have to switch of collision checking, otherwise I end up with a crash in the middle of the runway but that might be my system.
With respect to PeopleFlow I have to say that this airport is too small to really see if PeopleFlow would add to the scenery. One mechanic looking at an aircraft, one guy walking around the Cessna and one more guy north of the runway standing by its car is simply not giving me the impression that I must have PeopleFlow… but maybe in an airport with a bit more life, that might be different.
NatureFlow is certainly something I do not need. Yes, it is nice to have the grass and the trees moving in the wind but honestly, how many times do you really pay attention to these details when you are busy taking your aircraft to the skies? The same stands for the birds chirping: in real life, you can of course hear then when walking around your aircraft, pulling it out of the hangar and maybe even while you are performing the first steps of the engine start checklist.
But as soon as the engine comes to life, that’s it – you will have your headset on by then anyway (which is eliminating most of the outside sound) and the rest is covered by the engine noise… no room for chirping birds.
If this would be around Sims in an Airpark, it would be different – but for a flight simulator?
Finally, I can only repeat myself by saying that the limits of the scenery – the runway and the hangar area as such – are way too small for me to justify the cost. It’s an eye-catcher, not more. But 25 Euro for an eye-catcher? I’d say on my personal list, it would be somewhere around 12.95 Euro but certainly not twice that much.
Nice little airport, solidly done with superb textures and love to detail in some places. But unless you have a specific attention to that airstrip… I cannot really recommend it… unless of course you need the eye-catcher 😉
Palm Springs – one of the best sceneries I’ve seen. Great models, perfect animations and good textures. Plus all the objects that bring it to life. 6 stars!
Pros and cons
What I like in Palm Springs?
- picturesque terminal
- building models
- textures
- taxiway lights
- static planes
- people (huge number of people)
- airport surroundings (cities around Palm Springs)
- photoscenery
- cable-car
- wind farms
- vegetation
- performance
- configurator
What I do not like?
- photoscenery covering a few places at airport
- some night textures
What can be improved?
- night lighting
- 3d grass and stones could be added
Palm Springs & KPSP
Captain Renault: What in heaven’s name brought you to Casablanca?
Rick: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Captain Renault: The waters? What waters? We’re in the desert.
Rick: I was misinformed.
I am sure that those who came to Palm Springs were not misinformed. This resort accounts for a fifth of the California’s water use. There is a saying that “Palm Springs was built on water”. It explains the oasis like looks of this area – green cities and golf courses (120 of them) surrounded with sands and rocks of Colorado Desert.
For over hundred years the growth of Palm Springs was driven by tourism. At first Coachella Valley was recommended for health reasons. Than it was discovered by film stars and famous musicians – their homes are still one of Palm Springs attractions. Today, as the tourism grows, celebrities choose other location in Coachella Valley and Palm Springs is focusing on providing fun to over a million tourists who visit each year.
There is plenty to see. Among tens of museums and galleries there is the Palm Springs Air Museum (located at the airport – it boasts interesting collection of historical aircraft).
If you are interested in aviation records – check out Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. This cable car on the slopes of San Jacinto Peak was built with the unprecedented use of helicopters. Till this day they use helicopters for repairs and rescue. If you fly over Aerial Tramway line you will notice landing platforms on cable-car pylons.
Palm Springs International Airport – KPSP
Palm Springs International Airport has two parallel runways 13/31. The southern is 10.000ft long (3048m) and the northern is 4952ft (1509m) long. Their width is (respectively) 150ft/46m and 75ft/23m. Both runways use northern (over the desert) traffic pattern.
If you intend to use the shorter runway – remember about it’s weight limits 5 F/B/W/T classification is just enough for Beech 1900 and Jetstream 41 but insufficient for Learjet 45.
FBOs and general aviation aprons are located on both sides of runways. Airline terminal is located on the southern side. You will also find customs there.
There is no ILS system at this airport. It’s probably not necessary in this climate. In case of bad weather – there are VOR and RNAV instrument approaches.
What to fly and where to?
As a popular tourist resort Palm Springs is visited by several U.S. and Canadian airlines. Rich visitors use air taxi services. There is also considerable general aviation traffic. The statistics are well balanced – all three major types of operations amount to nearly 20.000 (each). Additionally there are about 3 thousand local GA flights and 1620 military operations annually.
What types of aircraft fly to Palm Springs? There are no rules in GA and air-taxi segment – any plane capable of such operations can be seen in KPSP. Among airliners small jets and turboprops are in majority. The biggest planes visiting Palm Springs regularly are Boeings 737.
Orbx People Flow
Browsing through Palm Springs photos on the internet I noticed large numbers of photos showing B-29s, B-17s, fighters and historical jets. This traffic is attracted by the museum I mentioned earlier.
If you are looking for some unusual planes that landed in KPSP – Boeing 747 (Air Force One) brought U.S. president on his visit. I found several photos of large planes like C-17, An-124 and older passenger planes – DC-10 and Boeing 707.
Weight limit of the main runway (64 /F/B/W/T) allows for 767 operations at full takeoff weight. 747-400 narrowly exceeds the limit at MTOW and 777-300 is seriously over this limit (if loaded fully). You should decrease takeoff weight if you wish to fly 777 or 747 from KPSP. You will also find it difficult to park planes as big. Palm Springs aprons are designed for planes of 737 (maybe 757) size and handling of larger planes if difficult (but possible – I have tried).
ORBX Palm Springs International Airport
Palm Springs was designed for ORBX by Jarrad Marshall (who’s Juneau I have recently reviewed). You can find the scenery description on a product page – ORBX Palm Springs International Airport. Buy Now! button will redirect you to the FlightSimStore where you can buy Palm Springs for 32.95 Australian Dollars (21 Euro or 24 U.S. Dollars – at current rates – October 2015). It’s three dollars more than the usual ORBX price for airport but keep in mind that this is the largest airport scenery by ORBX.
Scenery Coverage
The main subject of this scenery (just as the title suggests) is the Palm Springs International Airport. Additionally two airports located nearby were upgraded (in the manner similar to FTX scenery upgrades for airports). On both – Banning (KBNG) and Bermuda Dunnes (KUDD) you will see improved hangars, static planes and people.
The whole area of this scenery (1500 square kilometers) is covered with photoscenery. Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage, Cathedral City, Indian Wells, Thousand Palms, Palm Desert and Desert Hot Springs were recreated in detail. Many characteristic buildings or places were modeled – hotels, casinos and hospital among them. On the desert you will find wind farms and a power station.
There is also a cable car located in the mountains and an AI helicopter is flying over the city.
Purchase and installation
The scenery is available in FSS as a download add-on. Order number and date together with the product key are required to run the installer.
Requirements
Palm Springs scenery requires FTX Global Base.
Configurator
Scenery configuration tool allows user to choose scenery features that he (or she) would like to turn off.
Airport details:
- Airside Vehicles and Clutter
- Non-airside Vehicles
- Non-airside Vehicles – detailed
- Animated PeopleFlow
- Static PeopleFlow
- Static People Around Town
- Advanced Vegetation around Airport
Static Aircraft:
- Airliner Statics
- Charter Airline Statics
- Corporate Jets Statics
- General Aviation Statics
Set Runway Hold Short WigWags
- Wig-wags functioning night only
- Wig-wags functioning day and night
Set Runway and Taxiway Light Intensity
- 100%
- 85%
- 70%
- 50%
Animations and Time-conditional Content
- AI helicopter, Aerial Tramway Cabins and Coachella Valley Train
- Airport Fire Rescue Training Sessions
Other Details
- advanced autogen
- city landmarks
First impression (5*****)
Three things captured my attention immediately after I loaded the first flight – there are plenty of people, static planes and clutter objects! The more I use ORBX sceneries the more I am used to this, but nevertheless this airport is exceptional – even among other ORBX sceneries. The main reason is… this is not another small rural airport where the developer can put a lot of effort to refine each detail. It’s the largest airport ORBX has created and the attention to details is on par with smaller ones. Let me show you a single example – there is a hangar where a Sky West airliner is being repaired by four men (and I do not count the man by the gate – 30 meters away).
People and animations (6******)
I’ll stop for a moment here and describe it in detail. These men are working on the left engine – two of them stand on a ramp and fix the engine, another works on a part laying in front of him on a table. It’s interesting how he is animated – not only does he repair this part, but from time to time he stops, takes a step back, grabs a bottle of water at another table and takes a sip. Then he puts the bottle back on the table and returns to his task.
Small objects – clutter (5*****)
Everywhere I look there is something laying around – tool boxes, crates, bottles (water? oil?). And it is not just this place – there are more locations like this everywhere at this airport. When I taxied by the terminal I saw warning cones around planes and cars parked on apron, hydrants and fire hoses located close to aircraft gates and baggage carts – waiting for their load.
Cars and planes (5*****)
Cars and planes require separate mention.
As you probably noticed when I described the configurator – you can separately turn off airliners, charter planes, business jets and general aviation aircraft. On my screens you can see all these planes together – I had no reason to turn them off (the performance of this scenery is perfect).
I like the number of planes provided by the scenery author. Even when I fly without AI traffic (when flying on Vatsim I turn AI off) I do not feel alone. In here I pass by ten or 20 planes before reaching the runway! That’s nice – it looks like I was at the real world airport.
It’s the same with cars. At every real world airport, I have been, I saw plenty. And that is exactly what I see here – trucks, pick-ups, vans, tractors, baggage carts – they are all here.
Terminal building
Model (6******)
Suspended roofs are becoming popular – you can see this type of roofing at stadiums and over racing circuit stands. Palm Springs airport also boasts such architectural solution. I think that it doesn’t cause a problem in this climate. It was not a problem for developer either – in a little show off manner he demonstrated his craft and proficiency.
People and small objects (6******)
I took a tour around the terminal (yes – you can actually get under this roof and take a look around). There are plenty of people here too. Some are animated, some – just static. Their surroundings are carefully crafted – with chairs and tables in and in front of the terminal. There is also a small garden in the middle of the building boasting palms and agave plants.
Textures (4****)
Textures are a little less perfect. They are good or very good compared to other sceneries on the market but I feel that they are worse compared with other textures used in this scenery. When I look at the textures inside I can see that the resolution is fine but compression was too severe – compression artifacts look bad in some places but they do prevent signs from being readable (you can clearly see panels like “Gate 4*6*8”). Also on the outside the texture looks a little blurry in places.
Night (4***)
I have mixed feelings about night lighting. From the outside night textures of the terminal are perfect! On the inside you will notice that people and some objects lack night textures and are simply black… It looks odd.
Ground textures – airport (4****)
Most of the airport is covered with medium to high resolution textures. In places that lack this feature – 30cm photoscenery in the background takes over. As I already said in some of my reviews – 30cm/px is not enough for airport texture.
On the other hand – textures that were used are good or superb (especially in case of markings and lettering on the ground). Ant they cover most of airport’s surface.
Around the airport (6*****)
Orbx Peopleflow Download
I am stunned by the airport itself but the take-off and low level flight makes even better impression. This is one of the best city-sceneries I have seen in FSX. Autogen is placed flawlessly. Building models fit this region’s architecture and vegetation autogen is meticulously distributed.
In terms of ground textures – airport vicinity is covered with 30cm/px photoscenery. In other parts of the scenery 1m/px is used. This is enough for departures and low level flights. Although I consider 60cm/px a better resolution for a scenery around the airport – in this case 1m/px is sufficient – the quality of images and their editing makes them acceptable at 500ft and very good from 2000ft above.
The photoscenery comes in seasonal variations.
Mesh (5*****)
Palm Springs scenery uses 10m-mesh. Together with mountainous photoscenery it makes great impression and attracts low level trips in a small plane or helicopter.
Fsx Orbx Peopleflow Download
What to see in this scenery? Why to take a scenic flight?
It may sound absurd but I chose this scenery because I thought that it is the best ORBX airport for Boeing 777. My first trips from Palms Springs headed for San Francisco and Phoenix. But I noticed my mistake early. 1500 square kilometers may sound nice but for me it means nothing – it’s just a random number (I am not that good in remembering numbers or associating them with information). It wasn’t until I departed in 777 that I saw how much time it took me to reach the edge of this scenery until I understood how big it is. So I moved to Comanche and Duke and went for some local flights. Even in a fast Comanche it takes 15 minutes to fly from one edge of this scenery to the other. And there are additional destinations in here – these two upgraded airports are nice enough to land on a short trip.
Helicopters came later. Inspired by a friend’s photos I started doing flights over power lines (and there are plenty of these here). Following them I reached wind farms and an interesting power station. If you are more interested in flying over cities – take a medevac helicopter and fly to the hospital in Palm Springs – there is a helipad on the roof.
You should also remember about the Aerial Tramway and helipad-platforms on it’s pylons.
Wind farms (6******)
I have no idea how they managed to place so many wind turbines without sacrificing the performance. There are places where you can see hundreds of them! Hundreds! It’s amazing.
Shadows in the photoscenery show that these wind turbines are placed correctly.
Performance (very good – surprisingly good)
I did not expect such good performance on an airport big like this. It’s good and sometimes it’s perfect. Only the most frame-rate heavy planes caused the performance to drop below my 30-fps limit.
If you have an older PC – use the configurator to decrease the amount of clutter, animations and static objects.
Summary (6******)
It is one of the best sceneries I have seen. It’s all around very good – in every respect it’s on par or better than any other. It’s a display of great craftsmanship and artistry of the developer. From the flashing wig-wags mounted at hold short marking to the breathtaking terminal building everything in here is stunning. Palm Springs authors care about the fun in flying – the scenery doesn’t end at the airport’s fence but provides an amazing area to fly around. When summed up – this makes a great product.
Orbx Peopleflow Download
I almost forgot… (6******)
Did I mention that the escalators are animated? About firefighters training that you can watch at the airport? About the funny hen advertising a bistro in Palm Springs? I did not.
The review is too short to mention all the advantages and highlights of such a good product. If you fly to Palm Springs – make sure you look for playground where children have fun, a spotter who takes a photos of departing planes. Please admire the details of piping around the fuel tanks, the perfect airport lights and signs, the fences around the airport… and many other features.
Quality to price (perfect!)
For a scenery that good 32.95 is a deal.
Add-ons used in this review:
- Sky and cloud textures – REX4 Texture Direct HD with REX Soft Clouds
- Duke v2 – Real Air