When this product was first announced, a short time after the release of FS2000, concerns were raised immediately that there was little point in releasing a scenery for FS98 from the moment that what was thought to be the considerably better product became available. Now, however, it has very quickly become apparent that as with the step up to FS98 in its time; FS2000 requires major expenditure on upgrades for many people before it becomes a viable simulator. For those of us still stuck below the PIII-600+ owners club level, this product is a superb attempt at providing an environment otherwise only seen in the real-world photo generated sceneries of Fly! and the Flight Unlimited products.
A potted history
For people (which I suspect means the majority of readers) that don't know the history
of VFR Scenery limited, the product is originally based on the freeware
work of the UK Scenery Design Team, found at the 'Magrathea' website.
The UKDT scenery was an attempt to cover the entire United Kingdom
in Visual Flight Rules capable scenery, allowing sim pilots to navigate
using the roads, rivers, towns and landmarks really in place on the
ground, rather than the radio navaids required for most flightsim
routings. Gaining large amounts of praise from almost every user that
"discovered" the scenery, it quickly started pushing the limits of
available design tools and, indeed, FS98 itself—when it became necessary
to build flat-topped mountains, route roads over hill areas and even
put a church on top of a hill! (They managed that as well…) It wasn't
perfect—there were layering issues galore between the various designers'
work areas that caused some amusement value, and not all areas were
built using the same techniques, base textures or software, so it could
look a little patchy—but it did the job more than adequately. It
was also extremely accurate and was used on several occasions by real-world
PPL holders to practice flights before they did them in real aircraft.
This level of reality caused problems, however, in that it started
literally taking over the designers' lives and PC software budgets.
This was brought to a head after a well-reported breach of copyright
when several of the designers' work (not scenery, but aircraft…) was
used on a commercial CD and some of the freeware software was temporarily
removed from the web. The only way of truly protecting the work from
theft of copyright was to turn it into a commercial product itself
and, as an added bonus, this made it a little easier to justify the
amount of time and expense taken up by the project!
Enter VFR Scenery Limited:
The scenery being reviewed here is the first release from the resulting
company, VFR Scenery Limited, covering the entirety of England and
Wales but not, as yet, Scotland and Ireland. These are "under development".
Far from being just the "Maggie" scenery burnt to a CD, VFR E&W is
a far more polished product, with none of the visible seams or layering
effects, a fairly straight forward install routine (RTFM!) and most
(although apparently still not quite all… ;o) of the airports that
were missing from the original.
The UKDT scenery was particularly well populated with buildings
away from airfields, and a lot of these seem to have been ported across
or rebuilt from scratch—copyright restrictions and such make
a considerable difference when moving from a Freeware to a commercial
product. The area around Teesside is well populated with static freighters,
a football ground and lots of other things. Likewise, Humberside has
the local industry well represented along with some nice flame effects
at the top of stacks. Telford in Shropshire, my nearest large town,
has both Stafford Park industrial estate and the Army base repair
facility at Donnington visible as generic factories/warehouses—but
Ironbridge power station and the world's first ever Iron Bridge (built
by Thomas Telford, hence the town names!) down the road are not present.
It is worth noting, though, that you can find exactly where these
items should be. There are maps on the VFR Scenery page here that show the road and hydrographic information used for the scenery—they are quite extensive and, from personal experience, quite accurately
reproduced.
On my first test flight in the default Bell 206B, I got
lost not long after leaving the Welsh mountains, so I flew North to
Liverpool, down to Hawarden, then my home field of Sleap (hey, I know
the NDB freq so it is easy to find! <g>) then followed roads to Halfpenny
Green in Staffordshire where I landed and ended the flight. As I just
mentioned Halfpenny Green, remember the name – I'll come back to it
in a couple of sentences...
An "Organic" scenery
Part of the appeal of the UKDT scenery—and a philosophy that has
transferred in turn to VFR—is that no scenery representing a real
world area is ever finished. No matter how hard you work to get it
absolutely 'spot-on' accurate, the next week some managing director
somewhere will make a policy decision and all your hard work goes
out of the window. This is the case with Halfpenny Green Airport (EGBO)
– told you I'd be back to it! ;o) Halfpenny Green is, you see, no
more. In fact it seems to have had more names than a wanted Jewel
Thief trying to evade Interpol, having gone through World War II as
the navigation training facility RAF Bobbington, become Halfpenny
Green in civilian hands and now having been renamed to Wolverhampton
Business Aerodrome. I won't comment on which name I prefer (Oh, okay
then, I wish it had stayed as Bobbington… <g>) but when this scenery
was created it was Halfpenny Green and that's what it says on the
side of the accurately reproduced tower building. The team's intention,
as expressed to me, is that when something like this changes, or someone
builds a new landmark bridge, it will be included or updated on the
software. It's an excellent theory in my opinion, and well one that
would definitely be welcomed if other commercial scenery designers
took it on. The world does not stay still and, unless you are making
historical scenery, it means that your work is soon outdated by reality.
Dagnammit! Where did that 757 go???
Dynamic scenery is another area where a specific policy change was
made from UKDT to VFR. In this case the change was prompted by user
feedback following the release of Lago's superb FS Traffic package.
In ye goode olde UKDT days, each designer included a little collection
of dynamic and static traffic around their airports; for example when
you first went to Cardiff International (EGFF) in South Wales, you
were greeted by a Britannia 757-200 on final approach to runway 30.
Okay, so the wind is 180 @ 25 knots, that airliner is still gonna
land on runway 30; it has no choice in the matter. By recommending
use of FST in place of specific traffic at each airport, the team
has, in one go, implemented wind direction-specific traffic, eased
their own workload and saved potential trademark infringements by
not including airline liveries in commercial products. Again personally,
I think this is actually a very good way to work.
Now the Bad News...
Okay, so I'm running this up to be super-scenery, the level by which
all others should be graded (at least in the FS98 context). It isn't quite there at the moment unfortunately. Even now that the first patch has been released there are things that could
do with being addressed.
The patch/update has fixed a lot of them: Warrington now exists,
as does the Manchester Shipping Canal and associated VRPs. London
has buildings North of the Thames (lots of them!) and, just in time
for it to be sold off and possibly closed, London Westland Helipad
(EGLW/LWH) is also included. It does, however, also have one of the
more glaring problems in that the concrete texture used for the actual
landing pad floats quite some way above the markings and river. Could
there be something of a tile elevation problem here, maybe? I'm not
a scenery designer, so I shall leave that to the experts. Around the
country the number of buildings is very rapidly increasing and, with
the support of some of the users that also released freeware add-ons
for "Maggie", this could well turn into an even more complex scenery—watch out for the scenery buffers being pushed beyond their limits once more!
On the other hand, the West Midlands, for example, is a flat expanse
of textures with no buildings at all other than the local airports
and transport/waterways infrastructure, and a couple of aerials that
might be the top of Sedgley Beacon; I'm not quite sure about that.
The middle of Birmingham has a fair few well-known structures that
it might have been nice to see, like the Rotunda and the ICC / Hyatt
Hotel / Centenary Square complex. What about Birmingham City or Aston
Villa football grounds or the County Cricket Ground in Edgbaston,
maybe? I know I'm concentrating specifically on Birmingham here and
ignoring its surroundings, but I think you catch what I'm getting
at. The NEC complex isn't included either and that really is something
of a landmark for those of us aiming at Birmingham International that
can't use HON VOR and the ILS to line up for runway 33 from ten miles
out, like the Airliners do…
My only other comment would be that the team have replaced the default
water texture with one suitable for the area covered, replacing the
bright blue with a sort of muddy green look far more representative
of the North and Irish Seas. It looks good and (obviously) they have
blended the estuaries and river mouths to match this texture. Unfortunately,
this means that when you fly from the UK to the Adriatic, Caribbean
or Hawaii, the texture at the other end is hopelessly out of place.
Maybe it's worth MS looking at several different water textures in
future versions? I haven't checked this on FS2K, but I doubt it has
already been implemented. Someone feel free to correct me if it has!
Overall
This is a well presented, well produced scenery covering the area
far, far, more accurately than its nearest competitor (Apollo's Europe
3) and at a significantly lower price from the only supplier I could
find that listed both. I would seriously like to give this product
five stars and, indeed, would have were it not for a few niggling
problems. Yes, if you are still using FS98 and want to fly over the
UK, I really believe it is that good. Scotland and Ireland are under
production, although no release date for these was available last
time I looked; but there is a snapshot of a bit of Highland on the
website. Now, one of these days I really must get someone to put my
hometown on the road junction it's supposed to be… Putting in the
Ironbridge area might be nice as well!
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