Saint Petersburg (Russian: Санкт-Петербург, tr. Sankt-Peterburg, IPA: [ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk]), formerly known as Petrograd (Петроград) (1914–1924), then Leningrad (Ленинград) (1924–1991), is a city on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. It is Russia's second-largest city after Moscow. With a population of roughly 5.4 million inhabitants, it is the fourth-most populous city in Europe, the most-populous city on the Baltic Sea, as well as the northernmost metropolis in Europe and the world. As an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea, it is governed as a federal city.
The city was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on 27 May 1703 on the site of a captured Swedish fortress, and was named after apostle Saint Peter. Saint Petersburg is historically and culturally associated with the birth of the Russian Empire and Russia's entry into modern history as a European great power. It served as a capital of the Tsardom of Russia and the subsequent Russian Empire from 1713 to 1918 (being replaced by Moscow for a short period of time between 1728 and 1730).
In this pack for Microsoft Flight Simulator you can see the main attractions of the city, such as: St. Isaac's and Kazan Cathedrals, the Alexander Column, the General Staff Building, the Winter Palace (Hermitage), the Admiralty, the Palace and Trinity Bridges, the Bronze Horseman sculpture of Peter I, the Senate building and Synod, Disorder columns and the Exchange building, Peter and Paul Fortress and Cathedral, bridges of Peter the Great, Railway and Bolshoi Obukhovsky (Vantovy), Moscow Gate, as well as several additional objects such as the Gazprom building (Lakhta Center), LenEnergo building (with Easter eggs), Ice the palace, the pipes of the city's main thermal power plants, the residential complex Prince Alexander Nevsky, the TV tower, and the Gazprom Arena (Zenit) stadium.
The product will be updated! And you will receive more and more attractions and objects.
Review it now!
So, I am giving this a very optimistic 4 stars for now - and that comes with the disclaimer that this will hold if the developer's promise to expand the pack more comes true.
Improvements to the city were sorely needed, and this pack absolutely does fix the most glaring problems (I am so thankful it removed the horrible "skyscrapers" that were there instead of the Petropavlovka's cathedral spire and the Admiralty!) The buildings added are very welcome also, with a number of the most prominent landmarks now present and visible.
However... I also have trouble recommending this one for what's currently there, even at the low price. The number of new landmark is very, very small - and so many important ones are missing. I can understand why the developer released this early but in its current state, but in my view they should have waited a bit more; at the moment, this city does not compare favourably to many other commercial city add-ons out there, even at this lower price.
But again - what is there is very welcome, and if the developer simply continues to add more buildings, even at the same exact level of quality as now, it will become worth it. But it needs maybe 3 times more buildings than it has now, and could really use a few other fixes (if the current SDK allows it), especially when it comes to some of the terrain (there are "hills" in many places where Bing Maps falsely recognizes building elevation as ground elevation, resulting in some truly ugly street and buildings sticking out of hills).
PS - I hate that skyscraper at Lakhta with a passion, but that is not the developer's fault at all :)
Connections of bridges with the surface looks not well (for example, the Palace bridge with Vasilyevsky Island), also some buildings as Gazprom tower (Lakhta Center) or Admiralty has very low-quality textures. Cars continue to drive on the water, between the raised bridges, it looks very strange. I hope that the postscript about "The product will be updated! And you will receive more and more attractions and objects." is not a cheating, if it's true there will be great landmarcks pack. But now it's 3*.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.8.3, Windows 10 x64
