Split (LDSP) is one of the three main airports in Croatia (LDZA,LDDU and LDSP).Airport is situated near the Adriatic coast with very interested approaches, because of surrounding mountainds and beautiful landscape.
After my photoreal LDZA2004 this is the second Croatia scenery. LDSP2006 is like my LDZA2004 photoreal scenery based on hundreds of digital and satellite pictures and includes:
photoreal day and night textures
semitransparent night terminal windows with arranged terminal interior
correct airport mesh with two levels and surrounding hill
seasonal trees, roads, railways,parking cars and original apron vehicles
landscape for about 10 NM in both approach directions including surrounding islands, pensinsula Ciovo with all correct and detailed coastline and surrounding mesh -
small town Trogir near the airport with its shipyard,
characteristic objects in Split (Diocletians palace, port with ships, shipyard, footbal stadium, industrial zone etc).
Comparing with my old freeware LDSP scenery which was downloaded more than 4000 times, all reported bugs (the most important was computer crash when approaching) are complitely fixed, textures are photoreal and original and frame rate is now very good. With all scenery switchers on (including ground and aircraft shadows, antialiasing etc), scenery density extremly dense as autogen density and AI traffic on 100%, and using PSSA320 frame rate is minimal 20-25 frames/sec. For comparison, with the same settings Heathrow Pro had 5 frames/second, Aerosoft Munich 7-10 frames/second and ISD Milan Malpensa about 12 frames/sec. Testing configuration was PIV 2,6 Gz, 1 Gb RAM and 128 MB Radeon 9600 video. To see all objects, scenery complexity in display settings must be set to extremly dense as also autogen density. Of course if you will not satisfied with frame rate you can swich off ground and aircraft shadows, reflection,antialiasing etc. This will significantly rise frame rate (almost 10).And in the end you can lower scenery complexity. Some object will disapear but speed will be higher.
Please Note a required changed setting in your FS9.cfg file:
For better performace and correct airport mesh, a setting in FS2004 configuration file should be changed. Without this change airport mesh will be wrong.
First find and make a backup copy of the original file FS9.cfg. This file is usually situated in hidden folder: "Documents and Settings - Application Data - Microsoft - FS9"
Edit FS9.cfg with Notepad and find the setting:
TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL" (usually found at line 139).
Replace the original number with the number 21.
It should then look line this: TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=21
Save the file. Start FS2004 and enjoy
This airport is fully supported by AES (V1.9 or higher)
AES includes follow me cars which will lead you to correct parking position,
marshallers, buses and stairs, cargo- and catering trucks which come to your aircraft etc.
I have all three of Davor's sceneries and I must say that LDSP is my favourite. The landscape around the Bay of Kastela lends itself to a very enjoyable virtual flying experience and is simply stunning. The improved landclass makes it even more so.
Having flown in and out of LDSP countless times in real life I can appreciate the amount of work put into the objects outside the airport itself. Davor has gone to great lengths to recreate many famous landmarks in the area around the airport. Unfortunately, they will not really be fully appreciated unless you are familiar with the area - which I am. Start by doing an ILS approach to RWY05.
Flying in winter with strong NNW winds (bura) can be very challenging. This is the one approach in my real-life travels where I actually experienced downward wind shear. If it were not for the pilot's quick reaction and the powerfull 727-200 engines I would not be writing this review today.
The scenery is not on par with the latest FlightScenery or FlyTampa offerings but definitely worth checking out. If you are looking at Davor's three sceneries and want to try out one - I recommend LDSP. LDDU would be a close second.