King Shaka International Airport Durban, South Africa: a beautiful gem by the shores of the Indian Ocean, only a short flight away from Cape Town, Windhoek or Madagascar. Rated amongst the best airports in the world, King Shaka - named after a famous leader of the Zulu nation - has become a highly popular destination for passengers and pilots ever since the days of its inauguration in 2010.
Features:
Extremely realistic rendition of King Shaka International Airport, Durban, South Africa, and surroundings
Realistic shadow and light rendition
Animated ground traffic
Future Foxtrot apron and extended Bravo taxiway already included
Includes Dube Tradeport
Additional AI schedules for MyTraffic, UTLive and TrafficGlobal included
PBR ground and dynamic lighting (P3Dv4/v5)
Optimized for great performance and visual results
Compatible with SODE/GSX jetways
Compatible with all known add-ons including AES, GSX, UTX, FS Global and the ftx series (including ftx openLC Africa)
It's fantastic to see more content being created for Africa, so I bought Durban with much anticipation. And there is plenty to like about this scenery:
+ Overall good 3D modelling and very nice daytime texturing. Crisp, good colours.
+ Good quality aerial photo used around the airport perimeter.
+ Very good optional integration with ORBX OpenLC Africa
+ SODE Jetways and SODE Windsocks
Unfortunately I can only give 3 stars due to some significant deficiencies:
- The main terminal night texturing is bad, really bad. To not do any interior 3D modelling is OK for the price of this scenery. But just slapping on very low-resolution textures depicting a blurry terminal interior looks awful, especially when parked at the terminal. They should have done opaque windows with glass textures instead. But using a blurry texture simply looks very old and dated.
- Some parts at the service road level of the terminal are also not done in 3D, but using a skewed low-res texture instead to simulate a tunnel. That is simply not up-to-date scenery design.
- There's no Autogen trees, bushes and houses placed on the Northern part of the scenery, and some parts to the East. Approaching the runway from the North, you will overfly flat vegetation and houses. That is too bad, because the scenery integration is otherwise done very nicely.
- Dummy VDGS: They do not deliver functional VDGS, non-working dummy devices only. No option for SODE VDGS either and also no GSX file that would at least place some VDGS if you owned that software.
The scenery is overall still quite good value if you want to fly in Africa. But unfortunately the main terminal building is far from using up-to-date scenery design standards.
As a South African and Capetonian it is more than joyful news to slowly but surely see high quality airports for South Africa. For everyone that has ever visited South Africa will know that this is truly an exquisite country with one of the most diverse landscapes and changes in geography.
Durban's new airport is a welcoming addition from FSDG and for a very reasonable price you get a high quality airport. The PBR and surrounding landclass is well done and it works perfectly with ORBX's new Africa_LC.
Highly recommend this airport, and with Cape Town (FACT) as part of the FSDG stable, it makes a very good hub between the two city.