iniScene's largest airport yet: Heathrow International (EGLL) for Microsoft Flight Simulator. As the major beating heart of London's aviation scene, and the third busiest airport in the world, it's an essential airport for any seasoned flight simmer.
The airport is known for being the home of the UK's flag carrier British Airways and the primary operating base of Virgin Atlantic. Being used by over 80 airlines and with flights to over 180 destinations, it's safe to say there are a plethora of routes to keep you amused.
Heathrow's impressive area covers over 12 sq/km of area in the simulator. To compliment that, it features custom taxi signs, realistic terminals, custom ground service equipment and plenty of points of interest and surrounding buildings to provide a redefined level of realism plus many more features.
Features:
80+ custom modelled and textured POIs and buildings in and out of the airport boundary with accurate PBR texturing.
10,000+ custom iniScene car models scattered throughout parking lots outside of the airport boundary.
Aggressive performance saving methods featuring LOD model optimization (Level of Detail) and meticulous optimization where possible throughout the scenery.
Full Xbox compatibility and optimization when purchased on the Microsoft Store for Xbox.*
5 accurately-placed jetway variations with realistic PBR texturing and animations.
Over 430 custom made and hand placed taxi signs dotted throughout the airfield as in the real world.
Main airport landsides with ground markings and lighting faithfully re-created.
British Airways Concorde G-BOAB faithfully recreated and on-display before runway 27L.
Over 2,500 individually placed accurately colour toned airport lights scattered around the terminals.
Accurate logos and real-world decals scattered throughout the airport to promote a true to life feeling.
Custom-created, accurate and known landside points of interest such as the landmark
Emirates A380 and Turkish Airlines roundabouts.
Hand-corrected, colour accurate ortho imagery.
Hand-placed bespoke ground service equipment at each gate featuring over 2,000+ containers, 2,000+ cargo dollies and a plethora of various static equipment.
Animated points of interest including radio towers and construction cranes.
Notes
This product features our simInstaller technology and is available after purchase via our APP only.
This is an amazing scenery with great attention to details. I really like the night lighting at the airport. The terminal buildings and taxiways are made with high quality textures. The performence is also really good considering all the great details.
Unfortunately, at least 09R and 27L approaches do not work correctly. IAF and FAF of the approach are missing in the MCDU. That leaves only RNAV approaches or somehow smuggling oneself to the ILS.
In addition, there are very few interiors. However, the little is not bad.
According to MsFs Forum some AddOn Airports since SU11 have similar problems with the navigation.
Once these issues are resolved I will change my rating.
Good modelling, VDGS as well as good performance are strong points of this scenery, unfortunately there are several issues that lower the quality to a point where I just don't think it's a good hub airport scenery:
Some issues that are important for a large hub airport:
- Complete absence of accurate airline gate assignments and wingspan size for parking spots. AI Airlines and aircraft types park in places where they never do on the real airport.
- There is no custom, Heathrow-specific animated ground vehicle traffic anywhere on the aprons or service roads.
- Gross errors in jetway placement: Most jetways lack a realistic looking attachment to the walls. Some of the jetways are not even touching the walls at all, it's especially bad at Terminal 4. And many jetways therefore do not attach to AI aircraft. Strange negligence in quality control for something labelled as "accurate jetway placement" in the features list.
It's issues like these that prevent the scenery from delivering a true Heathrow flair.
There are further items amiss where the competition has done better:
- A few service road tunnel ramps have been modelled while most are represented by flat, non-descending roads only. This is very much noticeable where such tunnels are located next to taxiways.
- Some terminal buildings feature interior modelling that is plenty good for such a large hub, great job there. However, on those buildings that do not have such 3D interiors, only low-resolution night lighting textures are present. Unfortunately many daytime building textures are of low resolution as well, and a bit sterile in places, which do get noticed around the parking spots.
- In some areas crisp apron ground textures are bordered by very crude low res aerial imagery devoid of any 3D structures, which are again very much noticeable if located right next to taxiways or parking spots.
- While it is admirable to see high-res textures on all cars in the parking lots, the LOD for that texture is set so close as to pop up right in front of the aircraft, making the approach to runways 27R/L rather painful. Fewer cars with better LOD texture properties would have been preferable here.
- The maintenance area is odd looking with hangars fully open and empty, looking more like huge shelters instead of aircraft hangars. I don't need an endless amount of detail, but here the maintenance area is a true ghost town.
So while I see some good effort by ini such as VDGS and good care in placing taxiway signs or lights, the overall quality is not that good I'm afraid, in texture quality, features and accuracy. The lack of accurate airline/wingspan specifications is especially painful in such a place, and there are many competitors that feature custom animated ground service vehicles as standard, both very important items at a hub airport.
Pretty good and detailed scenery of Heathrow EGLL.
But, if you expect a good performance, you'll be disappointed.
It is worse than the MSFS Heathrow (Premium Deluxe). I lost 5-10FPS using this scenery compared to MSFS version.
I have to give 5 stars because this is very detailed of a huge mega airport which is about as large as any airport on Earth. The VGDS (visual guidance docking system)is really addictive to use. This is really unique to watch in action.
I have a low end computer and have to set my MSFS graphics back to medium (I normally use Ultra). This airport is really really huge, everything is in this scenery so it is hard on framerates. But quite flyable for my system. If you have a better system, then you can see by the other reviews and youtube videos it will handle the airport a lot better.
Worth every cent!
cpu: Ryzen 5-3600. gpu RTX 2600 SUPER.
Finally a good Heathrow!. Product was a great first step into mega airports for the developer and they seem to be fast to implement improvements. Look forward to seeing what they do next.
I am very happy with it. The ground markings are quite good. Also the most buildings are awesome.
Negative point: The passenger boarding bridges are conected very ugly to the terminal. That doesn't look very nice. Also the inside of the terminal get a piece of the bridge.
But what not is yet can still become ;-)
Thanks for the work.