Conversion of all buildings, objects and floor layout
Update of the floor layout, new markings on the apron
Location-specific 3D objects in the traffic pattern area such as the industrial area
in the west (ALSTOM, Antalis) for more realistic approach and departure
Animated people
Animated windsock
A LandeT and a notice board show the current take-off / landing direction depending on the wind direction
Night lighting in some windows and dynamic light on headlights
Orthophoto "data from the canton of Aargau"
https://www.ag.ch/de/dfr/geoportal/geodaten_agis/geodaten.jsp?sectionId=200690#200690
The scenery definitely has its strong points:
- Crisp ground markings with good colour and great accuracy
- Dynamic landing-T at the signal square area
- Some areas/buildings important to fly VFR have been modelled
- Nice work on the snow coverage
These are important features and the developer can be commended for doing these.
However, the scenery falls short in many other areas:
- Biggest let-down for me is the ground texturing. It is not at all true-to-life, the grass runway and its associated taxiways have a yellow-green texture while the rest of the grass area is much more blueish-green. This is not at all realistic and looks quite cartoonish and bad when on final during landing.
- While the recreational facilities have been modelled quite nicely, the buildings themselves are of very low detail and have blurry textures with what looks like compression artefacts. This is not at all what the simulator is capable of showing and is a clear sign of porting over from P3D/FSX.
- The night lighting, while being marketed as a highlight of the scenery, is very disappointing. For the buildings it means a blurry and over-exposed photo of lit-up windows, very unnatural looking and also a clear left-over from P3D/FSX.
Overall it is clear that this scenery is a rather simple port of the old P3D/FSX sceneries. There is no interior modelling, no open hangar with a lively interior, no PBR texturing, and an overall lack of detail on the flying side of things.
While I admire them from modelling some of the airport's surroundings and doing a dynamic landing-T, it is still a very low fidelity scenery nowhere near the standard a modern MSFS scenery can have. You need only to compare to masterpieces from Burning Blue Designs, AUScene or NZA Simulations to realise this Birrfeld scenery would need a complete makeover to be able to compete at the same level of quality. Here's hope that we can soon have Birrfeld V2!