Reviews (by Carlos)

Good product. Looks very much like the real thing and easy to install if you read the instructions. Easier if you have working knowledge of panels and how to read them. You have to turn on the GPS by pressing the comm volume button. You can even stack the 530 over the 430 if you want a second GPS to use comm2 and nav2 radios. Unfortunately the GNS430 cursor lags behind the scroll when trying to select a procedure from a long list (i.e., DFW), and sometimes there is no scroll at all (observed if the airport's approaches have been edited), so you may have a hard time trying to select a certain procedure if the cursor is off-screen. The 530 does not give you a distance from track indication (it did appear in one instance on vloc, but I wasn't able to get it to come back). Neither offers terrain info. Mostly aesthetic (very good aesthetic), but a slight downgrade from the standard GPS500 for practicality because of those lost features and issues. I think the 530 is better, and it also has TCAS.

Excellent scenery. Certainly realistic and highly detailed. You'll even find that banner between terminals A and C (something AA related). A lot of attention to detail. Night lighting is superb. My only issue is terminal B does not have enough jetways for all of American Eagle's ops, as they are really spaced apart for mainline aircraft, not regional jets. I assume this was the configuration of the terminal in the past.

Aesthetically, it's a B+, but it's probably the best up to date scenery available (flyTampa's concourse A is partially blocked from a now defunct concourse so parking is limited). However, as far as practicality, 3/5. I should not have to debug the scenery myself in order to get it to work just fine. If you're familiar with troubleshooting common scenery problems, it shouldn't be too big of a problem. The parallel runways run independently, meaning it does not come with the crosswind runway technique in place to operate both the 10s and 1s simultaneously, so be prepared to see a congested SFO if you do not know how to have both in operation. The runway links do not have a designator, so you may have to re-link it to where they have a designator (thankfully it is easy but annoying if unfamiliar with). Overall, 3.5/5, but because I managed to tweak it to my personal liking, I rate it 4/5.

A very good scenery for what it's worth. It's hard finding a good freeware scenery of this airport that's accurate or up to date, or that I can easily modify with AFCAD. The only thing I have to say is that the scenery can become a bit laggy sometimes in terms of FPS, although it's mostly reliable.