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Reviews (by Brian)

FLY 2 HIGH - EPWA - WARSAW CHOPIN AIRPORT MSFS

FLY 2 HIGH - EPWA - WARSAW CHOPIN AIRPORT MSFS

This is one of the better efforts by Fly2High. I support their work but I am critical of it too because I want them to get to the top of their game. This is worth a buy for sure. I have spotted the following mistakes in this airport, making it lose one star. A patch or two should be able to clean up these issues. o - Like many developers, there is an obsession with green center lights. These lights never go right up to the parking spots IRL. Their usage of them needs to be toned down. It is quite easy to see where these are through satellite imagery. I would like to see this fixed. Same at KPVD and KRSW. o - There are a lot of floating buildings on the NW and West sides of the airport. It is mostly the supporting buildings and none of the main ones. Some of the floating are drastic (floating off the ground more than 10 feet. o - The main lights on the tall light poles around Apron 3 (main apron) have their LODs set way too low. The lights are popping on and brightening up the ground when you get within 100 feet of them. These lights should be easily seen while on the final. Please increase the range of the LOD on these light sources. Surely it's not that destructive to the performance of the airport?

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COCKSPUR - C510 MUSTANG MSFS

COCKSPUR - C510 MUSTANG MSFS

I was excited to see a new Bizjet come to MSFS and snagged it up to give it a test spin. The modeling is solid, texturing is very nice. The interior cabin looks great and the overall night lighting is pleasing. The aircraft is zippy but seems to be functioning like a bizjet of this size in regards to flight modeling. The G1000nxi is a great feature as well. Now, why the 3-star rating then if all the above is true? Because I am a sim pilot of sound. To me, sound for an aircraft add-on is 50 percent of the score and the C510 fails in many aspects. The sounds that are there are good enough, but the lack of sound brings the score tumbling down. None of the switches make a sound when flipped, the A/C system makes no sound when turned on, and when the door to the plane has opened the latches, door swing, and deployment of the staircase make zero sound. The spring-loaded dinner trays that you can open in the cabin make no sound. The aircraft is just dead in the sound department. The engine start-up sounds are good but then you go to the exterior and your headphones explode from +300db engine blast sound that can be heard a mile away, on the ground, on the other side of the test airport I was using (KMCI). I shouldn't have to wear hearing protection for real to fly a simulated plane. The exterior engine sound mixing needs a great deal of work. Lastly, we are given a beautiful G1000nxi and a full-on dashboard with alphabetic and numeric keyboards below in the central console that don't work..... -_- What is an amazingly helpful keyboard system in real life is dead in this simulated plane, forcing you to use the old knob format to put in your flight plan and select menu options. The fact these two keyboards are non-functional is a huge turn-off for this plane. This plane could be a 5-star work of art but the lack of sound and non-functional center console keyboards mar what would otherwise be a perfect score from me. I hope the developer can bring this plane fully to life because right now it's limping along like a silent ninja in the night.

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UK2000 SCENERY - JOHN WAYNE AIRPORT MSFS

UK2000 SCENERY - JOHN WAYNE AIRPORT MSFS

What is a nicely modeled product becomes marred by incredibly bad performance. In order to make sure it was not my system or addons I was using, I had three other folks with this airport compare against my performance and all of us had the same results. There is no excuse for an airport of this size to have such a huge performance impact. My system can barely sustain 30 FPS on High settings with this airport installed. Why does an airport of this size and detail run at 30 fps while the giant KLAX down the road runs at 60-70 fps? There is something flawed with this airport's performance. It is clearly a bug in the airport. It needs another sweep of optimizations. Running the freeware KSNA which looks decent yielded 45+ FPS on our test systems. There is also an ortho flaw with this airport in general. I believe it is on Asobo's end to fix. Coming in for final at this airport the ortho ground colors and quality will morph before your very eyes. It is extremely distracting and ugly to witness.

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TROPICALSIM - ALBUQUERQUE INTL KABQ MSFS

TROPICALSIM - ALBUQUERQUE INTL KABQ MSFS

The overall quality of this airport is excellent. This was a much-needed addition to the United States available scenery. The only real complaint as others have mentioned is the lack of interior modeling. While this is not a deal breaker by any means, for a terminal of that size at the offered price point there should have been some basic interior design work done. This for me, would have taken the airport to the 5-star rating.

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DOUBLE T - JEDDAH KING ABDULAZIZ INTL AIRPORT MSFS

DOUBLE T - JEDDAH KING ABDULAZIZ INTL AIRPORT MSFS

The guys giving this airport a 5-star rating need to put on glasses. This airport has the potential to be great but the blue edge taxi lights are all over the place (And far too many! Hand place these DEVS! Stop being lazy and relying on the SDK edge light tool!), disconnected taxi lines, default taxi signage (in questionable locations), ZERO defined taxi network information (ATC software can't give taxi instructions since no taxiways are defined and EFB software won't show which taxiway you are on for the same reason), poorly defined gate information, and default jetways. The modeling is nice on the buildings DT cared about. A lot of other buildings have much to be desired in their detail and texture quality. Overall this airport product is sloppy in its execution. With some care, this could become a three-star airport or even a four-star if more polish was put into it. It is clear to me this airport is a quickly rushed conversion from the X-Plane 11 version, dumped on the market, and left to rot. It's sad because Double T picks airports to model that no one else would touch which is great and I can see the potential in their abilities but the lazy execution of their airports plagues their ability to get to the next level time and time again. At the very least Double T, fix the blue edge lights being all over the place! They stick out onto taxiways and are littering the parking ramp of all terminals. If you can hand place your taxi edge lights that would be enough for me to bump my review to a three-star rating.

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DOMINICDESIGNTEAM - KPNS PENSACOLA INTL AIRPORT MSFS

DOMINICDESIGNTEAM - KPNS PENSACOLA INTL AIRPORT MSFS

Overall this is a good rendition of KPNS. It is certainly the best rendition of it on any sim platform to date. With that being said, it does suffer from a few minor problems that can be addressed by the developer in good time. The biggest problem I have with this airport in its current state is a small stutter when turning to view the terminal. I can see a large spike in VRAM usage which is where this stutter is coming from. This may be addressed in SU10 but perhaps a little more optimization could eliminate this sudden loss of performance for that one second it occurs. The other eye sore is the extremely repetitive ground textures over on the GA ramp. The rest of this airport does not suffer from this but that area is awful to look at and needs to have the texture updated to a less repetitive texture with a bit of good randomization dirty and wear and tear overlayed on top to break up the repeating pattern. There are some trees that need to be sawed down with a good vegetation exclusion polygon. Overall good performance, a lovely terminal, and good groundline work. Keep them coming Dom!

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STEALTHY DUCK - KAFW FT WORTH ALLIANCE(PEROT FIELD) MSFS

STEALTHY DUCK - KAFW FT WORTH ALLIANCE(PEROT FIELD) MSFS

I am updating my review as the developer made a huge effort to fix all the reported bugs and even stopped by the live stream while we looked over version 1.1. There are just a few minor fixes left to do but the airport is now more than flyable and enjoyable for all the cargo pilots out there. Well done Stealthyduck! That is how you handle customer support!

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STEALTHY DUCK - KAFW FT WORTH ALLIANCE(PEROT FIELD) MSFS

STEALTHY DUCK - KAFW FT WORTH ALLIANCE(PEROT FIELD) MSFS

When I saw this appear on the SimMarket I got excited. This is one of my home airports where I live. I snagged it and used it on my Twitch live stream and unveiled it to my audience at the same time I was experiencing it for the first time. And then the problems began to show quickly. This airport is buggy and unfinished and produces a tiny bit of stuttering even on my monster rig which means there are optimization problems. here is a list of things I found wrong with the scenery. o - Too many taxi edge lights (a common problem with developers). Please hand-place these and stop relying on the SDK's default light system. o - I am not sure this airport uses green center lights (this is another overdone problem of MSFS airports) o - The main Amazon Prime building is missing its glass window fronts and you can see inside the 3D model which I don't think you were meant to as it is empty and you can see the roof from the building. o - Runway 34R and its opposite look like someone dumped buckets of pain across the concrete and the grass on either side. o - Some of the ground textures over by the FedEX main cargo area are floating above the default ground texture. I believe this was meant to be a dirt overlay decal but it is not properly placed. o - Weird autogen INSIDE the airport perimeter. There is literally an autogen shoe store right behind the fire station. o - Missing security fence line around the airport o - Some buildings are nicely modelled with details, others are basic. o - The fuel farm has floating polygon objects. o - Z-Fighting (flickering of textures) are on several buildings. o - Texas Motor Speedway should have been modeled in my opinion. This is an iconic landmark while on approach to this airport. Things I liked about the airport: o - The taxi lines and parking markings are high res, sharp and clean. Its surprising how many developers end up pushing out a product with low res line work on the ground that has artifacts on the edges that make their line work look really tacky. o - Some of the ground textures look fantastic (concrete and asphalt-type textures) and there are proper dirt markings all over the place (see above for a bug in dirt texture placement in one area). o - Night lighting looks good all around (minus the overuse of taxi edge and green lights). o - Airport overall performance is decent but there is a stutter slow down when looking in certain directions. This is usually a sign of VRAM overload from too many texture sheets being used (aka optimization problem). With a bit more time and some bug patches, this airport could become a 4-star rated airport from me. It will be up to the developer to deliver.

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FLYTAMPA - CORFU MSFS

FLYTAMPA - CORFU MSFS

This airport is insane in the best way possible. There is so much detail not only at the airport but the entire island is covered in animated people, jogging, swimming, sunbathing, plane spotting, exercising. Hundreds and hundreds of hand crafted buildings all over the island, full terrain mesh sculpting, animated boats going around the island. There is so much to see here you could spend a few hours just roaming the island with your drone camera. This airport has everything and earns one of my Golden Runway Awards for Excellence! FlyTampa, you have done it again and then some! Congrats!

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RDPRESETS - LIRN NAPLES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT MSFS

RDPRESETS - LIRN NAPLES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT MSFS

RDPresets has done an excellent job on this airport. The 3D modeling is very nice with HD texturing across the entire airport. This airport would have been an ideal canditate for a modelled interior but that is not a requirement in my book to make a great airport (more like icing on the cake). Ground texturnig looks good. Ground taxi lines could use some work as there is bad artifacting on the edges of all yellow taxi lines. This is not unique to this developer. A lot have this problem. I don't know what causes it. The only devs I know of that have managed to find a way to not have this on their airports is Digital Designs and VerticalSims. There are a few misaligned textures and a building or two at the end of the airport on runway 24 are floating slightly off the ground due to ground mesh issues that can be resolved by patching from this developer. Overall, great work, especially on the crazy air conditioning units and pipes on the roof of this terminal. I was looking at this the other day in Google Maps and was like "that is a crazy roof. Good luck to any develop who tries to 3D model this". RDPresets must have been like 'HOLD MY BEER!' :D Good work!

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DIGITAL DESIGN - LYON MSFS

DIGITAL DESIGN - LYON MSFS

They don't make airports much better than this in MSFS! This is hands down one of the top 5 best looking airports in the simulator right now. Digital Designs went above and beyond the call of duty to produce one of the finest looking European airports to date in the simulator. 5 stars! This earns my Golden Runway Award for Excellence. Looking forward to more airports from Digital Designs!

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VERTICALSIM - KBOI - BOISE AIR TERMINAL/GWN FIELD MSFS

VERTICALSIM - KBOI - BOISE AIR TERMINAL/GWN FIELD MSFS

I have been a fan of this developer since their early days on X-Plane 11 and it has been fun to watch them build in skill over the years to the level of talent that is on display here with KBOI for MSFS. Take the ORBX version and throw it in the Recycle Bin and grab this one instead. This airport is a feast of details, high grade HD texturing, accuracy and performance. All the bells in whistles were put into this one. Don't settle for mediocrity, settle for the best and you are looking at it with this rendition of Boise! 5 Stars easily.

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REALWORLDSCENERY - KSTL ST.LOUIS LAMBERT INTERNATIONAL MSFS

REALWORLDSCENERY - KSTL ST.LOUIS LAMBERT INTERNATIONAL MSFS

The scenery COULD have been greatness but the poor optimization and excessive use of giant texture sheets (this is where your lag spike stutters are coming from that have been reported) is bringing the scenery down to a 2 star. This airport could easily be a 4 star airport if the developer would give this thing an SU9 update, clean up the huge texture sheets and get this airport under 10gig of VRAM usage. This is one of the few airports that completely fills up the 10gigs of VRAM on my 3080 video card. Not even massive airports like KDEN and KMIA do this. I also tried contacting this vendor to inquire about lag stutters and 8k texture sheets being used but got no response.

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FLY 2 HIGH - KFAT - FRESNO YOSEMITE INTL AIRPORT MSFS

FLY 2 HIGH - KFAT - FRESNO YOSEMITE INTL AIRPORT MSFS

FLY 2 HIGH KFAT REVIEW FINDINGS ===================================== The Good: ---------------- o - Nice ground texture work. Dirty, disgusting, filthy... just the way we like it. Good taxi line texturing. o - Detailed 3D models. o - Partially modeled airside with animated peeps. o - Custom Jetways o - Good Clutter objects. o - Hand placed taxi edge lights. o - Scripted car traffic arriving and departing terminal area. o - Good night lighting. The Bad: ----------------- o - Texturing of buildings is generally good but the main terminal needs a little work. The scale seems slightly off and not as HD as it should be for such an important building. o - The airside interior texturing is lower resolution then the rest of the airport quality and also the scale seems off on the carpet and the like. o - Scripted car traffic driving ON TO the airport then teleporting back to their start points. Its distracting to see cars flung across the scenery to their starting point. This needs fixing. o - Attack of the killer green center lights! This airport does have green center lights but not all the way up to the terminal and to the gate parking spots. These need to be reduced in quantity. o - Missing buildings. These are minor but still right on the cargo ramp. Overall a solid redinition of KFAT with some minor flaws that can be corrected over time. It's price point is good.

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DOMINICDESIGNTEAM - KIND INDIANAPOLIS INTL AIRPORT MSFS

DOMINICDESIGNTEAM - KIND INDIANAPOLIS INTL AIRPORT MSFS

The Good: --------- o - Gorgeous Terminal with fully modelled airside interior with animated peeps. o - Detail models in general with HD texturing with PBR materials. o - Most buildings 3D modelled. o - 72 FPS in the PMDG 737 sitting at the terminal with no AI traffic running on my HIGH/ULTRA settings. o - Nicely lit terminal area and cargo area at night. Interior lighting good. The Bad: ---------- o - Disonnected Jetways. They are off by a foot or two on many gates. o - HOLY BLUE EDGE LIGHTS BATMAN! Way to many edge lights. These need to be hand placed. Wish devs would stop relying on the SDK's stringer placement system. Make a 3D light model and hand place it in the proper locations! o - Night lighting missing from areas where it should be such as the parking lots and the west side ramps of the airport. There are HUGE 32' tall ramp lights there in real life. o - Lumberjacks need to cut down some trees on the airport grounds. Way to many trees taht don't belong on the airport grounds. o - Extremely low LOD level on the ground taxi markings making them pop in to view from the cockpit. We should never see taxi line textures popping into existence in visual range from the cockpit. o - Lack of clutter in cargo area and across the whole airport in general. Needs more lived in look. o - Weird terrain mesh in places but at least its not near the terminal area. o - Some poor ground marking mistakes Over all a decent start to KIND but there are some pretty bad mistakes/ommissions that show a lack of quality control. A few more days in the developer oven would have made a far better product worthy of 4 to 5 stars. I own all of Dominic's scenery and they get better with each new product as they learn the SDK. Nudge the jetways to the building, remove the excess edge lights, fix broken ground markings and bad LOD and toss some cargo containers and palettes in the cargo ramps and we'll have a winner!

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JUSTFLIGHT - 146 PROFESSIONAL MSFS

JUSTFLIGHT - 146 PROFESSIONAL MSFS

An incredible well done aircraft with plenty of fun to be had at the controls. Its a great change from the flying calculators like the A320 that are out there. It is my current go to plane for cargo runs as we don't have a whole lot of choices right now MSFS2020. It sounds great! Flies great! Grab it now if you want a fun challenging plane!

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RKAPPS - FSREALISTIC PRO MSFS24/20

RKAPPS - FSREALISTIC PRO MSFS24/20

Its gettings there! I used XPRealistic PRO for years. FSRealistic PRO is starting to catch up to that product in quality and functionality. Its still missing some features that the X-plane 11 version had but that is limitations due to the MS SDK. As they improves so too will this product. I am giving it 5 stars based on its current feature set. It does what it needs too.

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SIMBITWORLD - A PILOT'S LIFE - CHAPTER 2

SIMBITWORLD - A PILOT'S LIFE - CHAPTER 2

While the first version wasn't bad I found myself using it very infrequently. I had some issues with it that just made me avoid using it however Chapter 2 has learned valuable lessons from their original product and made this version what I was looking for. Much better interface, a shop that works and a much stronger online community system. If you are looking to put meaning in your flights this is it. I run a large Virtual Airline and I still use Pilot's Life in conjunction with it to have the best of both online and offline pilot career interaction. Great product! Highly recommend!

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FLYMEX SOFTWARE - MMMX - MEXICO CITY INTL FOR MSFS

FLYMEX SOFTWARE - MMMX - MEXICO CITY INTL FOR MSFS

Great work from this dev. I fully reviewed this airport on Twitch live stream today and gave it high marks. There are some minor issues with lack of GA and Cargo spawn points, jetways vanishing (SU5 bug probably), some Hangers are placed inside each other creating Z-Fighting and taxiway Echo is pretty bump, taxi very slow through there. Other than that the airport has extremely detailed modeling, HD texturing, animated train, nice night lighting and best of all even with all the autogen in the area and running this devs Mexico City Landmark pack my FPS stayed locked at 60 FPS where I keep it locked for smoothness purposes. It probably runs even faster. I run a i7 9900k @ 5ghz with a 3080 GPU and 32 gigs of RAM so remember this when you read my 60 FPS claim. Your FPS may differ based on hardware. I ended up buying all of FlyMex's current products of MSFS. Their other stuff is very nice too. Look forward to more Mexico airports from this dev. If this minor issues listed above this airport is a 5 Star rated airport for me.

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RWY26 SIMULATIONS - KMIA MIAMI INTL. AIRPORT XP11

RWY26 SIMULATIONS - KMIA MIAMI INTL. AIRPORT XP11

The terminal is well built and nice PBR textures cover it. The ground texture work is very well done and also includes PBR. The airport is good on performance. However, as a long time X-Plane user and scenery developer myself I have to knock 2 stars off for this X-Plane version because the developer did two major things wrong and one minor gripe. There is ZERO AI logic programmed into this airport. That means no Taxi Routing and no gate assignments. Without these things AI traffic and ATC programs that rely on this information (such as Pilot2ATC) cannot function. This is considered a BASIC and REQUIRED function of a payware airports in X-Plane. The 2nd thing I am knocking off a star for is the developer uses facades far to much on buildings INSIDE the airports perimeter. All buildings inside an airport perimeter should be custom 3D modeled and textured objects, no low quality facades. The minor gripe is lack of ground decals such as taxi markings denoting which runways are ahead and what taxi route you are on. KMIA has these markings in spades all over the airport. These things need to be corrected to bring this airport up to a 5 star rating for me personally. This isn't P3D. X-Plane operates differently and the developer needs to adjust for these differences. Overall an okay product that could have been a super win if not for these problems listed.

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TOGA PROJECTS - ENVTEX FSX P3D

TOGA PROJECTS - ENVTEX FSX P3D

I was on the fence about getting this because I already had all of PFPX's packages for visual FX and I have REX 4 Direct and AS2016+ASCA for sky and clouds. I finally gave in, given that this product can work with ASCA to enhance it. I was not disappointed in the results. I even prefer their contrails, rain and snow FX to PFPX's. I also switched over to their water textures from REX Direct and wave animations. I don't use their shaders as I use PTA but that's the great thing about this product; They use PTA too and so gave you the option to turn off their shaders in the installer. Colors on the sky textures look amazing. Not a fan of the clouds. I'll stay with ASCA Art clouds but those sky textures cannot be beat. Highly recommend this if you want your sim to look beautiful.

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MYTRAFFIC 6 FSX+FSXSE+P3D

MYTRAFFIC 6 FSX+FSXSE+P3D

An excellent traffic add-on that does require a little more manual installing than should be necessary. Not everyone has spent hours under the hood of the simulator to figure out all the bells in whistles. Thankfully there is a good enough guide PDF that comes with this to help you get it installed. It took me about 5 minutes to get it up and running and tons of traffic spawns in everywhere. Note; if you don't want your performance trashed be sure you use an AI traffic limiter to force FSX/P3D to only spawn so many craft in. I use a value of 80 in Pete Dowson's FSUIPC4 and it works great. Smooth frame rates and plenty of traffic even inside the PMDG 737NGX. The people giving this product 1 star are probably those who skipped the PDF instructions and just dove right in. Look before you leap folks.

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CIELOSIM - KJAX JACKSONVILLE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT FSX P3D

CIELOSIM - KJAX JACKSONVILLE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT FSX P3D

A solid effort with a few flaws. Trees around the airport are not Season aware and stay in summer mode all year round. The orthographic overlay scenery is also eternally locked into summer colors. It really doesn't take much effort to give your airport 4 season textures in this day and age of airport design work. The jetways are currently broken and do not move as well but they are aware of this and working on a fix. Concrete and asphalt colors are off in places but this is minor. VAS friendly and on my system I have great frame rates and smoothness. The 3D object modeling is gorgeous. Night lighting at this airport looks great. This is worth the cash.

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SXAIRPORTDESIGN - NASHVILLE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT KBNA FSX P3D

SXAIRPORTDESIGN - NASHVILLE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT KBNA FSX P3D

I have KORF-Norfolk and KPNS-Pensacola from SXAD and was happy with those offerings. In their latest airport, KBNA-Nashville, SXAD has stepped up their game in quality without sacrificing great performance. The 3D modeling and custom ground polygon work look solid and the airport has sufficient night lighting. The Ultimate Traffic 2.0 AI perform well there so other AI packages should work good as well for those that like having AI Traffic on. If I had any complaints it would be the lack of dirt and grime at the airport. There should be far more skids marks, dirt and oil stains around the airport. One only need look at a Google Map satellite image to see this airport is dirty just like most major airports. Small details like this is what really makes and airport pop. I am also not a fan of airports that require me to use an external config program to setup what seasonal textures to use at the airport. FSX and P3D are more than capable of doing this automatically with a little extra know how in airport design. This is something SXAD should strive to achieve in future products. Overall, a great new US airport that is worth the price of admission! Pick up a copy today!

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