Four images from Kastrups terminal C. There are plenty of detail, and the animation makes the people move towards the gate when you taxi to the gate. The guidance also works, even if its not the AGNIS/PAPA or the SafeGate system as on the real Kastrup. The newer A- and B terminals. Static aircraft and ground objects gives a living image of Kastrup, even though they bring down the frame rates a bit. Even the newly build Departure building is featured, and it is actually possible to Slew into it. The question will be why you should do that... A few images of Kastrup by dark. FS 2000 really gives the opportunity to produce very nice night-sceneries, and this tradition Wilco follows up on. One difference from many other sceneries, is Tegel terminal, with a pale rust red shade. This gives a more realistic impression than the poster-red color that are most common. London Gatwick with static objects.

A few years ago, Wilco Publishing published the first version of Airport 2000. It became an instant success, which put a whole new standard to how airports should look in Flight Simulator.

Patric Moreau have looked into the new Volume 3, and he was both fascinated and troubled of the scenery that contains among others, Copenhagen airport Kastrup.

It feels like its no middle ground for Wilco Publishing, when they now ships Volume 3 of Airport 2000. One year ago they got quite harsh critics for Volume 2 that proved to contain a quite large amount of bugs. Sluggishness and low frame rates made the critics rule down the product, and it feels that Wilco couldn´t afford to make the same mistake twice.

Unfortunately it seems that Volume 3 is very much like Volume 2 regarding low frame rates and stutter.
Those hoping for a scenery with high frame rates and no stuttering, will be disappointed, but it is a beautiful and well done scenery just as its predecessor.

In some way it is symptomatic, it feels even when doing the install. I choose Full Installation, and even though I have a 900Mhz CPU the installation takes nearly 15 minutes to complete. Now fortunately the installer gives you the opportunity to select individual components during installation, that way you can select specific airport and/or adventures and panels.

Volume 3 is particularly interesting for us Scandinavians, because it contains Kastrup airport. It is actually luxury that one of the bigger add-on producers chooses to make such a "remote" airport as Copenhagen. They could easily have chosen airports like Tokyo, Sydney or Las Vegas, just to mention a few of the big ones.

As soon as the installation is complete I boot up FS, and place myself on Kastrup prepared for the big sightseeing tour. All the important buildings are there, with lots of detail. There is plenty of taxiing signs and lines, terminals and gates looks mostly as they do in reality. The scenery features precisely the "touch" as you would expect from such a scenery, with moving gates and guidance system. But I do not understand what type of guidance system they have tried to make, because its neither AGNIS/PAPA or an SafeDock (as there is in real world) but something in between. There is also plenty of static and dynamic aircrafts, but here Wilco could have been a little more accurate… The dynamic aircrafts has somewhat great ability to collide with me, and doesn't the Kastrup-scenery contain just a little too few SAS planes? This is in fact the SAS main hub… And they are painted in SAS old livery, which looks a little funny on the 737NG aircrafts.

I sense straight away that everything moves slower than usual, one quick tap on SHIFT+Z says it all. Around the terminals and the gates, my frame rates take a deep dive down to 5-6 per second. This is not at all very funny, but the important part is that frame rates are high on the runways.

I place myself on threshold of RW 12, so that I have the terminal building partly visible to my left. With all Display Options on max, I end up with 9 frames per second. I lower the Overall Image Quality to four (about 50% of full), and the scenery delivers 20 frames. This is in fact an OK level, even though quite a lot of the surrounding terrain is left out.

I perform a similar test around the terminal area. 6,5 frames on max, and 19,5 frames with overall image quality set on 4. To my big surprise the gates and guidance systems doesn't disappear. This is actually good work by Wilco, for the reason that most people wants to keep the gates and the guidance system even when running low complexity.

The overall feel is that Airport 2000 vol. 3 runs significantly slower than other sceneries. I therefore decide to do a test between the different commercial sceneries, with complexity set to maximum.

Product	Position	Frame Rates
LTU 2001	EDDL 05R	18,5
German Airports 3	EDDH 23	17,5
Real Airports	LSZH 28	15,3
German Airports 1	EDDM 08R	20,5
Average		17,95
Airport 2000 vol 3	EKCH 12	9,0

As you can see from this list, Airport 2000 vol. 3 gives half the frame rates as the other sceneries. On the other hand, the effect of lowering the display complexity is pretty big, and as a comparison I can mention that German Airports EDDM (the one with the highest score) gave 28,5 frames with overall image quality set to 4, where as EKCH approximately doubles with 19,5.

Volume 3 looks as if it's most suitable for those with more powerful machines. On the box, Wilco has stated a 400Mhz processor with 64Mb of RAM as minimum requirements. (This is ridiculous Wilco). I myself fly in FS with three computers linked together by a network with WideView, and the weakest of my computers are in fact a 400Mhz with 128Mb of RAM. When I go flying from EKCH, it is so slow that it looks like you're watching a slideshow of the scenery.

Airport 2000 vol. 3 contains other than Kastrup, the European airports Paris Orly, London Gatwick and Berlin Tegel. You also get the American sceneries of San Francisco, Denver and Seattle. Without getting into too much detail about those, I will just mention that they are all made with the same great detail as Kastrup, and also have mostly the same impact on frame rates. It seems that Wilco has played a little extra with Orly, because I can find really cute features there… In one of the terminal buildings, Wilco has put in an animation, which makes a steady stream of passengers move back and forth. And on short final of runways 07 and 26 you (almost) fly into a flock of birds that suddenly flies up in the air. I also enjoy the work Wilco has done on the Tegel terminal, with a pale rust red shade instead of the shock red colour that most other sceneries use.

One thing I found frustrating in Vol.1 and 2, was the lousy panels that Wilco stubbornly put out into the packages. You might think that the panels is an extra treat that Wilco gives you, but isn't the fact that you actually pay for this? And why should you in a pay-ware scenery put up money for poor quality panels and aircrafts? Unbelievable...

In volume 3 I therefore became positively surprised, because this time Wilco has put down a little more work on their panels. The package features a Boeing 737-800, a Airbus 320 and a Dornier 328, and I must say that that the Boeing panel and the Airbus is quite good. Among other things these panels contain a slightly simplified (but fully usable) Flight Management Computer, as a sort of hybrid between Airbus FMC and Boeing FMC. The instrumentation is also quite advanced featuring navigational displays that are not limited only to Arc/Rose functions in HSI but also Map and Plan. Of course these panels look simple compared to Wilco´s own Pilot In command, but they are actually of fairly good quality. If I got my hands on these panels two years ago, I would have found them amazing.

As a conclusion I will say that Airport 2000 Volume 3 is a nice product, which I will say if you have a computer with high specs. It is without doubt the best done of all the three volumes, and with that in mind that it contains Copenhagens Kastrup airport I think its worth recommending. The sceneries would have been good enough for 8 controltowers, but with the low frame rates in mind, the score goes down quite a bit. The panels and adventures is of such good quality they in my mind do not affect the overall score in a negative way. The final score is 6 controltowers and 64%.

© Patric Moreau Assistant Editor, FlightSim.No

To English by: Arnfinn Trones Flightsim.no

SCORE Test system 64 % AMD Athlon Thunderbird 900 mhz GeForce 2MX 32MB 256MB RAM

 

At RW12, Volume 3 only produces 9 frames with the sliders set to max.	With Overall Image Quality 4, frame rates increase to 20.
It is particularly sluggish in the areas around terminals and gates. Here we only get 6,5 frames with all sliders set to max.	With Overall Image Qualty 4, frames improve to 19,5. Interesting to note, is that gates and docking guidance remain and this is good work.
San Francisco International (KSFO)	Denver International (KDEN)
Paris Orly.	A cute animation at Orly. People move back and forth in the terminal - who wants to miss their virtual connection?
All of a sudden, a flock of birds flies up in the air on short final on Orly.	To this volume, Wilco has put down a little more work on the panels. Here we have a Boeing 737NG, with the FMC opened in a window.

25.05.2001

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