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Orbx Kern Valley (L05): The FSElite Review

Developer
Orbx
Publisher
Orbx
Price
$24.95AUD
Version
1.00
Provided by
Orbx
Sponsored by:

SimMarket
We want to ensure that you make the most informed decision you can. We will always put the Simmer First as per our Community Charter. When reading, please use of Review Guidelines to help you understand how we review products.

When Orbx revealed they were working on Kern Valley, I personally had no idea what airfield it was or why anyone would be interested in it. As the previews rolled in, my attitude towards the tiny Southern California airport had changed. It looks pretty good, is set in a nice location, and had complimentary scenery around it. As soon as it was out, I went ahead and downloaded it and have been enjoying some awesome GA flying ever since.

What’s important to remember with L05 Kern Valley is that this is more of an expansion of Orbx’s fantastic FTX Southern California. You need the aforementioned scenery to be able to use Kern Valley, which already begins to add up in terms of cost. If you’re interested in the region, then I recommend you purchase SOCAL, fly around and enjoy that before you invest any further. You’re probably thinking, “but why?” The answer is simply because Orbx have designed to integrate into the region. Everything from the vector to the landclass has been designed so that the airport fits in perfectly. Keep Reading

Aerosoft Napoli X: The FSElite Review

Developer
MK Studios
Publisher
Aerosoft
Price
€25.16 (Inc VAT)
Version
1.00
Provided by
Aerosoft
Sponsored by:

SimMarket
We want to ensure that you make the most informed decision you can. We will always put the Simmer First as per our Community Charter. When reading, please use of Review Guidelines to help you understand how we review products.

MK Studios’ latest release of Naples International is a development that I’ve been following for quite some time. Originally, I only become aware of it when I was investigating their Madeira Evolution product on Facebook. Needless to say, Italy has had quite a prolific streak of scenery releases over the past few months and Naples X, published by Aerosoft, makes a fantastic addition to your Italian scenery library. Come to think of it, looking at my scenery library, I’ve now got every corner of Italy covered.

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Aerosoft Roma-Ciampino X: The FSElite Review

Developer
Italian Airport Developers
Publisher
Aerosoft
Price
€23.53
Version
1.00
Provided by
Aerosoft
Sponsored by:

SimMarket
We want to ensure that you make the most informed decision you can. We will always put the Simmer First as per our Community Charter. When reading, please use of Review Guidelines to help you understand how we review products.

I remember that just a few years ago, the flight sim world lacked any decent payware Italian airports. We had some airports covered, including Bologna and Bergamo – and while they were great, they are some of the lesser used and known airports in the region. A few years ago, the awful DreamFlight Studio Rome Fiumicino was released. While it is a popular airport, the scenery was dreadful. Fast forward a few years, and Italy is now full of high quality payware products. Naples was recently released, Milan is now fully covered and finally, and with the release of Aerosoft’s Rome Ciampino X, Rome airports are now complete.

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Turbulent Design’s Idaho Regional Airport (KIDA): The FSElite Review

Developer
Turbulent Designs
Publisher
Turbulent Designs
Price
£23.99
Version
1.0.2
Provided by
Turbulent Designs
Sponsored by:

SimMarket
We want to ensure that you make the most informed decision you can. We will always put the Simmer First as per our Community Charter. When reading, please use of Review Guidelines to help you understand how we review products.

Turbulent Designs is back again with a brand new airport. Just a few weeks after the release of their impressive MBS International Airport, the team have delivered a similarly sized airport, but this time in Idaho. Idaho Falls Regional Airport has all the makings to be a great add-on for the community: plenty of GA flying and a nice selection of regional airlines serving a couple of nice destinations. Further to that, Idaho is a relatively under-appreciated area in the flight sim world, so it’s nice to see Turbulent Designs giving the state the attention it deserves.

Idaho Falls Regional airport is just a few miles away from the business district of Idaho, so the airport sees a lot of business travellers pass through. The airport is perfect for business jets with the small terminal building. Because of the size, yet again, Turbulent Designs has been allowed to go into detail with each structure. As we have come to expect now, the team has really delivered.

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FlightSimCon 2017: The FSElite Review

Last year when FSElite started, I gave a lot of feedback on how FlightSimCon 2016 was covered. In summary: I wasn’t impressed. News sites, developers and publishers all fell short of really informing the community outside of the convention about what was going on with their products. It left a pretty bitter taste in my mouth and I wanted to do something more. As a result, the FSElite team was in full force at the conference this year in Bradley. There’s plenty of lessons we’ve learned about covering future conferences, but feel we made a decent effort so far. We’re still uploading some of our video interviews, and I’m still writing up some impression articles. During the conference, we did our best at live blogging – though there are some lessons learned here for us – and as soon as we saw some breaking news, we posted it within minutes. Our Level-D 757 article was a great example. More importantly, however, allow me to share my thoughts on whether the 7500 mile round trip was worth it.

Let’s start with the pre-communication of the event itself. For months, the conference organisers did a great job at teasing information about the event: what to expect, announcing new exhibitors and more. All of this was done to hype up the event and build interest – all of which it did well. The more developers committed to the event, the more the community committed as well. Of course, it’s not just the developers, it is also the cockpit builders, the virtual ATC communities and more that all help to make FlightSimCon feel more than just a place for developers to promote their products.

The team at FlightSimCon also did a grand job at providing detailed information about what to expect at the event – which mostly came from the official app, Whova. When we first tried the app, it was obvious why Whova would be used during the conference. It opened up the possibility of easily conversing with people attending the event, setting up quizzes and games, and even allowed you to scan the hundreds of business cards you undoubtedly picked up. It’s a super easy app that kept everyone up to date with the happenings and a great way to continue that conversation post-FlightSimCon. I hope they will continue to use Whova in the future, and that other developers start to utilise it more. Keep Reading

Turbulent Design’s MBS International Airport (KMBS): The FSElite Review

Developer
Turbulent Designs
Publisher
Turbulent Designs
Price
£23.99
Version
1.0
Provided by
Turbulent Designs
Sponsored by:

SimMarket
We want to ensure that you make the most informed decision you can. We will always put the Simmer First as per our Community Charter. When reading, please use of Review Guidelines to help you understand how we review products.

Turbulent Designs is a relatively new face in the world of Flight Sim developers, but the team have been around for many years. Through the years, Turbulent Designs has built their team, and always increasing their ambition to create highly detailed and interesting airports for the sim. Their previous project L35 Big Bear City Airport was a favourite of ours, so when they announced they were working on an international airport, we were pretty excited. Despite MBS International Airport not being the largest, the idea of a commercial aviation terminal being created by Turbulent Designs was an exciting prospect.

The airport itself is located just outside of Saginaw, Michigan in the USA and serves a range of commercial, general aviation and police activities. The single main terminal building offers passengers a simple experience from the car to the plane, and most gates are equipped with jetways. These little regional airports are perfect for aircraft such as the CRJ and the 717, as they offer plenty of city-to-city route pairings at a high frequency. Sadly for the airport, passenger numbers have started falling as a result of nearby airports, which has meant airlines are slowing down their operation. Whilst it doesn’t impact the simmer, if you want to fly realistic routes, then your choice as a commercial pilot is rather limited. On the other hand, those who enjoy private jets or general aviation will be well served by MBS as it has plenty of parking and hanger space.

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Digital Design Leipzig (EDDP): The FSElite Review

Developer
Digital Design
Publisher
SimMarket
Price
$25
Version
1.0
Provided by
Digital Design
Sponsored by:

SimMarket
We want to ensure that you make the most informed decision you can. We will always put the Simmer First as per our Community Charter. When reading, please use of Review Guidelines to help you understand how we review products.

Digital Design, the scenery developers who brought us St Petersburg and Salzburg, have now come along with their next scenery: Leipzig, which is the 13th largest airport in Germany for passenger numbers and the second largest for cargo. The airport is located in East Germany, serving the cities of both Leipzig and Halle. In terms of passengers, the airport is served mainly by low-cost airlines such as Thomas Cook, SunExpress and Eurowings; other airlines including Lufthansa and Austrian opt to fly to Frankfurt and Vienna. Although passengers are important to the airport, Leipzig currently is the 5th largest cargo handler in Europe, handling more than 850,000 tons of cargo in 2015. The airport serves cargo airlines such as Polar Cargo, UPS and even NATO. This provides for a huge route variety across the globe catering to all divisions of aviation: commercial, cargo and military.

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Aerosoft Trondheim Vaernes: The FSElite Review

Developer
Aerosoft
Publisher
Aerosoft
Price
EUR 15,08
Version
2.02
Provided by
Sponsored by:

SimMarket
We want to ensure that you make the most informed decision you can. We will always put the Simmer First as per our Community Charter. When reading, please use of Review Guidelines to help you understand how we review products.

You may have read a small piece I did a while ago on Airports of Norway, and one of my most memorable sim experiences I ever had coming in to land over the sea to Trondheim. Back then I was talking about a great piece of freeware, but this time we’re gonna focus on Aerosofts recently released Tronheim Vaernes X V2. Trondheim is a medium sized, international airport serving the city of Trondheim. Even though the airport itself is actually located outside of the city and municipality (Vaernes). It’s the 4th biggest airport in Norway and its main operators are SAS, Norwegian and Wideroe. The Royal Norwegian Air Force also has some facilities on the airport.

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LatinVFR Barcelona (LEBL): The FSElite Review

Developer
LatinVFR
Publisher
LatinVFR
Price
22.00 Euro (+Tax)
Version
1.3
Provided by
LatinVFR
Sponsored by:

SimMarket
We want to ensure that you make the most informed decision you can. We will always put the Simmer First as per our Community Charter. When reading, please use of Review Guidelines to help you understand how we review products.

Barcelona almost seems like a sore subject within the Flight Sim community. Aerosoft did a good job a few years ago, but it was soon outdated and didn’t perform well enough for modern machines. Then suddenly, THREE developers all announced / released / previewed their version of Barcelona. We’ve also reviewed JustSim’s Barcelona, and now it’s time for LatinVFR’s version to be put under the microscope. We won’t be comparing in this review as we don’t feel it’s a fair reflection on either developer’s work.

Barcelona is an important airport for many reasons. Mostly due to being one of the largest Spanish airports and serving a wide range of airlines and destinations. It’s an exciting coastal airport which attracts visitors from all over the world. Serving over 44 million passengers a year, it’s always busy and making use of the various taxiways and runways. Further to that, the approach itself flies right over the city making for some stunning views along the way.

LatinVFR are known for taking on large airports and bringing them to a flight simulator. Their commitment has always been to provide a rich experience and to cover as much as possible. Barcelona is no different as you’re downloading the airport as well as the city itself complete with autogen, hand placed buildings and even the Sagrada Família. It feels like a complete package as once you download, you will have access to a manual with detailed instructions, a simple to use installer and a configuration tool. I found that the tool was pretty basic only allowing you to change a few things – none of which really impacted the overall performance of the scenery. More on that later.

Having traveled to Barcelona many times, I am very familiar with the airport, the approach and the surrounding area. LatinVFR have done an excellent job at creating the city of Barcelona. The buildings, the colouring and the layout of the city look fantastic and you can see the dedication the team have really made to ensure that this element feels right. If you look into the details, you’ll see swimming pools, roads and little houses, all of which are nicely modelled. Keep Reading

BlackBox Simulation Cessna L19 Bird Dog: The FSElite Review

Developer
BlackBox Simulations
Publisher
BlackBox Simulations
Price
15.99 Euro
Version
1.1.0
Provided by
BlackBox Simulation
Sponsored by:

SimMarket
We want to ensure that you make the most informed decision you can. We will always put the Simmer First as per our Community Charter. When reading, please use of Review Guidelines to help you understand how we review products.

Let’s first address the elephant in the room: I’m not a huge fan of the BlackBox Simulations Airbus series. I’ve personally had problems with it, but I know that many people have enjoyed the simulation. It certainly caught the community by surprise when people saw that the developers behind the “prologue” series were working on other products at the same time, but rest assured that this aircraft was a side project which hasn’t impacted the Airbus series.   You can imagine then my surprise when BlackBox Simulations asked me to review their recent aircraft, the Cessna L-19C ‘Bird Dog’, and honestly, my expectations weren’t very high. You can then imagine my even greater surprise when I found myself having a relatively good time with their latest entry into the simulation world.

It’s no secret that previous projects from the team have been very much like Marmite: either love it or hate it. I of course had the same fear for the GA aircraft BBS have suddenly turned towards. However, we shouldn’t let previous perceptions impact this aircraft. So clear your head and let me explain why actually, the plane is pretty damn good.

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