Welcome to the FSElite Developer Month. Our theme this year is about delivering for the community and part of that is delivering great content to you all. As part of our commitment to you all, we’re pleased to announced Developer Month – a month themed solely around celebrating our great development community. Over the course of March, you’ll be treated to some behind the scene looks at some of our favourite developers, stories from the FSElite team, exclusive interviews and more.
Anyone that knows me knows that I make no secret about my absolute love for FTX Norway. This region is incredibly beautiful and in my opinion one of the best addons from Orbx. I just love how it’s done. The ground textures are beautiful. The lakes and mountains around it look amazing. The weather in Norway is generally amazing. Wether it’s a bright sunny day or a cold snowy one, Norway looks amazing.
But when I fly here I like to have some nice looking (not default) airports. There are a number of payware options for a few Norwegian airports, but there is also great a freeware option. I want to tell you about my love for Airports of Norway (AoN).
AoN is a package with freeware scenery for almost all airports of Norway. Big or small doesn’t matter. AoN covers a total of 41 airports in this region and is made by Andrew Thomsen and other contributors.
So what is AoN? AoN is almost all Norwegian airports in absolute amazing detail. There are custom objects with custom textures. There are custom effects and animations. And some airports even have photo real ground scenery. It looks really amazing. The quality is right on par with some payware sceneries. This really stands out to me because again: it is all for free and it covers a huge number of airports. It’s also regularly updated if things change or need to be fixed.
The team behind this freeware package put a tremendous amount of effort and time into this and it pays off. Because of the huge coverage of AoN, you will keep finding new airports that you can go to. And every time I went to a new airport, big or small, I was surprised by how detailed it looks. I have bought only two payware addons in Norway and for the rest AoN does the job. It looks great, it is incredibly optimised and performs really really well. I can really recommend this region for anyone. Whether you’re into flying jets or GA, AoN has got you covered.
As I said, there are a lot of amazing airports in this package. But my favorite Airport would probably be Trondheim, Værnes. I discovered this airport some time ago doing a tour of Norway with a friend of mine. We had both recently purchased the Q400 and decided Norway was a nice region to fly in. We started down in the South and worked our way to the North. Eventually we came to Trondheim. Trondheim is a medium sized airport right next to a very big lake surrounded with hills and mountains. In between them, lots of small and big towns. Flying here was amazing. In the distance you could see smoke coming from chimneys as well as the approach lights over the water. Once landed in Trondheim, we were amazed by its beauty. An amazing airport, hugely detailed with photoscenery. AoN really amazed me back then and continues to do so to this day.
Airports of Norway is available for both FSX and Prepar3d from FlightSim Norway (https://flightsimnorway.com). Other great freeware packages that are also available from this site are AI Ships and Traffic, Airports of Northern Norway, Grass fields of Norway, Cities and Landmarks (Norway), Norway Bridges, Norway GA Fields (many GA fields are also covered in AoN base), Norway Mesh X, Norway Photo scenery and Sweden Design (AoN but then for almost all Swedish airports).
