Burning Blue Design has released a new airfield for Microsoft Flight Simulator. This time, the team have a crack at Popham Airfield (EGHP) in Winchester, UK. Home to the Spitfire Flying Club, this small airfield sees over 10,000 visitors each year for a variety of reasons. Alongside the flying club, the airfield sees numerous events throughout the year including the Microlight trade fair and also vintage fly-ins.
The team has recreated hundreds of 3D objects throughout giving this small airport a sense of character. Alongside the various bits of clutter is an impressive array of architecture like water towers, aircraft hangars and grain silos. All of this is accompanied by historic static aircraft and, in honour of the car and motorcycle events hosted at the airport, there is a collection of unique vehicles in the car park to find. All of the modelling and texture work has been crafted to a high standard with PBR applied to all objects.
If exploring Popham Airfield appeals to you, you can buy it from Burning Blue Design’s website for £10.95.
Features
- Over 110 custom 3D objects have been created exclusively for Popham airfield, each with full Physical Based Rendering (PBR) allowing for extremely realistic textures.
- Thousands of carefully placed stock assets, every cone, car, sign and fence has been placed in it’s correct location ensuring an atmosphere of a working airfield.
- High resolution colour corrected ground textures taken from Bing maps and manipulated for consistency and realism which far surpasses the quality of the stock Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 ground texture.
- Working custom Signal Square, which accurately shows the most suitable runway for the wind conditions.
- Dynamic smoke effects, signs and car park, which change realistically depending on the time of day.
- New control tower built in 2020.
- Numerous custom aircraft have been added around Popham to enhance the realism and better reflect actual aircraft found at the airfield:
- Ikarus C42 (AirBourne Aviation school aircraft: G-CCYR and G-CDVI)
- Spitfire F Mk.Ia
- Yakovlev Yak-52 (G-YAKI and G-YAKX – both real aircraft based at Popham)
- Yakovlev Yak-12
- De Havilland Chipmunk
- Correct AI pattern procedures and accurate taxiway and runway placement have been incorporated into the airfield.
- Key navigational landmarks in the surrounding area have been included:
- White Arrow – used by pilots to line up on the offset approach to 26
- Water Tower
- Grain Silos at Micheldever
- Polytunnels – marking the downwind leg of the 08-26 circuit
- BP and Esso fuel stations
- Starbucks (A303 North and South)
- Popham MX Track
- Test Valley Golf Course
- In honour of the car and motorcycle events hosted at Popham, the car park includes:
- 1946 Vespa scooter
- 1955 Volkswagen Transporter ‘T1’
- 1963 Austin Mini
- 1970 Porsche 911
- 1990 Mazda MX-5 ‘Mk1’
- 2017 Yamaha YZF-R3
