Visual Flight London. Published by Visual Flight. Reviewed by George Markham.
All versions of Microsoft's Flight Simulator that I have enjoyed since FS5 in 1993 to the current FS9, have done their utmost to portray London as best as possible. After New York, London was probably FS's second most important city to enhance, with a view, no doubt, of assuring Flight Simmers at the other side of the Atlantic that it also received the treatment that it deserved. FS9's London is the best to date and while the Millennium Dome and the London Eye are in their correct positions and the FS9 Patch added many missing bridges, Buckingham Palace is facing the wrong way and the Thames Barrier is missing, even though it was included in FS2002. All Flight Simmers will want to fly into London's various airports and while visiting, will want to fly over London VFR style in a small plane to view and explore all the well known sights. After all, most people want to visit London in real life, at some stage in their lifetime, and when staying there, will want to see as much as possible of such a magnificent city.
Over the years, I have visited London on business and on holidays with my wife, and have done all the usual highlights. However, I have one regret. We visited there in 1986 to celebrate our 25th Wedding Anniversary and enjoyed such shows as "Les Mis", "Chess" and "Mutiny". But, every day we passed "Her Majesty's" theatre in Haymarket where Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera" was showing and did not give it a second thought. As it was in its infancy, we did not appreciate its full potential. We never visited it and have regretted it ever since. All I have to remind us of what we missed is a subsequent CD of the original show released in 1987. It demonstrated the superb voices of Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman and all the memorable songs. Being a chorister all my life and lover of all good singing, the omission was even worse for me. Anyway, apart from that little bit of sad nostalgia, I was thrilled to get this chance of re-visiting London and to see what this reputably great enhancement for FS of that city has to offer. I'm dying to start this review to compare it to the default rendering of London by FS.
The package comes in a neat, almost square, CD jewel case with the CD inside and simple installation instructions on the back of a front and rear wrap around picture of part of London. I had to visit Visual Flight's website to find out what this package promised. I read that the scenery covers 50 sq miles of Central London from the Docklands to Battersea and beyond. It has custom 3D scenery containing more than 7500 3D objects and does not rely on autogen objects. It has detailed night lighting for buildings and landmark features. I will not give any more details here as it would only spoil what I have yet to discover as I explore the area covered.
Installation
This was relatively straightforward but during the process, I was asked 2 important questions: "Do you have VFR Photographic Scenery Vol. 1 East & South East England installed & in use?" and "Do you have VFR Terrain Vol. 1 England & Wales installed & in use? Please do not confuse VFR Terrain with other Terrain scenery packages." To both these questions, I ticked the 'No' Box. It appears that earlier versions of this scenery required both the aforementioned VFR add-ons to be installed and in use. As the default installation procedure would be to C:\Program Files\Visual Flight, I changed it to D:\FS2004\Addon Scenery. Approximately 68Mbs of my Flight Sim Partition was taken up by the relative Scenery and Texture folders for the Visual Flight London scenery and its accompanying relative Visual Flight Terrain scenery. The latter ensures that London is portrayed as accurately as possible compared to the default terrain. Apparently, in the default scenery, the course of the river Thames is not correctly followed.
Manual
The CD came with no printed manual but after the installation, many .htm files are to be found in a docs folder wherever one decides to install the scenery files. Using the Index.htm led me to the many various separate topics covered.
The Scenery
I think the best way for me to explore the city is to fly out of London City airport, which has been given a makeover in this new scenery package. As a mark of respect to the brave pilots who defended London in the Battle of Britain in 1940, I will use a Just Flight Spitfire which I got as a demo from the CD that came with the March 2005 issue of 'PC Pilot' magazine. As I fly over the city in this lovely, well portrayed, Submarine Spitfire MK1A, I expect Londoners, especially OAPs, will look upwards as they wonder what's happening when they hear the special and well remembered purr of its powerful 1060 hp Rolls Royce Merlin engine turning a 3-blade Rotol constant speed propeller.
As I said, London City Airport (EGLC) has been enhanced and looks great. Its runway appears to have been lengthened and the taxiways updated. As I sit on R28 facing west, I can see in front of me the top of the ill fated Millennium Dome and all the tall buildings - HSBC, Canary Wharf Tower, Barclays and Citygroup, around the West India Docks area. I release the brakes, apply a little power to begin moving and then, while applying right rudder to keep the torque of the Merlin engine and propeller from dragging me to the left, I gradually apply more power to get the Spitfire's tail off the ground. Then, full power and I am off on my VFR trip of discovery. I decide to circle the airport in a clockwise fashion and to my delight, when I have almost completed the turn, I see that the Thames Barrier is there with its several Nautilus Sea Shell-like structures stretching across the river. Approaching it is a Luxury Liner with many decks, the first decent ship I have seen on the Thames for a long time. Just before the Thames Barrier, on the airport side of the river, is the large Littlebrook Power Station with two tall oil tanks and blue warehouses. Belonging to it are two very tall chimneys billowing realistic moving smoke and flashing warning red lights on their tops. Another large green building nearby has the name 'Tate & Lyle' on its front and the adjoining jetty has a Tanker discharging its cargo of raw sugar, I presume, via a long grey pipe to the factory.
But, what's that on the water speeding towards me? It's a yacht and beyond it is another boat, a river cruiser and believe it or not, they are actually moving and leaving beautiful frothy wakes behind their sterns. The river cruiser has white plumes of smoke coming from its overhead exhaust. Very realistic looking indeed and all down to an option that I remember ticking when installing this scenery - AI River Traffic (for use with FS2004 only). It is courtesy of MarineScene AI Boats & Sailing Craft, a Freeware program included in the package. I found it very nice to have this additional realistic feature which I discover to be in use, perhaps a tiny bit too much, as I fly up the Thames.
I decide to throttle back to a more leisurely speed to enable me to take in all the wonderful buildings around me. Perhaps on mature reflection, I should have taken the Cessna for slower browsing but I wanted to show off my brand new resurrected Spitfire and give those Londoners below something exciting to talk about after my flypast. After all, if a chap has got 'it' - I mean a Spitfire of course - why not flaunt it. I headed over the Isle of Dogs with the Canary Wharf Tower below and spotted many tall building cranes here and there as well as the very useful Docklands Light railway. I flew on towards Tower Bridge which was nicely done. Just beyond it, I spot HMS Belfast neatly moored beside its special jetty on the left side of the river and I must add that the level of detail, guns and all, on it is excellent. On the other side, standing up amongst all the well known and easy recognisable buildings, such as The Tower of London, Tower 42, (formerly the NatWest Bank) and of course, Sir Christopher Wren’s famous St. Paul's Cathedral, I see for the first time ever, a new, tall unusual looking building, shaped like a giant fat black carrot. I later discovered that it is the Swiss Re Tower at 30, Mary Axe, and is affectionately known by Londoners as the "London Gherkin", or the "Erotic Gherkin". It was completed in 2004 and designed by Lord Foster. At present, it is London's 3rd tallest building at 180m, Canary Wharf being the 1st at 237m and Tower 42 being the 2nd at 183m. At 41 stories high, it is an environmental Skyscraper and consists of 5500 diamond and triangular glass panes. Amazing!
Further up river, I decided to explore Her Majesty's Buckingham Palace behind the Houses of Parliament at Westminster. It was well portrayed, facing in the right direction in this scenery, with the Queen Victoria Monument placed in front of it. The Mall, bounded by nice bushy trees on each side, led to Admiralty Arch beside Trafalgar Square and St. James' Park with its lake. I just had time to spot Admiral Nelson standing on top of his tall monument. Further on, I could see Hyde Park and to my extreme right, the tall unusual shaped BT Tower was prevalent with its many round shaped communications aerials placed around its upper parts. I flew on to the end of this enhanced scenery package, past the Oval Cricket grounds on the left, to Battersea Power Station, which was easily recognisable by its large rectangular buildings and 4 chimneys. I should add here that all London’s famous bridges were in place along the route of the Thames as was Cannon Street Station with a train crossing its railway bridge across the river. Many other Stations are correctly placed, as is many, many well known buildings but I'll leave you to find them yourselves if you decide to obtain this scenery. After all, part of the fun in getting new scenery is exploring it for ourselves having been given titbits from reviewers to whet our appetites.
As we have come to expect, flying after darkness has fallen, around airports and cities always adds to our flying enjoyment. Flying over London by night using the default scenery is passable but lacks lit up buildings and overall appears quite dull. But flying in this new scenery is a most wonderful experience. All the well-known and lesser-known buildings and landmarks are lit up and stand out, are more easily recognisable and made me feel that I was really there. Now, I will describe one treat that I discovered amongst the features htm file. The treat was mentioned as a "spectacular" one but I had to experiment with the time to come across it. I reset my FS date to the 5th November - date only revealed but no time given and restarted my flight from London City. I tested this many times during the evening but no treat was forthcoming. Then, I moved back to 1800 hours - no treat. But immediately I tried 1900 hours, all was revealed. Have you guessed what I witnessed? Of course you have - it was the biggest fireworks display that I have ever seen in FS scenery and appeared to cover all the London area - Brilliant! I took off in my Spitfire once again and had an enjoyable experience flying through all the 'flak'. In fact, it was so effective at times - like a direct hit, that my screen turned grey for a second while I flew through all the miniature explosions and flashes.
Conclusion
FS2004's default London scenery in an acceptable offering but this new add-on scenery is something that has to be seen to be believed as an enormous improvement to the world’s 2nd most important city. Frame Rates will come under strain on underpowered PCs but there is a htm file which helps to deal with that issue. London was portrayed as best as possible within the restrictions of various releases of FS with some of the main recognisable buildings but it now takes on a new level of excellence with this new scenery. In my view, if you like visiting London, I feel you will be thrilled with this package. (Visual Flight London is available from RC Simulations. www.rcsimulations.com).
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