XPlane: Aerosoft Frankfurt XP Review

 

Just 1 month ago Aersoft released their new Frankfurt scenery also for XPlane 11, it was previously only available for FSX and P3D. If you want to fly to Germanys biggest airport you have to pay around 30 Euros or 35 US Dollars. Is it worth it ? Yes it is! But why ? This review will give you an overview about the new scenery.

 

What is included?

 

The scenery includes the whole Frankfurt Airport, with all terminals, hangars and a lot of surroundings, for example the Sheraton Hotel or the German Autobahn also with modelled signs.

Furthermore the scenery comes with custom 3D cars, to enhance the immersion while you are flying over the car parks. The scenery uses the Auto Gate plugin to offer full immersion, with the plugin the marshals at the parking positions get animated and also the jetways are animated. Also the scenery uses all of the new XPlane 11 ground vehicles, because of this the whole airport looks alive and its more then just an overlay of textures. A special feature is that all 3D buildings are modelled with the real construction drawings so every building has the real scale, everybody who already visited Frankfurt Airport should appreciate that.

 

How does it look ?

 

The whole airport looks stunning. As well as a lot of the surroundings, the Squaire (the huge building next to the aiport) looks great and the developers put a lot of effort into the details. You can find signs on almost every building for example the Hilton Hotel or the Sheraton Hotel. Also the Autobahn (the German highway) is modelled, it includes the streets and also original signs. Little things like that enhance the immersion while you are at the airport or are flying in this area. But more importantly the textures at the actual airport are mostly of high quality, however the roof textures are not as sharp and not as good as the rest of the scenery. Every logo is located at the right place, for example on the big fuel tanks or on the buses which are located all over the airport. Due to the fact that Frankfurt is Lufthansa´s base you will find the their planes all over the airport, also you will find Lufthansa´s First Class Terminal, their cargo buildings and also their Lufthansa Technik building where all the maintenance happens. But if this is not enough for you, you should see the airport in the dark. Due to the huge size of the airport and the very good lightening the airport looks stunning from above and from the ground. But there is also something negative to mention, I talked about this already, I just don´t like the glass textures, in comparison to the rest of the airport they just look dated. In conclusion the airport textures are mostley of a very high standard.

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How is the performance ?

 

I was surprised how well the scenery performed on my PC. I only tested the Frankfurt scenery on 1 Setup (Windows 10 – 16GB Ram – i7 2600 Core – GTX1050Ti) and everything performed well without any problems. The whole setup didn´t struggle on medium to high settings during any phase of flight. On the ground it performed with around 40fps. I havent had any problems with the software at all.

 

Conclusion

 

There is not much negative to say about the Frankfurt scenery by Aerosoft, the only complains I have are low resolution roof textures and dated glass textures. And I couldn´t find a MD11 until now, this would be the iceing on the cake. Otherwise this airport might be one of if not the best payware scenery out there. With all the ground traffic it looks alive and it just feels like the biggest German airport. You will find a lot of static aircraft and a lot of A380s and the whole scenery is just immersive. This is why the scenery is worth 30Euros and you should try it out! But be aware taxi times might be long.

                                                                                                                              Jan Birkner