April 2009 Unedited Screenshot Contest Winners

[Ludo62]

Visual Flight London
Reviewed by Ludo Lambrechts



Up until Visual Flight released their London scenery add-on, I have always found London to be plain and not very accurately recreated in the FS2004 world. Visual Flight however has changed my opinions about that, now that I have the Visual Flight London scenery installed in the sim. Visual Flight has created an ultimate recreation of the city of London. I have visited London many times and I can say that the Visual Flight London scenery looks the same as it does in real life.

Visual Flight London has great detail, and has clearly had much time and effort put into it. The team from Visual Flight has spent many hours on making these buildings, when you look at them you see that every little detail has been put in, the textures are perfect, and the designers have taken the time to optimize the buildings for users with various computer strengths to use. Visual Flight has also ensured that all buildings show up in their correct locations in real life. All of the major buildings were included by Visual Flight, and even not so famous buildings were created along with new autogen buildings specific to London. All of the bridges along the Thames River have been included as well, and the quality of them is just breathtaking. This scenery carries amazing detail, and it is clear that much time has been spent putting this scenery together.



Another feature which Visual Flight included which adds to the experience of feeling as if you’re actually in London, England is the AI boats. These boats are sailing along the Thames River just as they would do in real life. These boats are beautifully detailed and are amazing to look at. These boats do a great job at making the Thames River seem as busy as it is outside the FS2004 simulator.

Visual Flight London comes with a beautiful upgrade for London City Airport (LCY). This airport upgrade is friendly to your frame rates and is highly and accurately detailed. Some people however might already have the UK2000 package which includes the London City Airport. Instead of having to uninstall your whole UK2000 package, Visual Flight has created an option within the installer which allows you to have the scenery installed so that the UK2000 scenery is installed into the London scenery. This is a great feature included with this scenery as often one of the problems with payware scenery add-ons is that they don’t mix well with other scenery add-ons. With Visual Flight London you have the power to choose what you use.

Everything on this add-on looks great and is highly-detailed but as with every add-on you have to think about the frame rates you get with it. I have found that although not the nicest on your frame rates, Visual Flight London performs better than the default London scenery included by Microsoft. This scenery also has a couple of good tips and recommendations included in the download, on how to improve your frame rates, and loading time. I tried a couple of these changes and didn’t see much detail go down but the frame rates did improve by quite a bit. Some of these tips included not installing the AI boats, or turning off the shadows. Visual Flight has put an amazing effort forth in creating scenery that looks good, and has good frame rates.



Visual Flight London is a great scenery add-on for everyone who isn’t shy of flying in a city environment. It is great value for its low price of £19.99 considering that for other sceneries which have trouble keeping up with this product’s quality you could be paying well over £34.99. This scenery includes almost every building in London, even the ones with little fame have been included, and make this scenery a great add-on which is well worth its money. Visual Flight has done an amazing job at accomplishing a task which no one else has done before, and that’s creating a highly realistic add-on for the London scenery. I would recommend this scenery to everyone and would give this scenery enhancement the score of 9.5 out of 10. Great work on a great scenery enhancement Visual Flight!


Ludo Lambrechts
Administrator at Canadian Pilots

[boxcar]

9.5 out of 10 ... that is saying a lot.

The painstaking & exacting detail of this package makes it quite attractive to this artist, as well.

Great review, Ludo! Thoroghly enjoyed reading it, my friend.

~Dwayne~

[The Top Gun]

9.5 out of 10 is a great score. VF London does sound really good the way that you put it.
You seem to have been busy the last couple of days as you've posted two reviews just recently.