Lord Howe Island
By Aerosoft When Lord Howe was released, it was really a roaring success. Those high, craggy cliffs and the shots of the now-famous newspaper irresistibly attracted simmers looking to relax. Now, Lord Howe has become a favorite of the FS community, and screenshot forums are flooded with pics of the place.
The Island itself is located some 600 kilometers east of Australia. Since its discover in 1788, Lord Howe (named for Admiral Richard Howe) has become known for its distinct beauty and in 1982, the island officially became a World Heritage Site. In 1974, the airport was built. YLHI has a 2900' runway made of concrete. Keep in mind on approach to this airport that it’s the only one for a long way around. If you make the two hour trip, you’d better make sure you’re in a nice twin engine turbine; turbine so that it doesn’t take all day, and twin because it makes you feel better. Lord Howe Island is really one of the beautiful places in our world. It embodies a tropical feel, but it could just as easily be seen somewhere up by Greenland. The island is dominated by two towering cliffs of mottled green and grey texture, and off the coast of the island you can see a jagged prominence of rock. I like to imagine it in a storm; waves tossing the boat harbor, and the wind dashing sleet and rain against the ancient cliffs. Well, in the simulator, weather kills my frame rates, the water is flat, and you’ll never see rain bouncing off a rock. So, I’ll keep the tropical feel, personally.
The airport can be summed up quite easily: cosy. There’s just the one runway with turn around spots at the end, and only one little parking space. Next to the parking lies the terminal, which is a medium sized white building. I looked for some pictures of the real airport, and the simulated airport looks just like the real thing. In the back, there are some cars parked on the circular paved drive, probably waiting to pick up the people in front. As with a lot of Aerosoft products, the people are a large part of the addon. Well, here we get to part of what made Lord Howe Island such a success; kicking back and reading the Sunday paper. Now I couldn’t quite discern what paper it was, but the young guy reading it was only interested in the crossword puzzles. There’s quite a few people lying around, some waiting to board a flight and others making a tearful goodbye. A white picket fence separates the building from the tarmac, and it’s amazing how easy it is on frames. The fence and airport is loaded with polys I imagine, but the scenery is probably even smoother than default.
Flying around the island, there’s a nice little harbor with quite a few of the default boats floating there. The whole area is photoreal, including the water. It’s interesting to see this, as the waves stop when they hit the Aerosoft water. Going over to the cliffs, you can see where the terrain mesh stops and where the terrain building starts. It’s not really terrain, as you can fly through the cliffs, but you can see the line where the two meet. They look beautiful from a little bit away, but when you fly close to them it’s really blurry. However, you’re not going to spend a lot of time hovering around the cliffs so I’ll forgive them. I was a tad disappointed I couldn’t take a heli and land there, though... On the other side of the cliffs, there are some neat little bays and inlets, one with a small ship in it. Like I said, the whole area is photoreal and the terrain detail is quite nice. One thing I missed is that there is no environment sound. It would be nice to here some wind whistling around the jagged rocks, or to have the call of seabirds near the pier. The island feels sort of dead without any birds or sound.
On a different note, there is a conflict between FTX and Lord Howe. Because both replace the stock autogen descriptions, they can’t work together. However, there are fixes for this if you look on the Sim Outhouse forums. The issue that I noticed with FTX and LHI was that holes appeared in the cliffs. When I installed a home-made patch and shut off FTX, they went away.
I think Aerosoft did another splendid job on Lord Howe, but I’ve seen better from them. The autogen it comes with is marvelous, and there’s detail to spare. However, it’s really a small island, and once you’ve flown around there a couple of times it loses its appeal. The photoreal textures are excellent, but over by the little town I noticed a bit lower quality in textures. There are some issues, such as the pier disappearing into the water, and of course the cliffs not being solid. The airport is beautifully portrayed, and when I compared it to real photos, hardly an object was missing; the skylights in the terminal, the weather station, and the tiles that make up the tarmac. There is a set of high definition textures for the runway also, but they are a tad harder on performance. Also, when you look at the runway from a low angle, the textures look quite bad, as if they’ve sort of blurred into each other. So, I think Aerosoft’s Lord Howe Island is definitely acceptable, but I think they could have done better. Still, I’d recommend it to anyone, whether they have a high end PC or integrated graphics.
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