VFR Reviews
There's a new name in the flight simulation review world: VFR Reviews.

VFR Reviews is an independent group of Flight Sim enthusiasts who review high-profile payware aircraft, effects, scenery and environment addons for Microsoft Flight Simulator.  Because we get most our products directly from the FlightSimStore.com we are under no obligation to write a shining review just to make a developer happy.  We will cover multiple key areas in consumer consideration such as accuracy, attention to detail, performance, and of course, value for money. Towards the end of the year, we will be giving out awards to products which stand out in their own field, and also order each addon into a list of must-haves, to give the consumer on-a-budget a better idea of what addons to get first.

Watch out for VFR Reviews, giving clear, unclouded advice.

Below is our first review.

From the VFR Reviewers,

Alex Hymers, Ashton Lawson, Kevin Glover, and Milind Chidrawar

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VFR Reviews
FlyTampa’s Hong Kong Kai-Tak (VHHX)
By Ashton Lawson

FlyTampa is known for its more-than-decent scenery products, and their latest scenery for Hong Kong is no exception.

The download itself is just under 120 megabytes in size, which is fairly good considering the amount of detail and options there are.  It comes as a straight-forward installer, not zipped up in any way.  Installation couldn’t be easier, and the options available are enough to satisfy most users, since it gives people more control over what’s installed, what’s not, as well as a rough guide as to which features are potential, or definite, performance hogs.

Now, you may all know that Kai-Tak, what was Hong Kong’s previous international airport, is now closed, so FlyTampa decided to go against the times and reinstate it.  Yes, that’s right, we have Kai Tak back up and running, fully detailed, checkerboard present, guidance lights in place, basically everything that it was years ago, all restored.

The area covered is basically Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and most of the New Territories, with scenery that extends to, but doesn’t actually modify Flight Simulator’s default Hong Kong International Airport.

There are many flaws with default Hong Kong, major issues including the water class: being tropical and green as if it were in Hawaii; general land class: showing suburban terrain textures along with its matching autogen; scenery objects: too little detail and not enough key buildings, so it’s a bit of a disaster really, with the only decent scenery actually being Chek Lap Kok, which is all well and good, but when people think of Hong Kong, they want the city, not just its airport.



This is where FlyTampa steps in.  They’ve done such a good job with the place that it’s pretty hard for me to begin explaining what’s different and how it’s better, but here it goes anyway.



Hong Kong is not really an island, it’s a land mass jam-packed with buildings, highways and roads, shopping centres, various developments left right and centre, so much that it’s just unbelievable.   This scenery package has it all.  Almost every single building in the Hong Kong and Kowloon area is present in its correct location along with several key places, all modelled and textured well; almost every overpass and road is present with custom-made traffic for some of them.  When you look over Hong Kong, you don’t see the ground, you see rooftops and traffic, and that’s what you get here.



If area-based observations are your thing, then this addon’s sure to satisfy, since the different areas definitely have the right feel to them.  Seeing as each building is placed properly according to the real place, if you live there, you’ll probably be able to spot where you live.  In fact, I do know of a guy who actually did.

Remember the tropical water?  Indeed you do, well that’s gone and replaced with dark, murky, deep water, giving you a real sense of what the harbour is really like.  It’s not pretty, it ain’t nice, you wouldn’t want to swim in it, but there are things chugging along in it, and those things are various custom-made AI boats, including the Star Ferry.  Perhaps that’s not all that great a change, but once you see it, it looks just like the real Hong Kong, and that’s what this scenery is all about.







So, that’s generally how Hong Kong appears, but what about the closed, but open, airport?  Kai Tak is just like what it was in the past, fully working, fully active, fully detailed, checkerboard and all, couldn’t be any better, with installation options that allow regular AI aircraft to operate, or if you wish, custom-made static aircraft, making the airport look busy.  There’s no doubt that however you choose to install and operate this Kai Tak, it will always look complete.

One thing that makes Hong Kong so awesome is the light show at night.  The lighting is quite a sight, and whilst you can’t animate scenery textures to make the buildings perform the proper animated actions, blue-coloured light beams do rotate and shine around the city, making for a very good representation of Hong Kong at night.  When using highly-reflective night-time water, thanks to FS Water Configurator, to provide adequate lighting in the harbour, there’s probably no other city in the Flight Simulator world that could look quite as good as Hong Kong does.



To add to that, it’s also got quite good ambient lighting effects during the day in the way of shadows.  This seems odd to say, since custom scenery can’t really deal with ambient lighting on the hardware scale, but that hasn’t stopped these guys, because they’ve made the buildings darken near their lower floors as well as darkened ground in areas, thus making it seem like the city has ambient occlusion being applied, shadowing areas that would be shady, and this effect is really cool, making the area look phenomenal, despite the actual inaccuracy of the effect.  Say good-bye to the scenery shadows checkbox.  This effect, though, doesn’t always look perfect.  There are, in fact, many cases where the effect is just wrong, like at night, during early or late hours, and especially with buildings that are completely out in the open, being occluded by nothing.



No product, however, is without its flaws, as we’ve just seen in regards to the ambient occlusion effect.  Thankfully though, there actually aren’t many more other than the ones following.  The terrain textures are fairly low-resolution in areas, however the actual scenery objects like buildings and trees are dense enough and well-placed enough to mask these textures in most situations.  Yes, as you fly over the place, you’ll see rooftops, you’ll see some vegetation, but rarely will you see the terrain textures.



The final flaw that will really get to people is performance.  With so much custom scenery, there’s no way performance can be better than default, and this Hong Kong is no exception.  Frame-rates will drop by quite a bit with this scenery, using the intensive options or not, however if you had default Hong Kong running well before, there’s a good chance that given a little configuration time, you’ll find a good balance between performance and detail to still find it enjoyable to fly over.



All in all, FlyTampa’s Hong Kong Kai-Tak is a magnificent addon, so if you love Hong Kong, or love flying that world-famous checkerboard runway 13 approach, even if you’re just a guy looking to get some decent city scenery, this addon is a must-have.