Alderney - by Earth Simulations

[Kevin]

Earth Simulations’ Alderney
By Kevin Glover

Earth Simulations

Whenever a new simulator is being developed, people are always screaming for the things they want in it. I remember when FSX was about to be released; Phil Taylor, the ACES member who, in addition to his normal work at ACES, dealt with the general public on the forums, was being swarmed with questions about what FSX’s capabilities would be. Many GA fliers, including myself, were very interested in a number of things: Would there be animals wandering around?  Would there be high-resolution terrain? All sorts of things which didn’t really come into being in the simulator. However, on a small scale, a company called Earth Simulations has taken all of the items on the wish-list and created an island heaven for us GA fliers – Alderney.


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The island of Alderney is a beautiful location in the English Channel. The main town, St. Anne, has about 2,400 residents. While I can’t see tourists flocking here to bask under a hot sun, there’s a quiet, serene beauty in the rolling hills and rouch cliffs which I, for one, find immensely appealing. Besides the natural aspects, the island has some fascinating history. To the west lies the airport, while just north of the town in the center of the island one finds an enormous breakwater of about 2,650 feet. There are numerous forts scattered across the island, many of which are an incongruous mix with the natural beauty.

First Impression

For its small size in real-life, Alderney for Flight Sim makes up for it with an impressive 700MB download size. Installation is quite straightforward, but some machines may have issues with the installer. You’ll know something’s wrong when you boot up at Alderney and there are very few trees and houses. The fix can be found on the Earth Simulation forums.


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Earth Simulations’ website boasts a number of very impressive features. For one thing, there are five seasonal textures included with this package; all the normal ones, plus a ‘Hard Winter’, which shows Alderney covered in snow in the month of January; plus, there’s even an attractive set of night textures.


   

So far, we’ve covered all the bases which people want in a low-and-slow scenery, but they’ve gone quite a bit further. For instance, there are all sorts of animals frolicking madly about the scenery, not to mention superb water masks – but it’s just one thing to talk about these on paper. How do they really look in the sim?


   


Textures

Your normal photo-real scenery comes with texture resolution of about 1.2M/pixel, but Earth Simulations has included 30CM/pixel resolution. Naturally this is quite an improvement on many sceneries, but you might find yourself running into some issues with it. The problem with high-resolution scenery is that it takes a powerful computer to keep it looking crisp. My medium-powered rig had no problems, even with max scenery settings and clear skies, but it’s something to keep in mind. Additionally, if you don’t have your Level of Detail radius tweaked correctly (or at all) you’ll find that the textures in the distance get awfully blurry. Mind you, it’s something that every comparable scenery suffers from, so it’s nothing Earth Simulations did wrong.


 

On the whole, the textures are definitely a key aspect to the scenery. With such resolution, one can easily discern cars, plow marks in the fields, swimming pools, sheds, as well as smaller objects like livestock. Heading out over the water, one finds several outstanding points which put this scenery ahead. For one thing, nearly all of the water surrounding Alderney is covered in exquisite water masks. These are simply textures which are placed over the water to add more detail such as banks of sand and mud; these are of excellent quality and are most noticeable in the harbor and lagoon areas. On top of this, Earth Simulations has added plenty of rocks in the water which tumbled from the cliffs, plus small lumps of granite sticking out of the water within a large radius of Alderney. Additionally, one finds that the cliff textures are very crisp and undistorted. It may sound like a small thing, but many products have been adversely affected by ‘stretched’ cliff textures.


 

The five seasons plus night textures all have their own unique traits. In Spring, one finds a very bright yellow-green crop called rape seed. In Summer, the vibrant colours fade a little, and in Autumn one finds that the trees are slowly turning to a subtle brown tint. In Winter, the trees are black and dead with the landscape being a mix of greens and browns, while Hard Winter shows patchy snow all over the island with bits of brown earth showing through. Night textures are subtle but quite enjoyable. One finds that the airport is lit up like a beacon, but the rest of the scenery is fairly dark. There’s less to see, naturally, but the crisp textures and pools of light thrown by the streetlamps speak volumes.


   

The textures aren’t always top-quality. In some instances, such as near the harbor, the textures look more blurry than the rest of the island. Fortunately, this area is covered in objects, so truth be told, there’s not a whole lot of the ground to be seen anyway. Another instance of this can be seen on some of the small islands around Alderney. Portions of some of these appear blurrier for the rest, but I can’t think why the developers wouldn’t have kept the same texture resolution.


   


Objects

Thanks to the Bespoke 3D modelling which Earth Simulations uses for its custom objects, most of the objects in Alderney stand out as being quite superior, and with good reason. For one thing, the general texture quality of the objects is quite good. Some houses feature elaborate gables, ivy climbing the front wall, etc. There are some repeated buildings, noticeably in the center of town where there are (in real life) a number of very similar houses. Objects placement is fair; one occasionally finds a tree growing up from a house’s roof, and some houses are the wrong shape for the texture on the ground. These houses are ‘generic 3D’, so even though they are placed in a real-world location, they don’t represent the actual house which is there in real life. Conversely, buildings modelled in Bespoke 3D are the major things such as the airport, the forts, and St. Anne’s.  


   

In addition to houses, Alderney features a wide variety of foliage to keep the eyes happy. The textures will change according to season from brownish winter to a very green Spring texture. On the whole, the plants are all modeled well, but there is a certain amount of jagged edges and such when viewed up close.  At normal flying elevations, I personally thought the autogen was much higher-quality than most sceneries include and certainly a great improvement on default.  


   

In addition to these objects, one finds a large amount of unique objects which make this scenery a lot of fun to fly around. For instance, the harbor area is brimming with objects. One finds a collection of cargo crates being moved about by an animated container forklift. Additionally, at the end of the breakwater there is a light-post which has a seagull flapping its wings on top; the ships in the harbor will also vary with the season. Moving towards the center of town there is a playground with animated objects such as a swingset and merry-go-round; by the airport one finds a hang-glider soaring about the cliffs. Some of these elements can look more cartoonish than the rest of the island, but the fact that they’re animated certainly makes up for that in my eyes. The playground objects in particular are composed of very bright colours.  Weathering would be very appropriate.


 

For someone who hasn’t flown in the simulator before, I daresay that these little things sound like nothing to get excited over, but in fact they are the realization of a dream for many people such as myself who felt that the flight simulator needed more detail near the ground, not just in the cockpit of a jetliner.  Admittedly, one small island can only contain so much, but what makes me so happy is that Earth Simulations has grasped a neglected idea and made it reality. This, more than anything, gets me excited for what they will do in the future.  


   

Earth Simulations has something called Seasonally Aware autogen, and this is really where the product comes into its own. In addition to the normal things such as houses and plants, the developers included a large and positively fascinating array of wildlife which changes depending on season. I will tell you some of the things that are included, but I’ll leave finding them up to you. Near the Casquettes light house (complete with helipad and animated people), one finds a whale which can be seen swimming about in winter. Also, on an rocky island between the lighthouse and Alderney there are seals (with pups) on the shore. Sheep, cows, and horses can also be spotted on the fields around Alderney, some with young, depending on the season. The horses are quite a delight to see; near the airport one finds a pair munching on the grass, but one seems a tad unsettled as he has a tendency to rear up in the air every now and again. Truth be told, he goes a little too far back, as a horse in real life would end up flat on this rear. Flying geese can be seen in Autumn, and the bird-watching enthusiast will also spot seagulls, storks, and a swan at various times of the year. Some of these are animated, some are not, but on the whole they’re a great and quite integral addition to the scenery. In this same vane, the beautiful St. Annes church features very crisp textures of stained-glass windows and beautiful stonework. On Sundays, one finds a small congregation huddled around the church. Mind you, don’t expect completely beautiful animals and custom objects; the scenery is fairly easy on a computer, so to maintain this they had to sacrifice a few polygons here and there.


   


Alderney Airport

Amidst the natural beauty of the island of Alderney itself, the airport nearly seems like nothing more than an added bonus. The airport itself was built in 1938 with three runways, two of which are grass and one bitmac. All three are fairly short, the largest coming to about 880 yards. Between the runways and taxiways, there are plenty of generic aircraft models sitting about. One should keep in mind that the taxiways are not actually a ‘taxiway’ surface. Since the texture quality is so good, Earth Simulations left them as textures on the ground.  Despite this, it still worked with Traffic X.

The airport itself is modelled quite nicely. The interior of the control tower is visible, and one can discern a person and several computers. Besides this are emergency vehicles, office buildings, benches, and shrubs. Amid the cluster of buildings, there are several rather neat objects such as a swimming pool and many cars which will turn their lights on at night. One also finds 3D lights and other details.  Although the airport isn’t my favourite part of the island, it’s still very nice indeed.  


 




Final Word

On the whole, Alderney is quite a stand-out. For one thing, it’s Earth Simulations’ first product- imagine where they will go when their first product is this good..  It seems to me that they have looked at the simulator and the sceneries being made for it and thought, “What’s missing and how can we make it better?”. Considering the level of detail and the five separate seasonal textures, I consider this add-on to be priced quite well, and it’s even more reasonable than some other island packages that come to mind. Yes, it’s a small area, and I suppose some people will get bored more quickly with it than others, but when the detail is this good it’s a case of the harder you look, the more you see; from what I’ve seen, it’s a roaring success.

Documentation- 9/10 points
Cost/area covered - 18/20 points
Colour correction and photographic quality - 30/30 points
Mesh quality (if not applicable, then five points are given, but if applicable extra points may be earned)- 7/5 points
Performance- 12/15 points
Realism-enhancing features (sounds, etc.)- 10/10
Lack of anomalies -9/10 points

Total-
95/100



Gold Award-
It gives VFR Reviews great pleasure in announcing that FSX Alderney has received our Gold Award, something only given to products which stand out for their visual excellence, innovative features, and over-all quality. FSX Alderney is the first official product which has earned this particular award and we feel that it could not have gone to a more worthy candidate. Earth Simulations has demonstrated significant advances in sceneries, and very few sceneries come to mind which can match this one in terms of innovation.  The A2A P-47D, the first recipient of our Gold Award for Aircraft, brought a number of revolutions to simulated aircraft and, on a smaller scale, FSX Alderney has done much the same for sceneries.  However, there is always room to improve, and it is the hope of VFR Reviews that Earth Simulations will go even further in future releases by including things such as environment sounds.




Sceneries-

Objects- The objects included in this scenery do not always reflect their real-life counterparts, but all major landmarks are faithfully and attractively modeled while the generic models are all very convincing.

Base textures- The product possesses scenery at a resolution of 30CM/pixel, which is well above-average, though some remote areas seem less-crisp than the general standard.

Features- The scenery possesses a number of very creative elements including moving animals, seasonally aware autogen, and excellent water masks.

Coverage/price- Although Alderney is a very small area, we feel that, in relation to other comparable packages, Alderney is priced fairly well; especially considering the cost of the high-quality satellite imagery.





   



   



   



   


   




 
For many more (much better) screenshots of this scenery, please feel free to view some of these links-   Thanks to the authors of these beautiful pieces!

http://www.flightsimworld.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=170311&hl=alderney
http://www.flightsimworld.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=170177&hl=alderney
http://www.flightsimworld.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=167397&hl=alderney
http://www.flightsimworld.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=169332&hl=alderney