Let’s first address perhaps the most important aspect of this scenery, performance. Despite the obviously demanding location of the airport, I had absolutely no problems in this regard. In fact, I had no problems maintaining 30FPS and did not experience any stutters, pauses, or memory troubles during testing...and yes, my texture max load was set to 4096. To further reinforce this point I have left the frame rate counter visible in two shots, both depicting somewhat demanding scenarios and both with overcast skies. The first being the Majestic Q400 flying towards the airport with Manhattan in the distance...and the second being the Alabeo Pitts performing aerobatics directly over the airport. I did notice very effective use of LOD techniques during testing, more so than most other sceneries.
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Update: Several readers have asked me to address performance while using AI traffic. Not being an AI aficionado I do not have significant amounts of custom traffic. Accordingly, I have simply set the default traffic to 100%. The below screenshot is the Majestic Dash 8-Q400 flying directly over the airport, with 20+ visible AI aircraft, overcast skies, maxed out density settings, looking towards Manhattan. I should also note that there was significantly more AI traffic on the ground that is not directly visible in the screenshot. You will notice I am still maintaining my FPS - I would expect dedicated AI models to perform much better as well.
Now there has already been some controversy regarding the ground poly quality of this scenery, but in my honest opinion, I think it looks good. It certainly did not stand out to me as a possible weakness... Further, the photo ground scenery creates a nice realistic feeling, particularly during landing. One thing that did stick out was some strange winter ground texture shading. There were very defined darker patches which seemed odd, at least to me.
Buildings are generally well done, both model and texture wise. Even non primary buildings such as hangers are replicated nicely. I did not experience flickering or any other graphical anomalies that take away from the overall immersion factor. There is plenty of ground vehicle activity, although not a big deal for me, many will appreciate this feature
The airport area is blended quite well into the surrounding scenery. I realize the release notes mention 115 sq/km of custom autogen, however, I did not venture out too far so I will not comment regarding this feature. Night lighting was effective and appeared realistic.
Now this was obviously a very quick superficial peek around. Considering the size and detail of this airport I could easily write an essay but that’s not the intent. Sometimes, it`s easier to let the screenshots do the talking I suppose... But if I were to sum everything up, this is an impressive release that looks good and performs well, especially given the dense suburban location. How it will match up to Drzewiecki’s rendition, no idea, but for now, this scenery is certainly worth a look.
Next, some screenshots:
26 comments:
Waiting for Drzewiecki’s rendition...
I don't see any AI anywhere except on one or two pictures. Does that mean that AI is not part of the 30fps you reported. FPS figures could probably be worse even if you introduced only 10-20% traffic.
No, AI traffic is not part of it as I am not a big artificial traffic user myself. The idea is to provide a guideline for performance. To achieve a smooth 30FPS flying over a highly detailed airport, with density sliders maxed out, looking towards Manhattan, with an overcast sky, and advanced aircraft is very good by any account.
I have installed V2 (owner of V1) and the performance is better than V1, the ground textures or base image is still not as good as other projects by FSDT but it is better than V1....V1 was really let down by the ground image, it was far too blurred and lacked sharpness and was also a hit on frames when AI traffic was enabled. There have been changes to V2 and it is a better version tho i wouldn't really consider it fair to charge those that brought V1 to now have to pay again regardless of the discount code...but thats just my opinion.
Big improvement on the first version but with the prospect of a NYC city with multiple NY airports in the making it does make me want to hold off buying this V2 until i get a better idea of what Drzewiecki’s version will look like. Whats more is the thought of decending down and passing downtown NYC with the new World Trade site, and into JFK using PMDGs 777 whenever that emerges!!!
Perhaps in future, for the benefit of readers, is to include AI as a bench-mark FPS indicator also. It is your choice to not have AI traffic as personal preference, but to the reader who is trying to make informed buying decision, it matters. Perhaps you can update your report on this for the benefit of us who are on the fence on whether to buy V2 or not.
Okay, no problem, I will do a quick test with AI and update the report.
Thanks for that, Mark. But overall, an excellent piece of report.
Wow what cloud textures/ Cloud rendering and weather injection are you using?
Added a quick update, hope it helps!
Just the default FSX weather engine.
when FSDteam posts, same as PMDG.. should be nurtured.
They listened to you. Son now that they did will you once again , put the smack down on them?
I suggest the chill pill. Deep Breath, maybe one day we'll reciece. Until than. Shutter , Turds., Farts. > you get the idea
JFK V2 has couple of things that are off at Terminal 5.
The connection to the AirTrain and the Skywalk is missing:
http://i.imgur.com/N3Blr4R.jpg
That extra terminal extension at the end does not belong there. In RL, the building ends with a flat window surface:
http://i.imgur.com/74Ap54E.jpg
It more than fair the price they are charging. It is a business, not charity. They did a rework to make it DX10 compatible (a big deal to a lot of us), amongst various other improvements. The cost is only $10 US. If you can't afford that, you need to get another hobby in my opinion.
No one here will fix that for you. :)
If you quote someones finding you should attach the source:
http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php?topic=8507.0
Just in case you're TO you shouldn't avoid to publish developers response.
I see destructively, non subtle behaviour taking place which can't be explained by ordinary community opinion.
Thanks for the effort, but still not convinced. You stated slider is 100%, but there are no gates filled up with AI. What's the deal here? You should show the FPS figure on your picture next time so we can see exact FPS impact. I have a pretty powerful system but still not able to muscle up enough power to fly around the tri-city area with 100% AI in JFK default, etc, so I am very cynical of your "100%" AI statement. Based on a single picture from above, I've decided to refrain from buying vs2.
The default AI aircraft do not have proper AFCAD assignments; hence, the random parking at undesignated spots. The FPS figure is indeed shown on the picture. Remember, this is 100% using the default artificial traffic. Obviously, everyone will have a different idea of 100% traffic based on the amount of custom AI installed.
The screenshot has 20+ AI aircraft in the background. These are not resource saving AI Aardvark type aircraft but the default. Results should be better with custom AI aircraft. Your yardage will obviously vary, I am simply trying to express how well the scenery performs. Honestly, I don`t know how much better it could be performance wise.
Just checked the default afcad placements through Airport Design Editor (ADE) and JFK gates are pretty filled up. Are you implying that FSDT did not fill up all their custom gates with proper afcad for AI parking? Doesn't make sense to me. The AI FPS impact question remain wanting for me and others, but thanks anyway for your explanation.
I`m sure the gates are filled up with proper airline assignments in the AFCAD file. However, default AI will not recognize any of the real life gate assignments and will park wherever.
Are the ground textures as bad in the full game as the demo?
The demo should be identical to the full version. Have you set your texture max load to 4096?
Hey guys its a better scenery (better for FSX).
I not going to need to go into detail because its all set before. Bottomline is that for 10bucks you get KJFK designed natively for FSX.
I've just landed using the BLackbox A330 from AS-EDDM with AI set at 67% and LOD 3.5 getting an Oom after hitting the tarmac. Usually, flying from the origin I may get as close as 8 miles from KJFK before (using V1) Oom stops me in my tracks.
The airport is far better on Fps for my rig. No loss here...and yes I'll still consider Dz scenery, But I guarantee that we'll need to deactivate I lot more there in order to appreciate Dz jfk.
Hey its your choice to complain or enjoy...
This site is so much better than avshit.com
Great review, Mark,
p3
Oh boy here we go.
I just flew in to JFK, 8ish hours from LHR.
FSDT magic kicks in on finals. OMM!!
FSDT's JFK V1 was fine. I do this route often.
Anything i can do? Or just go back to V1.
One of the "magics" FSDT executable did is to adjust certain values in my fsx.cfg.
Here's the story:
I don't claim to have found the culprit to the OOM errors but since my last tweaking research to cure this decease two months ago, I haven't got a single OOM (flying from/to high quality add on sceneries with NGX, J41, DC9, Dash8Q400)
Last night on the touchdown at JFKv2 I got an OOM (with the new Dash8Q400 was indeed my absolute first).
I remembered the installer notified at the end of the installation process, that the textures will be HD. This prompted me to check back the fsx.cfg and indeed the changes were there, specifically in the following lines:
TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD= and
UsePools=
Poolsize=
RejectThreshold=
[I remove the data because those vary from system to system. In my case those were changed by the installer]
I also remembered that my system (fairly high end) suddenly became prone of OOMs few months ago, and I could not relate it to anything specific. Now that I rewind the tape, I have indeed installed other FSDT sceneries somewhere at that point. There might be something related with the virtuali installer changing the fsx.cfg to make the scenery look better, but this way push your hardware to the brink of the OOM limit.
Have bought V2 (I owned V1) and I have to say, I'm disappointed. It is not the same quality as other FSDT sceneries. The roads, bridges in and around the airport look completely unfinished. Ground textures still not up to scratch in my opinion. Oh well, looking forward to Drzewiecki@s rendition :)
Tested out version 2, and it is a step backwards. Where as V1 displayed AI correctly with shadows, V2 forces no aircraft shadows through the add-on manager.
This is really annoying, FSDT is not listening to their customers. Aircraft having no shadows on ground looks really silly, as if they are levitating over the surface.
They claim it is an FSX limitation, yet countless other developers have gotten over this limitation somehow.
I have not bought any of their products since, and I will continue not to buy them. For now I will stick with V1 until DD comes out with their offering.
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