The FSX version is an upgrade to AUScene's original Sydney International Airport for FSX. It features the new Virgin Australia passenger terminal, redesigned aerobridges, a.
YSSY Sydney AFCAD. Download hits 367 Compatibility Microsoft Flight Simulator X (FSX) including Steam Edition & Prepar3D (P3D). The archive yssy_adex_v2.zip has 4. Photographic scenery add-on software for Microsoft Flight Simulator X. Features: Sydney Professional X Version 2.0 – The Flight Simulation Company & Store New Version 2 of Sydney International Airport (YSSY) is upgraded with this scenery package for Flight Simulator X and Flight Simulator 2004 from AUscene,. Sydney Kingsford Smith (YSSY). AEROSOFT - AYERS ROCK V2 FSX P3D. GODZONE - REAL NEW ZEALAND DUNEDIN FSX P3D. TABURET - FSX VECTOR AUSTRALIA. FLYTAMPA - SYDNEY FSX P3D. Its been a long time coming, and I can honestly say, the end result could not be any better. This is a masterpiece of airport design and has every. Sydney Kingsford Smith (YSSY). AEROSOFT - AYERS ROCK V2 FSX P3D. GODZONE - REAL NEW ZEALAND DUNEDIN FSX P3D. TABURET - FSX VECTOR AUSTRALIA. FLYTAMPA - SYDNEY FSX P3D. Its been a long time coming, and I can honestly say, the end result could not be any better. This is a masterpiece of airport design and has every. Flight Simulator X Australia sceneries. Last updated: The 26th of December 2018. NSW v2 for OZx: aussiex.org: Bankstown YSBK - only: flightsim.com: Barcaldine YBAR, Longreach YLRE, Rockhampton YBRK. Ants Aussie Airports Vol 7. Sydney, Kingsford-Smith YSSY: FSX version Prepar3D v4 version: Sydney.
Introduction
As an Australian, I have been flying in and out of Sydney since I was a young child. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find any payware scenery for Sydney's Kingsford Smith International Airport in FSX, despite other Australian airports being modelled by developers. So naturally I was excited to have my hands on a copy of Sydney Professional X by Commercial Level Simulations (CLS).
The scenery was developed by CLS scenery developer Aaron Clark. Aaron personally visited the airport a number of times and took thousands of photographs, which were used for reference. Google and maps were also used to double check to ensure accuracy. The Pro X scenery was built on the foundations of the CLS YSSY scenery, so overall construction of the scenery commenced in 2005. Aaron strives to create a realistic living environment for simmers. He has certainly achieved this, as this scenery is used for real life simulation training.
Now it's time for a bit of information about the airport. As the busiest airport in Australia, Sydney's Kingsford Smith International (ICAO: YSSY) plays an integral part of air travel in Australia. It is the major hub of Australia's national/international airline Qantas, and handled 31.9 million passengers and 290,346 aircraft movements in 2007. In 2003, it was ranked as the 28th busiest airport in the world, but has failed to make the top thirty since. Originally named Sydney Airport in 1920, it was renamed in 1953 in honor of Charles Kingsford Smith, a pioneering Australian aviator.
Installation
The installation process was rather straight forward. I downloaded the 307MB file to my default downloads directory. I then extracted the included files, and opened the setup file. It prompted me to select which operating system I was running (Microsoft Windows XP or Vista). After a minute or two, the scenery was successfully installed into FSX.
Documentation
The product includes a simple six page manual in PDF format. The manual can be divided into four sections. The first section is a welcome from the scenery's developer, Aaron Clark. The second section is an installation guide. The third section provides a link for the web site of Air Services Australia. This web site provides information for most of Australia's civil airfields; where technical information for Kingsford Smith International can be located. The fourth section is the credits. Overall, the manual was well written and contained minimal typographical errors.
Initial Problems
After I installed the product, I opened FSX and spawned on the active runway (which is 34L in good weather). However, the scenery wasn't entirely present. The new taxiway and ground textures were there, as was the moving traffic on the surrounding roads. Aircraft were parked at invisible gates at invisible terminals with ground service vehicles. I reinstalled the scenery and the same problem occurred. At this point I became alarmed, and went to the FSX Settings window. To my astonishment, all my sliders were set at the lowest or near lowest values. After resetting the values, the scenery displayed perfectly in all its glory. I recommend checking your scenery settings after installation.
Airport Objects
The terminal buildings are tenfold better than the default. That being said, they are nothing special. I found it difficult to locate pictures of the real counterparts on the internet. To be honest, I wasn't totally fazed by the buildings. In one instance, I noticed that on the corner of one building, the textures were not levelled evenly, so the two sides of the buildings were not aligned (see first screen shot below). From what I can tell, the positions of the buildings are accurate. The lights on or near the buildings are illuminated twenty-four hours. It would be more realistic if the lights were switched off during daylight hours. The control tower has remained untouched, and should appear exactly the same as in the default scenery.
Some buildings are laden with gate numbers and airline logos, and passenger gateways feature corporate advertisements, as they often do in real life. There is no indication that the gateways are animated. I think it is safe to conclude that they are only static. I would like to have seen animated gateways, programmed to move to the aircraft after entering a certain frequency into COMM 2 or NAV 2, like some sceneries do. Orange traffic cones can be found on the tarmac. They don't seem to serve any practical purpose, but they were still a nice touch. Ground refuelling trucks and airport fire trucks roam the taxiway, but I didn't see too much airport vehicle traffic. There was, however, one inaccuracy I noticed in one of the northern parking areas (see images below). I checked the airport on Google Maps. At the real YSSY, two semi-circular barriers are placed near a surrounding road. In the scenery, there is only one barrier, which lines the road. This isn't too big a deal, but may upset some purists. I haven't visited YSSY in real life since 2005, so I can't exactly remember every detail of the airport. Luckily, my friend in Sydney has the product, and he tells me that is rather accurate, based on his time spent there and a tour he had of the grounds.
Auxiliary Objects
Surrounding buildings and objects not related to the airport have also been modelled. I decided to go with the flow, so to speak, and followed the flow of road traffic on the surrounding roads. The traffic on the roads is a combination of the default FSX traffic, and custom traffic. I took to the skies in some helicopters and surveyed traffic elsewhere in FSX. I recognised the odd vehicle or two (particularly the trucks) that appeared in the Sydney Pro X scenery. However, the scenery had detailed vehicles that I definitely haven't seen elsewhere. In fact, I came across black vehicles that looked like the early 1908 Ford Model-T. On my flight around the road, I came across several buildings, including the Australian Customs Office, car rental outlets, a BP petroleum station, a Krispy Kreme doughnut store, and two McDonald's restaurants. The BP petroleum station has cars at the pumps, and people standing next to them refuelling their vehicles. I decided to land my helicopter in the station's parking lot. There was an animated man leaning against his SUV, standing on his toes and waving his arm. This feature caught me by surprise, and I was quite fascinated, having never seen an animated human moving their limbs outside of a cockpit.
Vans Chima Ferguson Sydney Pro
I spent a good ten to fifteen minutes observing the other men and women at the station. People held mobile phones to their ears, despite that being discouraged when next to a pump. I wondered if I could slowly hover taxi under the structure above the pumps. I expected a 'Building Crash' message to appear, but it didn't, and I managed to park between a vehicle and a pump. I then moved right next to the building. Similarly, the McDonald's had an SUV in the drive through. Continuing along the road, I came across two billboard advertisements for Ausflightsim.com, an Australian flight simulation web site. Little orange bubbles representing street lamps line the roads. Only the lights are present; there is no accompanying pole (see screen shot below).
In my opinion, it would be a little more realistic if the poles were included. These lamps are illuminated regardless of time of day. I thought these were all nice touches, and really added to the realism of the product. It also shows the level of commitment CLS has to creating realistic scenery for the airport. I went on Google Maps and located the scenery's real life counterparts, and I think it is safe to say that CLS have done a great job at modelling these auxiliary buildings.
At the north-western corner of the coverage area, there should be a bridge that passes over a small river outlet leading in from the ocean. However, the bridge is missing, and the street lamps are dotted along the path where it should be (see screen shot below). It would look much better if either the street lamps were removed, or the bridge was inserted.
Ground Textures
The runways appear exactly the same as in default FSX scenery, as the texture has not been changed. I was a little disappointed by this. I thought that a scenery package as detailed as this would have included runway textures. I do hope that CLS releases a patch to address this, as new runway textures would add just a little more realism to the scenery. The taxiways are comprised of multiple textures. The tarmac surrounding the terminals is the default white tiles, while the taxiways are comprised of the default grey asphalt, and a darker shade of grey.
The ground textures are photoreal, and appear to have been imported from satellite imaging, as they are exactly the same as the airport in Google Maps. The photoreal scenery is 50cm orthorectified imagery re-sampled from 10cm data. The textures are accurate, and match their real life counterparts. As with a lot of photoreal imagery, it is best viewed from above and at an altitude, as the textures may appear blurry at ground level. They remain the same regardless of weather seasons. It must be remembered that it doesn't snow in Australia, so the ground textures should be suitable for all seasons. However, I set the weather theme to 'Winter Wonderland', adding a bit of snow to Sydney just to see if there would be any snow. The rest of the city was covered in it, but not the airport.
The lake at the northern tip of the airport is just textured. In the default scenery, it is comprised of actual FSX water. In Pro X, it is just an overlaid texture, making it solid as a rock. The texture is from the satellite imagery used, and matches the rest of the imagery used. I would have preferred if it remained as actual water, but it does look somewhat realistically nice from an altitude directly above.
Performance
Even before I downloaded and installed the product, I knew my system was going to take a punch to the gut. The question was; how much? Well, my expectations were realised. The scenery put a rather large dent in FPS. Both on the ground and in the air, it remained at a reasonable level when the camera was pointed away from the terminal area. Taxis, takeoffs, fly-bys, and landings were marred by low FPS. Takeoffs and landings require precise movements to keep the aircraft on a correct climb/approach profile, and so low FPS can allow for mistakes when making control inputs.
Sydney Pro Documentation
I wondered if the FPS impact would be less noticeable at a higher altitude. So I flew directly above the airport in a Bell 206B Jetranger at 10000 feet, and the impact was exactly the same. I then flew the default Boeing 747-400 above the airport at FL350 with the same result. When I flew the 747, FPS returned to an acceptable level during climb out, when I was 5nm from the SY VOR (located at the airport), but only when the camera was not pointed directly at the airport. FPS returned to normal in all directions when I was 22nm away from the airport. When I taxied around the airport, FPS varied between 3.5 and 12.5. So it can be concluded that FPS will drop when above and near the airport, and with the camera pointing in its general direction. These tests were conducted with my level of detail (LOD) radius set to High.
Conclusion
This is a great scenery add-on, and really enhances the experience of flying to and from YSSY. Both the airport itself and the living environment surrounding the perimeter are remarkably detailed, and it is obvious that a lot of hard work has gone into producing this scenery. The only real problem I have with it is the drop in FPS. However, if you are passionate about a realistic simming environment, then FPS can take a back seat to the marvels of this offering.
CLS Sydney Professional X System requirements
- Microsoft Flight Simulator X
- Pentium 2.0 GHz
- 1024 MB RAM
- Graphic card with at least 256 MB
- Sound card
- Download size: 307 MB
Test System
- Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T9400 @ 2.53 GHz
- Memory (RAM): 4.00 GB
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT
- System type: 32-bit operating system
- Operating system: Windows Vista Home Premium (SP1)
- Primary monitor resolution: 1440x900
- Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Acceleration
Adam Johnson
[email protected]
Learn More Here
Kingsford Smith International Airport (YSSY), Sydney, Australia. This airport was designed with the latest version of ADE (Airport Design Editor) and made only for the FSX default airport: one file with the Crosswind runway 7/25 activated where all 3 runways will be used for takeoff/landing and one file as the default runway operation: assigned parking with extra parking, gates added for the A380, taxiways and taxi signs updated, extra fuel trucks, support vehicle roads rebuilt, lighted helipad with the area buildings and many other improvements. Airport views are from inside the control tower (when in tower view). Please view the readme before installation. By Ray Smith.
There are 3 BGL files: YSSY_ADE_RS.BGL, YSSY_ADE_CW_RS.BGL and a YSSY_ADE_OBJ.BGL file.
Runway Operation Files:
- The YSSY_ADE_RS.BGL file is the same as the default runway operation.
- The YSSY_ADE_CW_RS.BGL file is with the Xwind runway 7/25 activated where both runways will be used simultaneously.
Assigned parking is the same in both files.
To Install:
If you are using my earlier version please remove/delete these files first or overwrite them, if you would rather keep them remove them to another folder not associated with FSX.
- Take the YSSY_RS.BGL file of your choice (only one) and place this file into: Flight Simulator X/Addon Scenery/scenery folder.
- Take the YSSY_ADE_OBJ.BGL file and place it into: Flight Simulator X/Scenery/Global/scenery folder.
- There are jetway extensions, and to see these you need to add the textures for them, please follow these steps:
- NOTE: If you have already done this with any of my other airports then this step is not necessary.
- Browse to the FSXSceneryNAMETexture folder. Go down the list until you see jfk_jetway.dds (day texture) and jfk_jetway_LM.dds (night texture).
- 'COPY' them from that folder and 'PASTE' them into the SceneryGlobalTexture folder.
- Start up the Flight Sim and the changes will be present.
- NOTE: PLEASE ONLY USE ONE OF THE YSSY_RS.BGL FILES AT ANY TIME. I.E. Make sure there is only ONE YSSY_RS.BGL FILE in the Addon Scenery/scenery folder at any time, remove/delete any other YSSY.bgl to avoid incorrect aircraft parking and other airport conflicts.
- If you have any AI Traffic Addons please make sure they have 'NOT' installed another AFCAD for this airport as this will also cause a conflict.
- NOTE: When using ATIS with the YSSY_ADE_CW_RS.BGL file you will hear the fake runways as well as the airport runways, this is the method used in activating non parallel runways and should be ignored or if preferred use the version YSSY_ADE_RS.BGL.
To Uninstall:
- Delete/remove the BGL files and the default airport will then be active.
Enjoy and happy flying.
Ray
Cullmann Sydney Pro Vario 200
View of Kingsford Smith Internaitonal Airport.