Review: FranceVFR’s St Maarten & St. Barth – FS9 & FSX

Let’s Explore
I may as well use the bonus Trans Island Air Twin Otter for my explorative flight. After all, it was included in the package and accordingly, I should fly in it. I decided to do a round VFR trip by commencing at Princess Juliana on the Dutch side known as St Maarten, fly to Grand’Case on the French side known as St. Martin, land there, take off again and, hopefully, land safely after the ridge challenge at St. Barths, take off again and return to Juliana. I think that’s called a “Round Robin” trip.

I booted up FSX, chose Juliana at 12 noon and tried to find the TIA Twin Otter amongst the aircraft. I found it eventually and it had a large question mark “?” over it which meant that someone had forgotten to include the necessary thumbnail.jpg required for that plane’s FSX texture folder. I immediately set about taking my own screenshot of the plane, resizing it and saving it in the texture folder. Then, when I went to click on that aircraft again, I found it easily by its nice, bright picture. Next, when the aircraft’s acceptable panel appeared, there was no sound.

I went to outside view and all was quiet, although the propellers were spinning. I exited FSX and checked the plane’s sound folder. The necessary sound.cfg file was there all right but when I opened it, I found that someone had forgotten the single letter “B”. The entry was “alias=C208\sound”. There was only a C208B aircraft amongst the FSX SimObjects\Airplanes and so I adjusted accordingly. However, there was a C208 and a C208B within my FS2004\Aircraft – hence, the error. When I restarted everything again, I was pleased to hear that I had engine noise. Later, I considered amending the sound.cfg file again to align the sound to another, more appropriate, Otter engine sound. Now that I had those 2 little problems solved, I got down to business.

They could have been quite annoying for some Flight Simmers who may not have understood what to do to fix them. While sitting in my Otter, I had a glance out of the window to observe the airport. It was nicely equipped with facilities everywhere. Fourteen AI aircraft from many airlines, including WinAir Twin Otters, were parked around the Terminal. Two were moving into their parking spots, having just landed before I appeared. I zoomed in on the Terminal building and spotted people chatting outside and a chap about to load luggage into a van.

I took off and observed the scenery. It was as good as any I have seen in FS2004 or FSX. I was delighted with myself as I banked to port and headed towards nearby Grand’Case. Two liners attracted my attention, as did many moving smaller pleasure craft. When I spotted Grand’Case coming up on my starboard side, I noticed how nice the island looked, spotted here and there with trees and buildings. There were not too many of each, as I was only operating on the lowest Autogen Setting to ensure decent Frame Rates and a smooth flight. The ground textures were perfect from the modest height I was flying at but when I was coming in to land at Grand’Case I noticed that the textures became less sharp. This caused me no concern and if I were to be completely honest, I would say that the default FSX textures were better.

Grand’Case proved to be a nice airport and only had a couple of planes parked in front of the fairly small Terminal building. I had no time to waste, as I had to ready myself for my St. Barths’ challenge. I took off immediately and headed for that nearby island. I placed myself off the island in such a way that I was lined up with the runway when it came into view. I was smiling with delight when I saw that the island, at last, looked like its real life picture. Three cheers for FranceVFR who fixed the problems that I had with that island within FSX. The hilly ridge was there, below which I could see my challenging runway.

On passing over the ridge, 2 lorries were stopped as the drivers looked up to watch and see if I could perform a safe landing. I could hardly believe my luck. The landing was quite a hairy one, as I had to drop as quickly as possible and apply my brakes to bring my Otter to a stop, before I surprised my onlookers by becoming an amphibian. I listened for the sound of clapping but my Otter’s engines must have drowned all outside noises <gg>.

St. Barths’ airport was full of action and I quickly turned my Otter around, taxied back along the runway to turn and face the sea. I revved up, whizzed towards the sea, took off and headed back to Juliana. On coming in to land there, I was mesmorised by the number of beach parasols and chairs that were laid out on the beach in front of the runway. If there was anyone around, I thought of the flv video that appeared on YouTube in which an Air France B747 throttled up at the end of the runway beside the beach and blew a few hapless onlookers into the sea. Juliana looked much better than it did in the default FSX scenery.

Conclusion
I was delighted to find that this scenery package lived up to my own personal expectations and especially, when it corrected the problems at St. Barths. Its hilly ridge had been restored to challenge me and its runway was correctly placed and ended at the beach. Unless you are experienced with being able to follow the quite complicated instructions involved in making the package compatible for FSX, it may be advisable to invest in it at present only for FS2004. In due course, no doubt, there will be a proper version for FSX without the need for the rather complicated intervention by the user to make the FS2004 version compatible with FSX.

This review copy was supplied by www.simmarket.com and there is an amazing Promotional 50Mb “stmartin.wmv” Video available at http://secure.simmarket.com/product_info.php?products_id=2201 which demonstrates this whole scenery package much better than I endeavoured to describe it and which, in my view, justifies recommending it for both FS2004 and FSX.

Finally, in the FSX Patch readme file there is an important note and I quote “When FS9 based photorealistic sceneries are used under FSX, a thin black line may appear along the coasts or the lakes shores. This is a known problem, which is texture format related. It is due to the way the FSX graphic engine handles this texture format. To avoid this phenomenon, you have to select 5m texture resolution which is the native resolution for FS9. This setting is accessible from the main FSX interface”. As the contents of this warning caused me no concern, I did bother making any adjustments to my display scenery settings as suggested.

Based in Ireland’s capital city Dublin, PC Pilots Ireland was started in 1993 by two friends, Terry McGee and Ian Broni who wanted to share their hobby with other Flight Sim users. The club made it’s debut in Dublin at the annual fair of the ‘Aviation Society of Ireland’ in 1993, where we had six computer systems displaying a selection of Flight Simulators. Such was the reaction that we enrolled our first members and have attend this fair every year since. To date we have members in Ireland, UK, throughout mainland Europe, Canada and the USA. Our objective is to share and enhance the enjoyment of your hobby with the involvement of other flight sim users. Members have the option of being added to our active forum, where they debate flight simulator topics and post requests for help on any PC hardware and Flight Sim problems.