UK2000

London Heathrow V3 for FS2004, FSX, and P3D

By Thomas Jones - In Partnership with Flightsimglobal.com

i7-2600K turboboost to 4.6ghz | Nvidia ASUS GTX580 1.5gb | 16gb 1600mhz RAM | 2x 1TB HDD | Windows 7 64 bit

Please note, this review is based off of the FSX version of the scenery.

Intro:

London's Heathrow Airport began operations in 1929 as a small airstrip under the name Great West Aerodrome. It was surrounded by farm fields and a generally agriculture based area, known as Heathrow. Once World War Two came along, the English military decided to develop the entire Heathrow area into a large airport originally designed to house and launch long range military aircraft. The war ended before construction had finished and the airport was converted to a civil airport. It is located fourteen miles from central London and handles most of the international, long range air traffic.

Heathrow V3, as the name suggests, is UK2000's third version of this metropolis of an airport. New features to version three include:

1) More accurate modeling of T5 stands and buildings, including new

A380 triple jet way stands

2) New changes to T3 and entrance area

3) New Terminal 2 and T2b pier

4) Changes to T4, including A380 stands

5) New Static models

6) New methods used to create scenery

7) New Photo base image at 50cm resolution

8) Heathrow taxiway layout changes.

9) New better designed AFD files.

and hundreds of smaller changes and improvements.

UK2000's Heathrow also includes a whole list of features that are

listed on their product page at:

http://www.uk2000scenery.com/newsite/My_Homepage_Files/Page17.

html .

UK2000 will offer a free version of the airport, too (at time of

writing it was still in development). This version has less features and

basic details, but helps to give you a taste of how much work and skill

goes into the development. If you want to try the full featured version

before paying, there is a demo available on the product page. The main

product is available for 18.99 GBP or about $31.76 USD.

Installation: Installation of Heathrow V3 is very straight forward and simple. After purchase, you can download a .exe installer file and obtain a key code. Simply run the installer, enter the key code when asked, select from a list the features you want, click next a few times and finally hit finish! All that is needed now is to boot up either FS2004, FSX, or Prepar3d and you are good to go! If you need to adjust the level of detail for Heathrow due to performance issues, UK2000 has included a configuration manager to adjust various items of the scenery.

What is included in the package?

UK2000's Heathrow is full of features that range from large

buildings with sharp texturing, down to tiny details such as vehicles and

cargo containers dotted in appropriate spots around the airport. Unlike

some other products on the market, this airport does not look empty

and clean, it looks as if it is constantly busy. Some may argue that the

little details like the cargo containers and other airport objects do not

matter much, but in my opinion it really does add to the immersion

factor.

Around the perimeter of the airport, there is a custom fence,

trees, roads, buildings, and even car traffic coming and going from the

airport. On approach, there are 3D lights that are clearly visible from a

distance to guide you in, along with the structures that hold the lights.

Even the runway surfaces have 3D light effects. I have ORBX's England

region installed and noticed no border issues with the scenery other

than in wintertime. In the FSX winter with the ORBX scenery, there was

snow on the ground, but in UK2000's Heathrow the grass only appeared

dead. It isn't a big thing, but it is easily noticed. Other than that, all of

the roadways lined up perfectly and the grass colors are very similar for

the rest of the year.

All of the taxiways, runways, ramps, and aprons have high quality

texturing and even have bumps and cracks visible, again showing that

this is an airport that is constantly used. The taxiways and runways all

have accurate markings and the gates have proper markings for where

aircraft of different types should stop. In some areas there is also

custom shadowing on the taxiways for some larger structures like the

air traffic control tower.

This level of detail extends from the far reaches of the terminal

area all the way to the maintenance and cargo buildings. At the

maintenance area of the airport, we can see British Airways and Virgin

Atlantic hangars, engine run-up areas, a fire-training mockup, custom

objects spread around, custom light poles, and some hangars even have

objects and custom modeling on the interior.

The only areas I found that have lower quality scenery is around

the central terminal area where pickups and drop offs occur. There are

custom objects in this area, such as a BP station, but the texturing is

lower quality to save on computer resources. These lower quality areas

are in good locations though. They are not visible from the ramp area or

anywhere else on the airport unless you are flying directly over them,

so the immersion factor is unaffected unless you are flying a helicopter

right in these areas. Smart move on UK2000's part.

Around the gates, UK2000 has included a special docking system

that detects your plane, where it is, and gives you a guide for how much

closer you need to taxi in. A very useful tool indeed! Close to the

terminals, lots of airport vehicles are driving around going about their

business as usual.

At night, the airport is lit up quite nicely. The taxiway and runway

lights are all present and the terminals emit a glow onto the ramp

Performance Now, with all this talk about detail, high quality textures, and tons of objects and vehicles, one may think that this scenery would be heavy on frame rates. That is where you would be wrong. This is one of the most frame rate friendly large airports I've ever had. The frame rate only dropped very slightly for me (and I was running the scenery with all of the bells and whistles on!). For a real test though, I brought PMDG's 737NGX on approach from the virtual cockpit to see how much the frame rate dipped down and I was surprised. I only lost about three frames per second when I was in the NGX taxiing around the airport. Very nicely done UK2000!

Overall: In the past, London Heathrow has been a nightmare for simmers with lower-end PCs looking for scenery that gets consistently smooth and high frame rates. Not anymore. UK2000s Heathrow V3 is superb on the frame rates while maintaining an extraordinary amount of detail. The immersion around the airport is fantastic thanks to the little details that haven't been forgotten. UK2000 has a real winner here, and for a great price for the airport, why wouldn't you get it?

You can see into Terminal 5, giving it a nice depth.

Screenshot ideas from inside T5?