Before I start talking about the scenery, a small note: this scenery should be made available during the next few days (perhaps during the weekend of May 18th).
The scenery is now released! Go get it!
The scenery
As normal with Frank and Fabio’s scenery, this one also revolves around a mountainous region.
It covers 500 square kilometers (roughly 193 square miles) in the Swiss Alpine chain of "Berner Oberland", inside the + 46 + 007 and + 46 + 008 tiles.
All the textures are handmade (to both keep the project cost down and prevent copyright issues) and all the vegetation was faithfully reproduced. This also allows to have textures without clouds or cloud shadows, making them more realistic, even if they are not photorealistic. Which, in my opinion, wouldn’t add that much to the scenery. I rather have clean, beautifully handcrafted textures myself.
The houses were built based on the models seen at locations such as Grindelwald, Wengen, Kleine-Scheidegg, Lauterbrunnen and Murren.
The mountain of Eiger was fully reconstructed (just like the team’s Matterhorn , for example) from scratch in what one can only call a labor of love.
One of the things that I really enjoyed were the little towns in the bottom of the valleys or near the cliffs. Flying around these not only gives you a claustrophobic or even vertigo sensation (I can’t imagine living there in real life) but it feels like the mountains are alive. The quality of the mesh and the textures, combined with the simple, yet very contextual houses and buildings, gives me a great feeling that I missed since I first tried places such as the Matterhorn or the Dolomites.
I’m not a fan of huge flights – partially because I don’t have the time to commit to longer flights but also because I find the takeoff and landing parts to be the most fun and challenging – and this scenery caters for my need to have stuff to do in a small region.
Installation
Installation takes a bit more of work than usual. Rather than just “throwing the stuff” into your Custom Scenery folder, you’ll need to take some care regarding your scenery_packs.ini file.
This scenery is compatible with the Matterhorn scenery as well and that should require you a bit more of attention (and a patch which shall be released soon as well).
It’s not rocket science and, if you follow the instructions in the manual – yes, there’s one, please read it – you’ll be fine.
Still, it’s not just a copy + paste thing, so you’ll need to pay a bit more of attention.
Helicopter heaven – once again
There are a couple of airfields and a TON of helipads and heliports added. Considering the size of the region, it’s safe to say you are only a few minutes away from a place to land.
The team even added a list of locations so you can visit them all and make sure you don’t miss a lot of interesting locations.
|
ICAO |
Description |
Coordinates |
Region |
| LSGW | grass Airfields | 46.6200885 08.0312200 | GRINDELWALD |
| LSLB | grass Airfields | 46.5785401 07.9093166 | LAUTERBRUNNEN |
| LSGH | HELIPAD | 46.6196098 08.0350686 | GRINDELWALD |
| LSXL | AirGlaciers Heliport | 46.5852960 07.9135505 | LAUTERBRUNNEN |
| LSXG | Swiss Helicpter AirGlaciers | 46.6475786 07.8780632 | GSTEIWILER |
| LSKS | HELIPAD | 46.5850934 07.9598201 | KLEINE SCHEIDEGG |
| LSMN | HELIPAD | 46.6142314 07.9403820 | MANNLICHEN |
| LSJF | HELIPAD | 46.5479601 07.9854429 | JUNGFRAUJOCH |
| LSWE | HELIPAD | 46.6060063 07.9226019 | WENGEN |
| LSSC | HELIPAD | 46.5561069 07.9025077 | STECHELBERG |
| LSMR | HELIPAD | 46.5592818 07.8951591 | MURREN |
| LSBG | HELIPAD | 46.5631890 07.8586318 | BIRG |
| LSPG | HELIPAD | 46.5573448 07.8350485 | PIZ GLORIA |
Some of these helipads are quite challenging or placed in the most beautiful locations. One of them is, very probably, the most recognized of all the locations in this scenery. What am I saying? Probably? It IS the most recognized!
Bond… James Bond
Piz Gloria, in all its splendor, made it to Eiger Park and, with it, we finally have a nice version to fly to and from. And it should be quite a challenge as well, considering the altitude it’s located at!
It’s time to ferry some VIPs to this gorgeous revolving restaurant. Or perhaps go and save 007? Your call!
Framerate impact
Despite the fact that there quite a bit of custom mesh, of higher resolution as well as custom textures and buildings, the scenery handles pretty well on the framerate side, even in VR with my puny GTX 1060.
Conclusion
I’d like to be honest here and say something: reviewing Frank and Fabio’s work is a true pleasure but it makes me feel like we’re always saying the same thing. The truth is that they do excellent job and they release their new products so close to each other that, sometimes, I feel like I’m writing the same stuff over and over again.
But it is what it is. They DO excellent work and every new scenery they release is a delight.
Eiger Park 3D is not an exception. Quality textures, quality, custom mesh, lots to do for us, rotorheads, beautiful buildings and some highly interesting areas. Piz Gloria is the cherry on top of the cake but the whole scenery is marvelous.
