Welcome to Tahiti and the Windward Islands, the eastern part of the Society Islands in the South Pacific. Arrive with an airliner (up to Boeing 747 and Airbus A380) at Faa'a International Airport and go island hopping with a smaller aircraft, or test your skills as a medical air pilot. Explore stunning atolls, sandy beaches and mountainous islands covered by tropical forests, or service the hospitals on Moorea and Tahiti.
This scenery package for X-Plane features a custom terrain mesh with photo-realistic textures, dense vegetation and country-typical autogen, as well as custom road-networks and sea-routes with dynamic traffic. Included are detailed renditions of the Faa'a International Airport and two regional airports (Moorea, Tetiaroa), as well as three challenging heliports (Taaone, Taravao, Afareaitu).
Official features
- Detailed terrain mesh with photo-realistic textures for the landscape and the sea
- Custom overlay with dense tropical vegetation and country-typical autogen-buildings
- High-detailed renditions of Faa'a International Airport and two regional airports:
- Faa'a International Airport (NTAA)
- Moorea Airport (NTTM)
- Tetiaroa Airport (NTTE)
- Three challenging heliports:
- Taaone (NTHP)
- Taravao (NTHV)
- Afareaitu (NTHF)
- Hundreds of custom buildings and objects including PBR textures and night textures
- Implementation of theScenery Animation Manager(SAM), e.g. animated Marshallers
- Coverage: Tahiti and all the Windward Islands in the Society Islands archipelago
- X-Plane 12 / X-Plane 11.55r2+
- OS: Microsoft Windows 10 / 11 (64bit), MacOS (Mojave+) or Linux Ubuntu LTS
- CPU: Multi Core processor with 3.2 GHz or better
- Memory: 8 GB RAM or more
- Graphics card: 8 GB VRAM or more
- Free hard disk space: 9 GB
First Impressions
- Surprising number of buildings, trees and other scenery
- Looks very complete
- Flying around Fa’aa International didn’t destroy my FPS in the R22
- Lots of places to view at low altitude and potential landing zones
- Can fly coastal or in the valleys of the beautiful mountains
- Good place to learn to fly, practise chopper flying with different styles of airports and heliports
- Looks very lively with a lot of traffic around
- Slightly dark textures
- Trees glow when the sun is behind them, even behind the mountain
The Tahiti and Windward Islands scenery from Maps2Xplane is a well finished and solid scenery package. The Autogen buildings and trees matched to this area look amazing and there are a lot of them!
I found myself flying at around 300 feet AGL and I am quite impressed with the quality of the scenery at such low level. I also spotted a few potential landing zones to practice landing in confined areas.
One of the first features I noticed shortly after my first take off was how lively the roads and sea were with traffic. This feature really did make this scenery feel alive without air traffic.
There are a full range of geographical features in this scenery area which make it a playground for helicopters and pilots who want to try various scenarios ranging from precision approaches in to Faa’a International, confined area landing and operations at sea. There are also several hospitals to fly to and from for medevac operations.
This scenery covers 4 tiles. This biggest island is Tahiti with Mount ‘Orohena. This has Faa’a International and 2 hospital helipads.
The second biggest is Moorea-Maiao to the west, which has a regional airport and a helipad.
Then there is Mai’ao to the further west, which doesn’t have any helipads.
Finally, there is a small group to islands to the north of Tahiti, which has an airstrip there. Be sure to bring sunglasses to this one, you will see what I mean when you see what’s beside the runway.
The mountainous area and valleys inland are also impressive with carefully placed buildings, trees, roads and even cars parked at certain angles to match the sloping terrain.
There is only one area that I found a little disappointing was the glowing trees when the sun was on the far side of them.
This seems to be an issue with X-Plane Autogen, custom positioned trees don’t seem to have this graphical problem.
Frame Rate
I’m surprised that this number of trees didn’t have such an impact on my frames per second as I would expect pointing to the evidence that this scenery is well optimised and good use of Autogen.
If you do struggle with FPS, I would suggest dropping the Rendering Distance in X-Plane Options.
Textures
Overall, I have found that the textures are ever so slightly dark appearing as though the area looked like it was under a dark cloud in CAVOK conditions.
Where the water meets the land, this is very well finished with the extras of waves and even coral reefs further out to sea.
Mesh/3d
This is very good, especially where the terrain meets the sea. There are some pretty high mountainous areas here too and make the area seem pretty complicated. Well done to Maps2Xplane for this complexity.
Further inland the cliffs and steep banks seem to be finished very well and it’s a real pleasure to fly at such low level in these valleys.
Out to sea, you get a real sense of height of this area and how much has been covered in this scenery package.
