BEHIND THE SCENES AT GATWICK AIRPORT - British Airways ...

Reviews.airwaysReview:UK2000 SceneryGatwick (EGKK)Uk2000 have been producing top quality UK airports forFS9 and FSX for years. Brendan Farmer reviews one oftheir popular titles, Gatwick Xtreme...Gatwick Airport was built in the early part of the 20 thCentury starting as a small airfield owned by RedwindAircraft Company. They operated a flight school atGatwick. It didn’t take long for Gatwick to start beingserviced by commercial flights. In the year 1933 it wasapproved for commercial travel and Hillman’s Airwaysstarted service to Belfast and Paris from Gatwick.However in ’46 after the end of World War II Gatwickwas decommissioned but still provided charter andmaintenance and charter services. Gatwick reopened in1958 and only grew from there to what it is today. In2008 it was ranked the 28 th busiest airport and moreimpressively the 8 th largest in Europe in terms ofpassenger traffic. There are plans to expand Gatwick inthe form of another runway and/or a new passengerterminal. But for the time being Gatwick still remainsone of the busiest single runway airports in commercialaviation.But what about the UK2000’s representation ofLondon’s Gatwick Airport? UK2000 Scenery is knownfor quality, this cannot be doubted. Water is wet, the skyis blue and Gary Summons makes some of the bestscenery for the UK in Flight Simulation. This is just factand no avid simmer with an eye for quality will deny it.To really, accurately give opinion on this scenery it willbe best to discuss it as a function of several parts, liketexturing, performance etc.A close friend of mine once said that the scenery at thearrival and departure airport make the flight. Scenery isperhaps the signal greatest enhancer to FlightSimulation; it makes airports look like airports, ratherthan yellow and black uniform texture buildings. Andwithout a doubt the biggest portion of the scenery arethe qualities of textures. Day time textures in UK2000Gatwick are very good. This scenery is a little bit on theolder side, so the textures will not be of the quality thatother modern Flight Sim sceneries. But this doesn’tmean that the textures are bad, quite the oppositeactually. Through a bit of investigative work it seemsthat all the building textures are saved in a 256x25616bit format. That doesn’t sound high quality and itreally is not. But the ground textures that make the lookand feel of the airport are all saved in great, 1024x102432bit quality. Past the techno babble, I’m sure peoplewant to know how the textures look in the Simulator.Perfectly fine is the answer. The buildings do honestlylook lower res that what simmers would expect46 Airways magazine October/November 2010