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AGNIS
guidance system |
T5b a
smaller terminal but with more room for
larger aircraft. |
Terminals T1 - T3.
The centre section, where T1, 2 and 3 and the Queens
Building are, again
depict the present work being carried out so you cannot
fault Simwings on their accuracy. All of these
buildings are there in their present form but should be
updated in time to their new form, I am led to believe
these will be free as part of the on-going development
of the software.
You can see from the overhead and ground views so much
detail of the many interesting buildings including the
old control tower and radar. Also shown are various
ramps, advertising boards and road directions.
The main terminal areas also get their share of
detailing, as you can see below there are many familiar features,
take a good look before they change!
CLICK ON
PICTURES FOR FULL SIZE VIEW
The central complex of terminals also use Safegate
docking along
with a AGNIS PAPA/Mirror combined system, easy to use
and understand.
One thing you will not see are animated gates in this
airport. A lot of the Simwing's airport scenery are
compatible with Aerosoft's generic Airport Enhancement
Services, this will give you the animation along with
many other features but will cost you 5 AES credits for
this airport and would be well worth the cost. For us
lesser folk that do not have AES it is a tempting
upgrade!
Terminal 4
T4 to the south of the runways is home to 6 airlines,
the 2 major ones being British Airways and KLM.
The terminal handles approximately 14.2 million
passengers a year and has been carefully modelled with
detailed ramps to the car park at the rear and the
connecting covered footway to he Hilton Hotel.
There is plenty of room for large aircraft here and
loads of parking on the apron using the standard AGNIS
stop system the terminal gates however uses yet another
different system, the AGNIS PAPA! You certainly
get to see and use a lot of different systems and it's
nice to think that the developers have taken the time to
perfect this.
CLICK ON
PICTURES FOR FULL SIZE VIEW
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Aerial
view of Terminal 4 with Hilton hotel to
the right |
The
main concourse with apron parking to
left |
Cargo and Maintenance Areas
Again to the south of the runways is the distinctive BA
World Cargo building with the large BA ribbon banner. a
huge apron as you may expect and is shared with the Air
Canada cargo Terminal. The EL AL cargo terminal is
shown using an enclosed apron. There are other cargo
operators but not shown in any great detail.
The BA maintenance area lies to the east of the
perimeter road and is accessed by passing through a
sliding barrier. There is also other maintenance
hangars noticeably BMI as well.
You can open the BA hangar doors by entering NAV1
frequency 112.00. To close the doors simply select a
NAV1 frequency different to 112.00.
To open the barrier to get access to the maintenance
area you select a NAV1 frequency of 113.00 you then pass
across the road to the maintenance apron. Anyone seeing
this for real knows what a great sight this is to watch!
CLICK ON
PICTURES FOR FULL SIZE VIEW
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The BA
World Cargo building
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The
enclosed apron between EL AL and Air
Canada cargo
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The BA
maintenance hangar and barrier opening
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Patiently waiting to cross the road. |
Night textures.
This airport looks great at night, a compliment to the
developers I can assure you! T5 comes alive with a green
glow as does all the taxiway markers. The tower has a
nice low brightness glow too.
The T1 -T3 complex is bright and busy as you would
expect with the aprons are adequately lit.
Oh, before I forget, there is photoscenery included of
the airport environs, this gives you a nice feel for the
surrounding roads, this will only be apparent if you are
flying overhead or having to go around, a nice touch it
just goes to help the realism.
CLICK ON
PICTURES FOR FULL SIZE VIEW
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Sunset, Heathrow sparkles! |
The
calm that is LHR Control Tower. |
Conclusion.
Overall I am very, very impressed, luckily I have a reasonable
spec machine and I could run with max scenery at high
FPS, however I took Simwings advice and ran at 80%
traffic.
There must have been concern with processor usage and
CTD's as Simwings were very quick to release a V1.1
which addressed these issues along with converting DXT3
formats to DXT1 which considerably reduces the download
size.
For owners of FSX we have the promise of a free upgrade,
if it's as good as Budapest then wow I cannot wait, bring
it on.
So much kudos to Aerosoft/Simwings, this has to be the
best rendition of LHR yet!
My review machine
specs: |
Heathrow 2008 Links: |
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Self build:
MSI Intel 975X PCI Express Motherboard
Intel E6600 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo
4x 512Mb DDR2 667Mhz PC5400
Nvidia 7900GTX 512Mb DDR3 PCI-E
Windows XP Pro SP2
FSX with SP2 installed |
Aerosoft web site |
LHR 2008
home page |
Simwings
home Page |
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