Mutleys Hangar - Manhattan X review

Review

Manhattan X for FSX
Published by Aerosoft
Review by Joe (Mutley) Lawford
March 2009

Introduction.
Manhattan, the ultimate in skyscraper architecture, has since long lost the title of city with the tallest skyscraper, but remains the city with the most interesting skyscrapers in the world. It is home to so many famous landmarks and is synonymous with high finance and high living, in both senses of the word!

The buildings themselves are icons of their age. There is an eclectic mix of styles from the dark, early gothic influence with intricate detail to featureless square mirrored buildings.

So how do you go about modelling a city as interesting and diverse as this? Well you ask someone like Andreas Kozma, the guru of scenery design and developer of the previous FS2004 Manhattan scenery to do it for you!

There are a remarkable three million polygons and close to hundred and fifty thousand objects in this scenery so in theory it has to be good?

Area covered:
• Manhattan Island (East Side, West Side, Uptown and Downtown)
• Ellis Island
• Governors Island
• Liberty Island
• Roosevelt Island

Features:
• KJRB, Port Authority Downtown Manhattan/Wall St Heliport
• KJRA, West 30th St. Heliport
• 6N5, East 34th Street Heliport
• 6N4, Pan Am Metroport Heliport
• All major bridges in great detail
• Most famous landmarks on Manhattan Island
• Detailed manual of the heliports, VFR flight routes and covered area
• Effects files for smoke, sound and other effects
• Spectacular night effects.

To be honest I am nervous, will my machine cope? Let’s see.

This product is available as a reasonable 320Mb download or a boxed DVD.

After a fast download, the familiar on-line activation gets us up and running. Be sure to check your version, mine is 1.20 which, at the time of writing, includes all the latest performance tweaks. For the download version, at least, you can upgrade to the latest version via your account page.

The very first thing you must do is study the included pdf Manual, in-fact print it out as you will need to refer to it if you are not familiar with fine tuning your graphics settings.

Aerosoft are very aware that this product will present a challenge to the vast majority of machines but what is the point of not making the very best available as in time hardware speed will catch up, more of that later.

So, one painless installation later and pre-flight trials undertaken, it’s time to take flight.

Exploring
I recommend you try the included mission first, it is a tourist helicopter flight from the Port Authority KJRB out into the harbour, past Governors, Liberty and Ellis Island up the Hudson river across Central Park, down the East River past the United Nations building and south Street Sea Port back to the Port Authority heliport.

This mission starts with the engine off, the outside environmental sounds can be clearly heard. The sound of scores of taxi’s pounding the streets and sounding their horns and other big city noises. Also, by the water you are aware of water lapping sounds too.
The mission flight is accompanied by a tour guide; the actor must be a native New Yorker, that dialect is unmistakable! Quite kindly he points out what islands you are flying over and loads of other points of interest. The mission compass of course will also tell you what the next waypoint is.

This really does give you the feel for the place and an urge to ditch the tourists and go exploring.

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