Colonsay is a small island in the
Scottish Inner Hebrides, located north of Islay and south of
Mull. Visualize HD produced this because it is not included
as a default airfield in FSX. When I spotted this scenery on
Simmarket.com, having just recently purchased GenX volume 8
Scotland South, I thought that this would be a great little
addition.
The developer is new on the scene, this being their first
scenery release.
What does it promise?
* HD 1m/pix Ground Cover Image for
the whole island of Colonsay (Summer Day and Night)
* Accurate LOD11/19m Mesh covering
Colonsay and surrounding Islands + Parts of Ireland and UK
* Colonsay Airport (EGEY) featuring
HD Models and Ground Poly
* New 2012 Airfield Layout
* All Lakes updated including
Watermask (original lake shape)
* Accurate Coastline
* Autogen placed over the Island
including Night textures
(Houses,Trees,Lighthouse,Windmills,..)
* Animated birds
* Fast and Easy Installer
Purchase, download and
installation
The download from Simmarket.com comes as an 274MB executable
file. The first indication something might be less than
excellent is the appearance of a security warning telling
you the publisher of the software could not be verified.
However, I trusted the software installer and up popped the
Colonsay Island 2012 HD install program. After the usual
EULA confirmation you are asked to input your name and
registration code.
The installer then asks you for your FSX location before
proceeding with the installation. The claim is a fast and
easy installer, which it is, all things considered. What it
doesn’t do is add the scenery to the scenery library; it
extracts and copies the scenery files to your add-on scenery
folder in FSX. You are the required to manually add the two
scenery folders to the scenery library. This isn’t a
terrible problem but it would have been a professional touch
if the installer had done it automatically.
Terrain: Photo-scenery,
Mesh, Masking
The colours of the 1m/pix ground imagery are pretty
impressive, with a realistic look. In my opinion, the colour
balancing here is better than in the Scotland GenX
photo-sceneries, which tend to look a bit washed out and
dull. Colonsay though is lively and vibrant, what a pity
PlayHorizon couldn’t achieve the same! There is a problem
though which users of GenX volume 8 will discover, in that
there is a definite incompatibility between the two
products. Having both active leads to a strange phenomenon
where FSX displays photo-scenery in the distance from
Colonsay, but photo-scenery within a small radius of the
aircraft appears to be from GenX. The difference in colours
and hues mean you have rectangular areas on land that
constantly update and change between the two sceneries,
which do not sit well together. Around the coastline, it
appears that the two blendmasks for each product conflict,
causing strange polygonal greyish areas to be displayed in
the sea.
This product was clearly not compatibility tested before
release, and the product page on Simmarket.com has now been
updated to flag up this incompatibility. The developer is
considering producing a patch to try to eliminate these
problems. Initially they decided against it, their advice
being that you can always deactivate GenX volume 8 in the
scenery library to eliminate the symptoms of the conflict.
Whilst that may indeed be true, having to pause the sim to
switch scenery in and out of the scenery library whilst
mid-flight would be an absolute immersion killer.
 Colonsay with only VHD active |
 Colonsay with only GenX vol8 active |
Both sceneries active |
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The mesh provided to sit under the ground imagery is 19m, if you only have default scenery for this part of the world this should be a big improvement for you. However, if you are a Scotland South user, you will already have a better 5m mesh for Colonsay installed and I would recommend keeping that. There is not a tremendous amount of noticeable difference between them, but the beach and coastal areas tend to look more flat and natural with the 5m mesh in my opinion. The 19m mesh supplied with Colonsay tends to over-enhance the beach areas giving a pronounced dune effect, which looks slightly artificial.
Colonsay HD claims to have an accurate coastline and this is true. The developers have implemented coastal blendmasking which is nice to see and looks good. There is a difference in interpretation in the blendmasking between Colonsay and GenX volume 8 and visually which you prefer will be entirely a subjective preference. Again, if you only have default scenery the improvement will be stunning, if you have Scotland South you have a choice to make. Colonsay shows what appears to be a very calm sea, with most of the white surf that is characteristic of the GenX photo-scenery having been edited out. The developer has also chosen to apply the blendmasking over a number of rocky outcrops around the coast, giving the impression that they are underwater, when a quick reference to Google Earth shows they are not. This is an almost pedantic issue of accuracy though and shouldn’t detract from the scenery too much.
Colonsay with only VHD active |
Colonsay with only GenX vol8 active |
Both sceneries active |
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You can see where rocky elements around the coast have been placed under transparency in the VHD scenery where they are not in the GenX. Reference to online mapping services shows GenX is correct.
As Colonsay isn’t well populated there isn’t much to see there at night. The 3D scenery textures are OK, perhaps a bit too bright in some places but not so much as to be distinctly out of place. The two fictional lighthouses don’t appear to flash and the lighting effect on the few street lights that are dotted around seems to sometimes flicker on and off or only shows a semi-circle of light cast on the ground.
 General night shot |
 Scalasaig night shot |
Airfield: Layout, ground polys, compatibility and accuracy
Colonsay has a single runway oriented roughly east-west. There is a very small apron and taxiway and a single small terminal building. A quick search on the internet finds a wealth of imagery of Colonsay airfield so it’s easy to judge the accuracy.
The developer claims to have implemented a custom ground-poly for the airfield to improve realism. The ground poly has some distinct problems though as it has a tendency to flicker and/or disappear, leaving a very thin default runway over the photo-scenery. The runway ground poly also appears to tile down its length but the joins between the tiles are noticeable. The taxiway and apron are rendered with ground polygons, but there is significant flicker where they overlap.
When you look at them closely you can also see that the quality of ground polygon texturing is very different between the apron (which is clear and crisp), and the taxiway (which looks blurred and indistinct).
Upon examining the airfield in Airport Design Editor (free version) I can see that only the runway itself is represented, not the taxiway or apron. This results in your aircraft throwing up clods of earth as it travels along the taxiway because FSX thinks there is nothing but default ground there.
Version 1.02, despite the developers’ assertion that they had fixed it, still for me had the runway numbers the wrong way round on the ground polygon textures, showing runway 11 facing west and runway 29 facing east! It’s something that should be easily remedied and a fix is promised, but thorough testing would have resolved the issue before release.
 Ground poly Flicker |
 Ground poly joins |
 Taxiway-apron quality difference |
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Compatibility problems with GenX vol 8 scenery
 Colonsay with only VHD active |
 Colonsay with only GenX vol8 |
 Both sceneries active |
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Again there appears to be a compatibility problem with GenX volume 8. You can clearly see the depression caused by Colonsay’s airfield flatten when GenX is active. The manual install process doesn't allow for a user to do anything other than have one or the other, or both sceneries active. This means a pilot has to put up with the terrain problems caused by the airport flatten or switch in and out of different sceneries midflight. What is really needed here is an installer option for GenX users which modifies the GenX mesh in this part of the island with VHDs. I am not an expert in creating or modifying mesh but I do know that I hate switching in and out of sceneries and flying to airfields with massively obvious terrain problems.
The airfield representation itself initially looks to be quite solid. Clearly it is better than nothing at all which is what default FSX gives you, but a cursory examination of the available photos of the airfield show that the developers have paid little heed to accuracy in the depiction of this airfield. The textures for the small terminal building do not appear to be tremendously high resolution and in my opinion are unworthy of the term HD. I have produced custom photo-realistic scenery myself to a much higher specification without too much difficulty in the past. The developer has chosen to include trees where there are none in real life and to depict the car park perimeter in large concrete blocks rather than the simple wire fence that is actually there. The airfield sign, the small stone wall that runs parallel to the runway, what looks like a small generator are all not represented and most improbably of all, there is no windsock, let alone an animated one.
 Colonsay airfield in sim |
 Real life Colonsay |
 Missing Airfield sign |
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The best that can be said here is that it is better than nothing. Accuracy and quality are not going to be the first two adjectives you will apply to this scenery!
Autogen & 3D modelling: Accuracy and coverage
Remember the claim, ‘Autogen placed over the Island including Night textures’ When I opened the photo-scenery in the SDK Autogen annotator, it’s obvious that only the trees are Autogen, there aren't any buildings present at all. What we’re looking at here are placed models, probably achieved using one of the many small utilities that are available for that purpose, not Autogen. You may think that this doesn’t matter much to you, but when the accuracy of the description from the developer themselves is factually incorrect, how much hope do you have regarding the accuracy of the rest of the scenery? …and so it proves.
The autogen vegetation implementation is a little scrappy. Vegetation areas overlap, they are all created with polygons and even the polygon areas don't cover all the places with trees.
Vegetation polygons result in a lower autogen density in my experience as opposed to the Treescapes methodology of tightly packed small autogen vegetation squares. Altogether it does give the impression that this was lashed together either with little care and attention to detail or the developer still has something to learn about autogen.
There are two lighthouses shown in the scenery, both of which are completely fictional. One is even placed in such a position partly inland that it would be extremely unlikely that a real lighthouse might be placed there. The same goes for the wind farm. As far as I could research there are no wind farms on Colonsay.
There are however, four notable structures within this scenery area. They are the Colonsay Hotel, Colonsay House, the port of Scalasaig and Oronsay Priory ruins. A custom depiction of these would have been fabulous and really made the scenery unique, but sadly the developers chose not to. Colonsay Hotel and House are depicted by crude, unrealistic generic building models, while Scalasaig port itself is just a flat area in the sea and the Oronsay Priory ruins have been totally ignored.
It’s interesting here to focus in on some of the modelling (or lack of it) to show what it’s like.
The first buildings you come across nearest to the airfield are just to the east. Looking at the closest building on the left - the end looks completely out of place with the rest of the model. The end of the building looks as though the texture hasn't been sized properly because it overlaps the two longer sides.
 Buildings east of the airfield |
 Close-up |
Added to that, looking at the ground image it looks as though the buildings have been placed incorrectly. Sure enough, when you look at an overhead image from a mapping service you can clearly make out that the structures are a farmhouse and some outbuildings, not a set of three apartment complexes. Clearly no effort at all has been expended to try and even vaguely match the building types to those which are there in real life.
This is important, because the exact same building model has been used repeatedly across the island. The developers have clearly opted to just use generic buildings to give a flavour of habitation. In a significant number of places no attempt have been made to ensure that generic buildings are placed on the same footprint as those in real life either. Again, the lack of accuracy is disturbing and is the one consistent thread running through this scenery.
Moving east we come to the site of the Colonsay Hotel. Some good imagery exists of this structure and it shouldn’t have been too difficult produce a good custom model. Instead the same unfinished apartment complex model has been used here.
Just a little further on is the coast and the port of Scalasaig, As you can see from the screenshots, no attempt to bespoke model the pier has been made either, it has just been left as a flat area in the middle of the sea - disappointing since reasonably quality imagery of it exists freely. Also, if you look closer the pier services building isn't represented, nor is the breakwater, and the sheds on the shoreline are clearly not accurate nor is the tree placement. There is an American type shrimp fishing boat though, (albeit on the wrong side of the pier).
 Colonsay – Scalasaig |
 Scalasaig Pier |
The two other noticeable sites, Colonsay House and Oronsay Priory are also treated just as shabbily. The same old apartment model graces the site of Colonsay House estates outbuildings several times over, and Colonsay House itself is depicted by another poor quality unrepresentative model. Oronsay Priory and its ruins are not even granted this cursory attention, and are left to sit flat and unattended on the bare photo-scenery.
 Colonsay House |
 Oronsay Priory |
What else is around the island? There are a good number of small boats that are dotted around, but they appear to be generic default models and are not animated. There is a cyclist as well and a few vehicles, which are all static. There are animated birds at various places and at the airfield there is one animated man who waves at you by the apron. It would have been nice to have some animated boat traffic entering and departing Scalasaig harbour and circumnavigating the island, or a little bit of road traffic along the islands few paved roads. Perhaps I’ve just been too spoiled by the likes of other island sceneries by developers like Earth Simulations and I expect too much now!
Conclusions
The Good:
* The colour representation of the photo-scenery is at least comparable and probably better than that shown in GenX volume 8.
The Bad:
* There are some fairly major quality problems that affect this scenery, in the ground polygons, airfield construction and scenery
compatibility areas.
* The ground scenery models, where they exist, are not representative at all of the actual buildings present, and some appear to have
just been added in because the developers thought they looked nice. It's Flight Simulator, not a fantasy world and for me more time
should have been invested in creating a more realistic representation rather than adding in fictional structures.
If you do not own Scotland South GenX volume 8 and you are happy with a representative scenery rather than an accurate one, you may find the improvement you get with Colonsay’s mesh and photo-scenery more than acceptable.
If you do use GenX volume 8 though, and/or you are looking for a more realistic scenery, the current compatibility problems and other scenery quality issues will probably mean this is one you will want to pass on.
Verdict
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• Level of Detail : • Performance : • Scenery Coverage: • Flight Characteristics: • Quality of buildings: • Documentation: • Value for Money: |
2.0/10 7.0/10 3.0/10 2.0/10 2.0/10 2.0/10 4.0/10 |
Final Mutley's Hangar Score 3/10
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