Introduction
One of my many hotly awaited releases this year has been Earth
Simulations' Isle of Man. Following on from Shawbury Fields,
Scilly Isles, and Guernsey, this scenery has been a little
delayed due to Darren, the developer, being ill. Now his health
has improved and with significant help from Ted Ted Andrews,
Tony Meredith and Gerry Winskill, the Isle of Man has been released.
But given some
of the highly detailed and accurate sceneries Earth Simulations
have produced over the past couple of years, does it live up to
my expectations? Let's find out!
Features
Here are just some of the many features quoted by Earth
Simulations on their web site:
● 12GB of scenery coverage;
● 30 cm per pixel photographic scenery;
● seasonal textures and night lighting;
● intricately detailed 1.2 m post hand edited enhanced terrain,
looks especially impressive at coastal cliffs;
● full accurate coverage of new improved Earth Simulations'
advanced autogen;
● full coverage of Earth Simulations' unique environmental
soundscapes;
● realistically scaled, and hugely varied trees and buildings
modelled in local character;
● unique objects;
● many animations, including:
● animals/bird life/marine life;
● working machinery;
● road traffic;
● shipping and boat traffic; and
● special effects.
● extremely detailed Ronaldsway Airport (EGNS), including:
● detailed ground polys and markings;
● all buildings modelled accurately and using Earth Simulations'
shadow lighting techniques;
● 3D signs and lighting for terminal area, taxi ways, and
runways;
● working windsock; and
●lots of small detail, realistic grass, airport clutter,
animations.
● Jurby and Andreas Airfields, Mount Rule grass strip and eleven
real world helicopter pads included; and
● bespoke modelling make the Isle of Man towns instantly
recognizable.
So Where is the Isle of Man?
The Isle of Man is located within the British Isles, in the
middle of the northern Irish Sea, approximately equidistant from
the islands of Great Britain and Ireland. The closest landmass
is southern Scotland. It is 52 kilometres (32 miles) long and,
at its widest point, is 22 kilometres (14 miles) wide. It has an
area of around 572 square kilometres (221 square miles). This
means it is easily flyable to from virtually any part of the UK.
Download, Installation, and Setup
The first line of the features will give you some idea of what
lies in wait - 12Gb!!! - yes that is not a typo. Earth
Simulations have stopped providing DVD products so this is a
download only product. It took me only about an hour to download
the whole package, but I do have a fairly high speed connection.
If you have a slow connection, this may take you significantly
longer. It is worth noting Earth Simulations have moved away
from their ESI installer in favour of a more user friendly
solution. Personally, I always managed to use ESI with no
problems, but it was fairly cluttered in its look and was not
the easiest app to navigate, so it is good to see Earth
Simulations have listened to feedback and decided to do it
differently.
The actual installation was done manually as this was a preview
copy, but even so this did not take too long and was not at all
complicated. I used the MergES utility that Earth Simulations
provide to maintain compatibility with existing add-ons with
custom autogen and did not find any problems at all. Most people
should find that the Isle of Man works seamlessly out of the
box. Whether you think you would benefit from following my
example will depend on which other add-ons you use. For example,
if you only use Orbx sceneries, then you will not need to worry
at all about any autogen issues as Earth Simulations and Orbx
have agreed to include each other's autogen definitions in their
distributed libraries. If you use certain other sceneries
though, you may need to do a slight bit of jiggery-pokery to get
everything working correctly at the same time. It does need to
be said this is not a problem of Earth Simulation's making, it
is purely down to the way Microsoft made autogen work in FSX. In
my experience, Earth Simulations have been very good at
recognising this potential issue and working to solve autogen
issues between their products and others in the past. MergES is
a prime example of this. How many other developers have given
you an easy to use tool to allow you to fix your own autogen
issues?
Documentation
The manual is a whopping 41 pages, but in large print, and is
very easy to read. Every conceivable aspect of setting this
scenery up for use in Flight Simulator is covered, with
screenshots to guide even a complete beginner through setup and
use. The only additional things which could have been included
are a set of charts for the airfields covered in the scenery.
However, these are freely available in pdf format at the
NATS
web site where you will always find the most up to date version,
so you won’t miss out.
So what do you get inside that 12Gb download? Let's look at each
of the product features in turn.
30 cm per pixel Photographic Scenery
The whole island is covered by photographic scenery, which shows
all the exact detail of every part of the island. Not only that,
but the imagery used is 30 cm per pixel, which is similar to the
kind of resolution a lot of airport designers use for their base
airfield textures. However, in this case this resolution is
extended across the entire Isle of Man, meaning you can fly low
and slow anywhere you like and still get crisp sharp terrain
textures. Unlike landclass based products, this photo scenery
does not ever replicate itself. If it is there in the real
world, the chances are it is there in Isle of Man.
Seasonal Textures and Night Lighting
It gets even better though. People often complain that photo
scenery is not any good because it only shows one season, so the
ground looks the same at whatever time of year you want to fly.
With some products, this criticism is fair, however Earth
Simulations have made sure they cannot be criticised in the same
way as they included full seasonal variations for the entire
island's photo scenery. I have to admit, whilst I have known for
years this was possible through the FSX SDK, I do not know of
any developer apart from Earth Simulations who has actually used
it so extensively and effectively. It is impossible to say more
about this in words in a meaningful way and as "a picture paints
a thousand words", below are some screenshots of Douglas.
Douglas Hard Winter |
Douglas Spring |
Douglas Autumn |
Douglas Dawn |
Douglas Dusk |
The variation of buildings and objects in this scenery is immense. Even in dense urban environments, you do not get the impression you are looking at repeating objects randomly placed, because you are not! These pictures of Ramsey in different seasons give a great impression of how realistic the object variation is from an aerial perspective.
Ramsey Spring |
Ramsey Autumn |
Ramsey Dawn |
Ramsey Dusk |
Douglas Night |
Ramsey Night |
Intricately Detailed Enhanced Terrain
Another of Earth Simulations' unique selling points is the tremendously detailed terrain mesh they include with their sceneries. As most of their sceneries are islands, this is an important feature, as coastlines are usually incredibly varied and full of detail. Isle of Man does not disappoint in this respect either. You need to crank the mesh resolution right up, but in return you get wonderfully detailed terrain throughout the island. Around the coast there are wave and spray effects around rocky areas.
Coastline Example 1 |
Coastline Example 2 |
Coastline Example 3 |
Coastline Example 4 |
There is a fantastic range of bespoke autogen models and the attention to detail here is fantastic. As a test, I opened FSX and slewed to a built-up area, then opened up the same in Google Earth. I have to admit, I had to take a breath at this point. Looking at the sim, I was astounded at just how accurate and close to reality Earth Simulations have managed to get their buildings. I looked around and tried to spot features in Google Earth, then looked for them in Isle of Man. Buildings generally were excellently placed and of the right size, shape and colour. The screenshots below show a couple of the built up areas in the Isle of Man compared with a very similar perspective in Google Earth.
IOM-Google Earth Comparison 1 |
IOM-Google Earth Comparison 2 |
The default FSX trees are well known to be somewhat larger than their real world cousins, but fortunately the vegetation in the Isle of Man does not seem to suffer from this problem. The vegetation and buildings are hugely varied, as claimed, as you can see from the screenshots. Obviously, I did not expect every individual tree to be exactly as it is in the real world, but I compared some random areas with various mapping sites and the general impression of the trees and buildings in the Isle of Man is extremely believable. I have not seen any other non Earth Simulations FSX scenery this accurate.
IOM-Google Earth Comparison 3 |
IOM-Google Earth Comparison 4 |
IOM-Google Earth Comparison 5 |
There are animations for you to find including: animals, bird life, marine life, working machinery, road traffic, shipping and boat traffic, special effects, and more. To highlight all these in detail would spoil the fun of finding them but even on a quick flight I spotted farm machinery, construction work, dolphins, birds, crashing waves, and yachts. Clearly there is so much to explore here.
Ronaldsway Airport (EGNS)
EGNS Overview |
EGNS Hard Winter |
EGNS Winter |
EGNS Spring |
EGNS Summer |
EGNS Autumn |
EGNS Dawn |
EGNS Dusk |
EGNS Night |
● Stand 4 does not exist any more as it has been replaced by a new baggage screening area;
● north of hold A9 is now the private jet centre (shown as a car park and works area);
● there are flashing strobe lights at the threshold that are not actually there;
● there are no holding point signs at Alpha 3; and
● there is a new radar scanner on the small hill just to the north east of the airfield.
The ground markings are detailed, clear, and accurate. The entire airport looked solid under DX9 and DX10, although I had already installed the free DX10 mods on my system. The layout depicted is very recent, as you would expect, and it is accurate according to the NATS chart The recent runway extension, together with the associated land reclamation at the end of Runway 26 is modelled.
EGNS Runway Extension |
EGNS Ground Markings |
EGNS Taxiway Night Lighting |
Around the airport there are a number of animated features. Obviously the radar tower is one of them, but there are also some construction vehicles at work and there is a fire practice taking place around the back of the fire station. What you will not see is the likes of PeopleFlow, such as animated baggage handlers, or ramp marshallers. This is perhaps one area where more detail might conceivably have been included.
Airport Animations |
Earth Simulations have gone to some length to make the water masks, blends, and effects up to their usual high standard. As I was looking at some of them in close up, I noticed the wave effect seemed to be going the wrong way, that is, out to sea. Thinking I had found a glitch, or the vector wave effects had possibly been put in the wrong way round, I watched for a little longer. This is no chance error, as the wave effects first wash in, then wash out again, just like real world waves. This is not something I have noticed with any other scenery, possibly something I have been missing for a while.
Notable Landmarks
A quick Internet search revealed a fairly wide range of landmarks and attractions on the Isle of Man, so it would have been remiss of me to not check on how many of them had made it into this scenery.
Castle Rushen | Included. |
Laxey Wheel | Included. |
Peel Castle | Peel Castle is a fairly notable landmark. Without it, the photo scenery looks a bit flat and missing some 3D detail. |
TT Races | I would have really loved to have seen crowds gathered and motorbikes racing around the island at a certain time of year. This would have been the icing on the cake, perhaps it could be added later. |
Cashtal yn Ard | Depicted in coastal area, as shown in screenshots. |
Snaefell Tram Railway | Can be included, with added models available from TonyM’s web site. |
Corrin's Tower | This small tower on a hill overlooking Peel has been included. |
Tower of Refuge | Included. |
Lighthouses | This seems to be a slightly overlooked area. Lighthouses can be a very distinct aid to VFR navigation but only some of them around the Isle of Man have been included. The lighthouses which are represented are the Point of Ayre and Maughold Head. Lighthouses which are represented, but not accurately, include: Douglas Head, and the Calf of Man. Douglas Head lighthouse has been represented by some autogen buildings but the lighthouse itself is missing. The Calf of Man installation is pretty unique, having three isolated buildings, but it is represented by one single autogen building. Langness and Chicken Rock are not represented at all. |
Laxey Wheel |
Tower of Refuge |
Earth Simulations state in the manual, “As always, with our latest release we are pushing the boundaries. To run The Isle of Man on maximum settings will require a state of the art system. This is intentional because at Earth Simulations we strive to provide the highest specification sceneries at the leading edge of development.” My PC is about two years old now, so I was not expecting to run away with full detail and 60 fps throughout. The first start up with my existing settings was a little disappointing, with frames in single figures, but then I did not read the comprehensive manual which includes guidance on how to set the scenery up in FSX for maximum benefit did I! No, I attempted to run it at maximum settings, all sliders to the right, and at a 3 x 28' monitor resolution of 5100 x 1200. However, by tweaking the FSX settings only slightly and lowering the quality on my graphics settings I was able to fly around most of the scenery in my Aerosoft BroncoX at a reasonably smooth 15 to 20 fps. Remember, this is over a 5100 x 1200 display, and when run on a more standard 1920 x 1200 single monitor, I managed to achieve a solid 20 to 30 fps outside of Douglas.
In general, I found it was not possible to run with maximum settings, both in FSX and through my GPU drivers, and achieve a reasonably consistent fps with this scenery on my PC. If I dropped the autogen settings by one slider setting the scenery ran very smoothly indeed. This was quite acceptable to me, however, I do have a mid to high range PC, (although it is two years old and probably only mid-range in terms of performance now - see specs at end of review). If you run FSX on anything significantly less, you will have to make more of a sacrifice in terms of detail / performance and you will need to consider this. However, if there was a scenery which justified you making a hardware upgrade to run it properly Earth Simulations' Isle of Man is certainly up there with the front runners. All said, if you insist on running everything set to maximum, I think the sheer amount of autogen in places like Douglas will hurt your frame rates no matter what you run, but that's just the price you pay for accuracy. How much of an impact it has will depend on your hardware. Overall, the scenery is well balanced and allows you to customise the performance to match your hardware.
DX10 and P3Dv2 Compatibility
The Isle of Man performs well under DX9. With the free DX10 shader mods, (Steve’s DX10 Fixer should work just fine as well), DX10 preview mode looks good as well. I was keen though, to install the Isle of Man in Prepar3D Version 2 (P3D2) and see what effect it would have. The visuals are just excellent. Like most sceneries I have installed in P3D2, the Isle of Man comes much more alive and looks fabulous. If your hardware can manage P3D I would really recommend this. Like many developers, Earth Simulations have not provided a custom P3D2 installer yet, but I found a manual installation was simple enough, I just copied the entire contents of my FSX/AUTOGEN folder to the P3D/AUTOGEN folder and recreated the scenery library entries manually, duplicating the ones in FSX. See the screenshots which show a really immersive Isle of Man in P3D2. I took one screenshot with the fps counter on and, as you can see, I was getting a very respectable 25 fps with everything set to maximum, apart from building, vegetation and terrain shading, and even getting nearly 15 fps over Douglas, which is the most performance sapping part of the scenery. If you have top of the range hardware you will almost certainly be able to do better than me.
IOM in P3D2 1 |
IOM in P3D2 2 |
IOM in P3D2 3 (incl fps) |
IOM in P3D2 4 |
IOM in P3D2 5 |
IOM in P3D2 6 |
The retail price of this scenery is £34.99. Most of Earth Simulations' previous sceneries have been a bit cheaper. However, when you consider what you get in this package, the time and effort which has clearly gone into it, and compare it against products at a similar price point, is it? This scenery provides you with several airfields, coverage of an entire island with seasonal photo real textures, and fully annotated with autogen. On top of this there is all the animations, wildlife, etc. It is compatible with Orbx sceneries, as Earth Simulations have agreed with Orbx to include their autogen files. So users can relax in the knowledge they will not encounter any compatibility problems. Both companies are to be congratulated for this, and the practical result is users of FTX Europe series: England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Ireland can fly to the Isle of Man quite happily. This scenery, therefore, complements any investment made in nearby Orbx region scenery perfectly. It is the only part of the British Isles not actually covered by any of the Orbx FTX regions, so it completes the set of scenery perfectly.
In short, with all the accuracy of photo scenery and all the eye candy you would expect from a landclass scenery, yes, this scenery is absolutely worth the asking price.
Scores
Scenery Coverage - 10 - The scenery covers the entire island in 30 cm seasonal, fully annotated textures, with superb attention to detail.
Level of Detail - 9.0 - There are a few minor omissions, which, if they had been added would have made this product just about perfect, i.e. Peel Castle, a few harbour features, and a couple of lighthouses. It also takes into account the lack of airport life animations which seem to be becoming standard features in scenery. Otherwise, the score reflects the almost real life level of detail contained in the scenery.
Quality of Buildings - 10 - The range and quality of models used and the way they have been deployed to create a believable Isle of Man that in some places looks just like Google Earth is excellent.
Performance - 9.5 - The performance of a scenery like this will necessarily be quite subjective depending on your hardware, what you fly, and what settings you choose to use. The score takes into account that despite the huge amount of detail, I was able to get reasonable performance almost everywhere, except over Douglas, with an appropriate choice of settings.
Documentation - 10 - The supplied documentation is extensive and covers all the necessary information. It gives good detail on how to use settings to try to get the optimal performance for the scenery.
Value for Money - 10 - For what you get, it is excellent value.
Review PC Core Specification
* Intel i5 2500K, 3.3GHz (Overclocked to 4.7GHz);
* 12GB Corsair DDR3, 1600MHz; and
* ATi Radeon HD7950, 3GB.
Verdict: | |||
• Scenery Coverage: | 10/10 | ||
• Level of Detail: | 9.0/10 | ||
• Quality of Buildings: | 10/10 | ||
• Performance: | 9.5/10 | ||
• Documentation: | 10/10 | ||
• Value for Money: | 10/10 |
Isle of Man is awarded a Mutley’s Hangar score of 9.8/10, with an "Outstanding" and a Mutley's Hangar Gold Award. |