Leeds Bradford Airport (EGNM) is the largest airport in Yorkshire
and handles almost 3 million passengers and over 30,000 movements
per year. The airport has one main terminal with 2 check-in halls;
Hall B is (as at the last time I was there) solely for Jet 2 who
are the main operator from Leeds, flying to destinations all over
Europe and even to New York at Christmas.
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| Jet 2 Offices |
The airport is based about 2 minutes flight time from Leeds City Centre, but can be quite tricky to get to by road as there aren’t any direct routes – more going around the back-roads or taking your chance with the speed cameras on the A-Roads. The airport is constantly expanding in terms of passenger traffic, because of this a ‘Masterplan’ has been laid out which aims to increase parking areas, the terminal building, add more gates, changes to the runway/taxiway layout and add new road & rail links. Expanding the terminal building will be no easy feat as it’s more or less situated on top of a hill, which at 681ft elevation, makes Leeds the highest airport in the UK.
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| Airport Overview | |
The airport has a long history stretching back to the 1930’s, in fact my nan was stationed there during the war helping to build parts of the Lancaster Bombers (wings I think). Over the years it has changed dramatically to keep up with the current trends and demands, and it has now caught the attention of Gary Summons at UK2000 who has decided to add Leeds Bradford to his Xtreme range of airport scenery.
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| Busy Airside |
This is fairly straight forward but you must remember to de-activate any other Leeds Bradford scenery which you may already have installed from UK2000, such as the VFR Airfields range. The installer is 96mb and took hardly any time at all to download. Make sure to read the manual before you load up at the airport as you may need to move scenery around in your scenery library within FSX (very easy). The documentation is only 7 pages long and won’t take much time to read, but it includes all the important information to help you get the most from this scenery.
Integration with Orbx FTX England
I’m not going to talk about how well the scenery blends in etc… but if you are using FTX England you will need to move the EGNM Xtreme file above all the FTX Eng entries in the scenery library prior to loading up at the airport. It took me a while to figure out why the Xtreme scenery wasn’t that Xtreme, until the penny dropped that the Orbx scenery was displaying.
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| Scenery coverage with FTX England |
In many ways the fact that the Orbx scenery loaded first was a blessing because the ‘wow’ factor was fantastic once I loaded the correct scenery. The buildings and textures are unmistakably UK2000 and the quality is excellent. My only complaint is that, as with the UK2000 Doncaster scenery, the people who are scattered around the airport aren’t of the same high quality. But that is being hyper critical so I won’t dwell on it.
 Excellent Building Modelling |
 Cargo |
 Fuel Station |
 GA Section |
Walking around the airport I only found one odd-ball piece of scenery which was an air-bridge that seemed to be suspended by invisible forces from the terminal building.
Walking up to the terminal that only items that I can recall being at the real world airport which aren’t included here are the concrete barriers blocking vehicle access to the front of the terminal. These were installed after the terrorist attack at Glasgow airport in 2007. I noticed that the ground textures at the front of the terminal building weren’t as hi-res as those air-side, but were still an improvement over the default.
 I've Not Counted The Cars |
 Odd Airbridge |
The LOD is excellent and covers everything within the airport boundaries, and also the huge Royal Mail centre based just off the airport. There are a few fields and Yeadon Tarn included but that’s as far as it goes. But as this is airport scenery I didn’t expect anything more. The quality of the buildings, taxiways, grass and objects is first class. If the building is there in reality you will now find it in FSX. If you are still using FS9 it’s worth noting that this scenery is also available to purchase for that version of FS.
 Hi-Res Ground Textures |
There is a configuration tool included if you don’t feel that your PC can extract the most from the scenery. You are able to add/remove service fleets, static airliners, bizjets, road traffic, airport traffic and a massive 4,000 3D cars! You are also able to change the animation timer’s smoothness to be linked to your FPS or have a constant speed.
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| Car Parks Are This Close To The Apron |
Adding the cars will cause a performance hit, but the airport looks much better with them added. The locations of the car parks are spot on and give an impression of how compact everything is at the airport.
I have a fairly high end PC and didn’t experience any performance hit at all. The scenery is complex, but it has been modelled in a such a way that any performance hit is low.
Night Lighting
The website boasts ‘Stunning Night Effects’ and I totally agree! I’ve found that some scenery add-ons struggle to get the night lighting right, not in this case. The lighting is soft enough to allow you to make your way around the airport, but not so bright to dazzle you. I arrived back into Leeds last year at around 2am and the lighting is more or less as I remember it. That said, you really need to use this scenery in the daylight to enjoy it fully.
 Lovely Glow From The Lights |
 Night Overview |
 Night-Time Final Approach |
 Terminal at Night |
As with all hi quality products there is a price to pay. Thankfully it is not very much! At £16.99 I think Gary is under-valuing his scenery. However £23.99 seems a lot to pay for a CD-ROM version, although I wouldn’t expect many people to want a CD copy now that extra mass storage devices are so cheap for PC’s
Summary
As I have flown from Leeds many times in the past I jumped at the chance to review this add-on, and I wasn’t disappointed. The airport is captured perfectly and will make a fantastic addition to your scenery library. If you are 50/50 about purchasing this add-on you can download a freeware version (although with some features disabled/reduced) to try it out before making the plunge. I’d skip that and just go straight for the full version, you’ll love it!
Verdict
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Level of detail: • Performance: • Scenery Coverage: • Quality of Buildings: • Documentation: • Value for Money: |
9/10 9/10 9/10 9/10 9/10 9/10 |
Mutley's Hangar score of 9/10
Rob Scott
Review machine Spec: Intel i7 2600k @3.40GHz | 8GB DDR3 RAM 1600MHz |NVidia GTX570 1280MB GFX Card |Windows 7 64bit Home Premium
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