Photorico Scenery Dominicci Airport for FSX/P3D - Review

Photorico Scenery Dominicci Airport



Earlier this year, Photorico Scenery released their rendition of Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport in San Juan, an airport that most people know by the name of "Isla Grande airport".
The scenery was designed to work both with FSX and Prepar3D, and is available from simMarket for 20,57 €.

Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport

Dominicci Airport, most known as Isla Grande Airport, is an airfield located in Miramar, a district in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The airport was constructed by the U.S Navy prior to World War ll, and was given the name of NAS Isla Grande. 
It also served as Puerto Rico's main international airport until 1954, when Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport (TJSJ), was built.
Up until 1971, the airfield also hosted the USCG, but they relocated to Ramey AFB.

The airport was renamed in honor of Fernando Luis Ribas-Dominicci, a Puerto Rican F-111 pilot that was killed during Operation El Dorado Canyon.

Currently, the airport is frequented by private an general aviation aircraft.

Installation

As I got a review copy directly from the developer, I had to download the scenery from Dropbox, and also had to install it manually. 
I guess that it comes in a simMarket installer when buying it from there, but I'm not too sure of that.

Performance

Before moving on to anything else, I want to make some comments regarding the performance (FPS-wise) on this scenery.

Upon loading into the airport for the first time I found out that my FPS were lower than normal (compared to airports like Linate or Amsterdam). I had to turn down the settings quite a bit to get more than 20 FPS, and still, it was choppy.
I ended up disabling the photoscenery and static aircraft, and was finally able to get stabe 28+ FPS.
This was somewhat to be expected as there are lots of detailed objects surrounding the airport.

On another note, the developer told me that it's normal to have bad performance if using FSX and LatinVFR's San Juan, so it's recommended to delete SIG_GND.bgl from the scenery folder (this will delete the photoreal part of the scenery, not needed if using LatinVFR's).

The scenery

The airport and surroundings are very well modelled, and the textures are crisp. I've had an issue with some of the night textures (they flicker), but it's nothing too noticeable.

The Puerto Rico Convention Center in all its glory
Looking around the airfield you can find many detailed static aircraft, mostly general aviation, but also military helicopters, all placed where they should.
The parking lots of the airport are concurred by 3D cars that move, and all combined looks beautiful.

The night lightning. Apart from the flickering I mentioned, it looks very nice
Some of the static aircraft
On finals
The airport from above. Notice photoscenery was disabled for this screenshot

Regarding ORBX, this scenery looks nice when using it in conjunction with FTX Global and Vector, as you can see by the screenshots above.

Final thoughts

Photorico's Isla Grande Airport is a nice airport to have if you like to fly general aviation aircraft or helicopters, as there are several FBO's, flight schools and also the National Guard helicopters based here. 
You get a nicely detailed airfield with all major VFR reporting points modelled, and you can also get two nearby airports (Culebra and Vieques) for free from Photorico's website. 

If you are interested in what's described above, get the scenery. I really recommend it to you. 


Test system 

CPU: Intel i7 6700K OC 4,7 GHz
RAM: 16 GB 
GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 1070
Operating System: Windows 7 x64
Resolution: 1920x1080 

Simulator: Prepar3D v3.4


*Special thanks to Photorico Scenery for providing me with a review copy of Dominicci Airport.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

TFDi Design 717 for FSX/P3D - Review

Razbam M-2000C for DCS World - Review

Aviodev C-101 for DCS World - Review