103 replies to this topic

[Sasa]

Yesterday the authorities gave us the rare opportunity to have a private tour around the new Berlin Brandenburg Airport for making an addon of their airport. A thrilling experience and something we want to share with you with a few of yesterday's photos attached.

Just about 4 weeks from being opened we could have closeup access to areas of an airport that are usually not open to pedestrians and vehicles, enabling us to create an even more realistic addon with high resolution ground textures and more. Being the largest airport construction site in Europe this is a busy place with construction vehicles and workers at every corner.

For more background information check out Wikipedia:
German
English

[Cai Zicheng]

Very nice photos!

[Badfinger]

Look forward to this project Sasa, can you tell me what happens to Tegel when this airport opens, does it close ? I am not from Germany, reason I am asking.

Thank you for sharing the photo's.

rgds
Julian

[Sasa]

Look forward to this project Sasa, can you tell me what happens to Tegel when this airport opens, does it close ? I am not from Germany, reason I am asking.

Tegel will be closed the very night before BBI (=Berlin Brandenburg Airport) opens. I was told that one or a few lanes on the connecting highways will be closed during that night to move all vehicles from Tegel to BBI. I'm sure this will be quite a sight to see all those apron vehicles driving through the capital.

Bests,
Sascha

[Martijn-]

I was told that one or a few lanes on the connecting highways will be closed during that night to move all vehicles from Tegel to BBI. I'm sure this will be quite a sight to see all those apron vehicles driving through the capital.

That should be very nice to see indeed!
I'm looking forward to the scenery Sascha!

[Rafal Haczek]

Excellent!

Looks like the FS version of the new Berlin Airport will come faster than I could dream.
Now I have to do a lot of flights to the new updated Tegel before is gets closed down in reality next month...

Great pictures, Sasa!

[Silverbird]

Fantastic photos! I'm not from Germany also but looking forward too Berlin Brandenburg Airport very much! been looking at the videos and reading a bit about that airport, are German friends must be very excited.

[flusi4ever]

I see the header reads just "Preview FSX", but is a FS9 version planned?

Can't afford to get a PC running FSX at at least 15-20FPS on medium settings with addon planes and scenery.

[SirAviation]

My Home Airport YEAAAAHHH !

[Mathijs Kok]

I see the header reads just "Preview FSX", but is a FS9 version planned?

Can't afford to get a PC running FSX at at least 15-20FPS on medium settings with addon planes and scenery.

For now it is FSX/P3D only, the FS2004 market is really getting very small (and please, please, please. don't send us lot of comments that YOU will buy an FS2004 version, we know, but we need about 1000 of you).

But let me say this, I am 100% sure I can get a sub 800 Euro machine that will run this airport and our Airbus Extended at high settings at 35 fps. A lot depends on the quality of the add-ons. For FS2004 there are a lot of add-ons that are not done to the latest standards. You might be surprised how smooth FSX is these days.

[tempelhof]

I see the header reads just "Preview FSX", but is a FS9 version planned?

Can't afford to get a PC running FSX at at least 15-20FPS on medium settings with addon planes and scenery.

Looking at your rig, I don't thinkn you need to buy any new hardware in order to do that.

[Mathijs Kok]

Looking at your rig, I don't thinkn you need to buy any new hardware in order to do that.

Indeed, missed that. Should run FSX fine. Give it a bit of an overclock and it will run FSX great. Enough cores, enough mem, solid graphics card. For sure that rig will show at least as many polygons per second in FSX as it will in FS2004.

[flusi4ever]

Indeed, missed that. Should run FSX fine. Give it a bit of an overclock and it will run FSX great. Enough cores, enough mem, solid graphics card. For sure that rig will show at least as many polygons per second in FSX as it will in FS2004.

Thought it's gonna be FSX/P3D only.

Well, for now my FS9 is running at some stable 30FPS. My graphics hard hits the 100% mark in FS9 when starting a flight so I still need an upgrade there, but as I said, cannot afford that right now.
However, this is not a hardware thread, but a preview thread.

So I'll have to use some freeware to use the airport then

[Mathijs Kok]

Well, for now my FS9 is running at some stable 30FPS. My graphics hard hits the 100% mark in FS9 when starting a flight so I still need an upgrade there, but as I said, cannot afford that right now. However, this is not a hardware thread, but a preview thread.

But still, if we can help you run ANY kind of FS better it makes sense.

I have never, never seen any version of FS keep a graphics card run at max load. And with load I mean any kind of variable you can measure, throughput, memory load, shading etc. That's the problem with FS2004 and FSX, it can not feed the GPU with enough data to get it really going. I got P3D and FS2004 running on my system right now, both running pretty complex stuff and it is keeping all my CPU cores running very hard. But the fan on my GPU is still running at it lowest setting. 55 degrees and that's the best measure for GPU performance.

If your GPU is running at max, there is an issue.

[Rafal Haczek]

For now it is FSX/P3D only

Just killed my enthusiasm.
It is so easy with just 7 words.

[Stratocruiser]

Just killed my enthusiasm.
It is so easy with just 7 words.

I agree

[d-aish]

Shame, that the nice lights will be such dirty after one week in use

[Er!k]

Just killed my enthusiasm.
It is so easy with just 7 words.

Totally agree... Too bad this airport is done by Limesim. They don't do FS2004... Strange the GAP team didn't do this one.

[Cee-Jaay]

I was wondering if Brandenburg was gonna get some scrutiny. My old man used to fly the old IGS routes to & from Tegel back and forth through the corridors for a week at a time, I've booked a surprise weekend trip for us to go back into Tegel (in it's last few weeks before it closes) and revisit some old haunts in the city.

Last time I was there was when Germany won the World Cup for the first time after the wall came down (after they'd beaten us in the semi-final).

Chris.

P.S. shame if there may not be an fs9 version, I have both FS9 and FSX on Velocirator and Corsair GT disks respectively, but my FSX is plagued by uicoreanimation.dll instability (even with the vista fix) and for some unknown reason I can only get 1/2 to a 1/3 of the frames in FSX (e.g. QW757/EHAM: 15fps vs 45fps, which unfortunately leaves me choosing FS9 everytime).

[simon747]

Dang; thats a nice looking field...great shots!!

[ArtAir]

Just killed my enthusiasm.
It is so easy with just 7 words.

I agree

Totally agree... Too bad this airport is done by Limesim. They don't do FS2004... Strange the GAP team didn't do this one.

Agree with you guys. This addon will be done not for us....

[LCLK]

Guys i see people here with better machines moaning about FSX... i was afraid a bit to change but since i did i am so happy with it and most situations i get 25-30FPS steady.. mid high settings and my machine is not so powerful specially that the CPU is an AMD. all you guys running i5s should be able to enjoy nice smooth FSX. But maybe for FS you should forget AMD cards.. Nvidia handles better i think FS.

[PatrickZ]

Indeed, there are too many people thinking they can't handle FSX while in fact they can.

I currently got an E8400 with 4 GB ram and a Radeon HD 4800 series graphics card running FSX quite smooth. I've seen people with far better systems afraid to change to FSX. But if my computer can handle FSX, theirs certainly can. Only you shouldn't forget to tweak your fsx.cfg, that's very important. Without tweaking I wouldn't be able to run FSX as smooth as I do it now.

But back to topic, Berlin Brandenburg Airport. It's fantastic news that this airport is being worked on. Currently there is a freeware version of course, but it's far below Aerosoft quality.

[Thralni]

Nice photographs! I'm a bit saddened that Tegel will close as I always liked that airports, but I'm happy Brandenburg will be done so quickly for FS.

And I agree with people here - there are quite some people that seem convinced that they can't run FSX while I'm pretty sure they can. I use an Apple iMac, with an Intel i5 quad at 2,8 GHz, 12 GB RAM, an ATI 7570 (I think). All in all, it's really not great but it works for me. And FSX works rather well on it! I can easily fly around OrbX scenery with my RealAir Scout at very high settings, and I love it. To do airliners in back airports I usually use medium to high settings, but it still works okay. If My computer can do that, I'm pretty sure that the computers of those saying they can't do it, in fact can.

[Rafal Haczek]

there are quite some people that seem convinced that they can't run FSX

Benjamin, don't forget there are also a lot of people who just like their FS9 even though they could run FSX if they just wanted (like me).
One of the reasons is the excellent and huge collection of quality FS9 airports, aircraft, AI traffic and tools making a great flying exprecience.
Especially if they don't care about Orbx-like airfields and GA planes and do love flying airliners between giant aerodromes full of traffic.
I said it a thousand times but will repeat once more: prefering FS9 is not only because of poor hardware as many people mistakenly believe.

But since this is a dead-horse topic and I definitely wouldn't like to add fuel to fire, let me change it back to its right course before someone says I am 'moaning' or 'whinning'.


I am very happy the real Brandenburg Airport is opening, although I really like(d) Tegel.
In my view the architecture of the new airport is very moder and simplistic yet eye-catching.

This is also going to be a really large and well laid out aerodrome - have at look at the charts:





Especially the main terminal and apron seem very simple in its geometric form.
I just hope they will have a very efficient pushback and taxi system as the planes will pass rather close to each other.

[Sasa]

Totally agree... Too bad this airport is done by Limesim. They don't do FS2004...

Generally we don't do FS9/2004, that's right. But the fact that this airport will be done for FSX first, doesn't mean Limesim/Aerosoft won't do a FS9 and/or XP10 version later on. It's just something that hasn't been decided yet.

Strange the GAP team didn't do this one.

Strange indeed. But giving the work overload the GAP guys have to deal with (Düsseldorf being the best known example) we came to an agreement that LimeSim will do Berlin Brandenburg. While LimeSim hasn't done any larger German Airports yet, we have done a number of other projects like Rotterdam. There's also a growing number of other international German airports not done by the GAP team, Egelsbach and Frankfurt-Hahn being the latest ones.

Bests,
Sascha

[Rafal Haczek]

the fact that this airport will be done for FSX first, doesn't mean Limesim/Aerosoft won't do a FS9 and/or XP10 version later on

Danke, Sascha.

[Thralni]

Benjamin, don't forget there are also a lot of people who just like their FS9 even though they could run FSX if they just wanted (like me).
One of the reasons is the excellent and huge collection of quality FS9 airports, aircraft, AI traffic and tools making a great flying exprecience.
Especially if they don't care about Orbx-like airfields and GA planes and do love flying airliners between giant aerodromes full of traffic.
I said it a thousand times but will repeat once more: prefering FS9 is not only because of poor hardware as many people mistakenly believe.

Nobody was talking about you Rafal. We were talking about the people that use FS2004 because "their computer can't run FSX anyway". There are many people like that, I was one of them for a long time until I simply tried it, and it worked rather well. Nobody is forcing you to do anything, and that's certainly not how I intended my post. I'm sorry if that's what you got out of it...

[Rafal Haczek]

While LimeSim hasn't done any larger German Airports yet, we have done a number of other projects like Rotterdam.
There's also a growing number of other international German airports not done by the GAP team, Egelsbach and Frankfurt-Hahn being the latest ones.

And this, Sascha, leads me to a question I wanted to ask long ago. You seem to specialize in creating city landscapes for Microsoft Simulator.
So far they are US cities. Fine, but as a European simmer I would like to ask if you would consider making some European cities for MFS.

I have absolutely no doubts city addons like Frankfurt, Munich or Berlin (a great addition to the Brandenbrug airport!), plus non-German cities too of course, would be bestsellers.
Even without detailed photoreal ground, just the landclass plus a good number (not killing the FPS) of characteristic buildings and landmarks would make it a great product.
With so many European simmers including a huge German community, I can't see how they could not sell like hot cakes.

In today's standards pure airports seem too little for an immerse simulation experience. The surroundings on approach and finals add so much!
My number one airport is EDDF. The Aerosoft (GAP) rendition adds some buildings. I additionally bought Scenery Germany to make it even better.
But when I come to Munich for instance, there is nothing interesting to see (except for the Alps on the horizon) until I touch down.

Of course I would be more than happy to see such Europeam Cities come for FS9 too (even in some kind of 'limited' version).

[PatrickZ]

Benjamin, don't forget there are also a lot of people who just like their FS9 even though they could run FSX if they just wanted (like me).
One of the reasons is the excellent and huge collection of quality FS9 airports, aircraft, AI traffic and tools making a great flying exprecience.
Especially if they don't care about Orbx-like airfields and GA planes and do love flying airliners between giant aerodromes full of traffic.
I said it a thousand times but will repeat once more: prefering FS9 is not only because of poor hardware as many people mistakenly believe.

So here's the answer to what the developers need to work on to make people switch to FSX: quantity. Indeed, for FS2004 there are far more airport sceneries available than for FSX. Mostly they're of less quality, but users don't care too much about that. For FSX there are less sceneries available, but the quality of those sceneries is better. So basically you can say the choice between FS2004 is a choice between quality and quantity.

And eventough I do fly FSX I got to say for me too quantity is more important than quality. I don't care if the scenery looks a little less stunning, as long as it's available. For FSX there are still lots of airports where there's nothing available, and that's what keeps people from switching to FSX. If there would be something available, eventough it's of less quality, people will be more eager to change to FSX.

[Mathijs Kok]

So here's the answer to what the developers need to work on to make people switch to FSX: quantity. Indeed, for FS2004 there are far more airport sceneries available than for FSX. Mostly they're of less quality, but users don't care too much about that.

I beg to differ about that last comment Patric. For almost all FSX/FS2004 project we do we show the FSX screenshots (and we always tell people), but for each of those we get questions and support demands from FS2004 people who do not understand why they do not get the nice shadows and the high res textures. So they do want the higher quality, but it is simply almost if not totally impossible in FS2004. Of course Aerosoft tends to focus more on quality and slightly higher prices then some other companies, but still.

[Mathijs Kok]

And this, Sascha, leads me to a question I wanted to ask long ago. You seem to specialize in creating city landscapes for Microsoft Simulator.
So far they are US cities. Fine, but as a European simmer I would like to ask if you would consider making some European cities for MFS.

I have absolutely no doubts city addons like Frankfurt, Munich or Berlin (a great addition to the Brandenbrug airport!), plus non-German cities too of course, would be bestsellers.
Even without detailed photoreal ground, just the landclass plus a good number (not killing the FPS) of characteristic buildings and landmarks would make it a great product.
With so many European simmers including a huge German community, I can't see how they could not sell like hot cakes.

In today's standards pure airports seem too little for an immerse simulation experience. The surroundings on approach and finals add so much!
My number one airport is EDDF. The Aerosoft (GAP) rendition adds some buildings. I additionally bought Scenery Germany to make it even better.
But when I come to Munich for instance, there is nothing interesting to see (except for the Alps on the horizon) until I touch down.

Of course I would be more than happy to see such Europeam Cities come for FS9 too (even in some kind of 'limited' version).

Sure that Sascha will also respond but I can give my views.

Yes you are right, it would sell rather easy. The problem is that doing a city like the US Cities range is very difficult and incredible time consuming. You can use some autogen but still you need many hundreds of low res but well visible buildings. Our friends from VFR France are experimenting with some automatically generated scenery and though promising it does not give the 'feeling' that we think is needed. And while it would sell, it would not sell in Frankfurt airport numbers. So the key is in doing it as cheap as possible and that is possible for the US Cities. Getting these base files for European cities is not that easy. But I do think it will get better later this year. It's very much the issue around the night textures for the US Cities, sure they can be done, but the development costs are so high the product would never make a profit.

[PatrickZ]

I beg to differ about that last comment Patric. For almost all FSX/FS2004 project we do we show the FSX screenshots (and we always tell people), but for each of those we get questions and support demands from FS2004 people who do not understand why they do not get the nice shadows and the high res textures. So they do want the higher quality, but it is simply almost if not totally impossible in FS2004. Of course Aerosoft tends to focus more on quality and slightly higher prices then some other companies, but still.

Of course, if people see the difference they always want the best. But I was talking about airports where there's no comparison material.

Let's take an example: Aerosoft Spanish Airports Girona, developed by DreamFactory Studios. It's an FS2004 only project, there's no FSX version. In fact there's no FSX scenery for Girona at all. Do you hear anyone complaining the FS2004 scenery for this airport doesn't look good enough? I don't think so, I think you get more complains that this scenery isn't available in FSX. A simple port-over from FS2004 to FSX would do, so at least you can say it exists. A full-quality version can be done later.

[Mathijs Kok]

Of course, if people see the difference they always want the best. But I was talking about airports where there's no comparison material.

Let's take an example: Aerosoft Spanish Airports Girona, developed by DreamFactory Studios. It's an FS2004 only project, there's no FSX version. In fact there's no FSX scenery for Girona at all. Do you hear anyone complaining the FS2004 scenery for this airport doesn't look good enough? I don't think so, I think you get more complains that this scenery isn't available in FSX. A simple port-over from FS2004 to FSX would do, so at least you can say it exists. A full-quality version can be done later.

That would be very bad for Aerosoft. There is no doubt a product like that will be reviewed by some website and the review will say it looks like a project done in 2006 for FS2004 (duh) and we would get a bad score. Customers would buy it and complain. You can not sell this kind of work for FSX, or rather we can't.

[Sasa]

And this, Sascha, leads me to a question I wanted to ask long ago. You seem to specialize in creating city landscapes for Microsoft Simulator.
So far they are US cities. Fine, but as a European simmer I would like to ask if you would consider making some European cities for MFS.

I can generally support what Mathijs was responding to this question. Let me just add the following thoughts:
While getting the base data for European cities isn't much harder than for the US, you have to consider that doing a European city in the same level of detail always tends to be much harder on frames alone for the fact of European cities not being as symmetrical as US cities. You don't have any symmetrical blocks, meaning the polycount will be MUCH, MUCH higher. Also the autogen is placed manually. While US cities allow some kind of copy/paste for similar blocks, there is no such thing like city blocks in European cities.
But the most important reason that LimeSim didn't do a European city yet is that the US Cities series is not finished at all yet. There are still quite a few major US cities missing yet.

Bests,
Sascha

[Matt_Smith]

Looks like it is Cptawsom.

Edit: Sascha, if you want a European city built on the US blocks system, try Milton Keynes in the UK. Its got some interesting archtecture for sure, but other than that, it's a boring place lol

[PatrickZ]

I can generally support what Mathijs was responding to this question. Let me just add the following thoughts:
While getting the base data for European cities isn't much harder than for the US, you have to consider that doing a European city in the same level of detail always tends to be much harder on frames alone for the fact of European cities not being as symmetrical as US cities. You don't have any symmetrical blocks, meaning the polycount will be MUCH, MUCH higher. Also the autogen is placed manually. While US cities allow some kind of copy/paste for similar blocks, there is no such thing like city blocks in European cities.
But the most important reason that LimeSim didn't do a European city yet is that the US Cities series is not finished at all yet. There are still quite a few major US cities missing yet.

Bests,
Sascha

I only know the city of Lelystad is just as symmetrical as many American cities. Only I think commercially it wouldn't be a success. Not only is it quite a small and unknown city, it's also not the most beautiful city in the world. In fact, in Dutch it's sometimes being called Lelijkstad, wich means ugly city.

Most major European cities are quite old, and in those days there were no such things as cityplans. Houses were just being built in a natural way, leading to a network of small crooked roads with all different kinds of houses on it. Compare that to America where the city streets are much wider and you got far more traffic through the city center instead of like in Europe around the center. Only some suburbs look a bit like America, but when you fly over a city you usually don't pay too much attention to the suburbs. It's the city center that counts.

[kaspis29]

FS2004 or not, looks good, kinda reminds me of Munich, just with T1 from the layout, my hopes go for both versions, if not, well life is life, I need to get a better machine anyways.