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Commercial Scenery Review

JustSim’s Klagenfurt Austrian Airport

 

Introduction

JustSim are the new kids on the block as far as flightsim world goes. They are one of the few companies that release both X-Plane and FSX/Prepar3D sceneries right now, and are making an impact on this niche market of Flight Simulation. From looking at their website, it consists of a team of 8, but their site is not giving too much other information and most of it just shows default latin text as a placeholder yet to be filled in correctly. They would appear to be mostly from Russia according to their Facebook page.

Regarding the airport LOWK (Klagenfurt), which is the subject of this review, it started its history as a military aerodrome during WW1 and subsequently through WW2 as well. Mostly non-combat aircraft such as Ar 95, Fi 156, He 60 and Ju 52s.

After the second world war, Klagenfurt served, among others, Brazil, Germany, Israel, The Netherlands, The United Kingdom, and as far away as Venezuela. Sadly, since the beginning of this century, the air traffic has been in decline in this area, and suggestions on increasing revenue through freight movement has been met with opposition from the local residents due to noise pollution and night-time curfew restrictions.

At the moment, there are only three destinations from Klagenfurt; Vienna LOWW (Austrian Airlines), Hamburg EDDH (Eurowings) and Berlin EDDT, Hamburg EDDH, Cologne EDDK (Eurowings/Germanwings).

There are two parallel runways, consisting of the following attributes:
– 10L/28R (8,924 feet/2720 meters made of concrete)
– 10R/28L (2,329 feet/710 meters made of grass)

The main runway 28R is approved for CAT II and CAT III approaches There is also a small glider strip. There are no terminals as such, but some remote stands reached by busses which can accommodate aircraft in the class of the Boeing 737 and Airbus A319/320’s.
The current aircraft flying to and from Klagenfurt are mostly Dash 8s ([perfect if you have FlyJsims DH8D) , A319’s and A320’s.

From the X-Plane.org, the following features are listed in the LOWK package.
Main Features:
– Custom runway, taxiway and airport lights.
– Shading and occlusion (texture baking) effects on terminal and other airport buildings
– High resolution photo scenery near airport and city.
– High resolution ground textures / Custom runway textures
– High resolution building textures

Optimized for Traffic:
– World Traffic compatible
– X-Life traffic compatible
– Optimized for excellent performance

System requirements are quite light by today’s standards:
– X-Plane 10.50+ (any edition)
– Windows, Mac, Linux
– 2Gb+ VRAM Video Card Recommended

Installation and Documentation

Installation of sceneries in X-Plane is straightforward and usually follows the process of unzipping and placing the extracted scenery folder and placing it into the “Custom Scenery” location inside the X-Plane folder. On some occasions, you may have to adjust the scenery.ini text file to change the order of some reference files, but in this case, there is only one folder, so a simple restart of X-Plane, should allow your newly added scenery to be visible in all its glory.

Once purchased, you will be presented with a .zip file called LOWK_JustSim which, when extracted gives you three files named

1) LOWK_JustSim
2) LOWK_OPTIONAL
3) LOWK_installation txt file

The installation file is recommended reading as it give the instructions on installation and other valid points. It contains the below text.

WARNING! This scenery compatible with X-Plane 10.50 and above.

Installation
Unzip archive and place LOWK_JustSim folder to your Custom scenery folder.

For osm-based Klagenfurt city scenery you should install additional libraries. After libraries installation DO NOT rename their folder names!
– OpenSceneryX
RuScenery
– R2Library https://r2.xpl.cz/
FF_Library or FF_Library extended LOD. Do not put both versions of FF_Library. Use one of them.
World models or this link.

Or you can use Library Installer. This is the best and easy way to install all libraries. Download it here.

Then copy LOWK_JustSim_city from OPTIONAL folder to Custom Scenery folder and place it after LOWK_JustSim folder in load order.”

The only real difference here, that I can see is that there are more 3D buildings added to the scenery base, but not enough to make a wow impact. I have left it on in my case, but I feel that they could have populated the scenery much more since the airport is quite small.

In this airport, “runways follow terrain contours” has no adverse effect unlike some other sceneries such as LOWS which leaves some buildings floating It’s also recommended that HDR is enabled in X-Plane 10 in general.

First Impression

The immediate thing that stands out on this airport is the control tower. Rendered in the Austrian Airlines logo in bright red, it’s unmistakable and is the center point of this airport. You have the 3 European flags Austria, The European Union, and the German flags at the entrance to the airport itself. Not too far away is a pair of hangers labeled “Glock Perfection”, which houses a single Dash-8 Austrian Airlines under maintenance. To the East of the apron, are two more hangars, labeled on the charts as appropriately “Hangar 1” and “Hangar 2”.

The runway perimeter lights are very pleasing to the eye, and I love the RWY 28 approach lights.

A Closer look
This is quite a small compact airport, so I thought I’d do this review as a passenger approaching the airport might see it.

As we approach the entrance, we can see plenty of 3d cars, this is more and more of a standard feature nowadays, and the old 2d rendering is fading away from use with more and more powerful PC’s. The car rental office is very nicely done, with reflections and interior well rendered, complete with a bus-stop outside for easy access to public transport. The arrival gate looks good too, and the road markings are detailed with worn center markings.

The departure area is similar, with airport offices, shops and what looks like a tourist map of the area. Some advertising along the shops and exterior walls are very nicely done, and add to the realism of this airport.

The local Police station or “Polizei” has a number of garages for police cars, which can be used in an emergency or for customs duty as needed.

Further on along the perimeter, we come to the prominent red control tower, along with the offices and DB Schenker logistics building which comes complete with carpark and visitor entrance – handy if you ever decide to go there in reality!

Moving on along the perimeter, we come to the transport area which has an array of container ready to be transported to the 4 corners of Europe. Just while I show the perimeter of the airport, a quick look at the 3d grass detail here.,it really is nicely done. You can almost smell the springtime.

A quick overview shot and what do I see? Are trains really allowed to drive in the carpark in Austria? You can also see the tracks drive directly through the truck depot. A quick check on Google Earth for this region shows that they haven’t got the track layout quite right. Hopefully, this will change in a later update.

On the far side of the airport towards runway 28, they have thoughtfully provided an IKEA for us (aren’t they everywhere these days? And a Metro Cash-and-Carry – no free advertising for them though, as it’s not labeled.

Further along, parallel to the main runway, they have thoughtfully provided an Air Ambulance facility which includes a helicopter (I can’t determine the make or model), but it certainly adds to the overall feeling of a utility airport.

Moving back inside the airport main building area now, you really see the detailed weathering they show on the side of the office buildings and the details of the “smoking forbidden” is very well rendered. You can tell they mean business at this airport.

The main terminal looks good, but it’s difficult to get a well-lit shot of this to show the details, as in the morning or evening, the sun does not shine directly on this building – due to the overhead canopy design – to show the details, nevertheless, I think I’ve got some decent shots of it.

The apron has some Dash 8-400 aircraft nicely parked outside, but with that much paint on the aircraft, I think it will need a bit more power than usual for the take-off. They clearly have painted the Austrian Airlines logo a bit heavily on this model. Inside, the hangar details are excellently done and the interior contains all the bracings that you would expect inside.

They even have a C172 and some stands and pushback trolleys to give the impression of a working area., although I think some of these aircraft are breaking regulations by having the same registration numbers

The ILS, and PAPI lights are nicely rendered and look equally well in day or dusk lighting, and the approach lead-in lights, (not easy to show in the screenshots) are lighting in sequence to lead into the approach. Other nice touches are the runway apron cracks and markings to the main runway. This is what you would expect with payware sceneries now, but I always like these little touches.

Night Impressions

I really love the way the night floodlights show the apron and spill out to the surrounding buildings and give it a “lived in” look. The way that the utility building lights are more yellowish lights than the floodlit areas are something that I particularly like about X-Plane.

The surrounding lights at the perimeter of the airport and the runway lights are nicely done and look great for approach flights and dawn/dusk, and it’s nice the way the airport scenery blends into the surrounding landscape and nearby town of Klagenfurt.

Performance

This is quite a small airport, so in this case, it is no surprise that I am getting 30 fps with the IXEG parked at the gates. There is nothing really here to slow your system or put an extra drag on resources, even taking into account the details they have crammed into this package, so I can’t foresee any issues should you purchase this package.

Summary

Although this is a small airport, with little flights in reality, there are quite a few gems here. The red control tower makes this an unmistakable airport, and the glider strip and should you wish to go skydiving, well the touchdown zone is also available for you too.

This airport gives you enough short flights in the area if you wish to have a quick afternoon’s flight around Austria. Although it has its faults, such as the railway track routing to the DB Schenker building, it’s the only error I can see in this package so far. For the price, I don’t think you can go wrong with this, and hopefully they will release an update for this in the future.

The price of this add-on is currently 16.00 USD and you get it via this dedicated X-Plane.Org link.

With Greetings,
Jude Bradley

 

 

Add-on:Payware Realistic presentation of Klagenfurt (LOWK)
Publisher | Developer:X-Plane.Org | JustSim
Description:Accurate Reproduction of Klagenfurt Airport
Software Source / Size:Download / approximately 700MB (unzipped)
Reviewed by:Jude Bradley
Published:November 11th 2016
Hardware specifications:- Intel Core i7-47900K @ 4.5 GHz
- 32GB RAM @ 2400MHz
- Gigabyte NVidia GTX 1070 8GB
- Saitek Pro-Flight Yoke and Rudder pedals
Software specifications:- Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

2 Comments

  1. Tomas

    Hello.is compatible Justsim klagenfurt end digital design salzburg for x plane 11?

    • Angelique van Campen

      Hi Tomas,

      I don’t know yet, but for sure many developers will now or where already busy with updating their add-ons.

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