XPFR Montpellier Airport
XPFR Introduction
Who doesn’t know XPFR or the Association of French-Speaking Creators?
The following text, taken from the XPFR website, describe the main goals of the XPFR group. First, the creation of a common distribution platform aimed at clustering the productions of French-speaking (but not exclusively) developers.
Second, this structure allows painless distribution of content designed by it’s members within the frame of a well established and known platform.
Third, take advantage of the serious reputation of the group to obtain clearance easily from FS authors whenever needed for a conversion from FS to X-Plane.
Fourth, take advantage of a common production platform, a sort of factory or large workshop, allowing us to produce high quality aircraft or scenery with the advantages offered by the possibility to share each participants capacities and experience. And finally, this structure also gives us the possibility to retain, improve, complete or update creations that an author cannot or does not wish to continue the development of.
This short review covers the freeware airport scenery of Montpellier–Méditerranée (ICAO code LFMT), available for XP10.25 and up. The XPFR scenery is tested with X-Plane 10.51.
Since I do not have X-Plane 9.x anymore on my Mac, I’ve only reviewed the XP10 version created by titounet66. According to the dedicated XPFR Montpellier–Méditerranée web page this scenery is “A scenery wanted for a long time ! Titounet66 was close to let down this project but, fortunately, Cigaloi30 came to help him to finish this excellent first version of this airport … and available for free!”
So let’s check it out!
Real Montpellier–Méditerranée background
Montpellier–Méditerranée Airport or Aéroport de Montpellier–Méditerranée (IATA: MPL, ICAO: LFMT), also known as Fréjorgues Airport, is an airport in southern France. It is located 7 km (4 nautical miles) east-southeast of Montpellier in Mauguio, in the Herault department of the Languedoc-Roussillon region in France.
The airport carries the 10th largest number of passengers in France (over 1.18 million in 2010). There are five airlines that operate year-round at the airport, and several others that operate seasonally or provide charter flights. A campus of the École nationale de l’aviation civile (French civil aviation university) is also located at the airport (Courtesy of WikepediA).
Additional information can be found at the official Montpellier Airport website or for our French readers, here’s the same website in French.
The Terminal and surrounding area
Dominant on the real airport is the control tower, which is also applicable for the XPFR airport. And not only that, the passenger terminal is modeled with great details as well as the apron. Furthermore, in the vicinity of the control tower you’ll find many other buildings and/or offices. Most of them, perhaps all of them, are made with the help of photo-real material. This gives all these buildings and/or offices a realistic look. The ground textures are perhaps not of the highest resolution, but hold on, it’s freeware and perhaps not always available with a good quality.
The jet ways are modeled with great detail and although not everywhere photo-real material is used for the gates, it still looks good. The apron situated around these jet ways is great and all aircraft parking positions, markings and prohibited areas are clearly marked and sharp too, not unimportant is it?
Looking in a northwest direction, you’ll find some small and large hangars, the airport fire brigade, and other buildings and/or offices. I like the “Latecoere AeroServices” hangars. They are, in my opinion, completely made with photo-real material and gives therefore the hangars a realistic look.
Northern Airport Side
On the east side of runway 12L/30R, you’ll find a small freighter apron with a static DHL Airbus A310 to complete it. Added to this some interesting and nicely modeled hangers and/or offices as well as a large “La Poste” distribution center and not to forget a TNT office.
Suppose you decide to fly to LFMT, you now know that you can fly to LFMT with a cargo aircraft. And, in case you want to land with a Boeing 747, then you’re welcome too. Runway 12L/30R is capable for Jumbo Jets too.
Outside The Airport Fences
The modeled airport doesn’t stop within the airport fences. No, there’s a lot to see outside the fences too. It looks like that fuel station/distribution center “Total” has a huge fuel tank location outside the fences for supplying jet fuel. That it is huge is nice, but it is well made and quite detailed to be honest. You’ll find some offices in this area and many car parking places. A difference between payware and freeware is for example that you won’t find any 3D cars on the parking lot. On the other hand, is it fair to complain? I don’t think so. The airport is very well made although some higher ground resolution ground textures would be welcome.
The entrance of the passenger terminal is very nice and full with tiny details, so worth to have a look at it when you arrive at the airport with your car. Before you know, you’ve come the General Aviation part of LFMT.
Basically, the General Aviation part of LFMT consist of runway 12R/30L, some taxi ways, a small- and a large apron. The small apron is more a parking location in front of the hangars. The large apron also offers hangars and other offices, but it is clearly mend for parking your aircraft for night stops or visitors and not to forget the French flying school. The large apron offers some static GA aircraft too that gives you the feeling you’re not alone at LFMT.
What Else?
As in most cases, the airport ground textures not always blend with the surrounding X-Plane default scenery. What you could do, an I highly recommend that, is adding photo real ground textures around this airport. Then, when you’ve downloaded these photo real packages and installed them, LFMT will blend perfectly in the Montpellier surrounding area.
Curious?
Then you should visit ZonePhoto. The link I provided is for sceneries with a ZL16 resolution. According to ZonePhoto “ZL means “zoom level” and stands for the quality of photo sceneries. The higher the ZL, the higher the quality, but also the higher the disk space, download time, scenery loading time and memory in X-Plane you have.”
Anything forgotten?
For sure I have forgotten areas to discuss or to show you. On the other hand, it gives you the possibility to find out those areas I didn’t cover. But overall most of it is discussed or highlighted. The runway and taxiways tarmac is great as well as the night lighting system. The taxiways signs are clear, and they are located on spots where you expect them. On purpose, I didn’t add evening screenshots for the simple reason to challenge you to download and install the XPFR Montpellier.
Overall an interesting freeware XPFR scenery and as said before, I encourage you to add the ZonePhoto photoreal scenery packages of Montpellier area too. You’ll also interested in … will it work with X-Plane 11? Most likely it will – I haven’t tested this – but not all benefits that X-Plane 11 offer are implemented, keep that in mind.
Feel free to contact me if you’ve got additional questions related to this impression. You can reach me via email Angelique.van.Campen@gmail.com or to Angelique@X-Plained.com.
With Greetings,
Angelique van Campen
| Add-on: | Freeware XPFR Montpellier Airport |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Developer: | XPFR | XPFR |
| Description: | Realistic rendition of Montpellier Airport |
| Software Source / Size: | Download / Approximately 87MB (unzipped) |
| Reviewed by: | Angelique van Campen |
| Published: | April 27th 2017 |
| Hardware specifications: | - iMac 27″ 4.2Ghz Late 2015 | iMac 27″ 3.9Ghz Late 2013 - Intel i7 4.0Ghz / Intel i7 3.5Ghz / 3.9Ghz - AMD Radeon R9 M395X 4GB | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4GB - OWC 64GB 1867MHz DDR3 | 32GB 1600MHz DDR3 - 1 internal 1TB SSD (Sierra) | 1 internal 1TB SSD (Windows 10 Pro) - 1 external 1TB SSD | 1 external 1TB SSD - Saitek Pro Flight System X-52 Pro and X-56 Rhino |
| Software specifications: | Sierra (10.12.4) | El Capitan (10.11.6) - Windows 10 Professional - X-Plane 10.51c | X-Plane 10.51m | X-Plane 11.00r1 |
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