Product Review

Introduction

Gatwick became an aerodrome in the 1930s, but the airport we know today opened in 1958 with just 186,000 passengers passing through the airport in its first year of operation. Today, it's a different story, it is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and now handles more than 44 million passengers to 228 destinations in 74 countries around the world every year.

Gatwick Airport (also known as London Gatwick) (IATA: LGW, ICAO: EGKK) operates the world's most efficient single runway and is the second largest airport in the UK. It is a home to a mix of airline operators from scheduled to low-cost and charter airlines.  Fifty three airlines currently operate regularly from the airport including easyJet, British Airways, Norwegian, Virgin Atlantic, Emirates, Cathay Pacific, Monarch, Thomas Cook, Thomson, Turkish Airlines, and WestJet.

Location

London Gatwick Airport is not located in the Greater London area but in West Sussex 24.7 miles south of London, and is directly linked to the M23 motorway at junction 9. Its Airport Reference Point (ARP) is Lat: 510853N Long: 0001125W at mid point of Runway 08R/26L. Elevation / Reference temperature of the airfield is 203ft / 20C.

Runway Physical Characteristics

Gatwick operates as a single-runway airport although it has two runways; the northern runway (08L/26R) can only be used when the main runway (08R/26L) is out of use for any reason.

Product Features

The developer has highlighted the following points as features with this version:

Availability and Installation

Gatwick Xtreme V4 is priced at £16.99 including VAT, or the equivalent on currency cross rates, with a discount of £5.00 for existing users of the V3 product, and it's available as a download via the UK2000 Scenery website.  Presently, there are four files to download to bring the product up to full P3Dv4 specification, the main V4 package, the V4.02 update, the Dynamic Lighting Option file, and the UK2000 Common Library, presently at version 3.48. In all, the download size is a mere 195MB, and once installed, the disk cost is around 750MB.

There is a demo version (try before you buy) available which will give you a flavour of the full scenery or a free version which only uses low resolution textures and left out are many extras you get in the full version.

As part of the installation an options panel appears, this allows you to control the quantity and complexity of the objects. There is an option to tick if you are an FTX Global or FTX England user, but this doesn't appear to have any effect. If like me you are an Orbx England user, then you will find that the Orbx buildings will show through the UK2000 layer and ruin the scenery in certain areas, see the comparative pictures below.

The developer explains he cannot exclude scenery with a lower layer, this is due to a known AFD Jetway bug. However, if you are a confident tweaker you can disable the Orbx files manually, and this cures the problem. Details of the change can be seen here: http://www.uk2000scenery.org/forum/index.php?topic=9033.msg62968#msg62968. I would like to point out that it is not only UK2000 Scenery which is affected this way, other developers of UK airports are too.

Options Panlel

Scenery Coverage

The main focus of this product is the airport itself with a slightly extended coverage area all around. To the east there is the railway station with associated car parks and a petrol station. To the south east is the CAA building and The Beehive, the original circular Art Deco terminal building dating back to 1935. Over the southern fence are the staff car parks, all the service companies' buildings and sat amongst these looking a little out of place is St Michael & All Angels Church, Horley. To the north west are the long-term car parks which strangely have no 3D cars. The control panel allows for 4000 cars to be included but they all appear elsewhere. Finally, to the north east there is another petrol station sat alongside the Premier Inn just of the A23.

The image below should give you a good idea of what is included:

Level of Detail

UK 2000 Scenery's Gatwick Airport has always been an accurate representation of the real thing, and over the product's four iterations has adapted to allow for new structures like the Air Bridge, piers, parking layouts and hotels like the Sofitel and Premier Inn next to the North Terminal. Not only have the buildings and layout been brought up to date, so has the static aircraft too, A380's and B787's now adorn the apron.

Air Bridge

New Pier 1 (bottom right)

Hotels at the North Terminal

As with many airport sceneries, the base layer takes its imagery from photo scenery so the placement and accuracy of the buildings and taxiways etc is spot on. In fact, if you take a top down view of this scenery from a great height, it is far more up to date than the latest Google Earth images where the Pier 1 improvements still show as a construction site. It is also faithful to the latest CAA Aerodrome Chart issued 31/07/2017.

Fire and Rescue Training Area

Air Stairs and Safedock

Jet Blast Screens

Many of the stands and gates have the Safedock parking systems which allow you to position your aircraft to the exact position for the jetway. If you watch this operation from an outside view you will see that all the Safedock signs (where installed), which are positioned the same distance on a horizontal plane from your nose, are trigged once you are in place, so can appear a bit odd.

Thousands of Cars

St Michael & All Angels Church

Colourful Tails on the Static Aircraft

Quality of Buildings

I think the fairest thing to say is the terminal buildings capture the feel of the place. Gatwick is far from pleasing to the eye in real life with dull squared-off functional structures which were the order of the day in the late fifties. The earlier inclusion of the Air Bridge is well presented and in this edition, it has transparent windows so helps to lift the quality level. The round Pier 3 and Pier 6 have also been given the transparent glass. This allows you to move inside where you will find seating and 2D people, if only the transparency was still there at night, like Piers 2, 4 and 5 in the day, they revert to awful opaque textures, if these windows could be made to look reflective then the other piers would look a lot more realistic.

Welcome to Gatwick - Yeah, Whatever

Uninspiring North Terminal

Train Station

Inside Pier 6

Inside Pier 3

Control Tower View

Pier 5

Pier 3

The Original 1930s Terminal

Fire Station

Cargo Haulers

Maintenance Area

Other airside buildings are well crafted and realistic looking for their use. Like some of the piers, the control tower has transparent glass, so you can survey the whole field and watch aircraft going about their business. Other maintenance buildings and hangars have less detail but are fit for purpose.

On a final note, the scenery textures used are still being created in the old extended bitmap format, I expect this is to pander to the FS2004 die hards. Natively, FSX and P3D use DirectDraw Surface (dds) files which can support bumps and specular maps which would make the windows (in particular) look better. I feel this scenery is being held back by this and is crying out for a proper FSX/P3D update rather than an extended port over.

Runway, Taxiways, and Apron Textures

Another comparison was done with a top down view from Google Earth with the runways and the textures used, and their positioning again looked spot on. Runway colour and wear looked good. However, there are some white runway edge lines missing before the TDZ on 08R and 26L but they are there on 08L and 26R so just a small oversite.

The taxiways have the correct paving textures and the markings, be it lines, arrows or text, and they looked good too. There are plenty of low level runway and taxiway signs which really help when figuring out where to go.

The aprons continue with the excellent presentation of ground markings and are the same paved material as the taxiways. There is plenty of discolouration caused by wear and tear, but it still looked a bit bright and new for my liking.

Night Lighting

Runway approach lighting is nice and clear and the runway itself has centre and edge lights to guide you down the middle. On the main runway 08R/26L the TDZ lighting is always on. Although not realistic, this is the way the developer has designed it so in very poor visibility in daylight hours you will have an easier time in your approach.

Taxiway lights are green and centrally positioned only, the familiar blue edge lighting is only used on Taxiway Yankee between Y2 and Y4 in the southern maintenance area, this is accurately presented in this scenery. The green REIL lighting look good so with all these colours approach can be a bit mesmerising but all makes sense on the ground.

General View

Taxiway Lighting is Very Good

Air Bridge Window Transparency Lost at Night

Low Level Dynamic Lighting

A late addition, hence the extra file to be download, was the dynamic lighting. It has been added in various locations on the aprons and stands. From afar, the lit areas don't look as bright as I would like, and the dynamic lights are not always apparent as some of the ground textures have been baked to give the illusion of a lit area. Dynamic lighting is not the be all and end all but again I would have liked to have seen more and for it to be slightly brighter.

Seasonal Variation

This scenery is not seasonally aware, this is a shame as it looks so wrong in mid-winter to approach an oasis, with lush grass and green trees, when all around the land is in hibernation.

Animation and Sounds

There is very little in the way of custom animations included, no service fleet, no rotating radar on the control tower, no wind socks and most importantly, the driverless shuttle train which links the north and south terminals is not in the P3Dv4 version. An update is promised for the train, time will tell.

Who Stole the Train?

There are no environmental or ambient sounds included.

Performance

I had no issues with performance as far as fluidity of the sim is concerned, but I did experience some delays in the loading of static aircraft liveries, so the aircraft were black for a small amount of time. Also, I experienced some Z fighting (texture flashing) on a couple of buildings in the North Terminal complex.

Value for Money

UK2000 Scenery have always offered products which are excellent value for money and this product is no different. For users of the previous version, the £5 discount makes it a must have update. Compared with other sceneries of this nature, you are paying less than half price without sacrificing too much on the quality.

Documentation

Included with this product are the following documents and links:

Readme file,
User Manual,
Web link for charts, and
Web link to UK2000 website.

The 6 page user manual gives a brief overview of the product and covers installation, display settings, and known issues with other products.

Technical Requirements

UK2000 Scenery do not publish minimum specifications so if you feel your PC may not be up to the job then take advantage of the demo offer.

Review Computer Specifications

The specifications of the computer on which the review was conducted are as follows:

Intel i9, 7900X CPU, 10 Core, 4.3GHz;
MSI NVidia GTX1080Ti Gaming X, 11GB;
32GB Corsair Vengeance, 3200MHz, DDR4;
Windows 10, (64bit); and
Lockheed Martin P3D Version 4.

London Gatwick in all its Glory

Verdict and Scores

Verdict

A good all-round product with excellent performance.

Scores

For	Against	Category	Score/10
Accuracy.	Quality of textures.	Scenery Coverage	9.0
Performance.	Missing animations.	Level of Detail	8.5
Value for Money.	Poor dynamic lighting .	Quality of Buildings	8.0
		Documentation	8.0
		Performance	9.5
		Value for Money	10

Overall Score

UK2000's Gatwick Xtreme V4 is awarded an overall Mutley's Hangar score of 8.8/10, with a "Highly Recommended" and a Mutley's Hangar Silver Award.