Information
Oslo is the capital and largest city in Norway and is also holds
the unenviable title as the world's most expensive capital city.
It's current population is around 1.5 million people, and with a
growth rate of 2% is the fastest growing capital city in Europe.
Due to it's very northern location Norway's climate varies
greatly from Summer to Winter. The summer regularly sees
daylight hours of 18 hours and temperatures of 20 degrees,
whereas the winter temperatures barely get above freezing point
and hours of daylight drop to no more than 6.
It's not surprising that the country's largest airport is
located near it's capital city. It is situated about 25 miles
north-east of Oslo in Gardermoen and is the main hub for SAS
Scandinavian Airways. In 2009 the airport handled over 18
million passengers, more than 200,000 aircraft movements and
over 77,000 tonnes of cargo. The busiest domestic passenger
route is to Trondheim-Vaernes (also available from Aerosoft) and
the busiest international route is to Copenhagen.
About Oslo-Gardermoen X
This is an airport that I regularly fly to; it's only 2 hours
from the UK and the climate and weather always offers a
challenge and some spectacular colours. For a scenery add-on
titled 'Mega' it is a relatively small file at only 100mb to
download and 180mb to install. With Aerosoft's super fast
servers my copy was downloaded before I'd made my cuppa.
Installation was a breeze: run the installer, enter your email
address and key-code and it's done. The price is also reasonable
at €24.95 for the download version, which is around £20 or $32
USD
If you are expecting the airport to be similar in size and scale
to somewhere like Mega Airport Heathrow you will be disappointed
because it is a much smaller airport in terms of aircraft
traffic volume and size. To get an idea of Oslo's size, Terminal
5 at Heathrow has 60 stands, the whole of the airport at Oslo
only has 71 stands . Don't let this put you off because what is
modelled here is very good.
Features
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If FPS are a problem Aerosoft have included a tool to remove
static objects, 3d lights and alter the vegetation density to
help improve FPS. It usually takes a fair amount of tweaking in
FSX to find the sweet spot for sceneries and this add-on is no
different, but the included tools do make it a lot easier do
tweak.
You are also given a document that includes all the airport
charts for approach, arrival, departure and taxing around the
airport. There isn't a chart included showing stand numbers, but
as long as you follow the correct taxi route the stand numbers
are clearly marked on the ground. You could always cheat and use
the progressive taxi...
These charts are all available from the VATSIM Norway website,
but take a bit of finding and are of a lower quality than the
ones included here.
Exploring
I used a combination of FTX BOB and taxing around the
airport to explore it, either way is a lot of fun. Taxing
out to the runway or to the terminal after arriving with the
default scenery isn't really that interesting but it is a
lot different after installing this scenery. The runway
lighting and textures are excellent and make it very easy to
follow the taxi routes to and from the terminal. (although
ATC usually directed me to the same spot each time!)
I liked all the buildings scattered around the airport as it gives you something to look at other than a barren landscape and the default generic buildings. My personal preference was to fly into and out of Oslo at dusk or dawn as the airport lighting combined with the REX weather textures were fantastic. It was nice to see AI ground traffic going about it's business on the airport roads and bridges into the terminal, although you are not able to follow them as you cannot climb up the bridge. I have noticed this with other Aerosoft scenery add-ons, but it's not something I think is a major problem, more a minor niggle.
The airport has 2 runways which are large enough to handle an A380 and both have de-icing spots at each end, which is critical in a climate such as this. Although de-icing isn't modelled in FSX, you can purchase AES Credits for Oslo X and have a really authentic experience.
Conclusion
I really like this add-on and will frequently return here in the future. It is located in a challenging environment with other airports nearby which make it easy to make shorter flights in the region. But there is great satisfaction in landing a heavy here in terrible weather conditions in the middle of winter. It will appeal more to pilots who fly commercial airliners and gives the airport a long overdue facelift from the poor default offering.
Verdict
PROS
CONS
Mutley's Hangar Score 8.5/10
Rob Scott
Review machine Spec: Intel Core2 Quad 2.40ghz | 4gb DDR2 RAM |Nvidia GForce 880GTX |Windows 7 64bit Home Premium