Aerosoft Hawaii DillinghamX review

by mark.avey on November 11, 2007

This is a review of Hawaii Dillingham X from Aerosoft.

I’ll start this review with a quote from the supplied PDF manual:

Dillingham Airfield is a general aviation joint-use facility on the north shore of O’ahu near the town of Waialua. There is one 5,000′ by 75′ runway, a State-operated UNICOM (air traffic advisory) facility, several hangars, and a tie down area for recreation aircraft, but few other facilities. Traditionally, the airfield has been used mainly for recreation such as glider soaring, hang-gliding, parachuting, and skydiving.

This sets the scene nicely for what it is a relatively small but beautifully rendered add-on airfield for Flight Simulator X.

The photographic scenery has been sampled at 60cm, so this is the best option to set in Flight Simulator X for the Texture resolution. The complexity of the scenery can be controlled with, not surprisingly, the Scenery Complexity slider. “Normal” shows the buildings, some cars and a few humans. “Dense” shows all scenery objects. The screenshots in this review are taken using the “Dense” setting.

The add-on comes with two flights. The first is an approach in the default Cessna and the second puts you on the runway in a glider, waiting for the tow plane to take you out to the mountains. I had a wonderful flight from the air tow over the Waia’nae Mountains, with fantastic thermals around the mountain ridges providing plenty of lift for the return trip to the airfield.

As you can see from the screenshots, there’s plenty of “life” around the airfield. Flying in and taxiing around, you really get an impression of realism, providing the feeling that you really are visiting a live airfield. I think this add-on excels as a base airfield for gliding operations, which is pretty much what it’s used for in reality. The scenery, especially at dusk or dawn, is stunning.

You certainly won’t get bored taxiing around, checking out all the nice little touches, such as the spotters in their chairs at the side of the runway.

System requirements

Microsoft Flight Simulator FSX + SP1
Windows XP/Vista
2.0 GHz processor (Dual Core CPU highly recommended)
1 GB RAM internal memory (2 GB recommended)
256 MB graphic card (more highly recommended)

This is pretty much identical to the machine I used for this review. With the default aircraft, frame rates were excellent, maintaining greater than 30fps in most cases.

Conclusion

Once again, Aerosoft has supplied us with a beautiful little packet of realism to plug in to our virtual world. Soaring around the airfield is a wonderfully tranquil experience and I find myself wanting to return to this add-on frequently for a moments peaceful enjoyment.

The asking price of 14.95 Euros is very reasonable and I can strongly recommend this product to anyone looking for a small airfield add-on and a glider base in particular.

Many thanks to Aerosoft for supplying the review copy of Dillingham X.