Aerosoft Lord Howe Island X review

by mark.avey on April 19, 2008

Aerosoft are starting to get themselves a great reputation, particularly in the area of small but super-detailed airfields.

In the case of Lord Howe Island X, they’ve excelled themselves. I make no apologies for the fact that this review contains a lot of screenshots. This scenery add-on is simply beautiful and, as a picture’s worth a thousand words…

But first, a little background. Lord Howe Island is pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Here’s a shot from Google Earth showing just how isolated it is:

Handily, Aerosoft have provided a number of flight plans enabling you to get yourself there. Having said that, I can see the majority of people who purchase this add-on simply flying around the island taking in the stunning views.

The products comes with a short but useful manual. In it, Aerosoft provide suggested graphics settings for Flight Simulator X. I set my sim up with those settings for this review. I’d say the settings were spot on. I’ve got FSX locked at 25FPS, and it didn’t drop below that once.

As the manual points out, you should get healthy frame rates with Lord Howe, as it’s an isolated patch of land surrounded by sea.

Starting out at the small parking area at the airfield, you’ll notice a number of people in the surrounding buildings waiting to see you off, although the chap reading the newspaper doesn’t look too interested!

You’re going to need a fairly small aircraft to get yourself airborne before you hit the water, regardless of which direction you take off in. Aerosoft’s Twin Otter was the ideal aircraft of choice for my site-seeing tour.

I took off to the west and headed for a trip around the island. Once airborne, you’ll find the views are simply amazing. The terrain mesh and ground textures give an incredible feeling of realism. Even up close, the textures remain crisp and clear, making you want to explore every inch of the island.

I headed off towards the rocky outcrop a few miles from the island.

The trip back gave some nice views of the island from a distance. I flew over the runway to circle around, and this is where the winds being distrupted by the mountains came into play, causing a bumpy turn on to finals.

Time to bring the tourists back to the island and nicely lined up for a very short landing.

Conclusion

Once again, Aerosoft have excelled themselves with this product. I had a wonderful time reviewing it and will be returning very shortly. At 14.95 Euro, this is a bargain. The provided scenery area is small, admittedly, but is so well detailed and produced, it provides a feeling of reality rarely experienced. It also gives you the chance to crank FSX up to the maximum and still enjoy fluid flight.

I wholeheartedly rcommend Lord Howe Island to anyone who loves flying below 35,000 feet.