Simming La Vida Loca

Someone said that ‘the difference between madness and genius is determined only by degrees of success’. Under this premise, Stéphane Lepage, also known as Vauchez, is the genius behind FlightScenery’s FlightZone 02: KPDX. So now I’m gonna give it to you straight: this is the best scenery ever released for FS9. Period. What remains now is to justify why, and why you should stop reading and get this masterpiece immediatly or, if you own it already, go enjoy it (again and again).

OF METHODS & MADNESS

I personally do not like photo-real scenery. It puts me off and reminds me it’s a simulation, after all. Funny, because we’re all looking for the as-real-as-it-gets effect, and what could me more realistic, considering the medium’s limitations, than a photography of the object itself? Well, not to me. Photographic scenery gives me this disgusting feel that there’s nothing behind the textures. That there’s some crude wooden structure holding those polygons up. It’s probably caused by the fact that aerial photographies (either satellital or low-altitude) taken at a particular time of day, always freeze the shadows of that single moment. The closer you approach, the more the illusion falls apart. And when FS renders its own shadows, they don’t manage to cover the fake, other-than-this-time-of-day shadows. It’s like spotting Claudia Schiffer on the street, and upon promptly approach discovering it was only a picture of her, pasted on cardboard. Photo-real I pass, thanks.

KPDX is photo-real, and it’s glorious.

This is photoreal as it should be done: it just doesn’t feel like photographies, that’s the truth. He’s got his imagery from USGS photos, but it has been tweaked to life and integrated masterfully into the scenery, the offending shadows are just not there. And whence buildings and objects should rise from (as per photo reference), they do, and they are also photographical in their textures. What you get in the end is the pleasure to interact with an incredibly realistic, immersive diorama which lures you in like digital sirens. You risk forgetting your family and your life, self-locked away in FS scenery nirvana.

LORD OF THE RINGS

This is not an isolated airport. It’s a Flight Zone. It is constructed in concentric rings with the main airport at its center, and featuring more and more levels of detail as you approach the core. The high resolution, eighteen (18) meters mesh generates an incredibly detailed surface, over which objects are positioned with surgic, precise hand. All the streams and roads are painstakingly reworked, and the area features custom landclass and waterclass.

A hyper-detailed KPDX, KHIO and KVUO. More than twenty strips around KPDX revamped. Remodelled downtown Portland buildings, two to include helipads. Lots of animations (marshallers, road traffic, those ubiquitous wig-wags). Custom autogen and textures for all the seasons (I’m saving up this one, going to let the season change on its own and be surprised).

The manner in which the place is integrated with the rest of the FS world is unique. With other sceneries, as you approach the area it feels like some giant just pulled a gargantuan blanket on top. I’ve got Ultimate Terrain and Ground Environment textures, and KPDX integrates beautifully with those. There’s even a small compatibility patch for UT users and it works perfectly. At night, the ground textures blow your mind. When you’re on approach on a stormy night, and the clouds part to reveal this feast of lights, it’s flightsimmers joy, I tell you. But don’t take my word for it:

I took a flight one sunny Sunday morning with a light GA single. Taxiing toward the active I stopped for a moment, applied brakes, engine humming softly. I actually opened the window to look outside, and this Sunday-at-the-airport vibe was so powerful I swear I could feel the heat and the wind on my face, and was waiting for a fly to come buzzing into the cockpit. About that?

I would caution anyone flying this scenery against doing so lightly, because it deserves the utmost attention. Immersion is the name of Vauchez’ game, and you must get off the plane and walk about the surroundings to truly value the method behind his obsessive madness. Using slew-mode, a ground vehicle, or ActiveCamera if you have it, roam around his intrincate, huge, utterly gorgeous rendition of this place, for there’s so much to explore.

BUSY GALORE

So much. If you really start to summarize, you go crazy. Because it keeps surprising with new details all the time, at different times of the day. It’s just out of this world to contemplate this virtual space at sunset, when spotlights begin to glow up, and traffic illuminates roads and streets. I never liked ground moving traffic (I think it looks silly in FSX) but here, ah, it moves at just the right speed, turns properly, waits at the lights, you totally believe it. No, you integrate it into the whole experience, as it should.

Simmers using this scenery without a proper AI package should suffer the punishment of flying for a week with the default FS textures on, and no extra mesh (boy, was that harsh!). This is a busy hub, and it must be seen as intended, bursting with activity. Otherwise the cleverness of its design does not make sense. Get yourself some good AI pack.

Allow me to clarify: within certain add-ons you may get to see a small water-pump modelled. Right. When will you get the chance to notice a water-pump at 90 Kias on final? Ok, you could see it when you’re taxiing, maybe, but it doesn’t work that way. The knack, the gift, is to model and feature stuff which will enhance the reality feel within the context of flight simulation. This is where Vauchez’ work shines. He knows what things should be there, are relevant, and will contribute to the immersion factor. Plus on top of that, it’s done using economic, proficient, elegant programming. We’re talking the highest visuals here, with the least fps penalties.

There is a precious weight to this scenery, and it’s what literally does the magic. You feel gravity is at work. Buildings do not remotely remind you they were created with Gmax, they are buildings and there surely must be people inside. Open those doors and there will be activity in there, right? This one you can only pull when you’re willing to design and place by hand more than a MILLION (1.000.000) trees and objects, ALONE. That’s right. The credits only mention some betatesters, plus six people contributing with photographies.

ALONE?

He did it on his own, under his own obsessive standards. Isn’t it laughable when an all-powerful, unlimited resources monopoly states that, sorry, it won’t fix some or the other in this release? Behold what three, two, one motivated individuals can accomplish! How many nights has he spent adjusting, positioning, tweaking, crying?

No other scenery will ever come close to this, believe me. Unless a hitherto hidden Vauchez-clone appears suddenly and invests a whole painful year of digital sweat, tears, and passion into a similar effort, it cannot be done. The techniques employed by Stéphane may now be systematically imitated by every scenery designer out there, big and small, but they will never meet the Olympian standards achieved with this, not even by hiring legions of coders. Behold the equivalent of a great book conceived from the gut by a writer, a book that endures through generations, it’s seminal and spawns many a read-alike. Publishers may command sequels to it, but you know nothing can ever match the original work.

I believe we will see more amazing creations from this man, but nothing of this magnitude ever again. More so considering that, during development, Stéphane underwent serious personal problems which hindered release for some time and enraged the Eager Ones. Release was dangeously in peril, but somehow he managed to overcome, and thus deliver the best FS9 scenery ever released, thank God.

Vauchez’ scenery is not perfect, though. It’s cruel, in fact. Because you eventually have to leave the Flight Zone and then be painfully reminded that the rest of your virtual world will never look like that. Never.