Aerosoft’s Airbus Holiday DestinationsReviewed by Ludo Lambrechts
Who doesn’t enjoy a holiday? Defined as leisure time away from work devoted to rest or pleasure a holiday is welcome to anyone. Unfortunately the world is a busy one, and work is always a priority to everyone as it pays the bills, and puts food on your table. As we are stuck at home we can still enjoy our flight simulators. Flying is very relaxing and can help you escape to some place exotic-all from the comfort of your chair. Aerosoft’s product for Microsoft Games’ Flight Simulator 2004 titled Airbus Holiday Destinations focuses around the theme of vacationing tourists.
Three of the world’s most popular European destinations have been included into this HUGE package. I do not use the term huge loosely though. Aerosoft’s Holiday Destinations contains three airports with surrounding meshes and autogen included. But you are not stuck flying default aircraft to these areas. Included in this package is an Airbus A320, Airbus A321 and an Airbus A330. This is a huge package which sells for less than $50 Canadian. We’ll see if it is worth that price tag though.
There are three aircraft and three airports included in this package and it sells for $44.99 Canadian. That is the same price as the PMDG 737NG which is an extremely complex plane, but is by itself and does not include any other aircraft. Mega Airport Frankfurt, one of the most complex scenery add-ons and winner of Canadian Pilots’ Scenery of the Year award sells for $34.99 Canadian. Now it is hard to expect that these airports will all meet standards seen by Fly Tampa airports or PMDG aircraft developments as the budget for these projects isn’t as colourful. But for $44.99 Canadian there are still high expectations for this add-on.
The beautiful thing in an Aerosoft add-on is its ease of use. I have never had to scratch my head on how to figure out how to install an add-on. The installation program as usual finds your FS2004 automatically and places the Airbus Holiday Destinations package in all the right places. Again thank you to Aerosoft for making this add-on package such an easy one to use.
I have seen many quality freeware Airbus developments from great committed developers and have seen what is out there for A320’s, A321’s and A330’s. Aerosoft’s work on the exterior models is level with the work by other developers. The model is accurate and the animations are well done. Now there are 47 different high-quality liveries in all included in this package and all are ready to be used. There is no fighting with textures getting them installed; you don’t have to worry about having the right models or air files and there is a real ease of use. Everything is there and ready to go.
What really sets apart these aircraft from others is the Virtual Cockpits and the included FMC’s. Great exterior models are created, but the interior is always overlooked. 2D panels are aliased to the default 737, and the same can be said for the sound. Aerosoft has included a VC, a custom 2D panel and a functional FMC. Now these panels and FMC’s aren’t the most realistic but they are good and do resemble the real things in a lot of ways. As Aerosoft states in the manual, they want these aircraft to resemble the real aircraft but they don’t want simmers to have to study hours of manuals. Aerosoft has done a great job in combining realism with ease of use. These aircraft are very unique to it’s competitors and would rack up $44.99 Canadian without the scenery included.
The scenery is designed to get you in a holiday mood, and these destinations do a great job achieving that effect. Since there is a very large mesh area around the airports included, the beaches that accompany the cities of Faro, Kos, and Monastir have all been developed. Beaches along the coastlines have been left out in FS, and the sandy beaches along the coastlines just make you want to jump in. As for the airports themselves the ground textures have been rendered beautifully, but as I said before we can’t expect this to match the quality of a Mega-Airport title (Frankfurt and Vienna). The buildings could have been done better and that is my only disappointment in this whole package. Now the buildings haven’t been modelled badly, and there are some really good ones in there but the budget to further develop these buildings and texture them with photos wasn’t sufficient. Overall the sceneries are nice, and do put you in a holiday mood. There is a lot of extra stuff included like new autogen and the surrounding mesh. In the end you get a great value given the airports and the aircraft included in this package.
The performance of this package is not an issue at all. Frame rates are extremely fluid when using any of these add-ons together. As this is an add-on geared for every simmer with every kind of set-up this is perfect as anyone can use this add-on. In comparison to other freeware developments the Holiday Destination aircraft all performed better on my system.
All in all Aerosoft’s Holiday Destinations turns out to be a steal for any buyer. Three aircraft and three airports for just $44.99 Canadian is quite a deal. I loved the aircraft for the price, and the scenery is good too. Frame rates are very nice, and the experience turns out very fluid. One of the unfortunate issues I found with this add-on is that it does not bring anything new or revolutionary to our flight sims, but actually fills a void that needed filling. For Aerosoft’s great work and added value I award them an 8.0 out of 10 for Airbus Holiday Destinations.
Reviewed by Ludo Lambrechts for Aerosoft
Aerosoft's Airbus Holiday Destinations
[GK-customfield]FSX[customfield-GK] 
