Aerosoft’s LuklaReviewed by Ludo Lambrechts
Mount Everest, it stands 8,848 meters tall. The biggest landscape in the world is a daunting height. Located between Nepal and China Mount Everest is the biggest challenge for mountain climbers everywhere. The most common spot for climbers to start their trek up this massive landscape is the town of Lukla. Located at 2,859 metres Lukla is the highest airport on the world that has regular aircraft service. The gateway to Mount Everest is an extremely interesting community with terrific people.
The airport of Lukla is an extremely unique airport. It is a STOL only airport and can only be landed on from one side due to the proximity of Mt. Everest. It’s runway is short at 475m, slanted and made up of asphalt. In default the airport and the surrounding area is quite dull and has limited eye candies. The airport is something you’ll likely never see anywhere else and therefore is a great idea for an add-on.
The purchase and installation follows the standard Aerosoft Online procedure. It is an average price at $29 Canadian. It is an easy system and downloads, and installs extremely easy. This is very good as the scenery was an extremely difficult project for the Aerosoft team.
The airport is very small, and not a lot of aircraft can land there due to the short runway. However the surrounding village is what really defines the look of Lukla Airport. The ground textures of the airport have been done very well by Aerosoft. On the sides of the runway you will find a well rendered 2 metre high wire fence, around the airport terminal/parking aprons you will find a stone wall. This stone wall looks great from further away but doesn’t look as good from close up. Local Lukla landmark buildings have been included with great detail, and an accurate autogen has been generated for the surrounding villages.
The Lukla city may also be small, but every little extra that could have been added into this package is there. The value of this package is sky high, besides Lukla airport you get 3 other airports/strips. Mount Everest Base Camp is a small helipad at which a slight scenery enhancement has been made, not a significant add-on but a nice one. Also included is a high resolution, photorealistic mesh of Mount Everest. A land class has also been made which does a great job with the roads, rivers, and scenery integration.
The biggest part of this add-on which makes it unique is the sloped runway. The Aerosoft team has called it the biggest challenge if this scenery. FS has always had straight, perfectly level runways with no angles at all. Anyone who has been around flight simulator scenery development knows that a sloped runway is almost impossible in FS. However, Aerosoft proved all naysayer’s wrong and know there is a fully functioning, sloped runway. It is recognized by the ATC, but the only issue with this runway is that it does not appear on the GPS.
Given all of the eye candies and terrific graphics it is a shock that the frame rates aren’t affected either. Obviously there is probably a little drop in frame rates over default, but my frame rates have still not gone under 40FPS while flying in Lukla. The only performance issue in the scenery is the slow loading times for the surrounding photorealistic textures. This issue is always experienced with photorealistic meshes as textures are blurred and take a while to load. Once they’re loaded though, chances are you’ll forget the time you spent waiting.
Lukla is a revolutionary scenery add-on. Getting away from the perfectly level runways was a huge enhancement. The eye candies are great, and the autogen has been created to amazing effect. It runs smoothly on all computers, and offers a huge range of adventures. Lukla is a complete add-on which mixes in revolution, graphics, and fun. I award Aerosoft a 9.0 out of 10.
Reviewed for Aerosoft by Ludo Lambrechts
Aerosoft's Lukla
[GK-customfield]FSX[customfield-GK] 
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