ORBX KTVL Lake Tahoe Airport for FSX and P3D By Thomas Jones Flightsimglobal.com

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1 ORBX KTVL Lake Tahoe Airport for FSX and P3D By Thomas Jones Flightsimglobal.com i7-2600k turboboost to 4.6ghz Nvidia ASUS GTX gb 16gb 1600mhz RAM 2x 1TB HDD Windows 7 64 bit Intro: South Lake Tahoe is a popular vacation spot located in California, USA. Tourists come from all over for the attractions, including skiing in winter and boating in the summer. The city has a number of casinos located just across the California and Nevada border as well as bike trails and some of the Sierra Nevada's most scenic terrain. ORBX developer, Misha Cajic, has developed Lake Tahoe Airport as his latest offering and the result is nothing short of spectacular. The scenery package comes with the following plethora of features, listed on the product page: 500 square kilometers of photoreal imagery Fully custom modeled airport and objects Advanced rendering and AO techniques Animated ski-lifts during the winter All new custom vegetation exclusive to KTVL Includes SnowFlow, freezing rivers and lakes Available for P3Dv2 and FSX/P3Dv1.4 Optimized for the NGX and airliners Installation: As with most modern payware offerings in the FSX market, the installation is all automatic. There is no exception with Lake Tahoe. Simply downloaded your installer from the Flightsimstore website, run it, enter your order number, order date, and registration key when asked to, and let the installer take care of all of the difficult work for you. Not much else to say. Just make sure once the installer is complete that you install the latest ORBX Libs files so you actually see the buildings and surrounding scenery. I made that mistake at first! What's included in the package? Oh, where do I begin? There is just so much to see in this package. Starting at the

2 airport, what is immediately noticed is the level of detail in the taxiways, runway, and ramp area. The textures are immensely sharp and really pop. The slight grooves and cracks in the pavement appears as though they are actually present. A plethora of wheel marks and stains also appear in appropriate locations, adding to the immersion. An airport wouldn't be complete without the surrounding buildings right? Misha has done an excellent job with recreating the unique buildings found around Lake Tahoe Airport, from the terminal building, to the smaller hangar buildings and shacks. Even the smaller details, such as construction vehicles, yellow bollards, traffic cones, and bits and pieces of general junk lying about can be found on the airport grounds. All of the small details, along with the larger, more obvious details, effectively come together to bring the airport to life the way the ORBX team has always done! Scattered about the parking areas of the airport, a wide variety of general aviation traffic rests, showing the busy nature of this holiday airport. In front of the terminal, a private jet with a line of passengers sits. Certainly a lot of activity going on around the airport grounds.

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4 On the roadside portion of the terminal, I found the level of detail to be much higher than other scenery packages I've looked at. If you were to walk out of the terminal building, you would end up on street level, with a small parking lot directly in front of you. Across the street, Misha added a small slope with detailed stairs leading to the main parking lot. A number of different car types and general parking lot objects are present, and the result is very convincing. Once you are done gawking at the detail around the airport grounds, take to the skies and start exploring! The coverage of the package is absolutely astonishing. The satellite imagery extends from the Heavenly Mountain Resort in Carson Range all the way to the Sierra Nevada Range. The majority of the scenery is composed of 1m per pixel resolution satellite imagery, while the town of South Lake Tahoe is covered with 60cm per pixel imagery. The area immediately around the airport is covered with 30cm per pixel imagery. All of the imagery looks excellent from about 1,500ft above ground level and higher, perfect for cruising around and checking out the area. Flying over the beach, I was surprised to see the little details such as buoys floating just off shore. There are quite a number of these little objects dotted about the scenery, and they really show the dedication put into this package.

5 Along the Nevada-California state line a group of casinos can be found. Flying into Lake Tahoe Airport at night, the neon lights of the casinos are a nice checkpoint.

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7 If you think the scenery is lively during the day, then you have yet to see it at night! The airport simply looks stunning during the night. Misha has done an excellent job at the night-lighting both on and off the airport grounds. There aren't too many lights in the more residential areas of the scenery, while more are packed into the casino area, showing where most visitors or residents spend their evenings and nights. I particularly like the approach lights, they seem to just stand out in the darkness which I guess is a good thing to want to have at an airport!

8 Seasonal texturing is also a feature of this scenery that I absolutely love. During the summer months, the scenery is full of lush green trees with a tiny bit of snow on the mountain. You can see boats at docks, and many different colors in the clear lake water. Come fall, the trees begin to turn color and drop leaves. The snow on top of the mountain begins to work its way down. In winter, everything is basically dead. The trees have no leaves, the ground has a blanket of snow on it, and the lakes in the mountains freeze! That's right, Misha has included textures for the main lake and smaller lakes in the mountains that make them appear to freeze up in the winter. The effect is quite realistic and can make one shiver just by looking at it. Another nice feature during the winter season is that on top of one mountain there is a ski lift that begins moving. A very nice little detail for those who enjoy exploring the scenery, rather than just flying into the airport. I'll leave the rest of the scenery up for exploration, as there is still a plethora of details I haven't mentioned.

9 Performance: All of ORBX's airport packages are very frame rate friendly. Misha's KTVL is no different. I was able to fly the PMDG 737NGX into the scenery with barely any frame rate drop. The only aircraft I had a bit of issue with the frame rate was the Carenado Phenom, other than that the other aircraft I have from them worked fine. If the scenery runs a bit choppy for you, Misha included a menu to customize what appears at the airport and in what detail so you can still enjoy the airport in fluid frame rates.

10 Overall: ORBX's Lake Tahoe Airport is their third package for the Northern California region. Misha has designed the airport with a fantastic level of detail that spans over a large distance. That level of detail only becomes better when each season has its own little details dotted about that bring the scenery to life. At just $28.94 USD ( 22,89), the package doesn't break the bank and is completely worth the cost. I would highly recommend Lake Tahoe for anyone looking for a nice FS getaway location.