The intention has been to improve on the widely-acclaimed scenery produced by The UK Design Team, therefore both countries have received major re-works of virtually all features to provide an even greater level of detail and accuracy.

The scenery add-on can be purchased direct from VFR Scenery Ltd and full ordering details are given on their website at http://www.vfrscenery.com/ - including on-line ordering. The price is £21.99 including postage and packing to UK addresses, +£2 to addresses outside the UK.

Here's some mini-pics to give you a taster of this new scenery: 

Cosford arrival

The River Severn

Swansea

Peter James (of www.flightsim.com) - a much-respected flight-simmer and reviewer of flight-sim software - has found the slow frame rates caused by Airport 2000 to be so bad that he considers the product to be virtually impossible to use and he has published a very hard-hitting criticism of it.

The following is an introduction to his criticism which you may find of interest:

Due to the recent release of Wilco's Airport 2000 Volume 2, I have to say that I am very upset that scenery designers so well respected and idolized as Wilco, choose to "over-design" their scenery so that no one can run it. My review here shows my distaste for scenery that runs at 5 fps on a Pentium III 500.

I received many letters from dissatisfied customers who tried out Airport 2000 Volume 2, only to find the same thing I did. You cannot fly it!

Sure, it looks good in places, with many details, but unless you're planning on taking screen shots for fun, you will not be able to experience it as pilots do. I was told by one person who wrote me, his PIII 800 only gave him 8 to 10 fps. This is horrendous for flying! I for one will never rally around a scenery no matter how great it is, if I cannot achieve at least 12 fps while taking off and landing. It becomes a chore just to fly at less than that 

I saw frame rate wars first hand, as Lead Designer of Flight Unlimited III. There is always give and take and the bottom line that we experienced was that nothing below 15 was acceptable. There are many detailed and "new generation" sceneries out there that provide the same visual candy excitement as Airport 2000, but without the frame rate loss. If you check our file libraries, you'll notice many freeware sceneries of stunning quality, with an acceptable amount of frame rate hit.

I read reviews of all flightsim products on other sites as well, and I for one am tired of people either not being honest about a review or the lack of actual flying done to test a scenery.  Judging from the responses I've gotten lately in my email, a majority of you agree with me. It is time all of us let our talented and dedicated designers out there know we don't want you to over-build your creation. Use some discretion and test fly what you're building and ask yourself "would I want to fly around this?".

Great scenery is a good balance between frame rate and eye candy.  Placing too much candy in front of the pilot will destroy the effect the designer is trying to achieve and will sour the flying experience! Then you know what happens? Default FS2000 scenery looks better every time!