A few of you have asked me about doing some scenery reviews and after some consideration I’m throwing my hat into the ring (so to speak) with some unique scenery options that maybe haven’t been covered as much by other outlets. For this first scenery review I’m looking at a suite of options from Emerald Scenery Designs whom I’ve covered in two Flight Journal pieces to date (you can read them here and here). I’ll cover what the scenery looks like and then what you need to know if you buy them!

Disclaimer

Emerald Scenery Designs sent me the three payware scenery packages that I’m reviewing today. I had actually already bought Fort Crosby previously but the other two came my way as well and made great destinations in my second flight journal focused on their scenery. As always, my thoughts are my own and the group exercised no editorial control over the review.

Overall review and feature discussion

Emerald Scenery Designs have a small but growing collection of unique scenery options for Microsoft Flight Simulator. While a lot of the time scenery collections tend to focus on big airports and city visual updates with custom buildings, Emerald Scenery Designs has focused on the opposite end of the scale with small back country airports being their focus.

Most of their MSFS offerings are currently in Alaska where they have two categories: freeware airports with what they say are minimal updates of a surrounding scenery and then payware updates which add more details and features. To make both payware and freeware offerings look their best, you’ll need to download their Emerald Object Library which is both free and available on Marketplace and through their website. Unlike some freeware offerings, the library is all in one so you don’t have to download a ton of different asset packs. Just this one.

In the absence of massive airport areas to cover, these smaller, more intimate airfield experiences are jam packed with lots of little details. Most of what I’m talking about will apply to the payware selections specifically but their freeware airports sport many of the same features too.

These little details include custom environmental pieces. Native shrubs, wildflowers and weeds, rocks, logs, and other “doodads” scattered around. Bears, moose, wolves, and other wildlife will also randomly walk across the area and even cross the various airstrips. You’ll also see a few different kinds of butterflies during the summer months when its not raining. There’s also parked equipment, ladders, toolboxes, sheds, snowmobiles and just about every other thing that you might expect on a back country airfield.

There’s also some dynamic elements which I think is very cool and help makes these places you could visit again and again. Various sound effects play at different times of the year with birds, owls, woodpeckers, all making calls depending on the time of day and depending on if its clear or if its raining or snowing. If there’s sufficient amount of snow on the ground, snowpiles will appear dynamically (at least at Fort Crosby) as well which are great for visuals but they also restrict operations by making the available landing space narrower and shorter.

Everything, and I mean everything, seems to be modeled at exceptionally high levels of detail considering the background scenery nature of it. 4K PBR textures everywhere! Yet, performance remains high and I detected no slowdowns whatsoever.

Though the focus is undoubtedly on the airstrips, the team have done some work to touch up nearby water sources and added additional cabins and other details around. They aren’t quite as detailed as the landing areas themselves but when you fly in and out you’ll notice the other buildings.

Everything feels lived in! Makes it feel like you flew there and visited that location. Maybe had a campfire with some smores. That’s the kind of feeling I get!

Fort Crosby

Now let’s look at the specific scenery options on offer and I start with Fort Crosby. This is the one that I purchased first and was featured as part of my tour of locations in my first Alaskan bushplane adventure with these sceneries.

The coverage area here is reportedly 4 square nautical miles with custom, colour matched, aerial imagery and a custom elevation model too.

The focus is of course on the strip itself which is a 1500 foot gravel runway which many general aviation aircraft can manage. Not just the overpowered bush planes! Although those are more fun of course. The runway gets considerably narrower in snowy conditions so you do have to take more care when there’s snow on the ground.

The strip features a small hangar with fluorescent lighting (that buzzes) at night. The door on the hangar opens when you approach or when you spawn an aircraft inside of it. There’s also tons of objects on the inside to make it feel like a real hangar. Even the clock works. The size seems sufficient for most small bushplanes and general aviation types. There’s also a couple of other starting spots outside if you try and operate something a little larger.

You also see icicles hanging off the sides during cold snowy conditions. Beautiful!

My only complaint is that the lighting from inside the hangar spills out unnaturally to the surrounding area. May be a limitation of MSFS’ lighting engine. Most of the time, however, it looks great.

I like this one because if feels like it could be a base of operations for a small charter flight operation or a personal sightseeing base.

Chunilna Cabin Strip

This is a considerably shorter and more challenging airstrip to land at. With only 660 feet available, you’re going to have to be both skilled and choose the right airplane. XCub or Zlin Savage Cub? No problem! Aviat Husky? Sure! Got Friend’s Wilga or Double Ender? I’ve flown them both in here! But you’d struggle with some other larger or less capable types.

The centerpiece is of course the airstrip but there’s also a cabin nearby with modeled interior and a campfire lights up during colder temperatures. They’ve also cleared up some of the local river area so that you can go and have some fun landing on the sandbars.

This one feels less like a base of operations and more of a destination. You could fly in from one of the other strips or up from a larger airport near Anchorage and think of it like a getaway location. It has that kind of feel to it. Just choose something small and light to land here.

Unlike Fort Crosby there’s no snow piles when the snow gets deep.

Twentyfive Mile & Limber Lake

This last payware that I’m looking at today is a two for one package. The two airstrips are just a mile apart and have very similar aesthetic to one another. Both are dirt runways and both have a significant slope meaning you may be landing uphill or downhill depending on the wind conditions and your approach angle.

That’s not all because this scenery package also includes three spawnable docks that let you get your floatplane flying in as well. The dock areas are all beautifully detailed with a small dock, lily pads, boats and canoes, frogs and plenty of weeds and shrubs. Just like the airstrips themselves.

Snow obviously changes the visual appearance here but this one also doesn’t get the snow berm feature we see on Fort Crosby.

Final thoughts

Bush plane oriented scenery is far less common than your big airstrips but I find my visits to these locations just as interesting and rewarding as visiting other scenery in MSFS. Emerald Scenery designs have carved out part of a small niche area with some really thoroughly thoughtfully put together scenery packages.

Pricing on these is $9.99 USD for Fort Crosby and Chunilna Cabin Strip while Twentyfive Mile & Limber Lake comes in slightly higher at $11.99 USD. If you like this kind of flying and value having some higher quality scenery for your bush flight destinations, these strips are great value packing in tons of details and immersion. The best part is coming back during different seasons (or setting the weather to your season of choice) and getting a different experience. Combine these with the freeware offerings also by Emerald Scenery Designs and you can do quite a bit of flying here as I have and intend to do quite a bit more in the future.

If you had to choose just one I’d be divided between the “home base” feeling of Fort Crosby with its wider runway and the great details on the small hangar building or going with Twentyfive Mile & Limber Lake which has two airstrips near each other and the float plane docks too. Chunilna Cabin Strip is great as well with its chief feature being the difficult to land at location deep in the trees. In any case I can easily recommend any of these options if this type of flying appeals!

Buying options

Emerald Scenery Design’s sells their scenery offerings through their webstore. Check out the map which gives you links to the various products that they offer including their excellent freeware maps too. The three airstrips that I reviewed today are Fort Crosby, Chunilna Cabin and Twentfive Mile / Limber Lake.