A smattering of premium level freeware airport scenery packages is a well established tradition in the world of civil flight simulation – often enticing enough to convince many of us to then go on and buy some of the payware airports as well. Orbx Systems, well known scenery makers, have released their first into Microsoft Flight Simulator and I checked it out.
Scenic Fairways airport
A small grass strip located 12 nautical miles south of Portland and about 35 miles to west of Mt. Hood, OG20 Fairways Airport, is located in a more rural area of Oregon and features some nicely detailed grass runways and a small collection of airport facilities. There’s some nice little details included here and it’s ideal if you like the small, out of the way, small GA aircraft oriented airports like this one.
I flew from the airport and around the area in a Cessna 172 Skyhawk and clearly I wasn’t the only one as the small, quaint airport, had plenty of people crowding the mostly grass aprons and directional runways.
The detailing here is good. There’s some fun little details scattered around the airport and there’s some nice attention to detail. Especially so with the markers on the nearby powerlines which are in line with the runway.
The aforementioned markers, on my system at least, don’t have very much draw distance so they only become visible only at the last moment. It would also be good if slightly shorter grass was present along the airstrip as well – someone needs to get a lawnmower out.
Minor issues aside, this freeware airport is a nice addition to the list and a great way to launch some scenic GA aircraft trips in the Oregon area. It’s available only from Orbx through their Orbx Direct software and you can see more information about this airport here.
Stormbirds 
I installed ORBX Central and loaded this scenery up, and it’s nice enough. But the question of “Why bother?” comes to mind. In the past, ORBX scenery was an exponential improvement, but with the whole world looking fantastic now, the improvements seem incremental. Unless it’s a location I am tied to, like Montreal, I can’t see buying much or any scenery.
What we need are more planes.
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It’s a credit to the new sim that the scenery is so good that a group like Orbx can really only seek to improve specific locales like an airport or add scenery improvements to a city.
You do have to be more tied to the locale for sure. In this case it’s a fun little airport with some nice small details. I think some folks are going to love it.
Some more Canadian content would be lovely though 🙂
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