NZFF

Last week I was browsing the Marketplace, and thinking how poor the developer uptake was in MSFS2024. After 9 months, there are still just a handful of NZ airports available, considering one of the selling points was forward compatibility from MSFS (2020). I'm aware that it's really tough for most developers to get their products into the Marketplace, but this also extends to other online stores, and even direct-from-developer releases.

So I was pleased this morning to see a review of this narrated tour from Kea Skies. I don't know much about this developer, but they are NZ-based. This is their first local release. This is available from their own site, plus SimMarket. My order of preference for sim addons is the Marketplace, then direct from the developer if not in the Marketplace, and then SimMarket. As this isn't in the store, I first went to their site, did the normal sign-up thing, but the Google Pay process failed, as did the credit card payment. So I opened the SimMarket app and bought it there. I've finally come around to the app, and it is very simple, press buy and then install, and it just turns up in the sim. It is charged in euros, and I ended up paying NZ$14.22. (Kea only show US$ for some reason.)

However since then I received an email from Kea saying my order was complete. I haven't seen a credit card payment go through yet, but if it does, I'll need to get this reversed.

It took me a long time to start the flight, nothing to do with this addon, but more to do with MSFS. I wanted to take screenshots, but using the normal Windows screenshot mode crashed the sim every time. I reverted to Nvidia screenshots, which worked fine. However I didn't finish the flight, over an hour in I decided to record a bit of the narration, but that crashed it as well. Oh well.

The flight I did was a lot of fun, certainly kept me entertained and informed, although some people might find it a bit cringey -- I didn't. The narrator - Aroha - (not AI) has a great grasp of te reo, and she goes into some history of the place, albeit not in any depth. She teaches the passengers a bit of a couple of te reo expressions, plus gives them an intro to kiwi slang. The passengers respond enthusiastically, considering this is a Cessna 172 so there can't be many of them... you fly as Tāne, the friendly but very reticent pilot. All you do is follow the flight plan, flying out of Ardmore.

There's a 172 livery included, quite striking really. I may finish the flight one day, I'll just keep my fingers away from any screenshot or record buttons...

This would be ideal in the Marketplace, with the 'gift' function, where you could give friends around the world a great intro to Auckland, with a bit of 'culture' thrown in. The screenshots are nothing special, but do show the style of the narration.

Interesting Rob.
I do like the "gift" idea.

VFR sightseeing is the spice of flying for me. I just visited some castles along the Loire in France VFR, flying a Fieseler Storch in French colors. Buzzing over the landscape at around 1,500 ft, while time seems to stand still, is truly a unique experience. New Zealand also invites this kind of flying.

An interesting concept with a unique cultural twist. The 2024 scenery quality seems to have gone "downhill" Rob. Those screenshots look like they have come straight out of FSX.

Yeah, I've had to settle on fairly low settings with 2024, to concentrate on 'performance', which means this is the lowest settings I've ever used on any sim. with 2020 I can go Ultra, but 2024 is medium with some settings high but others low to balance that. This means my LODs are low, giving soft landscapes and low res ground textures.

However I do hate a lot about the scenery, the colour is a big issue, 2020 has nice green fields etc, with 3D trees which blend well, and everything looks like to belongs together, whereas 2024 has blue chunks, some brown bits, and not a single 'nice' green to be seen. I don't know if I can fix this, as I did calibrate my monitor for astrophotography, which affected the 2024 colour and tone, (not 2020, though) so I've applied a Nvidia filter to try and fix the gamma and improve the colour balance. But it is still ugly as.

Yesterday I loaded 2020 to compare the bush flight experience (Kea Skies Auckland is actually a 'bush flight') and noticed that 2020's UI performs much better, I don't get that frustrating clunky delay when moving from menu to menu, with no real indication when it's ready for input. Having to wait 10 seconds on every button press reminds me of the early days of GUIs, and shouldn't happen this far into the 21st century.

On a positive note, I did try this flight again, and was pleased that it continued on seamlessly after the previous crash, so it obviously saves the state often. I did keep away from the screenshot buttons, just in case it crashed it again, but in the end my email app popped up a notification which crashed the sim. So I still haven't finished the flight, although I'm on the home stretch.

I finally finished the Auckland flight.

Here's an example of what I see in MSFS2024, with a wide range of different coloured tiles, none of which is an attractive colour.



I loaded up the same scene in 2020, and saw the same patchwork, although the colours are better. I don't remember 2020 being this bad, I guess it's the 'new' Bing imagery from 2024 which they included in 2020 with the latest sim update... I don't like it.