Twin Otter X: Faroe Islands

Some time ago I saw some nice photos and brochures of the Faroe Islands. These are some small islands high up the North Atlantic between Iceland and Scotland (ugh! very cold!). The default scenery is rather poor and since I wanted to try some random flying with my new Twin Otter X and good scenery I started looking for a freeware scenery package.

I found the Faroe Islands scenery page scenery by Ryan Andersen and Peter Henrik Poulsen. It includes a mesh, totally redesigned coastlines, towns, etc. Their latest is version 3 but I have been trying to download it for days and it always comes corrupted. As a result I had to settle for their previous version for FSX Acceleration SP2. I don’t have the Acceleration add-on  so many nice objects used in that scenery would simply not be available (I think only a minority has FSX Acceleration).

After installing I started at the parking ramp near the nice terminal building (see the flag?). The terminal building and surrounding buildings are very nice. I loaded up my Aerosoft Twin Otter X 300 on this Vagar (ICAO: EKVG) Intl. airport. Which is nice with real weather conditions because of the clouds.

Anyway, I taxied to runway 13, and set my throttles 100% and as the aircraft accelerated it crossed some yellow markings on the runway and for some unknown reason the aircraft (in the centerline!) crashes with some unseen object. I tried this several times from both ends of the runway with the same result. Sad :( I cannot take off. The developers say they (or nobody else) has experienced that. I have nothing strange in my system so I can perhaps only attribute this flaw to the fact that I do not have FSX Accelleration add-on installed, only SP2. Clearly there is some weird incompatibility. I don’t have any other Danish scenery add-on and this Faroe Island is at the top of the list.

Anyway, I wanted to see some of the stuff even though I won’t be able to fully enjoy it. I set to start my flight at around 2500’ above the runway and flew outbound into the sea and then around part of the island. Crossing the island along a fjord or river I flew past these two “mushrooms” (observatories?). I had set my ADF to one of the ILS middle marker frequencies and the NAV1/2 radios to the Localizer. This gave me some information as to where I needed to head back in my VFR flight on this DHC6-100.

Then I went past the observatories watching out my ADF needle and headed back to the sea along the river. Really, this scenery looks very nice, all green and lovely. The hills with exposed rocks also looked very realistic.

Unfortunately I did not see much of settlements or other objects. Could because they used many FSX Acceleration pack objects. In their newest (v3) scenery they have more objects and towns (hopefully not requiring acceleration pack), but as I said that download always comes corrupted to my side of the world (and it is not my internet connection).

Back into the sea I turned right again towards the Middle marker (watch the ADF needle) towards the airport. This airport has a very short runway so Boeings 737 apparently no longer fly there. It has special grooves to improve the braking action (not simulated) and two emergency exit ramps at both ends with extra friction (they say it could damage a real plane) in case you run out of runway.

There is a cliff on both sides of the runway and according to the charts the approach is challenging on faster planes (not on my Twin Otter X). Nowadays they use (for what I read) large turboprops between mainland Denmark and the Faroe Islands.

Funny thing is, when I landed my a/c did not crash into the unseen object. Rather than taxiing to the terminal I decided to take my chances and taxi to the other end, also no problem. Then from that other end I attempted to take off again and guess what? when I went past the yellow markings on the runway the a/c crashed with the unseen object. I am totally puzzled, the scenery is nice although very sparse if you don’t have Acceleration Pack but I can’t enjoy it if I can’t take off.

I have contacted the author to see if we can verify the MD5 hash of the file I downloaded. I want (need!) to test their latest version which is supposed to be nicer and probably doesn’t exhibit this odd behaviour. So far the only scenery that has this on my system.

I also installed their Atlantic Airways AI traffic file but I didn’t see any taking off, landing or at the gates.

Aircraft	Aerosoft's Twin Otter X (payware) DHC6-100
Scenery	Faroe Islands Acc/SP2 by Ryan Andersen & Peter Henrik Poulsen (freeware)
Flight Simulator	FSX SP2
Type of flight	VFR around the island
Airports	EKVG rwy, 13/31