Review:  FSimStudios – Halifax Stanfield International Airport v2.0 for MSFS

Review by: Rick Desjardins

Halifax Robert L. Stanfield International Airport, ICAO: CYHZ, is located in the rural community of Goffs, Nova Scotia just north of the province’s capitol of Halifax and it serves not only the nearby communities but all of the neighbouring Maritime Provinces. The airport, in 2023, was ranked the 8^th busiest airport in Canada by passenger traffic and handled approximately 3.6 million passengers. The airport is a hub for Air Canada Express, Cougar Helicopters, Maritime Air Charter, and PAL Airlines.

The construction of this airport began in 1955 with full operations commencing in 1960. Over the course of the next several decades the amount of passenger traffic continued to grow and with that the existing facilities were renovated and new ones added. The airport was officially known as Halifax International Airport until 2007 when it was renamed to; Halifax Robert L. Stanfield International Airport in honour of the 17^th Premier of Nova Scotia, Robert Stanfield.

The airport has two runways; 05/23 @10,500ft and 14/32 @7,700ft. The majority of air traffic is to destinations in North America with seasonal flights to the Caribbean, Iceland, Europe and the UK.

Installation

After making the purchase you will be required to download your scenery file via the SimMarket app. Once the file is on your PC it is a simple matter of extracting the zip file to the location of your choice.

Visuals

Ground Textures

Ground textures were very good when it came to those used on what I like to think of as the business side of the airport which for me is the area that includes the aprons, taxiways, runways and adjacent grassy areas. They were high quality, high resolution textures that were very realistic in appearance even up close. Hard surfaces included crisp clear markings along with wear and tear and dirt in those locations you’d expect to see them at. Grassy areas were also augmented with some 3d vegetation to make them more realistic.

When it came to the ground textures on the other side of the airport, mainly the road ways leading to the terminal as well as the adjacent civilian parking lots they were less detailed being of a lower resolution and the grassy areas had fewer instances of additional vegetation. I spend the vast majority of my time in the cockpit so for me it was not a big deal but felt it should be mentioned.  

Structures

This airport is what I would consider a typical medium sized airport with a number of hangars used for maintenance and aircraft parking, a cargo area, control tower, fire station/maintenance  vehicle garage, various other small buildings, multi-level parking garage, airport hotel and of course the main passenger terminal.

I found the overall quality to be consistent throughout the airport scenery. Each consisted of high resolution, high quality textures augmented with 3 dimensional details such as window wells and doorways plus objects such as light fixtures and signage. All of these were added as appropriate. The textures were further coloured in such a way as to differentiate between various types of building materials and also to give a sense of aging and the effects of their exposure to the elements.  Glass surfaces in many structures such as the main terminal were transparent.

Structure Interiors

 As is the case with the majority of airport scenery products now released they chose to model the interior of the main passenger terminal. It was interesting to look around and explore the building as they did include lots of interesting details however it was devoid of any people so in that respect it was lacking and actually took something away from all the work they put into this area. However as I don’t normally spend lots of time wandering airport interiors apart from doing my reviews I didn’t consider it to be a major issue.

In addition to the main terminal their interior modelling skills were put on display in several of the large maintenance hangars. They included architectural features such as structural supports and other features such as lighting and then to further the realism they added static aircraft appearing to be serviced or simply parked inside. Where appropriate various types of equipment and vehicles you’d expect in those types of scenarios were included. This added greatly to the realism of the whole scenery experience.  

Objects

Here again their focus was clearly on making your experience a realistic one. Requisite objects needed for such things as navigational aids, signage and day to day operations were included using high quality objects. These could be found in all areas where airport activities were likely to take place.  

A stand out feature for me was their decision to include high quality static aircraft of varying types strategically placed either parked outside at various locations or inside several of the open hangars. These static aircraft are a great addition especially for those who do not use a third party AI traffic program. For those aircraft parked in the large hangars several appeared to be in the process of being serviced as there was scaffolding and ladders nearby. None of these aircraft interfered with any of the AI traffic injected by the program I use.

Animations

The only animations I observed were the moving jet ways and wind socks.

Night

I was happy with their night time rendition of the airport and felt that their portrayal after dark was believable. All the various types of lighting I was looking for were included and all appeared to project appropriate levels of light intensity illuminating all the right places.  

Approaches

I was able to successfully perform landings on each of the runways utilizing the airport’s visual and instrument guidance systems.

Final Thoughts

I was very impressed with the overall quality and performance of the product. The developers clearly put a lot of thought and effort into trying to give the flightsim pilot a realistic experience and in my opinion they have succeeded. From a pilot’s perspective this product checks all the boxes.

CYHZ may not be on the radar of many people when considering their options for a departure or destination airport however I feel that its size and location make it ideal for short to medium length flights in North American especially the east coast and Caribbean.

Review by: Rick Desjardins