Review by Nadeem Z

Airport Overview

WFSS , one of Asia’s top scenery developers have recently released their updated rendition scenery in mainland China with their rendition of Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport located in People Republic of China located in East Asia. Shanghai Hongqiao is the secondary and mostly domestic airport focused on the eastern coast of China for its operations. Hongqiao Airport, situated about 13 kilometers (8.1 miles) west of downtown Shanghai, near the town of Hongqiao in the Changning and Minhang districts, serves a range of international flights, primarily to Seoul–Gimpo, Taipei–Songshan, and Tokyo–Haneda. Although it is closer to the city center compared to Shanghai’s main international airport, Pudong, Hongqiao is a significant hub for several airlines. It serves as the corporate headquarters and a major hub for China Eastern Airlines, Shanghai Airlines, and Juneyao Air, as well as a key hub for Spring Airlines. In 2016, Hongqiao Airport was the 7th busiest airport in China and the 43rd busiest in the world,
handling 40,460,135 passengers.

Airport Features

The WFSS product offers amazing features which take advantage of the latest P3D technologies such as PBR Textures, 3D Grass, PBR Wet Effect(Can be turn off in the configurator), Animated Jetways.(SODE), VDGS(SODE), Dynamic Lights, manually planed vehicles in airport(Animated vehicles), Animated WindSock.(SODE), Low visibility Runway Lights, Real Ground Markings and a customized Scenery Configurator. It would be nice to have an expanded, Mesh/Terrain product that could complement this
scenery by WFSS but the ORBX global base package and trees product gives a decent representation of the bustling metropolis views of the fantastic approaches of downtown Shanghai which is located not too far from the airport with some amazing high rises and green landscapes.

Modelling and Texturing

After carefully examining the terminal and its features, WFSS have used high quality textures and have modelled all the major airport buildings with emphasis on high quality texturing and details of the apron. Although a heavy product on vRAM usage with a 3080TI, there is no option to customize the scenery texture quality or features from the configurator which can help improve the overall product features. Without a doubt, the modelling is of superb P3D addon quality, the details included near the main terminal which shows that WFSS have put a lot of effort and work into the product and its features and noticeably on the ground markings details. They have also included animated moving ground vehicles which blend seamlessly with GSX and include with amazingly high textures which have been placed around the various terminals making the clutter of service vehicles similar to the real life environment.

Final Feedback

In closing, the updated Hongqiao release has been in the works for quite some time after the previews published on the social media pages of WFSS, thus with the immense aforementioned details and features included, I would highly recommend WFSS version for the interesting domestic routes and busy airspace/complex procedures that will be accompanied while landing. It shows that they have put extensive effort into their version whilst including all the major and important P3D features such as PBR, custom runway lighting system and Dynamic Lighting features. With their focus streamlined on Asia, I hope they continue to release these Major Airports hubs in China and the region. It is worth mentioning that if you’ve owned the v1 version of Hongqiao you can simply upgrade to v2 for € 12.00 and receive the updated rendition of Shanghai Hongqiao. I look forward to the upcoming releases and this is a truly very well-done Job to the WFSS team on this updated release! Highly Recommended!

Review by Nadeem Z