Kai Tak 1998 The Last Days Are Back
This scenery brings back the last days of Kai Tak. In these days more and more spectators crowded the famous parking house to witness the planes flying towards checker hill, at the landing light in Durham Road start banking into a tight turn, while just roaring over the cities rooftops. Approach by approach, in these days a spectacular air show was unfolding, and every captain rightfully could be proud like a display pilot flying tricky and difficult maneuvers in close proximity to the ground. <... This scenery brings back the last days of Kai Tak. In these days more and more spectators crowded the famous parking house to witness the planes flying towards checker hill, at the landing light in Durham Road start banking into a tight turn, while just roaring over the cities rooftops. Approach by approach, in these days a spectacular air show was unfolding, and every captain rightfully could be proud like a display pilot flying tricky and difficult maneuvers in close proximity to the ground.
The Hong Kong Kai Tak 1998 scenery is dedicated to the last days of Kai Tak. The scenery specifically shows many details, which were unique for that time. The following highlights are included:
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Updated version 1. 4: SU8 supported and corrected Chinese texts at the parking deck and the Ads.
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Updated version 1. 3: SU7 based road and roadlight exlusion - ziggy runway boundaries flattened - improved grass patches along the Kai Tak river.
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Based on more user feedback -> Updated version 1. 2 released: Functional OLS (optical landing system) on the USS Abraham Lincoln in Victoria Harbour (limited visibility in VR), ship and runway lighting on the USS Abraham Lincoln, the radar tower at the end of South appron was added, runway markings corrected, scenery objects re-added, which were hidden due to SU5 changes, improved the East Apron asphalt coloring.
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Based on user feedback -> Updated version 1. 1 released: added the eye-catching pedestrian bridge behind the parking house, consistently colored roads around the terminal, moved a couple of static ships to avoid collisions with Samscence’s ships, added user documentation.
- No AI cars on the apron, taxiways and runway! - This scenery has resolved the issue with cars appearing at the wrong places, so you don’t need to set the road traffic density to 0%.
- Terminal building - Highly detailed terminal building
- Final state of the airport - Colors of apron markings and lines matching the final state of the airport. The same applies to the buildings. Even the old East Apron layout (as it was prior the 1992 expansion) is still visible by slightly different colored asphalt. Finally, as the USS Abraham Lincoln arrived in Hong Kong on July 4, 1998, the displayed scenery matches the reality at one single day: July 5, 1998, the day before Kai Tak was closed.
- 3D airport shorelines – The airport shorelines are designed as 3D models for maximum realism.
- Four aircraft bridges - Totally four aircraft bridges carefully crafted as 3D models.
- Sloped bridge - The long bridge between South Apron and Taxiway B1 has a length of more than 250m and has modelled the shallow ramps from both sides meeting in the middle. Taxiing over it you need to apply power on the first half and then brakes on the second half!
- 3D Kai Tak River - The Kai Tak Nullah (River) flows in a 3D riverbed right through the middle of the airport. As in reality, 10 bridges in total are crossing the Kai Tak River.
- Hand drawn aerial image - As no aerial imagery in today standards exist from the airport, a hand drawn image is used as airport background with a resolution of more than 30kx30k-pixel.
- Animated spectators - Exactly 1852 spectators are modelled in this scenery. While flying the final turn towards the runway, the people are waving with their arms!
- Aircraft carrier - On July the fourth 1998, the USN NIMITZ class aircraft carrier CVN-72 USS Abraham Lincoln arrived in Hong Kong to celebrate Independence Day. So, the scenery contains a model of VCN-72 anchoring in Victoria Harbour. The details of the ship reflect the state of the late nineties. The carrier has a landable flight deck and an open hangar deck below, through which you can fly!
- Shark lingering in the water - In the nineties, frequently shark attacks were recorded in the waters around Hong Kong. So, if you carefully follow the shoreline of the Kai Tak airport you will find a shark lingering under the water surface.
- Watermasks - Subtle modelling of the shallow waters around the runway.
- Realistic taxiway lines - Custom painted lines for taxiway.
- Displaced DME - IGS 13 instrument approach with displaced DME to correctly indicate the runway threshold after the turn.
- Fun challenge - As a “not really realistic but fun”-challenge, you can e. g. take off with from the long bridge to the East, turn left by 270 degrees and fly under the bridge, then turn to the West towards the USS Abraham Lincoln, fly at 40ft altitude through the aft hangar opening from one side to the other side of the carrier’s hull and then turn to land on the carrier!
- Approach lights - Realistic approach lights placed on the roof of the social club at Durham Road. Approach lights with sequenced strobes show the path of the final turn.
- KCR East Rail-line - (Static) trains have been added on the noticeable KCR East Rail-line, which marks the begin of the final turn on IGS 13.
- SID’s and STAR’s - Fully scripted SID’s and STAR’s in compliance with the charts from https://xe. ivao. aero/pilot/vhhx/.
- Based on large image database - Thousands of Kai Tak images were reviewed as baseline for modelling. Many rare photographs showed details in sparsely documented parts of the airport.
- Performance optimized - Resource saving innovative tileable texture atlases. FPS friendly parallax windows.
- Animations - Animated clock for the famous Maurice Lacroix-advertisement and animated airport baggage tugs.
