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The lack of income tax makes Monaco appear to defy gravity, but such state as there is survives on the income from the casino, tax on businesses, monopolies on the sale of tobacco and postage stamps, and sales tax. So Monaco welcomes visitors and encourages them to spend as much cash as they like, helped by spectaculars like the Monte-Carlo rally and the Grand Prix. Just don't lose your shirt in the casino. Aerosoft's Monaco X is a 104 Mb download from the Pilot Shop and installs automatically, once you have entered the registration key. I reviewed version 1.02, which appears to be the final release version and was very stable on my setup. System requirements are quoted at a relatively realistic 2.0 Ghz processor, 1 Gb of RAM (2 Gb recommended), a 128 Mb graphics card (256 Mb recommended) and of course, FSX. I did the review on a a 2.66 Core2Duo with 4 Gb of RAM and a 768 Mb GeForce 8800GTX under Vista. A few things about the recommended setup are worth noting before we get into the main part of the review: the pdf manual suggests that to get the best out of the addon, mesh complexity should be set to 100%, with mesh resolution at 1 m, texture resolution at 1m, autogen density to at least the normal setting, ships and ferries to 100% and leisure boats to 100%. On my system, doing this was a ticket to single figure frame rates, so unless you have a significantly more powerful PC, I would suggest loading the addon for the first time with mesh complexity at no more than 70%, mesh resolution at 38 m and the sea traffic at around 50%. You won't lose too much and if you can live with the framre rates that result, then try increasing the sea traffic to 100%, as there is quite a lot to see out there, including a couple of large yachts that do regular cruises, and various ships with helipads. I did the review using the lower quality settings, because this is how most simmers will see the addon, but if you can use better display settings, the results are even better.
It isn't often I get to write about rotary winged flight in Flight Simulator, perhaps because the helicopters weren't really flyable until FSX came out and Aces took a look at the problems of controlling them. You will get to know the helipads in this addon well, because the lack of a fixed wing airport means that the only way you can visit is by chopper, unless you use a float plane, or do a fly-by enroute down the coast - but helicopter simmers are going be delighted, because Monaco makes for some classy arrivals. No more hunting around for some obscure corner in an international airport, at Monaco, you are the star attraction, getting to land as you do right on the waterfront, with the whole world watching. Monaco X changes FSX quite a bit, in its small way. For a start, it adds an entire country - Monaco doesn't exist in vanilla FSX! With the addon installed, you get a couple of start locations you can get started by selecting either LNMC to go to the helipad, or LNMCW to moor at the Oceanic Museum buoy in the harbor, although if you do the latter, make sure you have the throttles at idle, or before you know it, you will have taxied through the boat in front of you and wrecked the plane against rock at the base of the museum. There are also two flights included, one starting you on the helipad and the other setting you up to fly from Nice to Monaco in the Bell. The scenery covers rather more than Monaco, the improved mesh and terrain textures extending back into France a fair way, so that if you tire of flying back and forth from Nice, you can always lift off and fly over the top of the mountain to admire the French countryside beyond. One of the most interesting quandaries about the place is figuring out when you have left or arrived in Monaco, because there isn't a visible demarcation marking the boundary - the development is continuous, but in practice, the moment you stop flying over the plain and begin to have to outclimb the mountain, you are in France. The Maritime Alps form a high barrier surrounding Monaco on every side and so flying with any kind of cloud cover is a challenge, unless you stick to the shore.
The manual makes some helpful suggestions about how to enjoy the scenery without having do fly in by helicopter or floatplane, the visual approach to Nice (LFMN) from the north-east being one example, others being the approaches to LFMN's 22R or 22L via the SALEYA intersection, or the ARZ VOR/DME approach. Having read this, I took a look at the plates included with the addon and found a couple, which are in French (not too much of a problem, even if you aren't a French speaker), both of which are for Monaco's heliport. What you don't get are any approach plates for Nice, which would have been er... can't resist this... nice, given that the manual makes so much of the opportunities they give for admiring Monaco. If you click on the thumbnail above right, you can see Nice in the distance, near the middle top of the shot. 
So is Monaco worth the money? To be sure, it is hard addon to classify, given that it doesn't have an airport and covers such a small area. If you like to measure sceneries by the acre, then Aerosoft don't have much here to attract the attention, particularly if you are a big iron simmer. On the other hand, there are very few sceneries that cater for chopper enthusiasts as well as this one does and there are a dozen airports and fields only a short flight away, the majority of them offering interesting views of the Maritime Alps, an area that few simmers know well and which would make a great playground for an aspiring scenery developer, given that there is little on offer in the area and it is particularly scenic. If you take Monaco X on its own terms and fly in using a chopper or a float plane, the only real drawback is the frame rate hit the scenery imposes if you pull the sliders far enough to the right to see it in all its glory. The only penalty of running with 1 m texture resolution is extended loading times, although if you are low on graphics memory, you are liable to get blurring even in FSX; but ramping up the mesh resolution and complexity did knock frame rates right back on the the review system and increasing ship and leisure boat traffic imposes its own penalty. If you can live with those provisos - and remember that you don't need the fastest possible frame rates to fly a chopper in FSX - this is a great little scenery and one that you are liable to come back to again and again, particularly if you are living with a wet winter in northern Europe.
Andrew Herd  Copyright © 2007 by FlightSim.Com. All Rights Reserved. |
onaco is an extraordinary place, a tiny European principality less than a square mile in area, it has a population of over 30,000 and is the second smallest independent state in the world, after the Vatican City (Europe specialises in such 'micro-states', having no less than six, the others being Andorra, Lichtenstein, Malta and San Marino). If you are small, you need to specialise in order to survive and Monaco has done just that, by becoming a tax haven; if you live in Monaco, you don't have to pay any income tax at all. You might ask why everyone doesn't live in Monaco, given such an attraction, the answer being - you try buying property there! Unless you are lucky enough to be born in Monaco, or to inherit a house there, you have to be a millionaire to be able to afford to live there. 
