On this week’s edition of No Money Mondays, we’ll be taking a look at the recently released freeware Aldinga Airport by AUscene for Microsoft Flight Simulator. Announced in late February of this year and released at the beginning of April, AUscene takes us to Aldinga Airport (YADG) located South of Adelaide in South Australia.

AUscene have been hard at work developing payware level sceneries ever since Microsoft Flight Simulator’s release in mid-August of 2020. Alongside Aldinga, the group has also released Ayers Rock (YAYE), Parafield - Adelaide (YPPF), and Southport - Gold Coast (YSPT) for Microsoft Flight Simulator. AUscene have also released Adelaide International, however, it was developed for the Prepar3d platform.

Aldinga Airport (YADG) is located just south of the city of Adelaide in Southern Australia. The airport hosts mostly general aviation and helicopter traffic with both one dirt and one paved runway. It is also a host to Adelaide Biplanes which offers biplane flights in and out of the airport. 

Installation of the scenery is extremely simple with this scenery as included with the 1.1 GB download is a .exe file which will instal everything for you. Users are asked to select their Microsoft Flight Simulator’s community folder and to select install. This installer utilizes Microsoft’s underpraised method of installing 3rd party addons.

Loading up for the first time on release day, I was greeted by other simmers checking out the recently released scenery. I was very impressed with the sheer amount of detail in posters and signs around the airport. Up close to the airport, I found myself extremely impressed with the texturing work and spent over an hour exploring many of the models up close.

When testing the airport between addon and default, I noticed little to no FPS impact with AUscene’s Aldinga. The custom buildings included with the scenery are outstanding in all aspects from the models to the textures. The use of vegetation is just the right amount to where it looks good while not taking much performance which I was impressed with.

I found myself enjoying traffic patterns around the airport as around the airport are beautiful views of both rolling hills and the Indian Ocean along with realistic ortho imagery, autogen and vegetation. The scenery is perfectly integrated with Microsoft Flight Simulators surrounding scenery as well.

I was also extremely impressed with many of the animated people around the airport. Some examples of the animated characters include someone checking a biplane before a flight, a helicopter being repaired by another person. I even found myself comparing some of their movements to many of the high grossed video game series character animations.

Overall, this scenery has left me speechless with everything it has to offer including the low price of nothing! Because of this, AUscene, I believe, is setting the bar for both payware and freeware airport sceneries for Microsoft Flight Simulator. This airport is perfectly placed into what I consider to be a perfect VFR territory. 

So you’ve heard my thoughts of AUscene’s brand new Aldinga Airport, but it’s really up to you to download the scenery off AUscene's Website and experience this high-quality freeware scenery!