Introduction 

Denver International Airport is an international airport serving the Denver metropolitan area with a yearly average of 77.8 million passengers, making it the sixth busiest airport in the world, and the third busiest airport in the USA. 

Opened in 1995, DIA finally replaced the ageing Denver Stapleton Airport. After 6 years of construction,4.8 billion USD, and nearly 16 months behind schedule, the second-largest airport in the world was finally open to the public. The first commercial flight to land at the new Denver Airport was a United Airlines flight 1474 from Colorado Springs.

One of the things Denver Airport is also famous for are the conspiracy theories inspired by the unusual airport architecture, construction problems and art. There are many theories surrounding the tunnels under the airport, believing that they lead to military bases, underground bunkers, or even homes for aliens. In reality, the tunnels are used for moving luggage between check-in counters, aircraft and baggage claim areas.

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Today, Denver Intl’ Airport serves 25 airlines that offer flights to over 215 destinations in both North and South America, Europe and Africa, it is also a major hub for United (35.97% of market share), and an operating base for Frontier (10.10% of market share) and Southwest Airlines (31.99% of market share). 

X-Codr's rendition of highly detailed models of airport buildings and static ground equipment, high-resolution ground textures, accurate up-to-date layout, custom animated runway guard and runway wig-wag lights, custom jetways, and terminal interiors with 3D photoreal people.

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Installation

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This scenery installation depends on the platform where you’ve bought it. It can be downloaded via OrbxDirect, Sim Marketplace or manually if you’ve bought this scenery on the Threshold Store.

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First Impressions

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After two years of development, X-Codr has finally released KDEN for MSFS. That makes it the third payware KDEN for MSFS (the other two are Flightbeam and FeelThere). As one of their main products for X-Plane, the expectation for the MSFS version was high.

For my first flight, I decided to fly a short commuter flight - from Colorado Springs to Denver. Flying with the United B737-800 equipped with good ole’ Honeywell MCP, I was ready for a short hop to Denver.

I have a habit of flying into airports instead of loading in right away, hoping that I will get stunned by the scenery. The X-Codr’s rendition was no exception. I was immediately greeted by amazing ortho textures and an easily recognisable DIA’s terminal. The performance wasn’t exactly ideal, but luckily, X-Codr gladly provided me with a patch with ½ resolutions. That did solve my performance issues, and I could enjoy KDEN again. 

The next day, I decided to see what will Denver look like during the night. Again, I picked another short hop, but this time, I headed to the west, over the Grand Junction. Early morning departure allowed me to check out the airport lightning, and enjoy the pink sky, while the sun was rising over the horizon.

Modelling / Texturing

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The quality and the level of detail of ground textures, terminals and ground equipment is outstanding. Considering the size of the airport, with three concourses and 72 gates, this was no easy job to do. 

The custom-made ground equipment scattered around the airport does give the airport a more realistic feel. Pushback tugs, ground carts, vans, GPUs, and pallets are all modelled correctly and look very similar to the ones that are used in real life. The PBR textures on the ground equipment make them look great, especially during the night.

Another lovely feature are the tire markings which can be found on runways, taxiways, and parking positions. This brings the immersion and makes the airport feel alive, not just a virtual simulator rendition. Tire markings aren’t the only ones to add to the dirtiness of the airport movement area, as we can find many oil stains and wear and tear markings as well.

X-Codr has done great work modelling the interior of the airport as well. From the pictures that I’ve managed to come across, the interior does look very accurate compared to the real-life DEN.

Night Lightning

The night lighting is phenomenal and covers both the airside and landside of the airport, as well as airport parking and garages. 

The lights are very well-modelled and in combination with the wall texture, give an amazing fading effect. Airport interiors are also well-lit inside, and you can often see the reflections from the gate signs and outside lights on the floor.

Another interesting detail is the different types of lights around the airport. Concourses A and B  are lit by lights with a yellow tint, while the remote stands are lit by lights with a white tint. Concourse C is an exception, however, as most of it is lit by the same type of light as the remote stands. 

Performance

Considering the sheer size of this airport, a slight drop in performance was expected. It wasn’t anything dramatic though, as my FPS in PMDG 737 and Fenix A320 dropped from the usual 35 to 30 (PC specs: RTX3060 12GB, i5-10400, 16GB RAM, 2TB SSD NVMe). I had bad performance the first time I tested the scenery, but the ½ resolution patch and the lowering of texture resolution solved it.

If you experience any performance issues like I did, feel free to reach out to X-Codr via this link, or email (contact@x-codrdesigns.com).

Conclusion

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Once again, X-Codr managed to deliver an impressive rendition of one of the biggest airports in the world. This scenery has a lot to show, and with the price of roughly $21.80, it is fairly priced. The moment you load in the airport, you can see why the development took more than two years. The size of 8.50GB for the scenery may look a bit too much, but considering the amount of details and the size of the airport, it makes sense.

Special thanks to X-Codr for providing us with the review copy!

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