Introduction

Frankfurt Airport (EDDF) is an international airport serving Frankfurt, Germany. Its yearly average of 59 million passengers makes it the busiest airport in the country and one of the busiest in Europe. 

Inaugurated in mid-1936, Frankfurt quickly became a central distribution point for airmail transport to North America, and its passenger figures were not too shabby: It carried over 58,000 people during its first year of operation! 

It was transferred to the Luftwaffe during World War 2, which led to the dismantling of the famous airships and their hangars. Then, the runway was fully converted into a military airfield. Four years later, Allied bombings destroyed it.

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Shortly after the war, the US Army took over the airport and built a new main runway and a base (Rhein-Main base). 

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In the early 1950s, civil air traffic slowly returned to normal: over 400,000 passengers passed through the airport in 1951.

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It wasn't until 1958 that Frankfurt would emerge as an international airline hub with the opening of East Terminal. Within four years, it was already too small for the figures at hand, with Frankfurt being the second busiest airport in Europe after Heathrow.

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In 1965, a new terminal was built to handle 30 million passengers annually, followed by a runway extension to accommodate larger aircraft.

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A new main terminal, the "Central Terminal," was built in 1972. It is divided into three concourses with 56 gates. At the time, it was assumed that the capacity would be sufficient for the next 30 years!

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Work on Terminal 2 started sooner than expected (in the early 1990s) because it turned out their Central Terminal was insufficient for the next thirty years. It opened in 1994, bringing the passenger handling capacity to 54 million passengers annually.

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In 2009, the German government decided to create a new Terminal in Frankfurt and Munich, preparing both to handle the expected traffic figures of 90 million and 50 million passengers, respectively. Terminal 3 would accommodate up to 25 million passengers annually, with 75 new aircraft positions. Work started six years later, starting with the main building and two main piers (out of four). That part alone would be able to handle 15 million passengers, and it is planned to open by 2026. 

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The second phase of the construction started in 2017 so that low-cost carriers could use it as soon as possible. Work started as soon as the approval was granted a year later, but the COVID-19 pandemic ultimately delayed it and postponed it to 2026. 

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It's a hub for Aerologic, Lufthansa, Discover Airlines, Lufthansa Cargo, and Lufthansa CityLine and an operating base for Condor, SunExpress, and TUI fly Deutschland. Most Star Alliance members, along with a fair share of Oneworld and SkyTeam members, regularly visit the airport.

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Aerosoft's latest release promises an accurate rendition of the airport, with an up-to-date layout, custom terrain elevation mesh, custom aerial imagery, custom jetways, custom GSX profile, custom ground service equipment, interior modeling on areas visible from the airside, custom vehicle traffic, and more.

Installation

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The scenery is distributed via Aerosoft One, which features a one-click install (which also automatically installs the GSX profile). For extra performance, users can disable features such as high-detail interiors, 3D passengers, and clutter.

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First Impressions

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After an awfully long four years of putting up with freeware alternatives and avoiding Frankfurt like the plague for my Lufthansa adventures, it was finally time to say hello again to a long-lost friend I hadn't seen properly since the Prepar3d days. Germany's most important airport was finally within arms' reach, and many route opportunities opened up with it.

Not only was it Frankfurt, an airport that has been sorely missing from our scenery libraries, but a Jo Erlend development at that. After such an incredible track record with Cologne-Bonn, Brussels, and Oslo Gardermoen, there was no way it could disappoint, right? 

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My first route of choice was not one of the most unique choices at hand, but a fun hop nonetheless: an Emirates flight from Dubai. Six hours and nine minutes of airtime and multiple connection issues later (Azure, my beloved), it was finally time to grace runway 07R's asphalt with my presence for the first time in what felt like ages. "Kept you waiting, huh?". Could it be the end of my FRA avoidance season?

The weather definitely did not care about the fact I wanted to take a bunch of screenshots, and the approach was underwhelming at best in that regard: a bit too cloudy.

Emirates conveniently parks at Terminal 2, which makes the—often scary—taxi procedure rather simple. The layout itself is not really what I would call complicated, but there are so many ramifications with specific wingspan limits, requiring high levels of concentration to avoid messing up considerably. My journey to stand E6 went as smoothly as humanly possible, though.   

It was not long after I parked and started snapping the first pictures (we strive for realism, after all; we're not going to make the weather clear just for the sake of it) that the clouds started to move away from the airport, letting the sun in, and the fog also quickly dissipated. The abrupt weather update also helped, but let's pretend it was a fable-like clearing up. 

A fogless environment finally allowed me to look at the scenery properly. The first impression was quite positive; I must say: solid ground markings, beautifully modeled terminals, visible interiors that I could not wander into due to them being collision-aware, different types of jetway according to their specific terminal, great levels of weathering, pretty neat. 

It's also worth mentioning that the first few flights into the airport were done with a preview build, which does not represent the final product. However, I waited for the release build to give it another thorough look to gauge performance properly and ensure that the small issues were mitigated (they were). 

Modeling / Texturing 

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The modeling work is pretty good, albeit not overly consistent for performance's sake, which is understandable. While the main terminal looks brilliant, with an airside to die for, Terminal 2, while also not bad, does not deliver the same level of consistency. Then again, Frankfurt is a huge airport, sitting within a demanding photogrammetry area, so sacrifices must be made, or else only a select few RTX 4090 owners could run the scenery.

That said, I understand the limitations at hand, and it makes sense that the Lufthansa / Star Alliance terminal would be prioritized over T2 for apparent reasons: Frankfurt is Lufthansa's main hub, and all the Star Alliance members also park there. Terminal 2, albeit also important, doesn't get anywhere near the same amount of traffic. 

Terminal 3 is the least detailed of the bunch, and that also makes total sense, as it's not operational yet (nor is it even fully built yet). Aircraft get occasionally towed to Terminal 3 for overnight parking and stuff, but it's not used for anything other than that for now and for the next couple of years at least (it's scheduled to open in 2026). 

The cargo apron and the many hangars scattered around both sides of the airport look great, featuring their logos, ground clutter, and so on. The custom-made vehicles also help quite a lot, with vans, SUVs, pickup trucks, etc. (the usual roster you would expect to see around a major international airport).

The remote stands accurately represent the real thing, with no spared detail on the portable ground power units, warning buttons, labels, GPS coordinates, etc. That, allied with the custom GSX profile, warrants a realistic remote deboarding experience. Being away from the terminal can also be fun, it turns out.

The product's highlight is definitely the ground texturing, with very accurate markings throughout. The developers visited the airport for reference, and it really shows. The runways are equally well texturized, and you can clearly tell which of them is used for arrivals by the obscene amount of rubber marks. Runway 18's characteristic composition change is there, too. 

The ground clutter around the main terminal could be a little denser, perhaps, which would also help make it feel like a living environment, just like Aerosoft Oslo, for instance. But it's easier said than done, as it's a big airport in a vast photogrammetry area, which is the perfect recipe for awfully low framerates if one is to go overboard with the object density. It doesn't seem like it's a choice they would have made without a proper reason. 

The main interiors look solid from the airside and would probably look good from up close, too, if you could move the drone camera inside the terminal (there's a collision system in place that negates that).

The landside buildings, such as the train station (which has a full-blown interior, by the way), look really good. They cleverly use parallax texturing on the windows to make it look like they have an interior. This technique is also used in Terminal 1 (the parts that are not really boarding areas) and looks really good, be it day or night. 

Another great advantage of parallax on the landside stuff is that it doesn't appear as a flat, lifelessly texturized office building block but a believable office environment, even if you zoom in. Some of them are visible from the airside, making the night-time screenshots look even better!

Overall, despite its shortcomings, it's by no means a bad product. The balance struck between quality and performance is commendable, bringing something that, while not exactly outstanding, is acceptable and performant on a broader range of hardware. The many customization options on Aerosoft One allow for an even more performant product. 

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The same customization options that allow it to be more performant could also enable it to be less performant in exchange for more eye candy. Way denser clutter and more ground traffic would be great additions, for example. It would satisfy those looking for framerate and those aiming for ultimate realism, no matter the performance cost.

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Night Lighting 

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The night lighting across the airport is really good, with very convincing effects. The aforementioned parallax texturing on some of the landside office buildings comes in clutch, making for a fantastic backdrop for your nightly operations. 

The taxiway mumbo jumbo is equally well-lit and features very interesting features, such as stop lights that can only be seen from one direction, just like the real thing, or taxiway exit lights that change from yellow to green once you have vacated the runway and the CAT1 area. 

The developers have researched the real counterparts to produce a rendition that would have the same brightness and behave similarly. As I haven't ever been to Frankfurt, I can't say whether they are true to life, but they sure look convincing.

The PBR work shines at night, with the yellow Lufthansa logos and their shiny moldy grim (only present on the older ones, of course), the partially-lit blue stand name placards, the A380 jetways and their "t-rex" arms underneath (with a ground power unit cable, I presume?). Eye-catching, to say the least.

The interiors also light up pretty well at night, and you can see the passengers waiting in line near the gate entrance to board the aircraft. It's a very immersive airside experience, be it day or night.

Performance

My System: 32 GB RAM, Ryzen 7 3700X, Nvidia RTX 3080 10GB, 2 TB SSD (non-NVMe).

With mega airports and photogrammetry areas comes great responsibility—I mean, performance impact. Even default Frankfurt doesn't really run as well as some payware scenery due to the unfortunate combination. With that in mind, I would not classify it as a poorly performing scenery, but it requires a bit more horsepower than your average airport.

Photogrammetry alone already eats a chunk of your CPU power just for the sake of being there, and then you have to factor in the scenery, ground service equipment, traffic, extra clutter, VDGS, and so on. There's no running away from the fact that it will take a toll, which will vary according to the hardware at hand. My 3700X whines a bit, but it somewhat pulls through. I've had my framerate dip to low 20s on approach, but no stutters or anything of the sort, which is a plus. 

The performance on the stand is much better due to the developer's LOD optimization work. Camera transitions are super smooth, and you don't get random GPU spikes, which are pretty common with sceneries that don't go the extra mile with multiple levels of detail. 

I would recommend at least a 5800X3D processor (or equivalent) and a 3060Ti (for 1080p) for optimal results. Anything less than that might not be buttery smooth, but it can be mitigated (to an extent) by toggling features with their scenery configurator tool within Aerosoft One. Lossless Scaling is also an option (I use that myself).

Conclusion

While Aerosoft Frankfurt does not disappoint, it doesn't drop any jaws either. For $22 (excluding VAT), it may be too steep if you intend on only occasionally visiting, but it's a solid choice if you intend on using it often. It's definitely the best rendition of Frankfurt to date, and there's no lack of route options to fly, be it with the flag carrier Lufthansa or basically any major carrier worldwide, as Frankfurt is the de facto gateway to Germany.

Most of the compromises are readily justifiable, given the limitations beyond their control. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 may allow them to push the envelope further without weighing on the overall performance figures too much, but that certainly is not the case with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. 

We have seen great examples of how far the simulator can be pushed with small/medium airports, and the opposite also holds true for what happens if you push it too far. Frankfurt finds a sweet balance between quality and performance, so that you don't need a three thousand dollar computer to fly in. 

A huge thank you to Aerosoft for providing us with a review copy!

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