Introduction

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Naha Airport (ROAH) is a public/military airport serving the Okinawa Prefecture with a yearly average of 21.5 million passengers, making it the fourth busiest in Japan by passenger traffic.

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The Imperial Japanese Army built it in 1933 as Oroku Aerodrome, and the Americans took it over during the end of World War 2, renaming it Naha Airport.

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Scheduled passenger service started two years after the takeover, with Pan American World Airways and Northwest Orient. Its new life as a commercially served passenger airport required slight refurbishment to keep up with the times between 1952 and 1954.

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Okinawa was returned to Japan in 1972, but America kept the airport longer, only transferring control to the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force in 1982. 

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Shortly after, a joint venture design consortium was created to design and manage the main passenger terminal, completed in 1999.

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An agreement to expand the domestic terminal was reached sometime in 2008. The expansion would require relocating cargo facilities and rebuilding the international terminal itself.

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Bigger terminals equate to more traffic (granted, as long as there is demand), and Naha only had one runway. That led to the construction of a second runway on an artificial island in 2014. 

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The new international terminal was inaugurated shortly after the work started on the parallel runway. It expanded again within two years, adding 3000 square meters to its total area, followed by a new building connecting both terminals.

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The new runway started operating in 2020, after six years of construction work, right at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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It's a hub for Japan Transocean Air and Ryukyu Air Commuter and a focus city for All Nippon Airways, Japan Airlines, and Peach. Air China, Asiana Airlines, Batik Air Malaysia, China Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, EVA Air, HK Express, Hong Kong Airlines, Jeju Air, Jetstar Asia, Juneyao Air, Korean Air, Spring Airlines, Starlux Airlines, and Tigerair Taiwan also serve it.

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MK Studios promises an accurate rendition of the airport, with a highly detailed terminal, various POIs, an up-to-date ground layout, custom jetways, custom vehicle models, custom runway profile and elevation data, a high-quality terminal interior, custom taxiway labels, and more.

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Installation

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The scenery is distributed via Contrail, SimMarket, and OrbxDirect, featuring a one-click install process.

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First Impressions

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I was pretty surprised when MK Studios announced they were about to release an Asian airport, which, if memory doesn't fail me, is their first product outside of Europe and North America. Quite a bold choice it was, I must say: it is not Osaka Kansai or Tokyo Haneda, but the "Japanese Palma de Mallorca," a busy destination visited by all sorts of airliners, big or small. Before checking FlightRadar24, I thought I could fly the 777-300ER in, but it turns out they - ANA and JAL - only use the 787s, 777-200, and 777-300. Oh, and the usual variety of narrowbodies, of course.

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Thus, reluctantly, I had to park my 77W in the hangar and dust off the 737-800 after more than a month of exclusively flying the mighty triple seven around. At first, due to my lack of widebody experience, neither the 738 nor the A320 looked particularly small per se, but that has changed quite a bit as of late. The sixteen-year-old JA51AN looked tiny as I observed the boarding process on Osaka Itami's Stand 11, which would soon be touching down on MK Studios' latest work. 

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The weather over Osaka that day could have been better. That made me concerned about my arrival, as I like to take screenshots with the live weather as-is, as if I'm visiting the place in real life. Immersion, you know?

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Thankfully, though, it cleared up a few minutes after departure, with clear skies all over and throughout most of the flight, up until the descent and ILS capture, when the weather decided to suddenly update and splash grim-looking clouds all over, albeit not densely per se, which would still let the sun shine through a bit. Better than nothing.

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My lack of 738 action as of late became quite evident when I found myself a bit too high to capture the G/S, leading to a bit of vectoring shenanigans and a slight delay that destroyed all the extra time bonuses I made thanks to very strong tailwinds during cruise. One hour and forty-three minutes, a whopping two minutes later than average.

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At long last, I was finally in Okinawa after a smooth landing on runway 36L, the artificial island. So far, so good: the concrete whatchamacallits looked stunning, and the ground texturing on the runway/taxiway was also pretty darn good. It was an excellent first impression.

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It was time to embark on a mini journey to stand 32. I cleverly shortened it by choosing a weaker autobrake option to coast through most of the runway before vacating into a taxiway and then onto the bridge to the domestic terminal.

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Parking was a walk in the park, thanks to the custom GSX profile (available in their Discord server) with VDGS guidance. It was finally time to roam around and check the scenery out properly.

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Modeling / Texturing 

Very much in line with their latest offerings, the models and textures are remarkably consistent, be it the international terminal, domestic terminal, low-cost terminal, or even the military buildings scattered across the airport. It's definitely a public and military airport if I've ever seen one.

The custom jetways—at the domestic terminal—are connected to a bridge with flowers on each side (violets, perhaps?), leading us to the main terminal area, which features a custom interior. One of the domestic concourses is ANA's, and the other is JAL's. The much newer International terminal is also accurately represented with its modern design language and equally modern interior. 

You can tell they have paid close attention to the ground service equipment, which matches what you expect to see in Japan, logos and all. All Nippon Airways, JAL, JAL Cargo, Unilode, etc. Furthermore, the pushback tugs look almost identical to the real units used in most Japanese airports—no default ground service equipment in sight, which is always a plus in my books. Everything is custom.

While not entirely up to the same standard as some of their previous work, the interiors are decent enough. The terminals are not see-through anyway (the windows are small), and it sure looks convincing from the airside: people, screens, advertisements, the usual stuff you would expect to see while parked at the stand. It's a flight simulator, not a terminal simulator, so it gets a passing grade. 

The airside experience is impeccable: the terminals sure look good, the custom ground equipment fits the region like a glove, and the air conditioning units are Mitsubishi-branded. Could it possibly be any more Japanese than that? Oh yeah, there are plenty of labels in Japanese, too, like the height restriction ones to stop trucks—or maybe even buses—from clipping the passenger bridge: nothing taller than 3.5 meters, please.

The ground texturing is great, matching the satellite imagery and the many photos I looked up online to gauge the overall quality of the product in comparison with the real-world counterpart. The consistency is admirable, be it around the main apron or the military area.

On that military note, it's done quite well, with their many hangars, trucks (which look pretty good), and even missiles! The Okinawans are not playing around!

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Night Lighting 

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The night lighting is quite impressive, significantly improving the airside experience once the sunlight says goodbye. The small windows—on both terminals, as a matter of fact—make it very hard to see what is going on inside, especially when it's not super sunny out. Once the lights turn on, though, everything comes to life.

I daresay Naha looks even better at night, with its imponent NAHA AIRPORT—DOMESTIC and INTERNATIONAL—reflecting on the rooftop rather convincingly, the realistic-looking terminal lights, yielding quite the visual feast. This makes you appreciate how far flight simulation has come in terms of visuals. It sure is an outstandingly beautiful airport at night.

The light intensity, inside and out, looks natural, not overly bright or dim, leading to an enjoyable experience and great nighttime screenshots, which hardly go hand in hand, at least MSFS-wise.

The taxiways and runways are also properly lit and fully adequate for safe nighttime operations—there are no complaints at all.

All in all, the nocturnal experience is convincingly solid.

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Performance

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

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I generally spoil some of the performance during the "first impressions" section but deliberately chose not to do so this time. Worry not; it is not because it performs awfully, but the exact opposite: perhaps, with no exaggeration, one of the best-performing payware sceneries I have ever seen.

I noticed something was "off" as soon as I started waltzing down the glideslope: in most cases, my framerate dips a tiny bit during approach as it loads in all the objects and stuff, but that did not happen. It remained at a constant 30. And there it stayed during taxi, parking, and deboarding. 

While they did mention in their Discord that Naha featured their new optimization technique, I did not expect it to be so noticeably lighter. The framerate did not flinch one inch as I moved up and down with the drone camera, taking hundreds of screenshots. There was no sudden GPU usage leap as I got closer to a specific area; there were no hitches, just plain smoothness all across the board.

It's almost as if the scenery isn't there. The loads were on pair—if anything, a bit higher—with my average during cruise (I lock my framerate at 30 with RTSS and then get the sweet 60 with Lossless Scaling during my approaches). 

Whatever their new optimization technique is, it sure worked! It's one of the most performant sceneries I have ever come across. Commendable!

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Conclusion

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Retailing for $17.26, the price is very fair for the best rendition of Naha ever made for any simulator. It combines great detail with great performance while sacrificing overall quality as little as possible. It's a great addition to your Asian airport roster.

The "Japanese Palma de Mallorca" features a variety of short—and medium-haul flights, domestic and international (Taiwan, Hong Kong, China), with airliners of all sizes. There's enough to keep you distracted for a good while.

The "Japanese Palma de Mallorca" features a variety of short—and medium-haul flights, domestic and international (Taiwan, Hong Kong, China), with airliners of all sizes. There's enough to keep you distracted for a good while.

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

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