About This File
EBCI (Charleroi / Brussels South), or Aéroport de Charleroi Bruxelles Sud (IATA: CRL) is an international airport, located in Gosselies, a part of the city of Charleroi in the Province of Hainaut in Wallonia, Belgium. The airport is 4 nautical miles (7.4 km; 4.6 mi) north of Charleroi and 46 km (29 mi) south of central Brussels. In terms of passengers and aircraft movements, it is the second busiest airport in Belgium having served 8.3 million passengers in 2022. It is also a busy general aviation airfield, being home to 3 flying schools (among which NewCAG, where I got my PPL in 2022).
This scenery is X-Plane 12 only. The X-Plane 11 version can be found here.
Please read the included Manual (PDF) for detailed installation instructions (after unzipping the downloaded file and entering the folder within), and see the list of required libraries below!
Making this scenery took a lot of time. If you like it, please consider buying me a coffee or two below. Thanks!
Required libraries:
- Airport Environment HD [X-Plane 12 compatibility patch is included with this download]
- MisterX_Library
- OpenSceneryX
- RA_Library
- HungaryVFR-Library
- BS2001 Object Library
- CDB-Library
- The_Handy_Objects_Library
- R2_Library
- SAM_Library
- ALES_DEV_LIB
Features:
- Terminal buildings, hangars, etc., recreated with the combination of existing library objects and custom objects, but always matching the actual buildings’ scales, window and door positions, colours, and style as close as possible (without actually creating custom models for everything). The iconic facade featuring endless tilted windows of the first floor of Terminal 1 is custom modelled in detail, along with its roof floor, 2nd floor terrace terrace, and the small tower above the first floor. Large warehouses (plus supermarkets, petrol stations) are also added outside of the airport boundary, especially under the glideslopes, along with large parkings, fences, etc. A 3D logo for the airport’s name is included on the main terminal, and a custom sign for the Executive terminal on the Southern side too, plus an animated Ground Surface Radar, some custom lights, stand signs, and railings here and there.
- Runway, taxiways, aprons, and stands recreated matching the actual situation of the airport at the end of 2023. Apron markings (taxiways, lines, stand markings, no smoking signs, ground vehicle speed limits and drive directions, etc.) 99% matching the real life situation where satellite imagery is available. Runway markers (touchdown zone, edge, centerline, arrows, skidmarks) are also hand placed for maximum accuracy. All surfaces are up to X-Plane 12 standards with weather effects, etc.
- All real life taxiway signs are modelled, without exception, and expected new signs are placed and will be refined as data becomes available around the new taxiways and extended runway. (Illuminated signs cast light at night.)
- Runway and taxiway lighting is recreated as close to real life as possible, including custom retroreflective markers along taxiway N (active taxiway edge lighting is generally only present at curves along taxiways at EBCI), and each and every runway light (edge, center, approach, touchdown zone) is hand placed exactly at the real life position - not using the default X-Plane runway lighting at all.
- Approach lights for RWY 24 are weather dependent, the full lighting system is only on in CAT II-III conditions (with custom animated rabbit lights), while for non-precision conditions only part of it is operated (no rabbit, and no touchdown zone lights), just like in real life. Similarly, holding position amber light bars are also only on in bad conditions.
- SAM marshallers are available on stands 51-72.
- Stands 1-4, 17-18, and 19-27 are available with both East and West facing positions (just like in real life).
- Extra starting positions were created at all holding points that are used in real life to enter the runway (this way you can start a simulator session at a more appropriate position, instead of on the runway if you wish).
- Radio frequencies matching real life (with ATIS info available on both a COM and NAV frequency, etc.).
- Native ground handling objects following the real life routes across the aprons, available both North and South of the runway.
- Compatible with the native “draw parked aircraft” feature (when checked realistic sized aircraft will appear randomly on some stands, when not then there are no static aircraft).
- Detailed apron, road, and parking lighting in and around the airport.
- VFR points, including a few water towers, a bell tower, all wind turbines inside and near the CTR of Charleroi, cooling towers, etc.
- Vegetation including a large variety of forests, hand-placed trees in and closely around the airport, 3D grass (colour - and area - matched to the included orthos), etc. All trees and forests are using the new season-dependent 3D X-Plane 12 assets.
- Flows and ATC Taxi flows are defined, addons like Global Traffic should create proper AI traffic, and the runway selection (communicated in the ATIS info) will take into account the exact real life preferential runway system’s rules (including tail and crosswind limits).
- Detailed custom mesh including an exact recreation of the runway topography, a very good recreating of the taxiway and apron topographies (to within 1-2 meters of accuracy), and recreation of the topographical features inside and around the airport (including ground walls north of P10-P12, south of P5, some of the parkings and rams around the airport, and recreating the different ground levels north and south of the main terminal, etc.).
- 25 cm resolution ground textures in and around the airport (in an approximately 4-5 km radius circle, masked to merge nicely with any other ortho texture by placing imagery edges always under roads or along river banks, and masking the groundworks around the now more-or-less completed runway extension with a custom draped polygon).
Edited by Papickx
Minor edits for version 2.5.
What's New in Version 2.5 See changelog
Released
Version 2.5:
- Added omnidirectional flashing lights (0.5 seconds on, 1 second off) on top of all main apron lights.
- Fixed weather effects for a lot of draped polygons and provided a fix for the weather effects for the taxi lines in the Airport Environment HD package.
- Updated more lights on the South apron to LED and moved a couple around or replaced them with other light fixtures reflecting real life changes over the past months.
- Updated the custom mesh to build on the most recent scenery recut of X-Plane 12. Added a few custom buildings/exclusion areas/forests to the South to accommodate some landclass changes in the default data.
- Included Ortho4XP patch file for advanced users who prefer creating their own tiles.
