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Introduction 

AVSIM Commercial FS9 / FSX Scenery Review 

Small Airfields Switzerland: 

Parts 3 and 5 

Publishers: FlyLogic distributed by Aerosoft 

Description: GA and glider fields for Switzerland. 

Download Size: 

85 MB (pt 3), 27 MB (pt 5) 

Product Information 

Format: 

Download 

Simulation Type: 

FS9/FSX (pt 3), FSX only (pt 5) 

Reviewed by: David Wilson-Okamura AVSIM Senior Staff Reviewer - July 24, 2010 

Two years ago, I reviewed “Switzerland Professional X.” This is a premium scenery product, based on photographic 

ground textures, for the Confoederatio Helvetica. It’s expensive but very well done, with natural-looking colors, 

autogen everywhere, night lighting, snow textures in winter, and smooth shorelines. 

The two products under review here, “Small Airfields Switzerland: Part 3” and “Small Airfields Switzerland: Part 5” are 

from the same developer, Jeffrey Stähli. They don’t have quite the same premium feel, but they’re less expensive 

(unless you buy the whole series), and they make the photo scenery even more attractive. 

Installation and Documentation 

Installation is the same as for any Aerosoft product: there’s a registration key, which you get at purchase time, but 

http://www.avsim.com/pages/0710/Aerosoft3/Swiss.htm (1 of 6)24/07/2010 10:17:09 AM


there’s not a burdensome series of checks. (I recently had to reinstall another vendor’s product and the process, 

which involved several steps, did not engender good will, even when it worked.) 

I did have some trouble with Part 3. The scenery installed fine, but not the texture switcher for different seasons. All 

of the airfields are based on photographic ground textures. When you’re flying in winter, there’s a little program to 

detect that, and it swaps in the appropriate textures for ground cover and trees. It’s a nice feature, but only if it 

works, and only if it doesn’t conflict with someone else’s program that uses the same start-up file (exe.xml, which is 

in the same folder as FSX.cfg). 

It didn’t work, it did rewrite exe.xml in such a way as to prevent AICarriers from running, and it was fixable -- if you 

knew what you were looking at and where to find it -- using a text editor such as Notepad. I’m guessing it has 

something to do with the different language versions of FSX, but it’s a bug and it can be maddening. 

The other (much smaller) problem with Part 3 is documentation; you can 

download a user manual from the product web page, but so far as I can tell, 

it doesn’t install with the scenery. I flew for a week without the manual 

before I found it on the website. 

Pt. 5, on the other hand, uses a different texture switcher, and installs the 

user manual automatically. The manuals aren’t long, but they are helpful. For 

each airfield, there’s a paragraph or two about the field’s history, and for Pt. 

3, some tips on how to approach. 

Seasonal textures 

For each field, there’s also a Google Earth screenshot with the approach 

pattern superimposed. Google Earth is a great tool, but it’s not great for 

printing. Still, it’s more interesting if you know what the restrictions are and hold yourself to them; and the Google 

Earth charts make that possible. 

Something that would be welcome is a map of all the fields in a given product; that would be helpful for planning 

hops between fields. I made one for most of the airfields in Parts 3 and 5, using a scanned chart from a different 

product (which means, unfortunately, that I can’t distribute the result). This is something that every user will want, 

and that I hope the developer will provide in future releases. If nothing else, it will look good on the product web 

pages. 

What Do You Get? 

Each package comes with five airfields. 

Part 3 is more geographically concentrated, and includes mostly airports from the east: 

1. Amlikon (LSPA), for gliders only 

2. Mollis (LSMF), a mixed-use field for military and civilian pilots 

3. Bad Ragaz (LSZE), for gliders and GA aircraft 

4. Samedan (LSZS), formerly a military field, still the highest airport in Europe 

5. Locarno (LSZL), another mixed-use field, with a training base for military pilots and skydiving for civilians 

Part 5 is more spread out, but Switzerland is so small that nothing is very far, and three of its five airfields are within 

12 nm of Part 3’s Amlikon (LSPA), and no more than 42 nm of each other: 

1. Lommis (LSZT), a grass strip which is almost never closed on account of weather (very useful!) 

2. Sitterdorf (LSZV), host to a restaurant, flight school, balloon tours, and para-jumping 

3. Winterthur (LSPH), a grass strip, for gliders only; with Lommis and Sitterdorf, part of a cluster centered around 

Amlikon 

4. Buttwil (LSZU), another grass strip, used for gliders as well as GA aircraft 

5. Thun (LSZW), 65 nm west of the Amlikon cluster, in the majestic Bernese Alps 

I’ve already mentioned that all of the fields have photographic ground textures that adjust to the seasons. What sort 

of objects will you see? It varies from field to field (which is part of the fun, of course). All fields have static aircraft, 

depending on which kind the real field is host to. For example, Lommis (LSZT) has Pipers, Sitterdorf (LSZV) has a 

Pilatus Porter for para-jumping, and Locarno (LSZL) has a fleet of military trainers. Most of the fields have gliders, but 

there is more than one model of glider. And, of course, where there are gliders, there are glider cases for wheeled 

transport. 



Military trainers at Locarno Gliders everywhere 

Many of the fields seem to be recreational centers for the community; that’s something I’ve noticed in Germany as 

well. Amlikon (LSPA) has tents and campers, and the main building has a colorful mural. All of the fields are 

populated with static human figures, sitting at a restaurant, stretching for a run, or playing at a playground. At a 

couple fields, there are livestock grazing in nearby pastures. Thun, I noticed, is adjacent to three soccer fields: there 

were goals at each end, and fences around the perimeter, but no players on the pitch. 

Family day at the airfield 

The architecture is varied as well. There are hangars, of course, but each one seems to have a unique design or 

roofline. There are some generic signs (which don’t, however, appear in the default scenery) but most of the signage 

is unique as well, naming fields or stating elevations. A few days ago, I was exploring the fields using Google Earth, 

and clicked on some of the user-contributed photos; thanks to these products, everything looked familiar. 

Unique buildings at every field 

Some of the fields here have night lighting and others don’t; that’s how it is in the real world too. Where there is 

lighting, there is always a 3D object to make it, even if it’s low to the ground; that’s usually not true of the default 

scenery, even for detailed airports like Las Vegas or De Gaulle. There’s also fencing of various types and, at a couple 

of fields, Locarno (LSZL) and Samedan (LSZS), 3D grass around the runways and taxiways. 



All lights have light sources Signage Photographic ground textures 

Speaking of taxiways and runways: the asphalt ones have more detail here than we’re used to in the default scenery, 

including more cracks but also more text: e.g., “Nose Here,” “Engine Stop,” and parking space numbers. 

A couple of wind Ts 

There’s some animation but not a lot. There is moving traffic on the local roads, but no moving service vehicles on the 

field grounds proper. (There are, however, lots of static vehicles, including passenger cars, fire trucks, and fuel 

trucks). Several airports having working clocks -- made by Breitling, of course, since this is Switzerland -- but what’s 

more useful are the working windsocks (which are a sight better looking than the default windsocks in FSX), wind Ts, 

and tetrahedron pointers. Every field has at least one, and many have more than one. If you’re getting ready to join 

the pattern, and you don’t know which direction to land, just look at the wind T. 

Of course, in the real world, there would probably be other planes, either in the pattern or taxiing for take-off. The 

only field where I saw moving air traffic was Locarno (LSZL). This is something we’d like to see more of; glider traffic 

would be even better (though it’s trickier to program), because it stays closer to the field. The other feature we’d like 

to have is ambient sound. This is well within reach -- there are good implementations in similar products, such as 

“German Airfields 9” and “Raw Grit: PNG Bush Pilot” -- and it contributes noticeably to a field’s atmosphere. 

Dramatic landscapes 

Part of that atmosphere -- and it’s something that this package does a good job of capturing -- is situation. 

Switzerland being Switzerland, most of these fields are in valleys. In good weather, that makes for dramatic views, 

especially on the ground. In the air, though, mountains impose limits, both on how you climb out and where you 

approach. To help with the approaches, there are various landmarks: at one field, it’s a house at the end of a runway; 

at Amlikon, it’s a castle ruin. There aren’t a lot of these (compared, say, with the “German Airfields” series), but 

enough to stay oriented. 



Castle ruins at Amlikon 

The field is just ahead: can you spot 

it? 

It’s easier with FSDiscover! 

The other challenge with these fields is finding them from the air. If you don’t have “Switzerland Professional,” this 

will be less of a problem, because the photographic ground textures will stand out from the default background. But if 

you do have the photo scenery, you will need to keep your eyes peeled. The fields are all there in the GPS (and in 

FSDiscover!, which gets its information from the same database). But even when you know where to look, the smaller 

fields aren’t immediately visible. That’s by design, because in real life, they blend in with the landscape. I found this 

was true even for fields that I’d already flown into a couple of times. I knew where to look, but it still took me a 

minute to spot the runway. 

Of course, once you land, the airfield environment is rich with lots of objects, and you wonder how you could have 

missed it. 

Performance 

On my rig, described at the side, I had good frame rates at all of 

the fields except Locarno (LSZL), which covers the largest area 

and features the most objects. 

Conclusion 

Each of the packages under review here sells for about 30 Euros. 

That includes VAT, so if you don’t live in Europe, the price drops 

by about 19 percent. How do they compare with similar products 

in the same price range? 

As of this writing, I think Orbx sets the standard for GA fields 

rendered in extreme detail -- keeping in mind, though, that 

they’re just doing one field at a time. The Swiss airfields that 

we’ve just been looking at here are less detailed, and there’s 

considerably less effort to model the surrounding area; you’ll get 

some VFR landmarks, but not a whole township. On the other 

Test System 

ICore2Quad Q6600 @ 2.4 GHz 

4 gigabytes RAM 

Nvidia 8800 GT (512 Mb) 

Samsung 20” widescreen LCD (1680 x 1050) 

Windows 7 (64-bit) 

TrackIR 3 with Vector Expansion 

CH pedals, yoke 

Saitek X45 throttle 

Sidewinder Precision Pro joystick 

Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer sound card 

Logitech X-540 5.1 speaker system 

Flying Time: 

15 hours 

hand, you get five airports instead of one, frame rates are noticeably higher, and they’re in Switzerland. 

Aerosoft also publishes a line of GA products, the “German Airfields” series that I reviewed packages from in 2008. 

The level of detail is similar, and so is the price. The German products are better at modeling objects off-field, and 

you get more airfields in a package (at least a dozen). But the Swiss fields are better on frame rates (though not by 

as big a margin this time) and, again, they’re in Switzerland. 

Compared with the Orbx products, “Small Airfields Switzerland” isn’t boldly going where no scenery developer has 

gone before. Most of what you see here (except for the more detailed ground textures) was already possible in the 

previous version of Flight Simulator; and, in fact, the airports in this product look very much like the “Scenery 

Germany” series for FS2004. 

I reviewed a couple of those, too, and if they worked in FSX, I would still be flying them. The technology moves on, 

but the local details are still engrossing. I like the Swiss airfields just as much, and for much the same reasons: 

they’re somewhat exotic (to American eyes); they’re grouped close enough for short hops; and while I’m there, I 

don’t worry about framerates. Also, they’re in Switzerland. 



What I Like About Small Airfields Switzerland: Parts 3 and 

5 

● Moderate detail, high framerates 

● Wide variety of 3D objects 

● Photographic ground textures 

● Closely grouped for short hops 

● Fields are situated in scenic areas 

What I Don't Like About Small Airfields Switzerland: Parts 

3 and 5 

● Installer for Part 3 corrupts exe.xml 

● No map of the whole coverage area 

Printing 

If you wish to print this review or read it offline at your leisure, right 

click on the link below, and select "save as" 

Small Airfields Switzerland: Parts 3 and 5 

(adobe acrobat required) 

Comments? 

Standard Disclaimer 

The review above is a subjective assessment of the product by the author. There is 

no connection between the product producer and the reviewer, and we feel this 

review is unbiased and truly reflects the performance of the product in the simming 

environment as experienced by the reviewer. This disclaimer is posted here in order 

to provide you with background information on the reviewer and any presumed 

connections that may exist between him/her and the contributing party. 

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