Introduction

San Francisco International Airport (KSFO) is a public airport serving the San Francisco Bay Area with a yearly average of 50.1 million passengers, making it the fourth busiest airport in the United States and 30th worldwide.

Though the City - and County - of San Francisco initially leased only 61 hectares from the Mills Estate in 1927 for a temporary and experimental airport, the project's rapid success led to a permanent commitment. The city purchased the leased land and surrounding areas, expanding to 450 hectares.

World War II saw the airport serve briefly as a Coast Guard base and an Army Air Corps training and staging ground. Postwar growth in international travel then led to its final name change to San Francisco International Airport in 1945.

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The jet age transformed SFO: In the 1950s, longer runways were built to accommodate jetliners, and new terminals sprouted to handle the surge in international travelers and increased passenger volume.

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SFO's dedication to innovation never wavered throughout the latter half of the 20th century. Early adoption of jet bridges and baggage carousels streamlined passenger journeys, and in 1971, SFO became the first US airport to boast an automated people-mover system, the AirTrain.

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It's a hub for United Airlines (44% of the market share) and Alaska Airlines (10.66% of the market share) and is visited by multiple international carriers such as Aer Lingus, Air Canada, Air China, Air France, Air New Zealand, American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Emirates, KLM, Lufthansa, Qatar Airways, Scandinavian Airlines, TAP Air Portugal, and WestJet.

Flightbeam Studios' rendition promises a highly accurate rendition of the airport, with high-detail 4K textures, custom jetways, detailed interior modeling, custom ground clutter, performance-friendly optimization, and more.

Installation

The scenery is distributed via Contrail, featuring a one-click install for the scenery and GSX profile(s)*

*  More on that later

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First Impressions

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After a nearly four-year-long wait, we finally have one - more so, two - payware SFOs for Microsoft Flight Simulator. While the first one came off as a surprise (AmSim and BMWorld's), Flightbeam Studios' SFO was being anxiously waited for by their customers. As one of their main products for Prepar3d in the past (and highly regarded at the time as one of the best payware sceneries for the simulator), the expectation was quite high. 

The release timing couldn't be any better: just a few days before the - also long-awaited - PMDG 777-300ER. San Francisco happens to be one of UAL's 77W hubs and a popular destination for many Asian/Oceania-based carriers that also happen to operate the same aircraft type: All Nippon Airways, Air New Zealand, Korean Air, Singapore Airlines, China Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines, to name a few. And if you thought that was it, there's more: Europe also has its fair share, with Air France, British Airways, and KLM, all with daily or weekly routes. 

Therefore, visiting the airport for the first time with the 777-300ER would only be fair. This would be my first long haul into a review airport! As most of you know, I refuse to load in and always fly into my subject matters. Until now, most of these review flights were on 737s or A320s (and even on a Comanche once!), but not once was it conducted in a widebody. 

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The route of choice was a 9-hour leg from Tokyo Narita with All Nippon Airways. Nine hours (That's almost more than every previous review leg combined if memory doesn't fail me)! At any rate, it just felt right. People have waited ages for a payware SFO and also ages for a proper long-hauler, and suddenly, we had both almost at once. It was too convenient to ignore, even.

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After around eight hours and thirty minutes, the first surprise came: satellite imagery was not being streamed, even though it was turned ON. My supposedly incredible descent with awesome views (the weather was so good!) turned into looking at default landclass for minutes on end, then onto a very default-looking Golden Gate Bridge and an overview of the city that made me feel like I was back in 2006. Lovely!

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The saving grace was the airport, standing out like a sore thumb among the blobs of odd autogen, almost like the light at the end of the tunnel. The nine-hour journey was coming to a close, marking the end of my long wait for the scenery and the beginning of many potential adventures. 

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While the data streaming issue ruined the moment a little bit, it became more and more of a nonissue as the airplane waltzed down the glide path toward runway 28R for its - perhaps not so gracious - touchdown: the landclass blob gave way to crisp, lifelike ground textures, and its many terminals warmly embraced my bird as it made its way to stand G8, where the sleepy passengers would finally get to stretch their legs, wear flowers in their hair, and enjoy the hustle and bustle of San Francisco. All in due time, though, as it's a slightly long taxi. 

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It was like meeting an old friend you haven't seen in ages: for the longest time, there was no proper SFO for Microsoft Flight Simulator at all, and flying to San Francisco meant dealing with default buildings, default taxiways, default everything (which is quite suboptimal, let's be honest). Thus, I'd avoid San Fran as much as possible. My strong aversion to default stuff wouldn't let it be any different. But it was all different this time around:

• The terminals were just like their real-life counterparts.
• Ground clutter was everywhere, and the ground textures had weathering, dirt, and grimness.
• The jetways had that lovely bit of corrosion that goes hand in hand with a seaside airport. 

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Modeling / Texturing

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If there's a good way to summarize the modeling and texturing work on this rendition of San Francisco, it would be "remarkably consistent." It's no easy feat, especially considering SFO's sheer size, with four terminals and 120 gates. Every square inch of the airside area looks great, and that goes a long way toward describing how immersive a scenery can be. 

The terminals are nearly photorealistic, creating fantastic imagery when the lighting is just right. Conveniently enough, the weather wasn't bad at the time, which led to many gigabytes worth of - subjectively, of course - good screenshots. 

The ground textures are second to none, with very accurate ground markings that closely match current satellite imagery, and a lot of wear and tear, just like you would expect the ground surface of a busy airport to be: the stands are grimy, full of oil stains, skid marks, fluid droplets, you name it. Wear and tear make an airport feel like a living thing rather than just a mere tridimensional representation of it. 

Airside-wise, Flightbeam's rendition is nearly perfect. I spent quite some time moving around the terminals with the drone camera scanning for that eventual underwhelming portion, but it remained consistent throughout, making it a joy to fly in and out of regardless of where you park. You can tell there was a lot of attention paid to each terminal and its respective (wildly different) ages, warning labels, custom clutter, and the many different jetway types, brandings, and so on.

They even made a custom VDGS system to match the real one closely (but you can also use the GSX VDGS if you prefer). On that GSX note, the scenery comes with a fully custom - and pretty good, one could argue - GSX profile. 

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On that ground clutter note, it definitely does not disappoint. Many custom objects, such as baggage carts and trolleys, match the airlines that operate at that specific terminal and their real-life counterparts. I don't recall spotting a single default Asobo object, which is still heavily used in the industry. 

The remainder of the ground service equipment, especially the vehicles, is a bit cardboardy, but there's only so much detail you can possibly pack in without significantly affecting the performance.

While not quite what you would call extraordinary, the interiors are accurate to the real thing and offer a decent enough representation without penalizing the user with a huge framerate hit. At the end of the day, the airside experience is more important, and they aced that aspect. 

Last but not least, it's important to remember that there is more to an airport than just the terminals, and Flightbeam does not disappoint with its hangars, fuel reservoirs, remote parking stands, cargo terminals, etc. It's all where it should be and as consistent as the main course. 

Overall, the models and textures are solid, with compromises here and there (cardboardy GSE at times, a bit of parallax on non-essential buildings and stuff), while sporting one of the best airside experiences out there, making you feel like you are boarding or deboarding in San Francisco.

Night Lighting 

In conjunction with the high-detail PBR texturing, the night lighting yields a very pleasing visual result, with very nice propagation and diffusion on hard surfaces. The many windows on all terminals make for a great "see-through" experience at night, with well-lit interiors that look great from airside.

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The interior lighting is okay—not too bright, not too dark, within what you would call natural, and the reflections on the floor are neat. As mentioned previously, the interiors don't really stand out per se, but they sure look good enough from an airside perspective.

The nightfall exposes some flat textures on the less important buildings, which adequately change to night-time textures, but you can tell it's a picture of a window rather than a fully modeled building with all its bells and whistles. Granted, there are not many of them, and they are not quite visible from the stands anyway, at least not from the flight deck.

The taxiways are well-lit, and the overall lighting throughout the airport is rather solid. I can't complain.

Performance

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

The combination of a photogrammetric area with a vast airport can be fatal and holds in most cases. Still, Flightbeam's SFO manages to escape from such a curse, keeping the figures in line with their previous offerings. 

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Even with the long-haul performance degradation (which made a lovely return in SU15), the approach was far from a stuttering mess, causing no harm to my landing. Flying into or out of it (out of the performance degradation zone) is as fluid as it can get for a mega airport. 

When I loaded in for my return to Tokyo Narita, the framerate was pretty solid throughout the boarding process (with no hiccups when moving the camera around the flight deck) and taxi, and it only dipped a bit during the takeoff roll (from locked 30—using less than 50% of my GPU—to 24-25). Remember that the locked 30 is deliberate and not fully representative of what a 3080 paired with a decent processor could do. 

Conclusion

With the added pressure of being perhaps their most awaited scenery yet, Flightbeam delivered an excellent rendition, with remarkable consistency throughout, negligible compromises for extra performance, and a noteworthy airside experience. 

For roughly $19.99, you get the best rendition of San Francisco by far, and despite its humongous size, it only takes 2.53 GB of hard disk space. Considering all the detail it bundles in and how it performs despite it all, one could say it's priced rather fairly. 

Thank you to Flightbeam Studios for providing us with a review copy!

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