REVIEW: KIAD For MSFS By Flightbeam Studios

Washington Dulles International Airport

Official description and key features:

Welcome to Washington Dulles International Airport, the gateway from the Nation's Capitol to over 125 worldwide destinations! KIAD is one of North America's busiest airports with more than 60,000 passengers on a typical day.

This all-new version for Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) is packed with upgrades and massive visual enhancements, making KIAD blend right into the next-gen environment. Months of production time were spent on creating hand-crafted PBR textures, model/texture improvements, a massive heap of clutter + vehicles and many other upgrades which makes this product a huge leap from the previous, highly-rated P3D version. Spend time with airliners at this massive 4-runway airport, or visit the friendly, highly detailed FBO area for your smaller, general aviation adventures.

Features:

A massive number of upgrades and visual improvements compared to P3D version
Custom PBR materials throughout entire airport
Detailed FBO for small aircraft operations
Realistic night lighting, with hand placed, illuminated floodlights and glows
Custom animated Flightbeam jetways with accurate placement and hood animation
Custom static aircraft in various ramp parking positions (Fedex, United)
A stunning number of clutter objects and vehicles throughout airport
Sloped and uneven runways with hand-painted exit marks
Includes various points of interest, including the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum
Custom elevation and terraforming on roadways
Detailed Airport roadways
Custom taxiway signs
Detailed airport surroundings
LOD-optimized for best performance

Sim Pilot HQ’s Take:

The landside approach to the departure terminal at Dulles International Airport is a familiar sight for me. Growing up in northern VA, KIAD was one of my most frequently visited airports. The grand elliptical terminal, developed by Finnish architect Eero Saarinen, is a beautiful sight to see as you approach the airport from the outer access road.

Another thing I remember about this airport from my childhood are the mobile lounges, also known as People Movers, that were a revolutionary way to transport up to 90 passengers per lounge from the main terminal to their departure destinations. I can attest to how nerve-wracking it was to be in one of these and having to yield to a jet passing by. It must have been an ATC nightmare, but fortunately for them the majority of the mobile lounges were replaced in 2010 with a People Mover automated train system.

Still, it’s nice to see that Flightbeam saw fit to model the ones that remain, which may in fact be refurbished soon to act as vehicles that carry passengers right to the doors of smaller commuter airliners.

Flightbeam’s KIAD, along with AI traffic programs like FSLTL, really does a great job of showing how busy this airport gets. Virtually every domestic and international airline company has representation here. Just take a look at KIAD’s FlightAware page (https://flightaware.com/live/airport/KIAD) and you’ll see the wide variety of companies and jets that visit KIAD daily.

This particular airport is also a huge airport that helps to serve the Washington DC area along with KDCA. Flightbeam did an amazing job of representing not only the airside grounds with the expansive runways and long terminal buildings, but also a very faithfully represented landside area with Arrivals, Departures, parking and even economy parking further outside of the access road.

The night lighting is particularly great here. Runway lighting is very pronounced and all gates are lit. Landside lighting is also particularly nice here, right down to lighting on the toll booths. Snow textures are another really great touch here at KIAD. Flightbeam did an excellent job recreating the look and feel of icy, snow covered textures. In fact, the texture work in all of KIAD is worthy of praise. It’s really an excellent looking airport all around with high quality, detailed textures.

Some of the terminal areas are modeled but it’s sparse at best when compared to some other offerings. Also, for some reason I was finding that the window geometry disappeared when looking at it from the inside. No big deal, I suppose, since I’ll usually be taxi’ing outside of it anyway. Still, it was something I wanted to note.

All in all, this is a really great addition from Flightbeam. I remember flying into the default KIAD as one of my first flights in MSFS, and it was so dark and missing so many of the details here that it made the price for Flightbeam’s KIAD look like the steal of the century. If you regularly fly into the DC area, you should pick this one up. It doesn’t matter if you’re flying a domestic 737 from Dallas or an international A330 from Heathrow - you can make KIAD one of your most popular go-to destinations for your sim passengers.