It seems like just yesterday that Orbx released Meigs Field for X-Plane as their entry into Laminar’s simulator space (check out the FSElite review if you missed it). Shortly after that, Bill Womack re-joined the team after some hiatus to develop his iBlueYonder brand, and the X-Plane products from his time away were assimilated into the Orbx catalogue.

Excitingly, the ever-so-hard-working developers now give us another gift to fill out the British landscape this time around, which was dangled like a carrot in front of our noses at the end of March. From today, load up FTX Central or visit the Orbx website to get your hands on EGCB Manchester City.

Sometimes referred to as Barton Aerodrome, Manchester City is a General Aviation airport approximately 5nm west of the Manchester city centre. The field runs four grass runways that service commercial, private, military, police and medical air traffic seven days a week.

Manchester City features 30km2 photoreal textures, incredibly detailed and accurate buildings, precision-placed static aircraft and signage, surrounding POIs, and excellent optimisation for best performance. The detail is incredible from edge to edge in this scenery.

Also worth mentioning, is this airport is an X-Plane first release, which means your friends on FSX and P3D will need to wait a little while longer to get their hands on this one. Be sure to link them here so they can see what they’re missing out on in the below screenshots.

If these screenshots have your mouth watering, you’ll be pleased to know that you can grab this right now for AUD $32.95 from the Orbx website or FTX Central.

Additionally, Orbx is kicking off their freeware library for X-Plane with the re-release of three simply stunning airports previously released via X-Plane.org by team member Tony Wroblewski. Tony goes by the name “antwob” on X-Plane.org and is most famous for his incredible World2XPlane application that has been downloaded more than 12,500 times from the file library, allowing OpenStreetMap data to be for the purpose of overlay scenery in X-Plane.

In addition to today’s payware release, you’ll now be able to download and install Tony’s ENOV Ørsta-Volda Airport, ENHA Hamar Stafsberg, as well as L52 Oceano County Airport all through FTX Central. These airports are all equally as stunning as the last and provide phenomenally beautiful renditions of these picturesque airports completely free. If you haven’t already seen these in your travels previously, it would be suggested that you check these out.

Orbx has really given us a lot to play with, in such a short space of time. We’re looking forward to their further offerings which if their current track record is anything to go by, will no doubt be just around the corner.