Farnborough has perhaps the richest history of any airport in the United Kingdom, and boasts a significant history dating back to 1908 when Samuel Franklin Cody, a Wild West showman accomplished the feat of the first powered, controlled and sustained flight in the United Kingdom. Cody’s audacious endeavour granted Farnborough the illustrious title, 'The birthplace of British Aviation'.
The Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) was created at Farnborough a year after Cody’s flight in 1909 and was where aircraft designers such as Geoffrey de Havilland and Henry Folland found fame, and over the course of more than fifty years designed, the RAE built and tested hundreds of aircraft at the airport including the Harrier and Concorde.
Today Farnborough is renowned worldwide with its yearly airshow attracting over 80,000 visitors and hosting over 1500 exhibitors all vying for a business in the incredibly lucrative civil and military aviation sectors. During the rest of the year Farnborough sees over 30,000 business jet movements and is UK’s busiest and most prestigious business aviation hub, hosting a swathe of business jets companies.
Farnborough Airport has been recreated faithfully over many, many hundreds of hours by Burning Blue Design’s 3D modellers and coders and features:
- Over 90 custom 3D objects have been created exclusively for Farnborough Airport, each with full Physical Based Rendering (PBR) allowing for far more realistic textures.
- Over ten thousand carefully placed stock assets across the airport and surrounding area, every fence, parking space, cone, light and tree has been placed in it’s correct location bringing life to Farnborough airport and the surrounding area.
- As with all Burning Blue Design Products new custom working Windsocks have been created and accurately placed around the airport.
- High resolution colour corrected ground textures have been used as a basis for the airport, these have been taken from Bing maps and heavily manipulated for consistency and realism which far surpasses the quality of the stock Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 ground texture.
- New taxiways and roads have been created in and around the airport and the runway with its huge displaced threshold has been faithfully recreated.
- Full night lighting placed across the airport and surrounding area including individually placed street lights along the surrounding roads.
Surrounding landmarks have been created and placed in their correct locations to improve visual navigation and general airport atmosphere, these include:
- The Wind Tunnel Project.
- Farnborough International Exhibition & Conference Centre
- The Aviator Hotel
- The Gloster E28/39 monument to Sir Frank Whittle.
- Farnborough Air Sciences Trust Museum (FAST) with it’s assortment of display aircraft.
- Farnborough Airship Hangar Frame.
- Farnborough Business Park.
- Eelmoor bridge.
- The Swan Pub
