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Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler | PC Support | Better Scenery?
DVA6838
Captain, B747-400
OLP

Joined on December 30 2008
50 State Club
Online Century Club
Everett Century Club
Globetrotter
DVA Ten-Year Anniversary
Quad-Jet Quartermaster
Triple Century Club

""Aim High""
Birmingham, AL

316 legs, 1,081.8 hours
115 legs, 255.1 hours online
315 legs, 1,078.3 hours ACARS
7 legs, 17.0 hours event
 Posted onPost created on March 21 2017 13:04 ET by Jonathan Goke
Hello pilots,

I just got back into flight simming and flying for DVA. I converted from FS2004 to FSX:SE. I was wondering...what is the best route to get the best looking a scenery? I just have the default and the area directly surrounding the aircraft is ok at best, but at altitude the ground down looks so blurry and not realistic at all. Any recommendations?


DVA2887
Senior Captain, A320
OLP, 737-ATP, VFRADV

Joined on January 30 2006
50 State Club
Globetrotter
Tri-Jet Triumph
US Coastal Club
Millennium Club
DVA Fifteen-Year Anniversary
US Mountaineer Club
Toulouse 250 Club
Online Eight Century

Charlotte, NC

1,287 legs, 1,796.9 hours
841 legs, 1,048.5 hours online
1,269 legs, 1,774.9 hours ACARS
31 legs, 49.6 hours event
3 legs dispatched, 2.5 hours
 Posted onPost created on March 21 2017 15:40 ET by Andrew Vane
Welcome back Jonathan!

I use Ultimate Terrain X from flight1.com. I have tried the megascenery. It looks good but only from 5,000 feet up and no autogen buildings are on top of it. I like UTX a lot. I turned off the lighting to help with the frames but the roads all line up where they're supposed to.

As for airports, I mostly use freeware updates from avsim and flightsim.com since they're more frame rate friendly. I have a few payware airports but they can hog resources on my machine.


DVA5434
Captain, B767-300

Joined on January 14 2008
Black Pearl Club
Toulouse Century Club
DVA Ten-Year Anniversary
Triple Century Club

Southeastern United States

319 legs, 1,299.2 hours
313 legs, 1,268.9 hours ACARS
 Posted onPost created on March 24 2017 00:40 ET by Chris Radev
Default scenery and mesh will only take you so far, but here is what you can do.

tex resolution, terrain mesh all to max in fsx settings. as well as all the others there whose names ive forgotten right now. you can choose what you want for the water effects.

then:
go into fsx.cfg and change the texture load to 2048 (1024 default) this is crucial for any good addons later on. and lod distance to 8 or higher (default is 4.5) with default scenery you can really take that value up without running out of memory. so try 8.5 and see. it's not a linear or a fixed increase so some areas might be the same as 4.5 others will be miles further on the render. FSX decides that based on each .bgl file.

then you need terrain mesh. default fsx is something stupid like 303m worldwide and 90 meters? for the usa. both are really a joke as far as experience goes. mt Everest looks like an anthill in my yard stock. go to fsgenesis and get the nextmap (19m and under) for the areas you fly in.

freeware mesh is available at simviation.com but their free download take days. use multiple browsers, as it limits you to 2 50kbps downloads per browser. now I have chrome firefox and ie each pulling 2 files and it still takes days to get all the free mesh. a lot of it however is not airport corrected so it will mess with default airports and even some add on ones that do not have flatten/adjusted tiles (latinvfr is notorious for basing all their products on fsx default elevation, 0 tolerance for anything else).

FSGNESIS tends to try to address those issues manually, but you have to pay for their stuff and they lack coverage for a lot of the world. I use a mix of freeware and payware mesh, depending how each area interacts with my addons, and sadly, fsg doesn't have a lot of their old product for sale anymore since the company changed hands. im lucky enough to have their old 38m mesh for regions they no longer sell.

stay away from megascenery. its literally the worst photoreal as they don't compensate for times of day, seasons, don't place autogen (that takes effort) and gobbles up terrabytes of data for coverage of the whole country. I would go with orbx if you want good ground textures.

as far as freeware airports go, you will be pretty disappointed that hardly any good ones are for fsx. the days of awesome fs9 freeware is long over and most fsx stuff is payware. and some of it is pretty horrible. look on simmarket to see what is available (they tend to carry the most diverse portfolio) and then you can check that against the typical sites like avsim, flightsim, simviation etc. chances are, freeware won't be available for fsx for the vast majority of things. and what will be there, will be badly ported from fs9.

I forgot to add the freemeshx project. its free and covers the whole world. download tho im not sure how reliable. I haven't used the product ->> http://ninetwopro.com/

fs global next gen came out last year too, and its the best asfik. but its only on boxed dvd set (80gb worth) and has to be shipped in from Germany. Once you get the default mesh replaced with something proper, your sim will feel 100x better, even if you change nothing else

DVA2887
Senior Captain, A320
OLP, 737-ATP, VFRADV

Joined on January 30 2006
50 State Club
Globetrotter
Tri-Jet Triumph
US Coastal Club
Millennium Club
DVA Fifteen-Year Anniversary
US Mountaineer Club
Toulouse 250 Club
Online Eight Century

Charlotte, NC

1,287 legs, 1,796.9 hours
841 legs, 1,048.5 hours online
1,269 legs, 1,774.9 hours ACARS
31 legs, 49.6 hours event
3 legs dispatched, 2.5 hours
 Posted onPost created on March 24 2017 07:46 ET by Andrew Vane
Chris Radev wrote:

as far as freeware airports go, you will be pretty disappointed that hardly any good ones are for fsx.


I can say the Sunskyjet philly is one of the best freeware airports I've seen. At least I think that's what its called. Its as close to payware quality as you can get. They are working on DTW currently. FS2004 and FSX versions. http://www.sunskyjet.com/




DVA11021
Captain, B757-200
OLP

Joined on September 13 2012
B757 100 Club
Everett 250 Club
Triple Century Club
Online Triple Century Club
DVA Five-Year Anniversary

Milford, NH

375 legs, 620.5 hours
365 legs, 604.5 hours online
374 legs, 618.9 hours ACARS
21 legs, 51.4 hours event
 Posted onPost created on March 24 2017 08:47 ET by Sean Zarella
Andrew Vane wrote:

Chris Radev wrote:

as far as freeware airports go, you will be pretty disappointed that hardly any good ones are for fsx.


I can say the Sunskyjet philly is one of the best freeware airports I've seen. At least I think that's what its called. Its as close to payware quality as you can get. They are working on DTW currently. FS2004 and FSX versions. http://www.sunskyjet.com/


+1 +1 +1 +1 +1 !!!!!


DVA3220
Captain, B737-800
OLP

Joined on May 19 2006
DVA Five-Year Anniversary
B737 50 Club

Southeastern United States

78 legs, 129.9 hours
73 legs, 122.3 hours online
76 legs, 127.3 hours ACARS
31 legs, 57.3 hours event
 Posted onPost created on March 24 2017 13:58 ET by Tyler Devereaux
Before I start, just in case you're in the same boat I was when I started trying to make my sim more realistic, I'll contend that "scenery" in the world of FS can be a complicated venture and somewhat confusing. I'm not sure if you're already on top of all that, so I won't elaborate and turn this reply into a novel; instead, I'll leave you this link to read more if you're interested. If you're wondering why there are so many products and how they are differentiated, I think this document will help. Orbx has a document, "FTX Definitive Guide," that (among other things) explains how FS Scenery works, starting on page 4: https://www.scribd.com/document/250384067/FTX-Definitive-Guide

Flight 1 (F1) and Orbx are two big names in the scenery department for the following products:
- F1 Ground Environment X (GEX)
- F1 Ultimate Terrain X (UTX)
- Orbx FTX Global Base (FTXG)
- Orbx FTX Global Vector (FTXGV)
- Orbx FTX Global openLC Europe
- Orbx FTX Global openLC North America

F1 and Orbx do overlap in their feature offerings, so they are effectively competitors; however, some people opt to use noncompeting products from both F1 and Orbx together, which can work. There's a lot (a LOT) of opinion oout there on the F1 family vs the Orbx family of productss. In the end, I think it comes down to opinion rather than anything definitive. Researching the two can be very tiresome -- in my experience, I spent weeks digging through various reviews, forum threads, YouTube videos, etc only to find a LOT of the same information and yet no "silver bullet" to convince me either way. Should you choose to look into the two families, it's important to note that the FTX Global range of products were released at different times, and openLC North America came to the stage quite awhile after FTXG, GV, and openLC Europe. Orbx's openLC North America is further complicated by the fact that it was somewhat deceptively pre-released originally with, if I remember correctly, all of North America EXCEPT the US (that was still under development at the time); it was then re-released (small upgrade cost for existing customers; Orbx didn't screw anyone over) once they finished the US portion. I only say all of this to point out the importance of verifying which products are being compared to each other if you choose to research which products you want to invest in. Specifically, since openLC North America was so late into the game, a lot of the GEX+UTX vs Orbx FTX Global comparison reviews/threads/etc were made before its release and thusly don't take its features into account. openLC North America changes the game, so to speak, and offers more to compete with the GEX+UTX combo. So, for a fair picture, you'll want to understand what openLC does and how it would change the conclusions of the reviews you read.

In the end, I went with the Orbx family of products. I haven't gotten off the fence on whether to switch to P3D yet, but I focus my purchases on developers who offer products licensed for both FSX and P3D or, at least, do something like A2A and offer a discounted bundle for a dual license. I want to minimize the amount of new purchases I will need to make if/when I switch to P3D. While F1's UTX is licensed for P3D and FSX, their GEX product line is separated, and the P3D version of GEX is a completely separate product. Also, with the release of Orbx's openLC North America, I felt that the Orbx family of products offered a direct competition to everything F1 had to offer -- without needing to re-purchase anything if I make the big switch. Last, but not least, Orbx has very good sales on their product lines fairly regularly, and I was able to get all of their Global family of products for 60-65% and save a little over $100 when all was said and done. I'm not sure if the same can be said about F1, but a little patience definitely paid off with Orbx.

Good luck!
DVA5434
Captain, B767-300

Joined on January 14 2008
Black Pearl Club
Toulouse Century Club
DVA Ten-Year Anniversary
Triple Century Club

Southeastern United States

319 legs, 1,299.2 hours
313 legs, 1,268.9 hours ACARS
 Posted onPost created on March 24 2017 14:16 ET by Chris Radev
Andrew Vane wrote:

Chris Radev wrote:

as far as freeware airports go, you will be pretty disappointed that hardly any good ones are for fsx.


I can say the Sunskyjet philly is one of the best freeware airports I've seen. At least I think that's what its called. Its as close to payware quality as you can get. They are working on DTW currently. FS2004 and FSX versions. http://www.sunskyjet.com/


nice. glad I brought that theme up. now I know about them.

DVA043
Senior Captain, MD-11
OLP

Joined on June 10 2001
Event Half Century Club
Online Double Century Club
50 State Club
DVA Twenty-Year Anniversary
Everett 1500 Club
Bi-Millennium Club
Four Million Mile Club

"Col. Panic"
Marietta, GA

2,347 legs, 9,466.0 hours
240 legs, 553.9 hours online
2,005 legs, 8,259.1 hours ACARS
75 legs, 196.3 hours event
2,383 legs, 9,600.9 hours total
91 legs dispatched, 66.4 hours
 Posted onPost created on March 24 2017 14:23 ET by Luke Kolin
This is a great mesh product: https://www.avsim.com/forums/forum/737-freemeshx-global-support-forum/

Keep in mind that it's everything *except* the US - it brings the rest of the world up to the same level of detail as the US.

Cheers!

Luke Kolin

Senior Captain, MD-11
Progress Spinner

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