Photo Scenery

Hi Mark

Well it’s taken some months but here’s what I’ve done now and it seems to work ok.

I’ve pushed the Scenery complexity and autogen to dense which has given me a lot more buildings, ground traffic and aircraft. To compensate I have brought the distant scenery slider back to the far left instead of medium.

As I tend to keep visibility to 20, or max. 30 miles, that doesn’t seem to make a difference to what I can see as it gives the scene that nice misty appearance. With broken clouds and medium coverage it’s pretty good.

I’ve also brought the traffic sliders up to around the 50% mark and I must say the whole thing has improved the activity feel no end.

As for water, I’ve brought that back to ‘nil’

However, the pay back is that I must admit the ride isn’t quite so smooth even though I’ve pegged the frame rate back to 20. Depending somewhat on what I’m flying, the frames dodge between 19 & 20 most of the time but just occasionally get back to 15 or slightly less.

As it doesn’t affect the flying, take offs and landings too much I think I can live with it like that especially with the good old Beechcraft Baron 58 – what a lovely steady old aircraft that is! The only real jerks I get are when I taxi too fast round the bends so it’s all my fault!

Mind you, I must also admit that I’m still using FS9 a lot. With most of the sliders to the far right and customised weather it’s still really smooth. Probably a bit smoother than a real aeroplane is I seem to remember! But with those settings quite realistic. If it only had better roads with traffic on them I could be tempted not to bother with FSX at all.

Thanks for writing.

Best wishes

John Y

Hi John

I really don’t understand why you were seeing less airport scenery with GenX it really should make no difference at all to the custom objects (i.e. not Autogen) that make up the airports – unless because there is no Autogen and therefore no other buildings or trees surrounding the airport it makes it feel sparse…could that be it?

Both Horizon and Just Flight only replace the ground textures and mesh and should leave airport buildings totally untouched.

I too am very frame rate sensitive – twenty is as low as I find acceptable and therefore keep my settings at a level where I can maintain at least that. I lock my frame rate at twenty-five and that’s usually where it stays…busy airports are the exception as are some of the add-on 3D objects, such as refineries I have dotted around where the fps can go as low as fifteen. My PC would be considered lower mid range now with an X2 3800 Dual core processor a 7600gt graphics card and 2gb RAM…it does ok but an upgrade would be nice.

Mark.

Hi Mark

Just to answer your questions. Your Bristol Airport sounds full up compared with mine, but with settings on Normal for both complexity and autogen I get the fuel pump and tower together with two large buildings, about half a dozen smaller buildings around the perimeter,several airport vehicles, 3 trucks, the boundary fence, usually one or two moving aircraft, and if I’m lucky one or two parked aircraft, one or two moving aircraft and the occasional moving vehicle. I think it depends somewhat on how the program is cycling. Is that the right word?

As I said, with the ‘Real Scenery’ from Horizon, there was much less than this and from what I’ve seen in the demos, Just Flights airports are just a sparse.

The thing is I simply can’t move the sliders to the far right, well I can but the flying would be dreadful. I think you must have a much more powerful machine than mine, or maybe I’m just too sensitive to lower frame rates. I find if they’re hitting any number below 15 I’m really having a jerky flight. Mostly, with my settings, they hover between 19 and 25 (the locked figure) and only for seconds just occasionally fall below.

best wishes

John Y

Hi John I just did a quick check and I see around fifteen buildings at Bristol with the scenery complexity slider set to maximum – it certainly looks quite sparse and way off what I have seen with the accurate UK2000 version, but I’m sure it is the same as it was before adding the photoscenery.

What are you seeing with your now default FSX installation John?

Hi Mark

Of course I don’t mind you replying. I’m glad you did.

The fact is, when I had the Horizon scenery downloaded I left those settings where they were and with Bristol, which I know well as I use it as my home airport, there was only one building and the tower and no aircraft or ground traffic at all.

So I tried Heathrow, but again, while there were one or two buildings and a lone aeroplane, as opposed to when I use FSX alone it seems full up.

Now it is true that I didn’t raise the settings higher because I wasn’t getting a satisfactory simulation as it was without potentially making it worse by moving the sliders further to the right.

Since starting this new thread and because I’ve received no reply at all from Just Flight to one or two queries I raised with them, and although Horizon were very willing to help, it seems to me that it is very early days with these sceneries, so I’ve more or less decided to give them a miss for the time being. I may well have another look at them next year when hopefully, some of the problems with them may have been sorted out.

All the best.

John Y

John as no one else has replied I will if you don’t mind – both GenX and Real Scenery use the default FSX airports and traffic, neither package changes what you see in this respect. It is purely down to the ‘scenery complexity slider’ in the ‘scenery’ tab within the ‘display settings’. The further right you take this slider the more airport buildings you will see – the same applies for traffic.

If you want very realistic populated UK airports look here.
http://www.uk2000scenery.com/newsite/

You can download and try them out first, you will have a box on the runway (you can fly through) in demo mode…they are rather stunning though, but the detail does come with a perfomance hit, as you would expect.

Best wishes Redline