SurClaro Flight Simulator Resources

[regalame]

Can anyone suggest which are the best and most realistic scenery, the one that you can fly over your house or other known buildings and areas in the world towns, closest to reality, but also with good tridimensionality.
If needed I am ready also to buy a dedicated 3d board to make flying as close to reality as posiible.
In other words, who sells this virtual reality and the actual state of art.
Pls help
Tks Giorgio

[Exxman]

I am right in the middle of reviewing FS Global 2005 right now. Give me a couple more days and look for the review here on Surclaro. I'm sure our members will give you some of their own preferences and tips on great scenery...hang in there.

Exxman

[skipperdan]

Here is some information that you will find to be very valuable in your search:
8) 8)
http://news.pcaviator.com/fsess4.htm

[regalame]

Tks a lot for the info and the link, surely very interesting and explaining a lot.
One thing I never found there thoug: are towns and villages included in this 3d scenery? And if I fly quite low can I still see the 3d effect, like flying in a canyon or among skyscrapers or is still 'scifi' at the actual state of art?
Sorry but I want to spend some money and would like to spend them for the right stuff from the beginning.
Tks for you patience
Giorgio

[Rana.V2]

Hi Giorgio,

I don't think you will find anything to that extent in FS. Let me explain what I mean.

A long time ago, I was also under the impression that when I am flying over my house, I would see it in FS (perhaps after installing some addons) but that is so not the case.

A bit on FS working: when we are talking about 3D objects (building, bridges etc), there are two ways FS handles it; the first one being a dedicated model at predefined place (ie. pyramids of Giza, or Statue of Liberty); the other type is AutoGen.. which means we define a region to have a certain type of building structures (or Trees), and FS would create some random objects based on those structure. However, these are not accurate at all.

To enhance the scenery, you can have many addons.

A) Mesh (as ExxMan mentioned above: FS Global is a mesh addon) which enhances only the landscape. ie. FS Landscape for UK is quite poor, with all our peaks missing from lake district. Mesh addon fixes this problem, but doesn't add any 3D objects

B) PhotoGraphic Scenery: ie, MegaScenery for USA, VisualFlight for UK... there are also some other very good photographic scenery around. This works in a way where: the whole landscape is photographed from 3000ft to 5000ft altitude. Then these photographs are overlayed on FS Scenery.
Now this is quite accurate: with PhotoG Scenery, when I am flying over my house, I can see the correct roads: However, instead of the house being a 3D object, it looks like a square (exactly how it would look like from that altitude).

C) Finally custom scenery, where developers model each building to give it the correct look. If I recall right, Cloud9 Rome was one of the first addon to really use this technology. There is also AeroSoft's Manhatten. I have recently purchase VisualFlight London scenery, which does the same thing for over thousands of buildings in London only. I have even found the house I lived in as a 3D object.

IMHO, photographic scenery are perhaps better value for money, as it covers a lot more region. Detailed scenery covers a very small area, and can be very extensive for the cpu (you need a more powerful rig to use it properly) - but I think can be a lot of fun if you know the area very well.

What I would suggest is: download all the freeware meshes uploaded to avSim by Justin (owner of FSGenesis, and I think one of the best mesh designer).. I think it covers complete west coast. That would give you an idea on how mesh can enhance the scenery. I believe there are some freeware photographics scenery: I think Holger (creator of Misty) have some brilliant freeware scenery... finally I would also suggest checking out ThunderBay 2 and Toronto, as they have many custom scenery models (however someone did mention TBay2 a frame killer).

[regalame]

Hi Rana
tks a lot. Your very comprehensive answer helped me a lot to understand and also to find some of these cities which I prefer to the trees and mountains because I can recognize them and see ythem from the 'top' at leisure.
Again very kind of you
My best regrds
Giorgio