Best addons for VFR flying UK

[nshooter35 0]

Hi everyone

 

I have had a search of the forums and seen a number of suggestions on how to get the best VFR scenery for the UK. I have tried Gex X photoscenery and also FTX England. 

The photoscenery looks great but is very flat, which I don't like. FTX looks great but I have read it is not very accurate, and also I can not see any power lines / wind turbines. I have also seen the Power Project but have not used this yet. 

 

I was wondering what you would suggest in terms of trying to get the most realistic VFR scenery. I tried the GenX scenery and the openVFR objects addon - but this didn't seem to show much for the area I was flying (north england). Are there any other solutions to providing realistic objects / autogen to the photo scenery?

 

I have also installed UK2000 airfields. 

 

Your advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

[hifly 925]

Hello nshooter35 and  to Mutley's. Being a tubeliner jock I don't see much in the way of scenery although I do have orbx scenery for a bit of GA flying.

 

There are scenery experts here though and they're sure to chip in with good advice soon.

 

In the meantime make yourself comfortable and enjoy MH.

[brett 2,314]

There's a little give and take with all scenery so you just have to research them out to what is best for your style of flying.

 

Photoscenery and even those that add some autogen are drab and colorless in my opinion so I went the ORBX/FTX route using the Global/Vector/openLC and Region addons. Good enough for VFR as far as roads, rivers, bridges and towns are where they should be. Is the town exactly perfect building by building, no. Is there a visual representation of a town where it should be, yes. Is every single point of interest replicated in a given country, no. Are there enough POI's to keep you interested, yes.

 

You can see some power lines at specific airports or even farm strips if they are in the way of approaches otherwise the lines themselves take up a lot of memory so it's not usually included between the pylons which are modeled. there are a few windfarms shown but I highly recommend the freeware PowerProject available in the download section here at Mutley's Hangar.

 

So it comes down to me telling you what I like and bought for my system. I can assure you that whatever folks are using will be their choice of scenery so it is best to keep looking at videos and pictures of what is available to form your own opinion.

 

Good luck and welcome to the forums here nshooter.  

 

 

[Bruce (a.k.a. brian747) 142]

Hi, and welcome to the Hangar!

I do dimly recall something called VFR, but <sigh> it's not my speciality either, I'm afraid. (There are plenty of people here who can be more helpful, but like Geoff and Brett I just wanted to say hello).

Happily, Brett has current knowledge on the subject, which I'm sure will help you.

> "FTX looks great but I have read it is not very accurate...."

Interesting. In what way, I wonder? (In other words, what exactly are you looking for?).

Cheers,

bruce

a.k.a. brian747

[UKJim 502]

I'm a GenX user with many uk2000 airports and the VFR airfields addons too.

I know what you mean by saying it's flat but in terms of VFR flying its got all the details you need and as real as it gets as you're flying over the satellite images of the land

Depends what you want out of it really - FTX would be my second choice.

[Christopher Low 63]

FTX England/Scotland/Wales may have lots of trees and buildings and a few landmarks, but it could hardly be considered the best option for VFR flight in the UK. PlayHorizon GenX photoscenery with ES Treescapes is the best option, since you are able to identify major landmarks/towns/lakes/golf courses etc. from the photo images. I also use the FSX Power Project electricity pylon network (including substations) and wind turbines, and also a nice little file that Darren Vincent gave me that includes some power stations and radio transmitter masts. I would love to see lots more major landmarks like cathedrals/castles/football stadiums etc, but very few people ever seemed to want to make stuff like that Nevertheless, photoscenery is light years beyond FTX landclass scenery as far as VFR flight is concerned. I have FTX Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland, but I dumped the latter in favour of the PlayHorizon VFR GenX Republic of Ireland photoscenery (and that doesn't even have ES Treescapes to back it up). If I could find decent quality photoscenery of Northern Ireland (with proper watermasking), then I would also dump FTX Northern Ireland in a heartbeat.

[brett 2,314]

Here a vid comparing the two.

[nshooter35 0]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I suppose one question is now inaccuate is the ftx scenery?

The ideal would be using gen x with accurate auto gen. I have read about using open streetmap to create autogen scenery. Has anyone had any experience of this?

Thanks

[brett 2,314]

FTX scenery is pretty accurate, I'm sure they use the same maps and tiles as everyone else.

 

I can't speak to the other, I would guess autogen can be placed like any other scenery.

[Kevin Firth 114]

imho

FTX scenery is accurate in the sense road and the general depiction of areas are pretty much in the right place.

FTX scenery is not accurate in the sense that it does not look like how things are in real life at all. For example, vector roads cut through fields and roads in the base textures, some people don't mind it, But it bugs the hell out of me

It is possible to create autogen using OSM data using Arno Gerretso'ns Scenproc utility. If you don't mind getting your hands dirty and spending some time it is possible to create some nice scenery for yourself.

Its worth noting that Ordnance Survey have just 'declassified' and made available for free a set of data showing individual buildings. This is better data than the RevolutionX add-on used, until recently this new free data would have cost you £55k to licence for the entire UK!

The data comes as free downloads in ESRI shapefile format, which can be used directly by Scenproc. It's something I'd like to play with a little as well, but (Chris Bell will tell be able to tell why in more detail I suspect) best results will only be obtained if you can find some free building use data to use along with it (Ordnance Survey still charge for that atm!). Maybe I'll call OS and ask about special case licensing because what they charge at the moment is prohibitive for FS use

Building autogen textures can be individually specified for each 1km sq autogen file so a bit of texture reworking would allow essentially the same autogen to look different in different places.

Add in some bespoke autogen models which can be placed by Scenproc using point data together with individually placed POI models and you can theoretically create a very nice and pretty accurate 3D autogen cover.

Scenproc can do automatic vegetation detection as well, so it would be possible to use an app like FS EarthtIles to download satellite imagery, use Scenproc to create bespoke vegetation autogen, and then merge that with any existing autogen you have as well with this neat autogen merge app. http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/agn-merge-tool.396534/

I have found free tree use data for the entire UK, showing which trees grow where, so it is theoretically possible (if you care?) to create autogen vegetation groups which reflect the actual species which grow together in the same rough geographical areas, and then use those groupings so that FS only shows autogen tree species that are actually there

Cheers K

[J G 927]

Hi and welcome to the Hanger!

 

I love to fly VFR and hardly do any IFR flights, so navigating by landmark is a big part of what I like to do. I fly Military aircraft exclusively, so I am usually either near the ground or very near the ground, with the occasional high flight when I am in an interceptor or the like.

 

I started with VFR scenery from Horizon which, whilst looking good at 5,000 or above was next to useless at 1,000 feet or below.  As someone said below, it is very flat and therefore needs to be viewed from on high to get the best of it.

 

After chasing the Ideal VFR scenery, I eventually tried ORBX. Since then I have never looked back. However to get the best of ORBX you need to start from the bottom up. You need to get the FTX Global base, then lay over that and where available a land class and then on top of that Vectors (this is very important if you want to navigate by road and river) and then the Terrane regions you are interested in.  Than you can start adding airfields etc 

 

It sound like a long haul but you can do it piecemeal and the results are fantastic 

 

There are a few things I have noticed with ORBX, and they are not really mentioned anywhere in the blurb and the most important is this:

 

Always run your graphics card as hard as you can. Higher resolution and furthest draw distance is best. If you don't check these then detail will blur the faster and nearer the ground you are. And yes it  is the quality of the graphics card that matters here. If the card cant cope with the refresh rate then bluring will happen and you wont get the most of your scenery.

 

At the moment i have a middle of the road spec PC and have had blurring problems whilst at 500 kts at 500 feet. this improved a lot when I upgraded my graphics card, but it still happens a bit still, but I could do with a PC upgrade.

 

If you are chugging along in say a tiger moth at 500 ft then you will see a great 3D landscape with detailed roads and rivers to navigate by (if you have Vectors installed). Compare it to an OS map and you will be able to use the real map and the ORBX world in tandum

 

Where ORBX falls down is that dome of the finer detail can be generic.  With the right FTX region in place then this is much improved, but not photo perfect.

 

With VFR scenery, things look good on high but as you come lower, then it starts to look poorer the flatter it gets.

 

It is a personal choice and depends where your priorities lie, the kind of VFR flying you do and how much you want to spend.

 

 

ORBX- with the works including Vectors at about 1,000 ft - Follow that road!

 

One last piece of advice. Make your decision now and then stick to it. Changing horses mid stream is expensive. so make your decision don't look back. ORBX looks ok the world over with the basics applied, FTX Global & Vectors, Things improve a lot with a regional land class and further still with a terrain region. I have all of the UK Terrain regions, but the screen shot above was taken in France with only the Open Land Class for Europe applied with FTX Global and Vectors.

 

 

Makes no difference up here, except that Vectors make the lakes and rivers the correct shape.

 

 

The Valleys of North Wales. Low and fast, with good detail on the valley sides.