Tom,I quickly realized in the FS world that if I want a specific scenery, region - it may not exist. However if I adopt a more flexible stance - show me what is good out there and what is either free or priced well then there are quite a few choices. I decline to pay $20 for a single airport but will gladly pay $60 for 60 airports ... I would say the best bung for your buck you will get these days in the UK (posts above), Germany (German Airports), Austria and Mexico (60+ very well done airports for $60). I like to learn geography and fly in unknown lands - as a matter of fact flying to familiar airports is boring to me. But expect mostly airports and mesh scenery (elevations) - since photo-realistic sceneries (like in the FU) are very, very few in the FS world (only some Italian region comes to my mind). I personally don't like photo-real sceneries since they are storage hogs, taxing performance and their boundaries are too abrupt. But there are at least 50 top-notch freeware airports available for the FS. It is hard work to find all the good stuff however .....Michael J.

The Scenery catalog is in the AVSIM library. Just do an extended search on my name Heather. You'll find it easy enough.A good 90% of those other files listed that aren't in the catalog are at AVSIM, the balance probably at Flightsim.And if you're planning on a lot of Busj Flying, BFU is a great place to hang out. Check out their Jobs Board as well as Don Moser's Alaska Bush Charters.Cheers!Heather

In order to use all these sceneries together, you have to understand what each of the components do.At the "bottom" layer is the mesh scenery, which describes all the lumps and bumps (hills, valleys etc.) This role is taken by the Lago Terramesh.Then comes the "scenery layer". These are the textures that you see, and describe the fields, rivers, buildings etc. Here the FScene textures are used.In addition, FS2002 must be told WHAT is to be placed where, so it knows whether to texture a particular area with trees, town textures or desert. Here it is the landclass scenery that provides the "code" that decides this.Finally, at the top of the heap, sits the airports themselves, usually isolated patches of highly detailed scenery that (hopefully) are the only areas where you will actually be in contact with the ground. Apart from the water, of course, if you have an amphibian ! In this case the airports will be provided by UK2000 and SimFlyers.So, to answer your question, it depends what aspect of the "described scenery" you want to address. For any of the components there might be a conflict if you have two packages that are addressing the same thing.So if you have two sceneries for Heathrow, only the one with the highest priority will appear, unless the authors' exclude statements are incomplete/incorrect, and either the default Heathrow or the "other package" shows through.Similarly, if you have files for two mesh sceneries for the UK (eg. the Lago Terramesh and Josiah Haut's) only the most detailed will be used. (This isn't quite true, but is close enough)Although I only started with FS98, its fair to say that scenery design has come a long way since FS95, and with the right combination of packages, freeware and payware, you can have a really great immersive experience.

<>I should point out that while your observations may be true in some cases, it is not necessarily the case. Optimizing the code to be kind to performance is now understood by many people, although it wasn't so until recently. In addition, some of us have developed techniques to blend photoreal into default. This is a matter of the artistry of the author and experience with the sim and his/her tools. Please review my scenery for Hoquim, Washington's Bowerman Field. You should find the frame rates unaffected and the blend to the default should be excellant. If you have installed the new landclass file that is available, the blend is still pretty darn good, just not as perfect.Bob BernsteinEdmonds, Wa.

Alastair,"... its fair to say that scenery design has come a long way since FS95..."Of this I have never had any doubt.Your write-up here is excellent. Thank you. I take it that the best starting point would be with a good mesh. Then I can build upon this with specific scenery. Would this seem a good approach to you?

It sounds like it tom, but its not really like that. The sim simply displays its ground textures on its mesh.You can install a new ground texture independantly of new mesh in any order you wish and the sim won't mind.The only factor to do with order that does matter is when your scenery is designed to exclude certain elements, like default buildings. In that case the scenery with the exclude file just has to be higher in the library order than the scenery file with the thing you are getting rid of.Bob Bernstein

Bob,I will definitely give your scenery a try (downloading at this moment). Thanks for the tip !Michael J.