Is there a way to plant palm trees in locales that should have them, but don't? MS doesn't show palm trees in Florida, nor S California, nor Mexico (where I've been flying lately).Thanks for any advice!Rick

You'd better ask this in the scenery design forum.

If you want them at a few specific airports or so in that region you should be able to place some with one of the scenery design programs. Just find a macro of a palm tree and place it where you want.But if you want it everywhere in those areas you name that will be a lot of work :), maybe you can then better try to do it using the autogen. I think you should be able to change the autogen type to get different trees.Arno

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Member Netherlands 2000 Scenery Team[link:home.wanadoo.nl/arno.gerretsen]Arno's FlightSim World for scenery design hints, tips and other tricks...

You might be surprised to find out that palm trees in Florida are FAR outnumbered by the number of evergreen-type trees. They can be found scattered here and there, but they are not naturally there. They have to be planted. If MS had placed them throughout Florida, that would have been extremely unrealistic.Nevertheless, if you want to plant them throughout Florida or any other locale, ask in the scenery design forum and someone can probably help you out.

Hello Rick,No need to ask in the scenery design forum. This is also a general Flight Simulator question.The reason why there are no palm trees in Florida (or in the Caribbean, or even in Tahiti) is because the entire set of Flight Simulator ground textures have not been completed.Ground textures will, in the next version of Flight Simulator, be unique to each region of the world where they are placed. But, for the moment, only the North American ground textures are available (with very few exceptions.)The associated autogen files for these ground textures understandably do not have palm trees. Otherwise, you would have Minneapolis or Kansas City full of palms!In the future, the Caribbean or Polynesian ground textures will have their associated unique autogen with palm trees.However, you will probably not be able to get palms in Miami. This is in the North American region and is not planned to include palms.What can you do to get palms in your region?You can change the land class to include the few ground textures that do include palms. Using Land Class Assistant (available in the library), it is quite easy to modify the land class assignments. However, the only ground textures presently available that contain palms are "palm forests" - so you can not get palms in the city, unless you place a bit of forest in the midst of a city.Or, you can modify the autogen files. Using the Microsoft Autogen Annotator (available on the Microsoft web site), you can very easily change the types of trees or buildings that are placed on city or crop textures (only these types of textures can have their autogen modified.) However, you will get palms everywhere in the world that uses the ground textures you have modified.Or, you can just make a new autogen tree texture sheet. Here is an example that I put together for my use:http://ftp.avsim.com/dcforum/User_files/3e479c6b11f84e53.jpgThis does take a while, but is a very satisfying solution. However, once again, you will get palm trees everywhere in the world using this method.Or, you could wait a year and buy the next version of Flight Simulator. Undoubtedly, at this very moment, the FS Development Team is hard at work putting together a great variety of new ground textures, many of which will have palms. A little patience is all that is needed.Best regards.Luis

Thank You very much Luis!Your response was detailed with regard to why palm are not seen many places. I'll see what I can do with what tools are available. And I will follow your guidance!Thanks againRick