Howdy Paul,I ended up getting Ground Environment Pro and Flight Environment. (Bit of a shot in the wallet.) Everyone suggested ActiveSky, and I probably will get it in a month or two, but I read a few reviews about its complicated nature. And me... I'm just not a complicated guy. I wanted some quick Hageen-Dazs for the eyes and FE has it.I've only got about an hour under my belt with my fresh FS9 install with GE Pro and FE, but so far I like what I see. Some of the airport concrete textures are pretty bland looking, a la, FSX, but I love the country textures. And at night, with the better night lighting and sky colours, the rural areas look fantastic! Patience is required with GE Pro at times, as a custom terrain texture, once created, can take twenty minutes to load itself into the GE Pro memory. But once there, it can be installed whenever you want into FS9 very quickly pre-flight.Still lots to discover with GE & FE, but that's part of the fun. Mind you, just had my first CTD when loading up a flight in Montreal. I'll have to see if that persists. Also having some small graphics issues with some flashing textures, but it's not enough to really detract from the flight.Haven't looked into that mesh scene yet. How much of a difference does it make?

C1,GE doesn't alter any airport concrete textures, thats why it looks bland. It only changes the texture tiles for countryside, farm fields, cities etc. Airports are seperate beings that sit 'ontop' of these base texture tiles.FE on it's own provides some fantastic textures, but I can promise you that those new textures will only really shine with a good weather generator like AS6.5I used to use AS4.5 and thought that it couldn't be that much different to AS6.5.....boy I was wrong!AS4.5 in itself was a siginficant upgrade to the standard FS9 weather engine, but AS6.5 just blows me away!Save some $$ up as soon as you can and get it. I don't know why anybody would find it complicated though...just run it and start FS. Thats all there is to it. You can even leave the options at default if you really want to...Oh and yes, FSGenesis mesh does make a HUGE difference.Anyway, enjoy your new sim experience

You may want to look at Weather Maker Pro. It is only $8.99 (previously $24.99) and does a much better job with real time weather then the default. You also get several different radar fuctions and use of FSUIPC features that you would not normally have access to without a registered version of that program. I found it to be a great deal for the price.It makes a great combo with Flight Environment textures. This combination gives you lots of the features of Active Sky but it is not nearly as complicated.Check @ www.weather-maker.com or right here at the AVSIM Weathermaker forum.Hope this helps- Blake

gjharrall,Hey there. I didn't want you to think I ignored your advice. You set me straight on a few things and I do appreciate it. I decided on FE over AS because it was cheaper and less complicated to use. Like I said, I'm a simple guy and I get frustrated quickly when things are too codeified. I'm sure I will get AS, maybe soon, but I am happy with the eye candy I'm getting out of FE.GE Pro is turning out to be very nice. I just had a hop from Heathrow into France and the scenery was top notch. You hit a visual sweet spot at about 5K' and if I keep the FPS locked at 25, the auto-gen pretty much keeps up with me. Unless I'm in my F-104.... Then nothing keeps up with me. :-bigangel GE Pro lets you "paint" the terrain as you see fit. It's trial and error, though easy to use, but you can really get a nice look to things. Match the GE and FE colours and styles and it's a beauty of a ride, no doubt about it. Lots of atmosphere. I'm going to look into the weather-maker mentioned above (thanks) and will certainly get AS. Maybe before Christmas. Depends on how rich I feel. (Probably not very.)

A question about UT. What happens when it runs alongside GE Pro? Does it simply improve the coastlines, as I read in a post, or does it put another layer of general terrain eye candy goodness on top of the GE Pro and you get the best of both? Having both would seem to be redundant but many people here suggest having both is a good thing.The FSGenesis mesh simply fixes the terrain elevation, is that right? If that is the case, is it worth getting terrain mesh for a flat area? Also, is there a min res that is worth getting?Thanks.

Correct - FSG fixes the terrain elevation, as you suggest.Minimum res? - depends where you want to fly and what Justin has available for that area.GE Pro will improve the look and feel of the texture around you - in hundreds of different subtle ways - dependent on the number of configurations you choose. You really need to study the product, C1, in order to grasp its concept. FSG's landclass will make an improvement: UT USA will supply and fix all the roads and make an improvement to some of the texture, and GE Pro will "make it real", if I can put it that way. There's some tinkering to do because of small incompatibilities with some other softwares - like FZ01 and 2, but this stuff is all well documented by the two or three sites. Also there's a few pointers like - UT USA's "Enhanced Roads" function will kill the autogen in its immediate vicinity - so you turn that off, for eg. It's a bit of reading and a trail to follow, but it's worth it and it's not that hard. The end result - for me - has revolutionized fs9. again! I thought I'd reached Nirvana after FTampa's Seattle, with Holger's "stuff" - and then came Rhode Island - then came Portland! Now this! It's all good.Regards,

Great topic for information on some of the more popular payware add-ons. I see most who have replied have some smokin' rigs to run this stuff - anyone car to comment whether my setup might be up to the task with any or all of these? I've been having problems again simply climbing out through heavy cumbulus and was hoping AS6 might help aleviate that issue somewhat, while offering a much better weather engine. What is the FR impact on running all of these add-ons together? Thanks.Regards, KendallDell 8400 3.2 GHZ H.T.800 FSB/2MB L22 GB 533 DDR2X800XT 256MB/Catalyst driver - 6.9's6x Adaptive AA/16x HQ A/FIntegrated SoundDual Monitor: Dell 2405/1905CH Yoke/Pedals

Hey Kendall,Just FYI, my AMD64-3000/2GigRam/7800GS runs GE Pro and FE at 1280x1024 with all sliders maxed, including traffic, in a Shockwave P-51 at a solid 25FPS, which is where I have it locked so the auto-gen will keep up with my flight. Looks great.With the Portland FZ02 scenery + GE Pro + FE + custom plane, all sliders maxed, it drops a few FPS, but still a great flight.I read that intergrated sound cards might not handle some of the add-ons very well (I know I read it, but can't remember where right now). Good sound cards are pretty cheap these days, might be worth looking into.

1. You may want to get Ultimate Terrain.2.this freeware Real Environment Professional http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?DLID=...hor=&CatID=root3. Active Sky.4. All Megasceneries and Fly Tampa Airports and FlightZones.5. Ground Environment ProManny

One of the best addons I think I've got is "Diskeeper". I did a full defrag as part of pc optimization just after getting FSX, and found it made a huge difference. It runs in the background, automatically defragging.I think you might be able to up your proc to a 3.6 gig unit (or overclock it, I don't know how it is to overclock). The 800XT is also a good card, but it might be a little "pushed" in running two monitors. This can be overclocked a bit, too.Other than that, it's a pretty good machine. I had ASv6, UT Canada/Alaska, Flight Environment, both FZ01 &2, all FlyTampa, running on a similar (but homebuilt w X1600XT card) machine to yours, and it was quite adequate: you certainly can't run 100% traffic and expect good fps around KSEA, and you may not have Dawn/Dusk blending on, or Extendad Terrain Textures on, and some of the other sliders will be down a hair, - but traffic is really the only big stopper. ASv6 should work ok, too, but it does create better clouds, better overcast, etc., and the tendency is to use them! The difference with the high-end machines is the incredible jump with FS9. Frames are wherever you want to set them, and just to be clear - I NEED my addons for FS Ten; so until they're created or updated, then I'll still do most of my flying with 9. I didn't expect this bonus.

Can't go wrong with AS. Perhaps I'm not that well informed, but FE doesn't offer any automated interaction with AS, does it?That's what I like about AS + GE Pro. It may take a while to configure everything for the best results, but once you've got that figured out, it'll take your breath away and fully automated.I run AS. I manually download the latest weather (you can enable automatic updates, but I keep my weather for the entire FS session), I fetch a couple of reports and do my flightplanning in FS Build, then I import the flightplan in AS, hit Refresh and AS will generate the weather and automatically submit a fantastic combination of ASG textures and GE Pro textures (I prefer GE Pro sky over ASG sky).

Yup. AS weather using FE clouds. "It may take a while to configure everything for the best results, but once you've got that figured out, it'll take your breath away and fully automated." - Hah! Understatement of the year!!, but it's about what I do too.

>Yup. AS weather using FE clouds.Yeah, but auto-submitted by AS like with ASG (weather influenced)?

>Hey Kendall,>>Just FYI, my AMD64-3000/2GigRam/7800GS runs GE Pro and FE at>1280x1024 with all sliders maxed, including traffic, in a>Shockwave P-51 at a solid 25FPS, which is where I have it>locked so the auto-gen will keep up with my flight. Looks>great.>>With the Portland FZ02 scenery + GE Pro + FE + custom plane,>all sliders maxed, it drops a few FPS, but still a great>flight.>>I read that intergrated sound cards might not handle some of>the add-ons very well (I know I read it, but can't remember>where right now). Good sound cards are pretty cheap these>days, might be worth looking into.Hi C1, You're right on the mark with the integrated sound - I almost bought an XFI card the other night, only to find out most of the features (like EAX) might be renedered useless while using Vista because of the way it processes sound differently than XP. I held off, but should just pickup a cheapy for the time being as I notice a definate stuttering when ATC comes alive.Glad to hear the FPS hit seems minimal on your rig and you're enjoying your new toys. Are you able to solve the cloud FPS issue at all by using FE? Thanks again for the reply.Regards, KendallDell 8400 3.2 GHZ H.T.800 FSB/2MB L22 GB 533 DDR2X800XT 256MB/Catalyst driver - 6.9's6x Adaptive AA/16x HQ A/FIntegrated SoundDual Monitor: Dell 2405/1905CH Yoke/Pedals

Well, if more EYE CANDY is what you're after, why mess with FS2004? FSX is Eye Candy Nirvana. That's what the various forums seem to be saying.