Ultimate Terrain - I'm a Bit Confused As To Exactly What It Is.

[Chuck_B 2]

I've only been simming for about 4 months now (every free moment, it seems!), so I'm sorry if this is a very basic question but is Ultimate Terrain designed to simply clean up and refine innacurate geographic features in FS9 - coastlines, rivers, lakes and their correct placement, and such - or is it supposed to enhance the look of my roads, towns, cities and other, man made scenery too?After some research and based in part on comments in a recent thread here I went ahead and bought, downloaded and installed Ultimate Terrain USA and Alaska/Canada with great expectation. After configuring the system to enable all UT features and textures, I opened up my FS2004 and, after it loaded up the new scenery, went straight to my home airport - South Jersey Regl. KVAY, I started up a Cessna and flew around South Jersey and Philadelphia at between 600 and 1200 ft and I was really disappointed. There are definately more roads and lakes in my scenery now, but most of the roads still look like dirt pathways, and that's what I was looking forward to enhancing the most. The Alaskan mountains looked good, but they looked good before, and my scenery definately doesn't look nearly as good as some of the screen shots here and on the UT websites.The only thing I'm sure of is my system seems to be taking a 5 - 7 fpm hit now, especially at night. I haven't started tweaking things yet, but I was far from 'blown away' when I started to fly in the semi-rural areas of South Jersey, and approach and landing to KMCO Orlando, although pretty, had me down to 12 - 14 fpm with 50% AI traffic. I already have Ground Environment Pro, FS Genesis, and Real Environment Pro, and I thought UT would be the best addon left for me.I'm sure I'm doing something wrong or was expecting the wrong results, but as always, thanks for any insight you all might be able to provide.Regards,Chuck B.

[boshar 6]

UT replaces existing roads and waterways with geographicly accurate versions. You also get secondary roads and trails and waterways that are not in FS9. Last but not least cities are more accurately placed.You can switch of UT's special nightlighting if you find the FPS hit to great. Personaly I also disable minor roads because its to much road in the area's I fly in.You won't get improved mountains with UT you would need a mesh add-on like FS Genesis has http://www.fsgenesis.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc to improve the countours of the mountains.Its sounds like you are looking for improvements only photo scenery can give. Maybe its worth to checkout http://www.megascenery.com/ to see if they have one of the area's you like to fly in.

[Chuck_B 2]

Thanks. I was afraid of that -- I was looking at the photos from their websites and some articles I found and was trying to achieve the same sort of look.Personally, I don't need that much geographic accuracy at this point -- I just want the nicest looking sim experience possible. Ground Environment Pro, FS Genesis, and Real Environment Pro have done a really nice job for me with that up to this point, and photo realistic scenery or Mega Scenery just doesn't seem worth it to me yet -- that would bring my system to it's knees.Thanks again for your time.Chuck

[dfish 1]

You can choose different road textures from inside UT's setup utility. Dave FisherCYYZP4 Prescott 3.2e 478p 800mhz 1mg CPUP4P800SE Asus Motherboard2.5 gig PC3200 DDR RAM 400MHZGeForce 7600GT/512 OC'dMaxtor 80 Gig ATA 133 HD x2WDC WD800 80 Gig HDAntec 500watt true powerSharp 19 inch LCD MonitorLogitech Extreme 3D pro Joystickhttp://fs2crew.com/linepilot.jpghttp://www.jdtllc.com/images/rcv4bannersupporter.jpg

[buzzbee 52]

Ultimate Terrain really helps with road rails, rivers and coastlines and city placement compared to default, but it does not really add or change much outside of the cities. If you want to improve the look and have a decent computer, I would recommend active sky and FS Genesis Mesh and FS Genesis landclass. That along with what you have already, will make for a nice flying environment. I added worldwide mesh from FS Genesis and Active sky just before the Round the World race and it was quite a nice improvement. You can also generate more texture sets improve the textures over the scenery.Also, look for Holger's Glacier Bay Scenery freeware in the library. I have spent hours just buzzing around up there. Cheers!

[Chuck_B 2]

Thanks to everyone for taking time to clear this up for me -- I have requested -- and received! -- a refund from Flight1 (knock me over with a feather: a REFUND on downloadable software! I am IMPRESSED, Flight1! New customer for life!)I do have both FSGenesis Mesh and landclass, and I am very interested in Active Sky, but I'm not sure my system will take it. I have a Celeron 3.2 ghz processor, 2 gig of RAM and ATI 256k 1300 Pro card -- all bought right before I got FS for Christmas when my old motherboard died and I needed a replacement fast -- and FS2004 is running sweetly right now. Active Sky would be great but still . . . that Celeron processor . . .:-roll Thanks again!Chuck

[alastairmonk 0]

Hi Chuck,If you're looking for "visual improvement" then take a look at GE Pro. This replaces the default FS2004 textures with better ones. It can additionally match the colouration of these textures to the degree of cloud cover using separate texture sets, but even if you only ever use one set its still an improvement. As the default textures are replaced the changes are global. However it won't affect which textures FS2004 chooses to apply (in terms of whether its desert, woodland, urban etc.) For this you will need upgraded Landclass scenery to better define what is placed where. For the USA, this can be done with the FSGenesis Landclass package. Elsewhere, there are many landclass packs available in the main libraries.Alastair

[Chuck_B 2]

Thanks for the advice for Alastair! -- as I said earlier I have GE Pro and FS Genesis and you're right -- they made a huge difference and that's why I decided (for now, at least) that I probably didn't need Ultimate Terrain.Since uninstalling UT, though, it seems that my FS9 has reverted to it's 'natural state' -- ground seems to load up in "squares" and with different shades. Do you think I need to reinstall GE Pro and all my FS Genesis landclass (I have it all -- I bought the 3 year membership). Or is there a setting I should change (back) in FS9 that would save me the trouble?Thanks again!Chuck

[JSkorna 137]

Hi Chuck,Active Sky has 8 detail levels of clouds for you to try, and you can purchase through Flight1 so as if things don't work out........Thanks!Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/Active Sky V6 Development Team Active Sky V6 Proud SupporterHiFi Beta TeamRadar Contact Supporter: http://www.jdtllc.com/AirSource Member: http://www.air-source.us/FSEconomy Member:http://www.fseconomy.com/

[alastairmonk 0]

Hi Chuck,Sorry - I missed you stating that you had GE Pro already.No need to reinstall GE Pro, as the next time you use it it will write another set of textures to FS2004.I suspect that your "loading up in squares" is nothing to to do with UT or the FSGenesis mesh, as the textures and FSGenesis Landclass layer should be independant of whether you have UT installed or not.However using UT will have renamed large numbers of files a couple of times as they were first deactivated then reactivated on uninstallation of UT, and possibly have become fragmented. Try defragmenting the drive and see if the problem clears up. Similarly, installing the set of GE Pro textures will replace a large number of default texture files, which will definitely cause fragmentation.Alastair

[Chuck_B 2]

Thanks, Alastair! You bring up a good point -- defragging the GE Pro drive.In the past month since first installing GE Pro, I have as yet been unable to completely defrag my FS9 drive (they're both running from my second' "D" Drive) because when my defrag program gets to the GE Pro file -- which is now over 3.8 gig big, it slows wayyyy down on it's bmp files. On Monday I let it run over 24 hours on the GE Pro file alone and it still didn't finish! I use Iobit's Free Defrag program and it's an excellent utility and I have never had a problem otherwise. Another user here said he was told by the GE Pro developer that this defrag issue is a bug in the GE Pro software, but my Iobit is definately working on the files, just taking too long to grind through them.Have you experienced this? How do you handle it?Thanks again for your time!Chuck

[alastairmonk 0]

Hi Chuck,I'll assume that you mean that you have a GE Pro folder that is 3.8Gb rather than any single file ! My Texture Sets folder is a similar 3.3GbAs for defragging, I use Diskeeper 10 Home, which continually monitors and defrags "on the fly" so there is never much defragmentation and each pass on my ~ 125Gb FS2004 drive only takes a minute or so, even after an installation of a new GE Pro texture set.Details here. This is for the slightly more up to date version, Diskeeper 2007:http://www.diskeeper.com/diskeeper/home/di...dnm4555vkj3hb45Alastair