Low 'n Slow is a land class upgrade for Flight Sim X that will accurately recreate New York State, including many of the towns, cites, and of course the stunning upstate coutryside.Below are some comparison shots between actual Google satellite photos, Low 'n' Slow - New York State, and the default Flight Sim X scenery.Google satellite photo of Central New York:There are clouds that obscure some of the detail in the above photo.The only other third party software I have running for the below screen shots is Ultimate Terrain X - UTX is a must have in my opinion!Low 'n Slow - New York State:The above shot was taken even before the product was finished.Default Flight Sim X Scenery:Not even close!Low 'n Slow - New York State is going to be free!The product is nearing completion but I need a couple of people to test it to make sure everything is working as it should and also to get some feedback.Send me a PM if you want to beta test it.Thanks.

Low 'n Slow is a land class upgrade for Flight Sim X that will accurately recreate New York State, including many of the towns, cites, and of course the stunning upstate coutryside.Send me a PM if you want to beta test it.Thanks.

Looking great (from far above). As shown from the sat pic as compared to low 'n slow (mmm sounds odd) I seem to miss some kind of rocky landclass or am I totally wrong?

There aren't any significantly large rocky areas in NY that I know of. It's pretty much just a lot forest, fields, hills, mountains, water + a few large cities and many hundreds of small cities and towns. - what the in-game satelite photo doesn't show is the hundreds of small cities and towns which are now accurately sized, shaped, and positioned.I absolutely LOVE Upstate New York and after being sorely dissappointed with a couple of popular payware landclass products, I decided to take a stab at it myself. New York State finally feels like home in FSX, and I want to share it with everybody else.

Looking great (from far above). As shown from the sat pic as compared to low 'n slow (mmm sounds odd) I seem to miss some kind of rocky landclass or am I totally wrong?

There aren't any significantly large rocky areas in NY that I know of. It's pretty much just a lot forest, fields, hills, mountains, water + a few large cities and many hundreds of small cities and towns. - what the in-game satelite photo doesn't show is the hundreds of small cities and towns which are now accurately sized, shaped, and positioned.I absolutely LOVE Upstate New York and after being sorely dissappointed with a couple of popular payware landclass products, I decided to take a stab at it myself. New York State finally feels like home in FSX, and I want to share it with everybody else.

Okay let me rephrase my question. What's the brownish stuff in the sat pic?

Low 'n Slow is a land class upgrade for Flight Sim X that will accurately recreate New York State, including many of the towns, cites, and of course the stunning upstate coutryside...........................Send me a PM if you want to beta test it.

Larry was kind enough to advance me his beta of this landclass project. First and foremost I want to acknowledge how easy he made the set-up, and how clear and concise the instruction are for those that have UT, GEX, etc. As I do.My first reaction on slewing up over various areas is very positive. So, I decided to take some screen shots to compare against various products. This is a great example of how important landclass really is, as it can make a tremendous difference. These shots were all taken at about 12,000 ft. The various products represented are my personal favorite Cloud9 'xclass', SceneryTech's US, the landclass provided with Ultimate Terrain, and finally this 'NY State' landclass.I hope this provides everyone and idea of how regional projects as this are better than 'whole country' files, that are 'hit and miss' depending on where you are flying.First up is a series of shots above Lake Placid, and the order of the attached screens are Cloud9, SceneryTech, Ultimate Terrain, then finally, this NY State landclass:

Second is a series of shots above The Finger Lakes area, and, again, the order of the attached screens are Cloud9, SceneryTech, Ultimate Terrain, then finally, this NY State landclass:

Third is a series of shots above the Plattsburg area, and, again, the order of the attached screens are SceneryTech, UT, New York State, then finally, Cloud9 landclass: (Not sure why, but these images got 'scrambled' from the order I uploaded)

And fourth, is a series of shots above Mountain Top just SW of the Albany area; and, again, the order of the attached screens are Cloud9, SceneryTech, UT, then finally this New York State landclass:

And finally, an additional couple shots above Mountain Top. This shows how much better Larry's file represented the area vs Cloud9, (again, my personal favorite in most areas). The first is Cloud9, and the second is Larry's NY State. Cloud9's seemed 'patchy' when I turned around and looked north, where as Larry's seem to 'feel' much more realistic:

I just want to let people know a little about what Low 'n Slow New York is and isn't trying to accomplish. My goal is to recreate the terrain of New York state as accurately as possible, so when I look out the window of my airplane, I'm getting a fairly good impression of what that area actually looks like in real life. Before I go any farther I want to say a few things about Ultimate Terrain X. UTX is much different from other land class products like Scenerytech and FSGlobal. UTX main focus (at least for the U.S. version) seems to be on lakes, rivers, roads, rail lines, bridges, shorelines, golf courses, cities, + numerous other details. The data UTX uses is extremely accurate - I wouldn't even consider flying without it. The U.S. version doesn't really seem to address general land classifications outside of towns and cites. Low 'n Slow New York State was designed from the get-go to work with, and compliment UTX, so it focuses more on land class assignments, and it also reworks hundreds of small towns and cities in New York state. Redoing the land class assignments with the kind of accuracy I wanted meant hand placing tens of thousands of tiles individually in an attempt to match the real terrain as closely as possible. For rural areas I had to find land class tiles that would represent the types of vegetation and farmland found throughout the state. Then, while viewing satellite imagery (zoomed way in so I had a clear view of an area), I had to find a tile with the proper proportion of trees and fields for each given 1.2 km area. This process was repeated for the entire state. For some areas, even that didn't provide acceptable results, particularly in the south central part of the state where all the densely packed hills and valleys form a complex maze. In many of those areas I resorted to hand drawn vectors, because the 1.2 km tiles didn't fit very well in the narrow valleys where most of the towns and farm land reside. The downside to hand drawn vectors is, if you aren't carefull, you'll end up with a lot of long straight lines that don't blend with the overall terrain very well. That means you have to spend a LOT of time drawing as many nooks and crannies as you can to keep the lines as short as possible. In fact I'm still working hard on the hilly southern areas trying to add more detail to the vectors before I release the final product. Small towns and cities in FSX are a huge challenge. There are land classes available in FSX that are supposed to be used for smaller urban areas, but it's pretty near impossible to get any kind of accuracy using the 1.2 km tiles provided. At a minimum I wanted the towns and cities to be accurately sized, shaped and positioned, so once again I had to resort to hand drawn vectors for most of them. The biggest problem is finding urban tiles in FSX that work well for smaller cities. None of those provided were quite right for what I was trying to accomplish, but I had to make do. I'm not entirely satisfied with the way they look in the game, but at least the towns and cities are about the right size and shape, and in the correct location - if nothing else. I kept the towns and cities separate from the general land class, so if you don't like the way they look, you can turn them off and use the UTX towns and cities instead. If you layer the land class areas as described in the installation instructions you will get the best of both worlds - Low 'n Slow terrain, towns and cites along with UTX custom urban enhancements like industrial areas and cemeteries in addition to the roads, rivers, golf courses - it's amazing how many golf courses there are - and all the other things UTX adds!Again just to show you the big picture, below are more satellite shots comparing Low 'n Slow New York with a couple of popular land class products. Ultimate Terrain X was also active for ALL the screen shots below - except Google of course. Once again Google Satellite for reference:Popular land class #1:No more accurate than the default terrain, it's just wrong in different ways.Popular land class #2Adds some detail but the non-wilderness areas are almost completely devoid of trees.And again Low 'n Slow:I think the overall result is pretty close to the real thing. Of course I am a little biased.I'm open to any suggestions or criticisms.Also please let me know how well the installer is working.Still plugging away at it...Larry

I'm open to any suggestions or criticisms.

No criticisms for the effort you've put forth. The somewhat limited choices in land class make a small project difficult, I shudder to think of the fun you had doing the entire state! Being U.S. based, I always like to think of land class not in 1.2km squares, but rather in 3/4 of a mile chunks.Congrats on what you've accomplished.

VERY nice so far, impressed with the change over my current LC, would love to see Quebec province done the same way :( Will investigate some more tonight, Thanks!!!

UTX is much different from other land class products like Scenerytech and FSGlobal

FS Global is not landclass, it's mesh. Maybe you wanted to say Cloud9?

You are correct. I didn't mean FS Global, I actually meant to say FS Genesis. Thanks for the correction.Larry

FS Global is not landclass, it's mesh. Maybe you wanted to say Cloud9?

Just a couple screen shots to help illustrate some of the points I made in a previous post regarding the potential benefits and pitfalls of using vector based scenery.The shots were all taken using Fall textures so there would be a lot of contrast.The first picture is hilly area I spent a lot of time on, trying to get the vectors looking as natural as I could by adding as much detail as possible. The vectors were all drawn over satellite images, so they are very accurately shaped and placed. Below is an area I'm still working on. It's currently a mixture of stock 1.2km tiles as well as some hand drawn vectors. As you can see, vector terrain doesn't blend very well when there isn't enough detail - to many un-natural looking straight lines. And 1.2km square tiles in narrow valleys just look sloppy.This shot is a finished area that's a mixture of vectors, a few tiles, as well as city vectors. The overall result is pretty good, but there are still a few lines that don't look quite right. The city looks pretty good, and follows the valley as it does in real life, but it also illustrates a pitfall of vector based towns and cities - some hard edges that don't blend well with the surroundings.