Hi,To date most of the changes I have made to FSX has been to buy the Acceleration expansion and download re-paint for existing aircraft. I have tried a number of free downloadable aircraft, but most of it has left me a little under-whelmed, albetit very impressed by peoples efforts - so hats off to those people, please keep at it! I have recently started looking more into retail/payware add-ons and recently purchased the CaptainSim C130, which is very good.Anyway, I'm also interested in payware options for add-ons that will improve the visual appearance of the virtual world but to be honest there seems to be so may different products out there that I have become rather lost and confused as to what products offer what kind of improvements and at what cost.So my questions are...

1. What kinds of add-ons are there for improving the appearance of the virtual world in FSX (i.e. replacement textures etc.)?
2. What benefits or limitations does each type of add-on have?
3. Are there any widely accepted add-ons that are regarded as must have or well worth having within the FSX community?
4. Are there any particular downsides to any of the add-ons, e.g. do they hit performance badly?

Ideally what I want from scenery type add-ons is to...

• Improve upon the realistic appearance of the virual worlds surface.
• More realistic looking landscapes and cities, e.g. natural land surfaces looking more realistic and man-made structures like roads etc. being more accurately placed etc.
• I tend to use realistic weather whenever I fly in FSX, but find the weather effects to seem a little weak, for example even when flying in a thunder storm the storm always feels kind of remote if that makes sense.
• Obviously I would not like to reduce frame rates drastically, so any add-on needs to have a good benefit against cost of performance.
• Likewise I'd like to use cost effective add-ons, scenery for specfic airports seems like it could get rather expensive?

I have the following system...

• Processor: Intel Quad Core 2 Q9550 (over clocked to 3.4 Ghz)
• Motherboard: Asus P5Q Deluxe
• Memory: 4Gb DDR
• GFX Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280
• Monitor: Samsung SyncMaster 226BW (running at native resolution of 1680 X 1050)
• Sound Card: Creative X-Fi Audio Processor (WDM)
• OS: Vista Home Premium (SP2)
• Game: FSX Deluxe edition with Accleration Pack.

Many thanks for any replies I receive. :(

I will keep this simple ASA (Active Sy Advanced), X-Graphics, REX (Real Environment Xtreme), FEX (Flight Environment X), GEX (Ground Environment X), UTX (Ultimate Terrain X USA, Canada, Europe), MyTraffic X, Ultimate Traffic II, SceneryTech Landclass products, Cloud9 Landclass products, FSGenesis Landclass, FSGenesis (Terrain Mesh).Those are some of the top addons for making FSX more realistic and immersive. You can find loads of posts on AVSIM regarding all of these addons.Regards,Bob Modrowski

I will keep this simple ASA (Active Sy Advanced), X-Graphics, REX (Real Environment Xtreme), FEX (Flight Environment X), GEX (Ground Environment X), UTX (Ultimate Terrain X USA, Canada, Europe), MyTraffic X, Ultimate Traffic II, SceneryTech Landclass products, Cloud9 Landclass products, FSGenesis Landclass, FSGenesis (Terrain Mesh).Those are some of the top addons for making FSX more realistic and immersive. You can find loads of posts on AVSIM regarding all of these addons.Regards,Bob Modrowski

Thanks for the reply Bob.I have naturally seen a number of these products mentioned in various threads, but with such a bewildering list of add-ons I've been finding it a bit difficult to group the various products into categories, i.e. which of these are effectively doing the same thing, but created by different companies. For example GEX and UTX, are they equivalent products? I thought it this thread might prove useful for other people like myself who are fairly new to FSX. Once I know what product does what and what other products are for the same purpose, then I'd be more sucessful in determining which products I should possibly buy with a view to them giving me the most comprehensive coverage of improvement within the game. :( :(

Thanks for the reply Bob.I have naturally seen a number of these products mentioned in various threads, but with such a bewildering list of add-ons I've been finding it a bit difficult to group the various products into categories, i.e. which of these are effectively doing the same thing, but created by different companies. For example GEX and UTX, are they equivalent products? I thought it this thread might prove useful for other people like myself who are fairly new to FSX. Once I know what product does what and what other products are for the same purpose, then I'd be more sucessful in determining which products I should possibly buy with a view to them giving me the most comprehensive coverage of improvement within the game. :( :(

Blitzer,I'm not trying to be rude. This question has been asked numerous times and thus been answered numerous times. If you take a little time to search AVSIM and research the products you will know what each brings to the table. Here are some links to the products websites to get you started (and search AVSIM as well!!). BTW GEX and UTX are not the same as you will soon see. :( Active Sky AdvancedX GraphicsReal Environment XtremeFlight Environment XGround Environment XUltimate TerrainMyTrafffic XUltimate Traffic IISceneryTech LandclassCloud9 LandclassFSGenesis

To some extent it depends what and where you like to fly, and especially at what altitude you like to fly. So, over and above considering what products to get hold of, you should also carefully consider exactly what you want, and choose accordingly based on that alone. What everyone else considers a 'must have', might not be a must have at all for your own preferred type of flying.If it is mainly general aviation aircraft you prefer, then VFR photo-realistic terrain will obviously be a possible consideration, but then again, if you like to fly at fairly low level in GA aircraft, such as in helicopters and older biplane types, then VFR add-ons start to show a few cracks in the concept, since they tend to look a bit crappy when you get very low down, where you are effectively looking at aerial photographs from a very oblique angle. So you could find that the add-ons which are not necessarily photo-realistic, but enhance the default terrain's capabilities are preferable, by that I mean things such as FS Scene, which soups-up the default tiling and terrain system, making it look better overall without resorting to photo-realistic pictures of the actual area in the real world. There are one or two such programs which give you better and more optimised autogen scenery too, so those may be worth a look. This might be a wiser choice if you are not flying in the US. US aerial photographic survey data is considered 'public domain' which means it is freely available for developers to use, but many other countries are not so fortunate in that respect. So choosing to go one way or the other might also be dependent on that aspect of things, especially if you want to use freeware stuff, which is a more feasible concept when the aerial data is free.A consideration to bear in mind with all that, is if you want to use VFR navigation realistically, since that requires genuine features of the real world to be in the right place so you can compare what you see out of the window with what is on your map in the cockpit, whether that is in electronic or paper form. For that you could choose a third option, which is the kind of add-on that attempts to accurately portray the typical stuff VFR pilots will navigate by, such as the road and rail networks. There are several add-ons which attempt to accurately place those features. They are not the prettiest, but for emulating real VFR flight where you have to identify turn points on the ground, they do make things a bit easier, although of course photo-realistic terrain can also manage that, since it is a picture of the real earth's surface.An interesting hybrid of the two concepts is FS Altitude. Although it is geared to looking good and realistic at the kind of flight levels airliners tend to whizz around at (and it does look amazing), what it also does, is gradually kick in those textures as you climb to those heights, so FSX switches to using 3D scenery when you get down lower. This means it does a better job of trying to give you the best of both worlds, for low and high level flight. It is fairly expensive scenery, but it is a more sophisticated solution to having things look good at a variety of different distances.Where weather is concerned, you have two things to consider. There are weather add-ons intended to replace the default FS weather system, and there are ones which simply replace the visuals. The former type is geared towards better interpreting the METAR reports which FS uses to create the weather you get in FS, the latter are concerned with how the clouds will look. So depending on what you desire, you could choose one of those types, or both. The visual aspect usually comes down to how you think the clouds look in a particular product; some are geared towards realism, others are aimed at looking spectacularly beautiful, so that's one add-on where you can judge them from screenshots. Where the actual weather generation add-ons are concerned, you can simply look for what features you would like. Some can add wake turbulence simulation and things like that, others make a big show of updating things at a faster pace than the default FS weather downloads, so again look for what matters to you in those products.If you want to add a lot of realism to airports but think that could end up being costly (which indeed it could), you might also want to consider something that will let you place or create your own scenery. There are many of those, from GMax and FSDS and Sketchup 3D modeling programs, which with a bit of effort you can use to create your own masterpieces. Or there are the simpler 'drag and drop' types of scenery enhancement tools, such as Runway 12, EZ, Instant Scenery etc. Some of these types of programs are free, but all of them can generally use a large library of 3D objects that you can simply drop into FS to make things look a bit more alive, so you don't always have to be an artistic genius to use them. Then you have things like Airport Design Editor, more geared towards creating airports from scratch, but still able to be used to tart up ones already in FS.Al

Thanks very much for the pointers. I have since downloaded and installed the following, but may add more...

• GEX - USA/Canada
• REX - Clouds and water effects are good, but finding the weather engine quite weak.
• UTX - USA
• UTX - Canada (waiting to be installed/paid for)
• UTX - Europe (waiting to be installed/paid for)

As I said I'm finding REX a bit weak when it comes to weather effects. I was hoping for example to create a big thunder storm, but all I could seem to get it to do was give me overcast/foggy skies with broken cloud and if I was luck a little rain. I've been thinking of getting ASA to beef it up in this respect but to be honest I'm not sure I understand how ASA woudl utilise the clouds etc. from REX? Before REX and when using the built in weather system in FSX I would pretty much always leave the weather set to realtime updates every 15 minutes.I've also been considering FsPassengers to give me more to actually do once I'm actually using FSX, at first I thought it might be a bit silly, but on reflection it might bring a bit of a "game" element to FSX. I'm not one for all-out needing or wanting to know what each button and switch is for but I do enjoy flying different aircraft in varying locations, I'm hoping FsPassengers would bring a new element to the sim for me.Beyond this I've also been looking at FsGenisis, although unfortunately I can't seem to get their website to work ATM, but am I right in saying it basically alters the "shape" of the virtual world's surface to make it more realistic?I should really stop, but I'm also considering the UTX equivalent for Australia (the name escapes me right now) and possibly the Aerosoft F16! I'm on a bit of a spending spree where FSX is concerned ATM - can you tell! :( Of course, if anyone has any views on the items I am considering I'd be more than happy to hear your views. :(

If you want more "to do" while actually flying then VA Financials gives you all the tools you want to run a VA with virtual passengers, routing, stats, etc. If you want to haul boxes around then Air Hauler (from Just Flight) is a very good piece of kit.

Blitzer,FSGenesis is terrain mesh and you are corect it will more accurately depict the terrain elevation of the ground (this is indeed a must have). The software you are talking of for Australia is FTX (Full Terrain Experience) by Orbx. It is also a very nice addon. If you are having issues with REX, its best to ask for some assitance directly in their support forum as their support is top notch and you will receive quick assistance. Keep in mind that the new version REX 2.0 will be out very soon and it will be a major change to the REX you now have. If you keep it up your soon going to be broke!!! :( Bob

FSGenesis is terrain mesh and you are corect it will more accurately depict the terrain elevation of the ground (this is indeed a must have). The software you are talking of for Australia is FTX (Full Terrain Experience) by Orbx. It is also a very nice addon. If you are having issues with REX, its best to ask for some assitance directly in their support forum as their support is top notch and you will receive quick assistance. Keep in mind that the new version REX 2.0 will be out very soon and it will be a major change to the REX you now have. If you keep it up your soon going to be broke!!! :(

Hi Bob,Doh! I wish I knew that REX was about to be updated. :( As for FsGenesis, I have since managed to loo at the website, but I'm really not finding it easy to actually identify the product in question? I'm assuming this would be the minimum, or is it best to go for the bundle?..http://www.fsgenesis.com/Merchant2/merchan...tegory_Code=WRXBundle...http://www.fsgenesis.com/Merchant2/merchan...amp;FootSteps=1And yes, at this rate I will have spent a whole pile of money on FSX! :(

Hi Bob,Doh! I wish I knew that REX was about to be updated. :( As for FsGenesis, I have since managed to loo at the website, but I'm really not finding it easy to actually identify the product in question? I'm assuming this would be the minimum, or is it best to go for the bundle?..http://www.fsgenesis.com/Merchant2/merchan...tegory_Code=WRXBundle...http://www.fsgenesis.com/Merchant2/merchan...amp;FootSteps=1And yes, at this rate I will have spent a whole pile of money on FSX! :(

Blitzer,Do not worry, the REX 2.0 update is free to all current owners of REX. If you plan to fly FSX all over the globe then the FSGenesis Bundle is the best way to go and the most cost effective.

The terrain mesh is the most important for realistic looking hills and mountains. FSGenesis or FSdreamscapes both do very high resolution meshes, which I consider invaluable. Check here: http://realenvironmentxtreme.com/forum/ind...hp?topic=3349.0 for a little example of how good you can get FSX looking with the right addons. As the other guys said, decide what type of flying you want to do and choose accordingly. Myself, I love the photoscenery. And be warned, there is a completely huge selection of great products out there, you can and will spend a fortune ( I just discovered FSX about 4 months ago and am already about