HiI try to make the world look more "beautiful" in my FS9. I am flying literally everywhere on the planet, from Scandinavia to the Cape, from French Polynesia to Siberia, from Alaska to PAtagonia. The Caribbean, the Himalayas, etc. Really everywhereI've invested a lot in addon airports, and I installed all of the Ultimate Terrain addons.Now I am looking for:1) Better mesh for the entire globe. I am hesitating between FS Genesis and FS GLobal. Both look decent, to a point that I cannot see the difference in the product. However, FS Global seems much easier to handle as it doesn't require many separate downloads to cover the entire globe. Am I right in assuming that FS Global is a "one stop installation" product? Is there any difference between FS Genesis and FS Global in their coverage or LOD?2) Better textures. I am fed up with the entire globe looking like some part of the US. So how about that Ground Environment package? I've seen some really damn good textures for various regions done by VOZ, but then that's only Australia. Would Ground Environment be the right thing for me? Is there anything else better out in the market? Is this a "one stop installation", or do I need to download and/or manually manipulate some files before flying?3) Flight Environment looks great, too. Any thoughts whether it is worthwhile having? I do run Active Sky - are the clouds by FE that much better? The water surely looks nicer.Some questions for all of these three products: are they compatible with each other? Are they compatible with Active Sky? Are they compatible with Ultimate Terrain? Are there any compatibility issues with leading airport addon products (Flytampa, Aerosoft, FS Dreamteam, Imaginesim, UK 2000, Overland/Japanese Airports, etc.)?Thanks for any hints.

FSGenesis, Utimate Terrain and Active Sky Advanced all work together very effectively.I also have Birds Eye View (BEV) layered on top of everything. BEV is ony for the USA.

HiI try to make the world look more "beautiful" in my FS9. I am flying literally everywhere on the planet, from Scandinavia to the Cape, from French Polynesia to Siberia, from Alaska to PAtagonia. The Caribbean, the Himalayas, etc. Really everywhereI've invested a lot in addon airports, and I installed all of the Ultimate Terrain addons.Now I am looking for:1) Better mesh for the entire globe. I am hesitating between FS Genesis and FS GLobal. Both look decent, to a point that I cannot see the difference in the product. However, FS Global seems much easier to handle as it doesn't require many separate downloads to cover the entire globe. Am I right in assuming that FS Global is a "one stop installation" product? Is there any difference between FS Genesis and FS Global in their coverage or LOD?2) Better textures. I am fed up with the entire globe looking like some part of the US. So how about that Ground Environment package? I've seen some really damn good textures for various regions done by VOZ, but then that's only Australia. Would Ground Environment be the right thing for me? Is there anything else better out in the market? Is this a "one stop installation", or do I need to download and/or manually manipulate some files before flying?3) Flight Environment looks great, too. Any thoughts whether it is worthwhile having? I do run Active Sky - are the clouds by FE that much better? The water surely looks nicer.Some questions for all of these three products: are they compatible with each other? Are they compatible with Active Sky? Are they compatible with Ultimate Terrain? Are there any compatibility issues with leading airport addon products (Flytampa, Aerosoft, FS Dreamteam, Imaginesim, UK 2000, Overland/Japanese Airports, etc.)?Thanks for any hints.

3) Flight Environment looks great, too. Any thoughts whether it is worthwhile having? I do run Active Sky - are the clouds by FE that much better? The water surely looks nicer.

I have both and I actually prefer the ASG clouds to FE's although admittedly I haven't tried each and every option available in both apps. FE's water is a keeper but I prefer the custom sky textures generated by GE Pro. I don't care for the way FE installs everything as a package rather than giving you the option of installing only the water textures leaving the sky and cloud textures as they are for example. It's easy to go into the program's installation folder and copy over the textures manually however, which is what I do.Some good landclass will probably do more towards preventing "the entire globe looking like some part of the US" than textures actually, but you should get GE Pro none the less. You can create your own custom ground & sky texture sets, adjusting brightness, contrast, hue & saturation, etc to suit whatever appeals to you.I know nothing about FSGlobal and I'm sure it's a fine package but FSGenesis is also a "one stop install" if you purchase the DVD sets, and the shipping is free. I bought the North America 2 DVD set and with that you get landclass, some high detail 9.6m mesh covering certain areas of interest (Hawaii, Yosemite, Yellowstone, etc), and a free "world buffer mesh" DVD for $30 USD. That's like 12.5 GB of self installing data on 3 DVDs and it arrived at the post office much quicker than I could have downloaded it. Since I used and enjoyed Justin's freeware 38m USA mesh for years, I wouldn't have even considered buying mesh from someone else when I finally decided to upgrade to payware.Jim

Just a note about the elevation mesh. I use FSGlobal which is a very nice package. BUT, I think that if I were you, I'd use Justin's FSGenesis because he actively supports it. He seems to be "into" FS9, (like most of the people at Avsim and this group), and a part of the FS community. He also provides regular updates and support which all in all, can prove to be more valuable to your simming experience in the long run.If I ever do decide to change over, I will go with Justin's software next time.Mark

FolksThanks a lot. That was INCREDIBLY helfpul info. I know what to get now:- FS Genesis (instead of FS Global)- Ground Environment Pro- Flight Environment Pro

Some good landclass will probably do more towards preventing "the entire globe looking like some part of the US" than textures actually, but you should get GE Pro none the less. You can create your own custom ground & sky texture sets, adjusting brightness, contrast, hue & saturation, etc to suit whatever appeals to you.

Jim, you are very right, thanks for pointing that out again (and no offense to the US ;-) ). I am just wondering: is there any good product that does that? Ultimate Terrain is probably best, but that covers only Europe and North America. VOZ is great for Australia. But other parts of the world, is there something?Thanks again.

There are bits & pieces (landclass) available here and there but outside the US I don't know of any all-inclusive landclass that's available for the rest of the world. Maybe someone else can chime in with an idea or you could search "landclass" in the file libraries and you'll find a few specific areas that are nicely done.I've found that the UT landclass is basically just the default with enhanced city areas (UT doesn't claim it to be anything more so I'm not complaining here). For the region I live in anyway it's not very accurate, the cities are far too large and urban, and it doesn't do anything at all for rural areas that I can see.I'm a low and slow GA flyer for the most part and I rarely get more than an hour or two by Skyhawk away from my home base, so I've been using Jim Kier's LWMViewer2 and Google Earth as a referance to make my own landclass for my local area. This is a tedious process but very rewarding. I can landclass an area roughly 10 NM square in around an hour or so and the result rivals a photoscenery for accuracy but without the slow loading times and lack of autogen. It's far too slow and clumsy to accurately landclass large land masses, but for me, where my idea of a good time in the sim is to depart my hometown airport in the Carenado Skyhawk, fly up the valley and touch & go at a few of the local duster strips, then return for some pattern circuits before putting it back in the hangar, this transformation has been amazing.There was a "VOZ plug" available at one time which was a tutorial that detailed downloading, setup, and use of LWMViewer2 which I believe is still on the VOZ site but unfortunately no longer linked from any of their pages. I still have a link somewhere, if you're interested I'll dig it up for you tonight after work.Jim

With Ground Environment you won't have to worry about the whole world looking like the US. GE did a good job in making different areas of the world have the appropriate feel and look.