Hello,I have had a membership at FSG for years but I ended up uninstalling their mesh because it had too many conflicts with add on scenery in FS9. I know this is not just a problem with FSG, it is a problem will all add on mesh - it is a trade off between airport plateaus and having detailed mountain ranges (KLAS was the airport that made me ditch mesh)Anyway, seeing as FSX default mesh is 76m, is it likely that I will encounter far less drastic conflicts than I did in FS9? I'd like to install their mesh but again, the massive plateau was too much for me in Vegas.I'd really like to get a gauge of the situation before I install an test it out because I would like to keep the install as clean as possibleThanks,

I know this is not just a problem with FSG, it is a problem will all add on mesh Anyway, seeing as FSX default mesh is 76m,

No, not every addon mesh product causes you to suffer from the plateau effects without some type of remedy. :( The default resolution for the U.S. is 38m in FSX. There have been efforts to "cure" the plateau by cutting out the higher resolution mesh from around the airports, thus causing the very low resolution default mesh to show through. Note, the reason there are no plateaus with the default mesh is because Microsoft also cuts away their high resolution mesh from around the airports, leaving 1km resolution to show through.Any cure of the plateau effects so far has been for large airports, such as KLAS and not the other 100 or so airports that are in Nevada.

So even though the default is 38m, MS adjusted the areas around large airports so the mesh isn't truly accurate. If I add FSG stuff, I will still end up with a large plateau - even if I only add 38m mesh.In FS9, I recall the plateaus appeared even after adding their 308m worldwide mesh which caused me to uninstall add on mesh completly.Can you recommend a product that has made adjustments for large airports? KLAS really was the biggest issue for me - one of my favorite destinations.

So even though the default is 38m, MS adjusted the areas around large airports so the mesh isn't truly accurate. If I add FSG stuff, I will still end up with a large plateau - even if I only add 38m mesh.In FS9, I recall the plateaus appeared even after adding their 308m worldwide mesh which caused me to uninstall add on mesh completly.Can you recommend a product that has made adjustments for large airports? KLAS really was the biggest issue for me - one of my favorite destinations.

HelloFSgenesis V2 mesh does this, and is being worked on to remove the plateausFrom the website"V2 also addresses one of the more prevalent complaints over the years concerning high-resolution terrain mehs add-ons: the plateaus seen at some airports. While this problem is not caused by the high-resolution terrain, per se, but due to the "flat-airport limitation" inherent in all version of flight simulator, we have tackled this problem and solved it at most public-use airports in the continental United States, and are in the process of addressing the problem worldwide. Currently, V2 files are available for the entire continental US. V2 Alaska, Canada, Mexico and Hawaii are currently in production. The rest of the world will follow throughout the summer of 2008.

i have the FSG mesh and V2 does take care of a lot of the problems. you may find 1 or 2 airports are still not done and outside of the US, there is still that issue for now but FSG V2 does make a very big difference, especially on that issue.

So even though the default is 38m, MS adjusted the areas around large airports so the mesh isn't truly accurate. If I add FSG stuff, I will still end up with a large plateau - even if I only add 38m mesh.In FS9, I recall the plateaus appeared even after adding their 308m worldwide mesh which caused me to uninstall add on mesh completly.Can you recommend a product that has made adjustments for large airports? KLAS really was the biggest issue for me - one of my favorite destinations.

The mesh around large, commerial airports is accurate... at 1km resolution (or about 3/4 mile between data points). So it's hard to get any definition at that level of accuracy. Adding in anything sharper than 1km introduces the problems. Since the default, low-res area affects anything and everything, adding any higher resolution also messes with any water bodies (lakes / rivers) that are in the zone.The compromise offered by one vendor is said to include "most" public-use airports. Reno Intl. is cleared out, but Reno/Stead is not. I don't know the true definition of "most", but most of the airports I fly my smaller planes to are still affected by the plateaus. And yes, I am a past customer of another vendor's products. But it would be more appropriate to say most of the larger, commercial oriented airports have had holes punched in the high resolution mesh to allow the low resolution mesh to show through, thus eliminating the plateau effect.But I also do not feel comfortable critiquing another vendor's products or product line. So I shall abstain from here on. But there are and will be alternatives for those, like me, who wanted something better.

I like the FSGenesis mesh in general and I continue to use it. However, I've observed odd effects around some airports in UK and elsewhere since I installed a complete set in FS9 about a year ago. The FSG 'resolution' varies from 23m SRTM in N. America I, to 90m SRTM in Europe. I also have their World Buffer Terrain installed (90m SRTM) but am not exactly sure what this is. I couldn't find out much about it on the FSG website. An example of the odd effects is shown in the screenshot of the approach to Rwy 07 at EGAA (Belfast Aldergrove). I have set the TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=21 as recommended and also=19 without any improvement. The airfield is 267 ft asl and the freshwater lake nearby (the largest in Europe) a few feet lower. The screenshot shows the lake on an elevated plateau with steep sides all the way around. The mesh also produces deep furrows in the landscape which are totally incorrect. These occur in most of the areas I've flown in although the area around EGAA is particularly bad. Both effects are visible in the shot. I have the Belfast Xtreme scenery addon but the problem persists even when this is disabled. What is FSG V2 mesh? Is this available as an upgrade in an FS9 version? Will it solve this problem? Thanks. John

A lot of those issues can be solved by using ADE from ScruffyDuck and creating blend polygons, but that is really a community based type of process...The other issues with either cutting holes in mesh as is the case with any 'plateau fixes' is that many FSX airports are off from their real world location, the question then becomes one of 'what happens when i add photoscenery to it', the flattens will flatten out terrain that shouldn't be flattened...It was expected that a future version of FS would resolve the issue of having to have completely flat runways but with the demise of ACES who knows what the future really holds...I would venture to say though that it's not worth spending years of man hours manually providing custom hand made flatten fixes for the over 24,000+ airports in the FSX world... By the time it would be complete, we'd probably be at FSnext x 2...There are limits to today's technology, unfortunately completely flat airports in MSFS is one of them...

A lot of those issues can be solved by using ADE from ScruffyDuck and creating blend polygons, but that is really a community based type of process...There are limits to today's technology, unfortunately completely flat airports in MSFS is one of them...

Thanks. So, if I understand you correctly the lake is elevated because the airport is not completely flat? I have the ADE program but was not aware that I might use it to correct this mesh problem. I agree, life is too short to tackle 24,000+ airfields but it would be great if I could fix the fifty or so I fly into regularly. John

Thanks. So, if I understand you correctly the lake is elevated because the airport is not completely flat? I have the ADE program but was not aware that I might use it to correct this mesh problem. I agree, life is too short to tackle 24,000+ airfields but it would be great if I could fix the fifty or so I fly into regularly. John

Ah the lakes issue is another matter, there's a couple of approaches that will help with that depending on how you're running your scenery...a) is to use Ultimate Terrain X and either that will resolve most issues or you can use it to quickly turn off all the water flatten featuresB) is to go into your terrain.cfg file and for all water bodies ensure "waterflatten=0"c) if you're using photoscenery and per chance data from Intermap's NEXTMap ProMesh, the water flattens are burned in to the mesh, so the default FSX water flattens can be turned off...The easiest method to deal with water flatten issues though is using Ultimate Terrain X regardless of which high res mesh you have installed as the water bodies are way more accurate.Cheers,Dean.

The easiest method to deal with water flatten issues though is using Ultimate Terrain X regardless of which high res mesh you have installed as the water bodies are way more accurate.

Will Ultimate Terrain 2004 do the same job in FS9? I bought the Canada/Alaska set a few years ago and had to uninstall as I found the coastlines to be seriously wonky in many places - I got waves in the seaside towns and dramatic sci-fi shoreline waterfalls. In those days I ran the default mesh. Now its FSG. Thanks for your help. John

Oh gosh it's been so many years since I've used FS2004 and Ultimate Terrain... Likely your best bet is to reach out to the flight1 ultimate terrain forums and Allen would probably be able to give you a more direct answer...http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_topics.asp?FID=19Cheers,Dean.

Oh gosh it's been so many years since I've used FS2004 and Ultimate Terrain... Likely your best bet is to reach out to the flight1 ultimate terrain forums and Allen would probably be able to give you a more direct answer...

Thanks, Dean