Hi all.I am suprised not much has been spoken about this product on the forums yet. I purchased Part1 the other day and I was amazed at what a difference it makes to the UK photo scenery. Even though the buildings are still flat, having trees and forests and woods accurately laid out all around the terrain really helps your brain think that even the buildings are 3D. As soon as I can afford it I will be getting the other two parts for the rest of the UK. To see trees and bushes accurately following the edges of fields too is great. Really nice addon which was created with the help of Ordnance Survey UK as well.Its just a shame that its such a small company that creates this and other scenery like Scilly islands and Alderney in comparison to OrbX or Aerosoft for example, so please if you have the UK photo scenery, then goto the website and look at some of the screenshots and have a look at some of the other products.www.earthsimulations.comThanks for reading.Craig

Agreed. Nice company, great support, interesting products. Thanks for the tip about the trees - it's time to "unflatten" GB :)

I think it's not much spoken about because it is an addon to an addon which isn't very widespread or popular. So this addon will only appeal to those who already own the UK photoreal scenery and who like it enough to spend even more cash on it. Had this been released when the scenery itself had been released (or shortly after that), I'd probaby buy it (I own all three UK regions), but right now I am more into Orbx scenery... I sort of had it with photoreal addons because everything is so flat and odd looking. :( Yes, Treescapes remedies this to a certain extend, but cities still look awful imho. Still, I might want to give it a try someday, specially the version for part 3 (Wales), which is the only part of the UK scenery that looks okay imho (the mountains and all). As long as there are no houses in the vicinity, the UK scenery can be nice. ;) When I received the mail about this new addon I was interested enough to check out the site, so... who knows, maybe I'll get it... The screenshots (all without houses, obviously...) do look okay. Surely better than without the trees.

I think it looks impressive from what I have seen on their site, and (pending being paid) I intend to get hold of it for sure, so they can at least expect a sale from me in a week or two!I'm actually probably the reverse of a lot of simmers on Avsim, as being from the UK, I'm not really interested in what Orbx are doing, since it would never really be somewhere I would especially want to fly. That's no reflection on the quality of what they do of course, just that UK and European scenery is far more likely to appeal to me, since it gels with the flying I do in real life. There is of course the 'why not explore a bit?' argument for getting Orbx stuff, so I wouldn't totally dismiss the possibility of buying what Orbx make, but before that, I'd much prefer something on my doorstep.Al

I think there's no real relationship between the OrbX stuff and Horizon's / EarthSim titles so comparing them is quite hard.As far as Horizon goes (in fact, there are four parts out, check their site) they deliver very high res textures (up to 0,6m/pixel) on a large area to get an photereal image of the Earth around GB. That's their approach on scenery. They state this clearly and so everybody can decide whether or not to buy.Image quality looks good (bought one title lately) but on the first exploration "flat", I agree. Mesh helps a bit, but approaching cities is some kind of unusual to many pilots including myself.They've mentioned autogen packs to arrive later but as far as I could see, EarthSim are the first ones to comply to this and of course, it will cost you something.A big thumbup to Horizon to deliver even night textures to their scenes. Although this might only be a second best visual experience when flying around GB, it's superior to most other photo sceneries I know which usually stay completely dark when overflown at night/dusk/dawn. They also deliver water surfaces which behave like water - not common in the photoreal business.Again, thumbup on EarthSim for their work on placing autogen - don't know if this can be automated, but I think not and so it's hard work to do.OrbX design approach is quite different and of course delivers objects. I own quite a few of their titles and wouldn't compare the products with the Horizon stuff. It's a bit like comparing pure photoreal with the normal texture + autogen stuff. Both nice, beautiful and a good buy, but it depends extremely on your personal favor, so objective comparison is nearly impossible.As long as OrbX doesn't come up with GB scenery, there's no need to decide and you can buy both software with guaranteed pleasure.

I have been informed that ORBx scenery is a "landclass based" scenery that uses repeating tiles to create large areas. If that is the case, then it is nothing like the truly photorealistic scenery offered by Horizon's Generation X Version 2. Further to that, I would disagree with Jeroen's comment that the UK scenery only looks good in Wales, or away from towns and cities. IMO, the Horizon GENX2 scenery looks superb almost anywhere, even at altitudes as low as 250 metres. Of course, natural landscapes (grass, trees, bare hills etc) almost always look better than towns in photographic scenery, and that's because they have less contrast and "clutter" in the image. They are more relaxing to the eye. Let's face it, even a few default MS landscape textures can look acceptable, but the urban stuff (particularly when combined with default autogen) looks rubbish.Frankly, the combination of Horizon GENX2 photographic scenery, Treescapes UK, and VFR Airfields packages looks phenomenal on my PC. People can criticise "3D" trees on photographic scenery as much as they want, but that doesn't alter the fact that Treescapes UK is a very impressive product indeed. It adds a colossal number of trees to the British landscape (using accurate Ordnance Survey data), and the effect is very realistic. From very small clusters of trees, through lines of trees along roads or rivers, to huge forests.....it all looks extremely convincing and realistic. And that last word is very important. Generic landscape scenery will never be truly realistic. It may look "nice", but it doesn't accurately represent the real world.This is what Darren at Earth Simulations has to say about the comparison.....** The constant comparisons we see being made between our work here and Orbx scenery are I think both flattering and frustrating at the same time. It is true that the two types of scenery are really not the same thing at all. Orbx scenery being in the main a "Landclass" based offering where there are only comparatively very few tiles to place objects on. A landclass scenery is nothing more than a very rough representation of an area, you won't find anything in it that truly reflects what exists in reality. Though there may be extra attention given to small specific areas within the overall Orbx territories. Not only that but even the best landclass scenery will repeat at very regular intervals. If you are using ORBX and look down in flightsim to see a farm next to a small wood for instance, there are two things you should understand about what you are looking at. Firstly and most importantly for anyone that takes VFR flying with any seriousness is that the farm and wood don't really exist in reality at that location. Secondly is that you will only have to fly a few miles before you'll spot the same farm and wood in a completely different location. Because landclass tiles repeat... repeatedly.Compare the above situation to a combination of Generation X and treescapes UK . You can fly over 151,174 km2 of truly realistic scenery without once seeing the same thing twice, When you look down from your cockpit you'll know that the farm and woodland you see below you truly exist in real life.**

This looks a pretty worthwhile add-on. However, I do still have most of the autogen from the former UKVFR project, which still works fine in FSX and in many cases also contains buildings. I don't really want to lose these (although I'm betting the actual tree textures are better), so I'm guessing I'll have to install Treescapes in a "dummy" directory and then copy across only the autogen tiles that don't conflict with the ones I've already got. Anyone any views or experience with this?

Great thread. I fall in between the camps here - I fly lots in PNW, and love it, but as a UK-based flyer I also enjoy the Horizon photoscenery since you can't beat following real roads/landmarks for VFR.Chris, thanks for the notes. I reckon I will invest in at least one of them. I only have north and south anyway (at the risk of upsetting you folks in the middle bit... it's just too flat :) ) so I guess 15 quid won't break the bank to tree-ify my local area. I hope the other available scenery still works - I can see the BT tower just south of EGNM, from where I live, so having it in the sim is great - I assume you just put the extra scenery above the trees?<runs off before midland-ers turn up>

This looks a pretty worthwhile add-on. However, I do still have most of the autogen from the former UKVFR project, which still works fine in FSX and in many cases also contains buildings. I don't really want to lose these (although I'm betting the actual tree textures are better), so I'm guessing I'll have to install Treescapes in a "dummy" directory and then copy across only the autogen tiles that don't conflict with the ones I've already got. Anyone any views or experience with this?

You'll have to do a manual install pretty much along the lines you've described. Complete installation directions are available from Earth Simulations, including how to install manually. I bought Treescapes UK for one of the Horizon Simulations regions but I'm afraid it is not for me. The contrast between the flat, photographic buildings and the 3D trees is a bit much unless you are at a reasonable altitude, which kind of defeats the purpose. While I applaud the developers for taking the risk and realizing the concept, it does not work for me without building autogen as well. Cheers,Noel.

Noel,Whilst I respect your opinion, I don't agree that the contrast between the trees and the photographic scenery is "a bit much". The combination looks perfectly fine to me, and it has made my FSX experience even more enjoyable. As for building autogen, well......I can see how this will be a real challenge. The default building autogen is rubbish, so any custom job in this department would need to be a significant improvement. I don't know about the rest of you, but my human brain has never been convinced by a few houses scattered haphazardly across the landscape.Andy,When you download Treescapes UK, it is first installed in the Earth Simulations folder. This is done precisely because people like yourself have other custom autogen already installed. I suggest that you check out the Earth Simulations forum for further clarification of what to do in this case, although I am fairly sure that the PDF manual includes instructions for this.

Its actually very easy to add Treescapes to a system that already has a load of custom agn's you want to keep. Just copy and paste the new agn's over the stuff that is already there and windows will ask you if you want to replace any already existing files, simply choose "NO" and your original agn's will remain intact.Another way you can do it if you don't trust Windows is to back up all the texture folders to a safe location and then copy them back again afterwards if you want.

Sounds good - I'll be buying - just on my way back to UK at the end of my latest RTW flight! I'm glad to hear about the manual install - makes life a lot easier!I appreciate what you're saying about "randomly scattered" buildings, but much of what I've got was very carefully placed by some very talented and hardworking people, so I don't want to lose it if I can help it, particularly since some of it disappeared from the net with the demise of the UKVFR site. However, if anyone's interested, see http://www.shepsshed.com/autogentrees.htm for good links to what's left - some is trees only, some is a mix of trees and buildings and it's usually specified which is which. Mine all went into an "All-in-one" folder a long time ago, so I haven't a clue what's what in there!

Andy,I was referring to the Microsoft default autogen when I mentioned "randomly scattered buildings" :( Mind you, any custom autogen buildings package is going to have to be phenomenally good to get me interested.

Having now bought and installed this product, I felt I had to come back on here and just confirm how incredibly easy and safe it was to install. The designers have taken into account the likely needs of people with autogen already installed and the options and pdf manual are very clear. For someone with a new, "raw" 3 part Gen X installation, there is a fully automatic install routine (but still not overwriting anything already there). At the other end of the spectrum, there's the option to do a completely manual installation (I reckon I didn't copy over around 25% of the treescapes files).Brilliantly thought out and presented.Oh, and the landscape full of trees looks pretty good too!

Andy,I was referring to the Microsoft default autogen when I mentioned "randomly scattered buildings" :( Mind you, any custom autogen buildings package is going to have to be phenomenally good to get me interested.

Hi Christopher & all..I also have all 4 areas of the original VFR scenery - but I am now using GenX.I don't know whether you are aware of my scenery offering for EGOW, in which I hand plotted over 8500 buildings on GenX textures - most of them houses. (You'll find it here on AVSIM - search on my name). I have never been impressed with the 'standard' default autogen for UK scenery.I had a particular problem with the sheer numbers of conifers at the Western edge of the airfield. I'm considering buying Treescapes UK. I wonder what difference that would make to my framerates and whether it would make much difference locally ? I'll like to see also whether it would work with VFR textures in FS2004 ?I created this scenery simply because I live on the fringes of the airfield, and anything that improves the scenery would be most welcome.I am curious whether this addition would work successfully with it, and what changes, if any, are required ? I agree, Shep's site is a good site to 'Keep in touch' with what's available. He and others have given me a lot of help. His trees have also saved me a lot of work.RegardsBill CusickFormby, UK0.9nm SW R03 EGOW