Do you think the autogen power utility pylons are large enough and easy to see?

[Guest JonP01]

I can't believe I've spent maybe 50 hours flying and only started to notice these pylons last night! And that is the problem. On my 17" monitor at 1024 x 768 resolution, these pylons are *extremely* difficult to see, unless one is quite close to the ground and deliberately making a concerted effort to look for them.The two problems I see are this: Firstly, the background bitmap upon which the pylon vectors are placed blends very well with the surrounding scenery. Secondly, I am sure the pylons are true to scale, but is that what we really want when we are using a flat, 2D monitor with a much lower resolution that real life and a much smaller viewing area than real life?What do real pilots think? Are the pylons in FS2004 harder see than they are in real life?And maybe a question for Chris Willis. Would you know of any way the terrain mask for the utility plyons could be changed to make those narow strips of terrain easier to see? I tried changing the terrain.cfg file to change the bitmap mask but it didn't make any difference at all.

[Guest Gordius]

I would say it's personal preference. For myself I think that they fine. Their size needs to be relative to other scenery and I would rather that they are hard to spot / unobtrusive. Maybe someone can add how they really look from the air I haven't ever seen any for real myselfAndrew"If it can go wrong it probably will. If it doesn't then turn it off"

[Guest JonP01]

Hi Andrew,That was the exact question that was now on my mind. Can someone like Geofa let us know if they are realistic in terms of visibility? I tend to think they would be easier to see in real life. One big difference I notice in FS9 in Australia is that the pylons tend to run over the generic forest textures which are dark green. Although they use a light green bitmap mask, the resulting "trail" is still sometimes hard to pick out. Here in Australia in real life, the pylons usually have a fair amount of sparse terrain around them, which I imagine makes them quite visible as long, wide bands from the air. But like you, I've never been up to see for myself.