I'll say it again, it's just so disappointing to have such great scenery and such generic basic airports to fly into. No amount of generic buildings cars and fences will hide the horrible default runway taxiway and grass/dirt textures at each airport. I really wish they had a couple airport scenery designers who added photoreal ground for the big airports of the areas released with the scenery itself.

I'll say it again, it's just so disappointing to have such great scenery and such generic basic airports to fly into. No amount of generic buildings cars and fences will hide the horrible default runway taxiway and grass/dirt textures at each airport. I really wish they had a couple airport scenery designers who added photoreal ground for the big airports of the areas released with the scenery itself.

Now there is something I had not noticed, and most photoreal scenery I have seen is pretty awful close-up :(

Check out any addon airport from Orbx or FSdreamteam to see how beautiful the ground textures look, I Just can't go back to default airports, they look soooo bad.

I'll say it again, it's just so disappointing to have such great scenery and such generic basic airports to fly into. No amount of generic buildings cars and fences will hide the horrible default runway taxiway and grass/dirt textures at each airport. I really wish they had a couple airport scenery designers who added photoreal ground for the big airports of the areas released with the scenery itself.

Most airports in the area are upgraded a little bit. I flew into one at random and was quite pleased to discover some cars and parked planes etc...They can't possible do them all to the level of Darrington, but what they have done to even the smallest airports in the area is commendable.

Here is Castlegar..

Thanks for that.scott s..

There are about 430 airports within the coverage area of NRM in real life, every single one of these has been enhanced for the NRM packageAt http://fullterrain.com/product_nanrm.html you can download the manual and a google earth kml showing the coverage extent and airports, POI's ect..

Enhanced means nothing except a few generic buildings and cars, fences, in terms of ground textures it's all basically default looking. No photoreal taxiways and grass like addon companies have been doing. There are how many big airports in each area? 4-5 maybe? How hard would it be to give some custom ground textures for taxiways, runways, and the surrounding ground.

Hi David,

How hard would it be to give some custom ground textures for taxiways, runways, and the surrounding ground.

LOL, that's a good one, where to start? First you'd need very high resolution orthocorrected airphotos, which aren't available for most places (Canada currently offers exactly zero in the public domain) and the 1-ft or 2-ft imagery available for some US urban areas are not good enough to directly use for runways and taxiways, just for the grass skirtings like we did with Paine Field in PNW. You'd then need to adjust the default ADE file to exactly match the photoreal base so that AI aircraft move correctly, taxiway signs sit properly, etc.Assuming you did have high-res and current imagery you'd need to remove all of the aircraft and other airside objects imprinted on them, make the imagery fit in tone and brightness to the surrounding areas, create seasonal variants plus a night variant, and cope with the fact that the resulting .bgl will add yet another GB to your final installer size. And then you're still stuck with moving around generic objects on top of the pretty base, which won't align with the building imprints in the imagery.Since the ORBX NA regions blur the old delineation between landscape enhancements (mesh, roads, water, land class, etc.) and local scenery packages it's easy to see how those in the "glass half-empty" camp now expect custom modeling of airport grounds and structures. We always try to add a few custom models and our own object libraries keep growing too but the primary purpose of an add-on like NRM remains the landscape in between the airports. Having said that, Neil's tireless adjustments of default airports are nothing to sneeze at and have evolved into a key feature of ORBX regions. Grab a copy of ADE and Instant Scenery and try a couple airport enhancements yourself, and then multiply that by 400 or so. And don't forget to add those sloped flattens around them to prevent plateaus and trenches ;-)Cheers, Holger

Holger, you are a real gentleman for providing such a detailed answer...David, having tried my own hand at just one airport, I decided to stick with 3d modeling and gauge programming.Try it yourself at least once. You'll perhaps begin to understand just how difficult it is.

Enhanced means nothing except a few generic buildings and cars, fences, in terms of ground textures it's all basically default looking. No photoreal taxiways and grass like addon companies have been doing.....snip-snip-snip

I think the enhancements to the small airports are significant. Just compare the FSX standard with what we get from the Orbyx sceneries including small landing strips, seaplane bases and heliports that aren't even found in the standard FSX. I'm a happy customer and appreciate the extra eye candy! :Applause:Brent

I think the enhancements to the small airports are significant. Just compare the FSX standard with what we get from the Orbyx sceneries including small landing strips, seaplane bases and heliports that aren't even found in the standard FSX. I'm a happy customer and appreciate the extra eye candy! :Applause:Brent

Until PNW came along I barely - if ever - flew vfr sight-seeing flights... Now it's a BirdDog, from Harvey to Arlington, to Darrington, to Concrete, to Skagit, now to Orcas.... then there's Portland Stark's, Hillsboro, and so on. This software has revolutionized the sim. Tie that in with Bojote's and Nick's fixes, an i7 at 4.2 and it's a completely new world. ... and so tonight I'm pondering the Northern Rockies....Will the madness never end?? :(

Honestly you couldn't even get a decent framed photo of the Rockies for $40 bucks... here you get to fly through it. I've actually flown(passenger) over this area many many times.. this and the grand canyons are a must have.

Holger, you are a real gentleman for providing such a detailed answer...David, having tried my own hand at just one airport, I decided to stick with 3d modeling and gauge programming.Try it yourself at least once. You'll perhaps begin to understand just how difficult it is.

What I don't get is we are already at the 3rd release of ORBX NA scenery... and yet there are exactly zero addon airports available from them in the same time frame as... 2 updates to some of their Australian airports? I understand it is challenging work as you and Holger have mentioned, but that isn't my problem, is it? I'm just saying it would be nice to have 1-2 main airports in each region get the professional touch, instead of "well by 2011 maybe" we'll have SEA and PDX... sorry it just doesn't do it for me. Short hops are fun for sure, but flying from addon airport to addon airport will be what everyone wants in 6 months after tiring of the spruced up default airports. Take FSDreamteam, they put together a great Hawaiian airports package, 3 beautiful airports that look amazing. Now if only someone did the Orbx touch for all the Hawaiian islands... but there's a great example. Why not work with FSDreamteam so they can release a SEA and PDX and maybe a Canadian airport that fits perfectly with one of the NA Blue releases? Here's to dreaming I guess.

What I don't get is we are already at the 3rd release of ORBX NA scenery... and yet there are exactly zero addon airports available from them in the same time frame as... 2 updates to some of their Australian airports? I understand it is challenging work as you and Holger have mentioned, but that isn't my problem, is it? I'm just saying it would be nice to have 1-2 main airports in each region get the professional touch, instead of "well by 2011 maybe" we'll have SEA and PDX... sorry it just doesn't do it for me. Short hops are fun for sure, but flying from addon airport to addon airport will be what everyone wants in 6 months after tiring of the spruced up default airports. Take FSDreamteam, they put together a great Hawaiian airports package, 3 beautiful airports that look amazing. Now if only someone did the Orbx touch for all the Hawaiian islands... but there's a great example. Why not work with FSDreamteam so they can release a SEA and PDX and maybe a Canadian airport that fits perfectly with one of the NA Blue releases? Here's to dreaming I guess.

I'd vote for a detailed version of Vernon.You can even land your Airbus there (just like Air Canada tried once :( )

Short hops are fun for sure, but flying from addon airport to addon airport will be what everyone wants in 6 months after tiring of the spruced up default airports. ... Here's to dreaming I guess.

I'm not sure that you have pinpointed "what everyone wants" :( The "spruced up airports" do the job for me, very nicely.. ask me again in 6 months, but I doubt I willhave tired of them..