Questions about Sim Savvy

[Blades 0]

I have a few questions concerning this product..It look great. I can justify the purchase. I am wary of the external drive and have space to transfer to my HDD ( have a WD HDD 1TB external...which is now a doorstop/anchor, failed 4 days after warranty expired, Had a lot of A/C folders stored on it) Has the documentation improved since the last review? I have asked questions elsewhere and am looking for answers here. Answers appreciated from current users of this product...I have tried many other add on scenery and they don't measure up to this.. Thanks.Blades

[meshman 109]

You can do a simple copy/paste of all or any part of the scenery files onto your internal HD. Use the Scenery Library in FSX to point to the new location.Edit: More often than not (IMO), when an external HD fails it's not the drive itself but the enclosure and circuitry. If you too the old WD drive apart and installed the HD into your computer it may surprise you and work just like it's suppose to!

[yankeegolf3 51]

Hi,You don't need to worry about the external hard drive. It works fine. In fact I have not noticed any difference between the simsavvy files installed on my internal HDD or on the external HDD that is provided with the product.You will not have any performance issues (blurries, FPS, stutters..) with the textures. The textures are crisp and the colours are right. You can check out some screenshots in the avsim screenshot forum or in the simsavvy website. I like it very much. If you like photoscenery, you will not be disappointed.

[Blades 0]

Thanks for the tips and replies......getting closer to "hitting buy now" button BladesThank you >>> yankeegolf3 ....Thank you>>> meshman I am going to perform surgery and hopefully recover some foldersI now await patiently for it to arrive . Blades

[Bob F 0]

Thanks for the tips and replies......getting closer to "hitting buy now" button BladesThank you >>> yankeegolf3 ....Thank you>>> meshman I am going to perform surgery and hopefully recover some foldersI now await patiently for it to arrive . Blades

Duplicate Post

[Bob F 0]

I've had it since it first came out and if I'm not flying in PNW, I use it all the time. Colorado and New Mexico are outstanding. I've transferred the areas I fly in frequently to my internal hard drive and use the rest on the included hard drive. I really can't tell any difference whether I'm using the internal drive or the external drive.If you have flown RL or are very familiar with the landmarks in an area, you will love it.I highly recommend it and an very happy I bought it.

[Petraeus 145]

What you may not like about it is the absence of water masks. This is very noticeable off the coasts of the East Coast states, where there are some very ugly stripes in the coastal seas.

[Fenric 0]

The lack of water masks are worse on the coasts (East Coast, West Coast, Louisiana marshes, all around the town) but affect many "larger than a pond or stream" body.Next on the "cons" list would be the state-to-state mismatches where either the color or brightness (or in the case from CA to OR, a less than one mile wide missing strip of coverage) draws attention to where the boundaries are.Bottom of the list would be the few "cloud on the ground" images that persist. (The lack of general autogen is a given with any super huge photoscenery package, although large city centers still remain.)Then again I believe there is still a problem with CTDs when entering parts of Michigan. I'm sure that will be sorted.Still those shouldn't detract from the awesome value of this package. I'm very glad to have bought it - even if I've removed the bits that cover PNW and NRM. :(

[greggerm 312]

I'm a happy Sim Savvy owner - but as mentioned above, the product is not without its shortcomings. Any and all of the shortcomings are due to the source material used to create the scenery. The occasional low cloud translated onto the image, mismatched source data leading to unappealing visual strips, and blocky coastlines especially along oceanfront and Great Lake areas. Another minor shortcoming is that the FSX airport database is not 100% accurate, leading to slightly misplaced runways and taxiways. Other, well known shortcomings include the lack of nighttime lights and no autogen... but these are known tradeoffs for the photoreal. For the source material issues, I have used FSEarthTiles to create brand-spankin'-new photo scenery for the areas I feel are critical for my flying. There was a cloud over the northwest corner of an airport I frequent, so I created a new block of scenery to make up for it. The benefit of this is that I opted to use higher resolution scenery for this small replacement section, giving me a better experience than what Savvy could have done even if the clouds weren't there. For the airport alignment issues, one could use airport editing tools (AFCAD, A.D.E., Airport Facilitator X) to move and adjust runways and taxiways. This is very straightforward at simple airports with 1 runway, but more challenging at larger airfields. Not only are some runways off alignment, but FSX took some liberties on where to place taxiways it seems. I'm only working on runway alignment fixes for airports which are grossly out of whack. Another "fun" little enhancement is to add scenery elements with something like Instant Scenery. There is no autogen with photoreal, so sometimes the airport scene is a little bleak. Add in some trees and scenery items on your own. As for my installation, I opted to install the scenery entirely on my internal hard drives, using the USB2 drive as a backup copy. I placed the states which I frequent the most onto my SSD drive, and I placed the remainder of the country on my traditional drive with FSX installed. The SSD helps load the scenery more quickly in the states I fly the most, even though FSX is actually installed on a different and traditional drive. -GregSidebar Story:

I was reading the other day about the flood control features called "floodways" which are along the Mississippi River. There is one called the Bonnet Carre Spillway, located just north of New Orleans. In the event of a serious serious flood emergency, it's designed to let excess river water spill out into Lake Pontchartrain and then into the Gulf of Mexico, thus lessening the amount of water flowing through the river and into the city. The next day, I was flying in the area over the photoreal scenery, and I without even INTENDING on doing it, I saw what looked like a spillway.... I did another quick search on the Bonnet Carre, and indeed - I WAS flying directly over the scenery feature I had just coincidentally read about. Little things like this can make photoreal scenery awesome. I've made many trips to Google Maps and other resources to determine what ground feature I am looking at... from military bombing ranges, mines and quarries, ski slopes, and other industrial features... photoreal scenery brings the country to life!

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

There is a widespread belief in the community that the FS developers made mistakes in certain aspects of the game, for example, misplacement of airports, runways, or taxiways.In fact, while it is true that ACES did not send employees out to measure and geo-reference every airport in the data base, they did use the best source data available, which happens to be the F.A.A. list of airports with all facility data included. Unfortunately, in the U.S.A., all airports self-report their facilities data and their geographic coordinates, and many of them do not take the trouble to give extremely accurate information. (And why should they? They purpose of geographic coordinates is to get a pilot in the close vicinity of an airport from where he should be able to get visual confirmation of its location. It is not to provide an accurate location for placement of FS airport models.)So, the FS developers did not do this on purpose, nor did they have any choice but to use that information. Too bad for us, but it is easy to fix as Greg points out.Best regards.Luis

[greggerm 312]

So, the FS developers did not do this on purpose, nor did they have any choice but to use that information. Too bad for us, but it is easy to fix as Greg points out.

Most definitely not done on purpose! I'm positive that ACES used some sort of automatic tool to create the airports in the database... using both the "official" airport center points and some sort of tool which looked at airport diagrams and automatically laid out the runways and taxiways. It isn't perfect, but it's damn good considering the number of airports they had to deal with. Photoreal textures bring out these minor positioning errors, and occasionally in dramatic fashion.In my opinion, it's not an issue which rises to the level of preventing the purchase of SimSavvy... just one that a customer should be aware of before buying, and that the fault lies with FSX itself and not the new textures. :)-G