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Mike_CFII_MEL

Sim-Savvy

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Hi,Well, looks like Sim-Savvy's Continental United States is on sale here at AVSIM for $159.20. The price is right so I just purchased the product.Anyone here at AVSIM have this software package?. I'm just wondering how you feel about it, and should I leave it on the usb hard drive it comes with or copy it to my new SSD.Thanks


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Michael,I have used photoreal, not this one but others, but because I like the season changes and flying at night I gave it up. I did enjoy it though as the landmarks are right where they are supposed to be. Just wasnt for me.RegardsBob

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Mike,I have both their US (aerial) and Euro (satellite) sceneries. I did try running from the external drive and it worked fine that way. But I ended up copying the data to one of my internal SATA drives so I could turn states on and off at will and not have to worry if I had switched the external drive on of off. (For me, trying to keep all 50 states active really slowed down my FSX load times.)I use my PC for non-flightsim things (a level one heresy to some perhaps) so that was important to me.I really like using SimSavvy, but if there were one thing I could change (and would be willing to assist in doing so) it would be to do a better job of watermasking, at least on the coasts and larger lakes. And if it matters, it's easy to find the blocks to exclude so ORBX PNW shows through.I've had the US scenery for nearly two months, and the Euro scenery since last week. The initial problems that were reported with the Michgan scenery have been fixed. On request, the author mailed me a 16GB flash drive with updated MI and WI files... even including a SASE for the return!Three minor-to-me nitpicks on the US scenery follow.

  • SInce the US collection is state-by-state there are some subtle and some dramatic color shifts. That does tend to draw one's eye, but given the cost-per-coverage factor, I can accept it.
  • As with other large photoscenery packages, there are a few clouds here and there, mostly in Louisana that I've seen.
  • Also there are a few areas in Nevada (51, hint hint) where the photoscenery is really low level. (AAMOF those areas are pink on my rig.)

To sum up, if you like photoscenery and flying in the US it's a great buy.

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I too have started thinking about adding this as "filler" (not in a bad way). I picked up a lot of Megascenery Earth with the 50% sale they just had and what I like about it is the high resolution and they do have night textures. I can live without seasons considering the amount of area covered but not sure about no night textures as that limits my flying to just 25% of the day... no dusk, dawn or night. But then again for the price of the whole USA...Be prepared for a LOT of set-up/install time. Maybe not if you keep it all on their Hard drive. But for me, installing just the state of California took several hours, yes I said hours. It came with 22 DVD's to install. It has something like over 100 folders after installing - think about when you want to turn off the scenery, yikes! (not sure how Sim-Savvy does theirs). I did combine all the scenery to one folder. We're talking a 90GB addon scenery folder! I was surprised how well FSX handled it. No issues as of yet.Oops, got off track. I would be interested to see and screenshots after you install it, especially around the California-Arizona border around lake Havasu or West of that as that is one area that for some reason MegaScenery did not include.ClutchP.S. - Just read on their site they have a 5-person package deal. Four pay $57.50 and the 5th pays $120 but keeps the hard drive. Now that's not a bad deal at all.


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The SimSavvy US scenery is one folder per continental state. So 48 folders. Or thereabouts with all this new math....There are some extra North America satellite scenery folders - IIRC there are two for Canada , one for Mexico, and maybe one for Alaska.

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hi,I am one of the first customers of Simsavvy and I really love it. I fly VFR the old fashioned way, dead reckoning and pilotage, no GPS, only maps and a stopwatch. For me it is the ideal product. With the entire US coverage at a low price, it gives me endless flying possibilities. I choose a departure airport and a destination from the fourflight website, fly real weather with ASE and REX. I love the challenge of finding my preselected landmarks and the scenery rendition is excellent. Check out the screenshots of my latest flight in the screenshot section (north dakota post).I use it in conjunction with ultimate terrain and the lights do show at dusk and at night. It is gorgeous with REX and ASE!The FPS impact is nil and you can leave the product on the supplied disk.Take care

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I've been flying around the sample area and I'm intrigued. Has anyone had any problems with having all 48 states active at once in the scenery library?

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Dan,I tried that first thing and had a really slow flight load (stuck at 6% for what seemed to be ages). Since then I'm much more selective in which states I activate.And I even thought once about finding the disk space to dump everything into one giant folder to see how that would fare. Call me bonkers, cause you'd be correct....

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Thanks for the reply Fenric. Does it play well with third party airports? (I assume that you have to put them above the Sim Savvy textures)

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I have owned for six plus months and I like it alot.. yes SSavvy plays real well with all addon scenery i have purchased. You just put the addon above the SSavvy states and no problem all, it is in how you layer your scenery config.In fact, SSAvvy replaces with high detail layouts most of the airport backgrounds i buy, (wont say which brand) :( So yeah i would recommend buying right now even in these economic times, the free upgrades alone would take weeks for me to achieve in this new higher def scenery Larry is touting. And yes i have Ultimate terrian underneath SSavvy so i get great results in evening flightsHope this helps Steve

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Dan,As Steve notes, most of the 3rd party airports that I have appear to live well above Sim-Savvy. As for default airports... as many of them are not properly placed, you can expect to see "shadow doubles" and the like. A little effort with an airport editor should do the trick though if there are some more important to you than others.Although I wish that I knew how to replace some of the default runway / apron textures with an "invisible texture" so that photoscenery backgrounds would show through. Still, something like that would bring its own child issues.

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