Thanks Robert. Yeah I did a full defrag using O&O v10. I don't see any point to upgrade to v12. Anyways, this is the first time I've done a reinstall on the same machine and I was pretty surprised to see my defrag take about a full day and a half. I've read so many threads about people having massive problems after reinstalling FSX; I was most worried about simconnect as I have two client machines in my network but all is well. Thanks

Would you mind providing the link to the topic at simforums?

no Scenery Tech will do what UTX does, just for the smaller cities, lakes, streets and so on ...I haven't seen Scenery Tech in action yet, maybe in the future after I'm having more money

Make sure you defrag in between each addon, this is vital especially with scenery files. ( BGL'S ) I use ultimate disk cleaner 3 its great ..

As a newbie, can someone tell me what are the differences, uses between Scenery Tech, GEX and UTX. Are they redundant? Are they the basics (if not the best) to enhance scenery? I should point out that except for cities I'm usually above 30,000 feet. Thanks. Dan Cole

GEX is ground textures, UTX is terrain.

As a newbie, can someone tell me what are the differences, uses between Scenery Tech, GEX and UTX. Are they redundant? Are they the basics (if not the best) to enhance scenery? I should point out that except for cities I'm usually above 30,000 feet. Thanks. Dan Cole

Simple explanation:GEX = ground texture tiles - the actual images that get displayedScenery Tech = landclass - which texture tiles get placed whereUTX = mostly contains data for roads, coastlines, rivers, some city landclass - it's a variety of thingsFS Genesis/FS Global etc - mesh, the actual 3D shape of the terrain.

Simple explanation:GEX = ground texture tiles - the actual images that get displayedScenery Tech = landclass - which texture tiles get placed whereUTX = mostly contains data for roads, coastlines, rivers, some city landclass - it's a variety of thingsFS Genesis/FS Global etc - mesh, the actual 3D shape of the terrain.

Ryan, At the risk of pushing my luck, the terminolgy is beyond me. I understand you're up to here with other issues, but can you point me to a place where I can learn the difference between the various definitions. For instance, while I know (I think) what ground texture tiles are, I don't know how to differentiate those from landclass. Where does Mesh fit in? Finally, what should I get, givem that I only fly airliners? If you don't have the time for a tutorial, I'll understand. If you can point me in the right directiction, I'll beappreciative. Thanks. Dan

Dan, It's up to you what you want to get. All three - mesh, landclass, and textures are important to me at least. I'm not really sure how to give better definitions than what you quoted though. I'll try though: Mesh is how accurate the shape of the terrain is - the default FSX USA mesh is 38m resolution, this means that there's an elevation data point every 38 meters diagonally along the ground. Most of the addon mesh products you see have 10m or even 5m resolution. This means the shape of the terrain features are more accurate because the data points are closer together, meaning smaller features that might get smoothed out in 38m are there with their correct shape in the higher resolution. Ground textures are just that - the actual artwork/photos that are displayed on the ground by the sim. They do nothing on their own without landclass. Landclass is a map of sorts that tells FSX which ground textures are supposed to be displayed where. It says "This area is dense pine forest, this area is urban industrial building." etc. Landclass is very important, if you have a simplified landclass like what FSX ships with by default, cities may not look right, small towns may be completely missing from the sim etc. Much of the stuff UTX does is technically called "vector data" and "ground polys" but that stuff like roads, water etc are different from the three things above. There's some products like the Orbx FTX regions that are are totally self-contained - they have all these things built in and will exist on their own outside of those other products mentioned. You need all those things for the sim to look its best.

Where catagory does MegasceneryX fall into. It seems very detailed. Art StuartKABQ

A must read. Tells you where to place STLC in relation to UTX.http://www.simforums.com/forums/landclass-and-how-it-effects-what-you-see_topic24965.html

A must read. Tells you where to place STLC in relation to UTX.http://www.simforums...topic24965.html

Yeah, and awesome must read. Dan Cole

Dan, It's up to you what you want to get. All three - mesh, landclass, and textures are important to me at least. I'm not really sure how to give better definitions than what you quoted though. I'll try though: Mesh is how accurate the shape of the terrain is - the default FSX USA mesh is 38m resolution, this means that there's an elevation data point every 38 meters diagonally along the ground. Most of the addon mesh products you see have 10m or even 5m resolution. This means the shape of the terrain features are more accurate because the data points are closer together, meaning smaller features that might get smoothed out in 38m are there with their correct shape in the higher resolution. Ground textures are just that - the actual artwork/photos that are displayed on the ground by the sim. They do nothing on their own without landclass. Landclass is a map of sorts that tells FSX which ground textures are supposed to be displayed where. It says "This area is dense pine forest, this area is urban industrial building." etc. Landclass is very important, if you have a simplified landclass like what FSX ships with by default, cities may not look right, small towns may be completely missing from the sim etc. Much of the stuff UTX does is technically called "vector data" and "ground polys" but that stuff like roads, water etc are different from the three things above. There's some products like the Orbx FTX regions that are are totally self-contained - they have all these things built in and will exist on their own outside of those other products mentioned. You need all those things for the sim to look its best.

For someone who wasn't sure he could add to the definitions, you did a great job. Thanks. I assume all this stuff is pretty demanding, especially with the NGX. Newegg just delivered the following. I trust it'll be able to cope with it all (assuming the tweaks from NickN and youself are applied) CPU:Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz MOBO (not MOFO): ASUS P8Z68-V PRO LGA 1155 PSU: CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX750M 750W ATX12V v2.31 / EPS12V v2.92 80 PLUS BRONZE CASE: Corsair Obsidian Series® 600D Mid-Tower MEMORY: CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 CL8 COOLER: CORSAIR CAFA70 120mm Dual-Fan CPU Cooler GPU: EVGA SuperClocked 012-P3-1572-AR GeForce GTX 570 HD: Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5"SSD: SAMSUNG 470 Series MZ-5PA128/US 2.5" 128GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive CD/DVD: SAMSUNG CD/DVD Burner 22X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW Thanks again. Dan Cole