Could be just me but both New Yorks don't look that believable but because of the better looking water, shorelines, and less neon looking buildings/autogen I prefer the xplane one above. I'd also like to see the New York shot with the autogen maxed out as it appears the fsx one is (I don't think the xplane one is at the highest setting).

I'm not that pessimistic. Here's what New York looks in my X-Plane 9. Will only get better.No AI, no ATC, no airliners, not every airpport with buildings, only Switzerland …It is high resolution photo-scenery. If you want the world like that then better start saving for a harddrive that can take it ;)

Well at least this version has the Empire States Building!!

Granted, as a starting off point, it's (XPX) not at it's best. The possibilities are there however. If you have a look at the pics Simon has on his website, http://xplane10.wordpress.com/, in the third series of shots, find the one with the Cessna directly over a highway. Now that's how the roads should apparently look in a future update. There are jewels in there, and they're showing us what's coming...I hope .

never mind

just found some more insight into all things scenery: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=55314&view=findpost&p=612759

It's a base only, Greg. What I said: It can only get better.

I interpreted your statements of "it can only get better" to mean that your shots of XP9 were out-of-the-box, and XP10 would only look better than that. If those XP9 shots were based on addon software, than you are more than right - it's not apples-to-apples and a comparison is challenging. Even comparing XP10 to FSX out of the box is not legitimate as Microsoft did spend some time in NYC sprucing it up. But does anyone consider the default state of New York City (*or any other city) in XP10 to be acceptable?As enthusiastic simmers, we often rely on 3rd party scenery developments to further enhance and extend our simulated world... but there needs to be reasonably strong out-of-the-box experiences to fill in the gaps. From what I've seen of XP10 so far (via the demo that I have used, and the shots I have seen), anything greater than a mid-size town is generated in such a way that we might need 3rd party developments for every town greater than 10,000 people before we have something which comes close to being a plausible representation of cities and towns.The rural world of XP10 is beautiful no doubt! The suspension of disbelief starts falling apart as we get closer to the city lights.

Let's not fool ourselves: Laminar made a move to a WHOLE new data source. And on top of that, they planted a whole new approach in regards to how the new data source is processed. That's massive and I did not expect it to be most impressive in the initial release.

Respectfully, I disagree with the allowances you're giving them. The move to a highly touted new technology should be strong right out of the box. After reading the press releases and development updates from Austin Meyer over the months leading up to this week, I was expecting something groundbreaking - something impressive. Perhaps my own personal expectations were set too high, but in my humble opinion, the current state of XP10 towns and cities is no better, if not worse than FS2004/FSX. The technical rendering of the simulator is far superior with its improvements to smoothness, resolution, and image quality, but the material being drawn on the screen is betraying those tech/performance abilities.

I'd also like to see the New York shot with the autogen maxed out as it appears the fsx one is (I don't think the xplane one is at the highest setting).

Agreed - since they are not my shots, I don't know what the settings are - they could be quite low. But that speaks to another failing of the scenery engine in my book. If one needs to drop settings back to make it smooth, there should be some method to maintain continuity and convincingly represent the world you are flying in. Instead, XP10 punts back to grassy fields, leading to a strangely bucolic south tip of Manhattan and Brooklyn... except for the 6 Flags style bridges and roadways.NYC aside, what about the shot from Phoenix, Arizona. Is that image a plausible representation of one of the biggest American southwest cities? Does it even look like it is in the middle of a desert?I was also provided screenshots of my local area, and it too suffers from implausible scenery generation - 7 story buildings in residential neighborhoods, houses in downtown areas, vast tracts of streets with nothing nearby to speak of, train and road bridges going nowhere... if I'm experiencing these hangups with the scenery I am supposed to be flying in, I can't imagine I'm alone.

just found some more insight into all things scenery...

Thanks for the link, Wowee... unfortunately that discusses the "natural" world of XP10 versus the populated world. This natural world of forests, hills, mountains and rivers are all generally QUITE well done in XP10, based on the demo. I also picked up on references to how they will be progressively updating XP10 over time - that is encouraging, but you never get a second chance to make a first impression.People will like XP10 for various reasons - many of you love the flight models, the weather, the visibility, the night environments, and even perhaps the daytime terrain as it stands today. I'm not going to try and change your minds about it, because the product does have lots of bright spots to it. The appearance of XP10's daytime cities and towns just struck me squarely between the eyes when the demo released, and continues to leave me disappointed as screenshots and examples begin rolling in from those who own it. I'm disappointed in large part because I want XP10 to work! I want it to be successful and being a simulator geek, I'd love to drop my cash on the product and add it to the library. In its current state, I'm quite hesitant.I'll probably kick a message out to the scenery design forum about some of my concerns to see if there are plans to work on them, and/or something that I as a user would be able to do to to improve my own experience.Back to your regularly scheduled programming...-Greg

Well at least this version has the Empire States Building!!

Two of them, apparently.

Could be just me but both New Yorks don't look that believable but because of the better looking water, shorelines, and less neon looking buildings/autogen I prefer the xplane one above.

As I said earlier, I think it's fair to make a distinction between quality of the visuals and how accurately a real-world location is represented. The FSX shot is arguably more accurate, but I think XP10 has the better visual quality.

The rural world of XP10 is beautiful no doubt! The suspension of disbelief starts falling apart as we get closer to the city lights. -Greg

No doubt about it, from what I have seen until now, this is true. I still have to wait for my XP10 DVDs in order to make a full judgement and also see how the add-on sceneries do with the new version and roads.In any case I wouldn't want to run XP10 without roads and objects set the the Maximum.

Respectfully, I disagree with the allowances you're giving them. The move to a highly touted new technology should be strong right out of the box.

Here's a post about difficulties with rivers (some of which we will miss like "the big cities"):http://forums.x-pilot.com/index.php/topic/2657-x-plane-10-landscapes-of-the-world-125-screenshots/page__view__findpost__p__29940It's not easy and that's why I give that allowance.

I just got this emailed as a newsletter so it looked a bit different but it was essentially all the text in this link.http://www.fspilotsh...roducts_id=3498 This is where xplane will get purchasers and I can think of a few guys who would buy it from an advert like this. This to me makes it clear why it should be marked as beta when it's shipped from a shop in a box. In fact I am not sure if it should be advertised like this and shipped in a box form from retailers when it's a beta. People will buy it from the advert alone. I know a couple older guys who subscribe to pcpilot and every now and then tell me about something they bought or get me around to install a demo that came on the CD. Thats exactly who could get this and be in a bit of a bad mood.

Maybe I'm the exception here, but I'm less concerned about having a realistic world (as in it conforms to reality) to fly in than I am about having a good looking world to fly in, and as far as I'm concerned, X-Plane 10 gives me that. Of course I'm not a real pilot and have no aspirations to become one, so my wants/needs as a simmer are probably different.

Mountain man, me too for a lot of flying. I am happy if I have nice scenery and have some procedures to follow and get me out of my boring life for a while :) The trouble is if I want to fly around the areas I know then it does become somewhat distracting. In fact I am not sure why I would want to fly around areas I do know, I would only do it because I _know_ them so it would be off putting if they are too different. It just takes the whole experience of saying I will take off at auckland and do a VFR flight to taupo out of the equation if I cant visually get there.

I do most of my sim flying around small towns and medium sized cities (places I've lived), which are basically areas that never receive any attention from developers, so I'm used to flying around areas I'm familiar with that don't look anything like their real-world counterpart. That's where suspension of disbelief comes in. As long as the world outside the aircraft windows looks good then I'm not too bothered about the accuracy, although in XP10, I'll at least have half a chance of being able to follow accurate roads and highways.

I'm afraid I was the one who showed Goran the CTD page (really, that many pages?? Wow) I booted fsx for the first time in months and experienced 2 CTDs. Guys, not the way to encourage growth in your audience..hang on, no one works there any more.Last time I used fsx it was pretty stable. Not sure what's changed since then- anyone know what might have happened?I had another bizarre error when first loading, check this out:Over the ocean, UTX on and orbx off. Global warming?:After some thinking, I realized that I hadn't uninstalled the demo UTX USA. Weird though, it shouldn't have corrupted the default, non-orbx scenery? Anyone see a similar case, where OCEAN is replaced by AUTOGEN TREES AND TERRAIN?!I suppose you get these issues with a poor base (pig) dressed up with multi layered addons (lipstick) that don't necessarily talk well together (rouge). Am I in an orbx area? Disable UTX. Am I not? Re-enable UTX. Have I loaded Rex first to update my weather and my flat cloud textures? Can't remember..I finally got pure Orbx 2WA1 Diamond point up and running with ocean rather than the funny tree ocean.. I'll be posting my full findings and detailed comparisons at our blog, for now my immediate reactions, after flying the exact same area in xp10 :-)- the Carenado V35 Bonanza handled as I remembered- like it was flying in jello, no real feeling of flying in a moving mass of air subject to changing air pressure. No concentration needed to keep the plane trim and level. - the autogen trees and houses of orbx and fsx are underwhelming, no advantages over xplane's default trees and houses. Up close, the orbx trees are better. But I didn't buy a tree simulator.- the terrain below the trees, excluding the small, excellent airport, is textured blandly and xplane gives a better impression.- houses and streets in the area to the west, across the bay are heaps better in xplane. No comparison. I had to check that my autogen sliders were maxed out in fsx at one point as this area felt so bare.- clouds in fsx feel far more 2d than xplane's. No comparison, xplane's clouds are so real and have depth and a 'live' feel. Turbulence closely matched to the clouds ;-Night time in fsx- quite cartoonish and dull, the lack of dynamic lighting is very noticeable. The xplane 10 lights have a wow factor to them, that largely offsets the lack of airport detail (no buildings in xplane!)Up close, the airstrip is stunning in fsx. That's obvious, it's their strength. Unfortunately for me though, I've quickly got bored of the  tiny details- wonderful at first, but not that essential unless you use the airfield for practicing Call of Duty moves. What is this, an FPS or flight simulator?Up higher, at 300 ft, the comparison evens out rapidly. The strip doesn't have that many buildings, so anyone could easily place standard hangars/ buildings in xplane now and already give it a nice feel. I'm getting better at blender so could even closely match some of orbx's work, excluding their grass! Even then, u can create subtle grass, I've tested it before.Even the lovely group of houses near the coast and the little lake are modelled and positioned nicely in xplane. Remember, this is FREE, not $30.-Night look and feel- xplane 10 is vastly superior. Even orbx's houses look 2 dimensional at night compared to xplane. And the approach lights, so intense in xplane.Thats enough for now, I need to finish the comparison pics for the blog article, to further prove my points. Please go ahead and pick apart every one of these sentences and over-analyse. This is just my own opinion after flying the 2 sims back to back. I had multiple jaw drop moments when flying this area in xplane 10, caused by the integrated weather, clouds, terrain and streets capes. I did not have those same feelings when flying fsx- actually made me feel quite sad, the end of one generation I sense.I am from Melbourne, so feel a great loyalty to Orbx (i have ymmb and ybas on pre order!) If they just ported their airport scenery without the surrounding areas, they could charge much less but sell more in the long run. I am available via PM! No flamers though :-)