I agree about the scenery. The plausible/realistic or simulation/reproduction debate was already kicking when Fly! was alive... And the very only new thing since is to be found neither in FSX nor in XP but in Apple's hands... LR made a radical strategic choice for plausible and simulation, thus virtually eliminating reality/reproduction and trading it for high def. One must admit that was gutsy.I will buy XP10 and probably work on IFR stuff, including night flying, which appears very good and not only plausible but also more realistic than what existed before.

You say gutsy, I say easier.

Hmph.Although I know my discussions on the state of the scenery have been critical, I also feel my criticisms have been fair. Hardly ridiculous. ...and people wonder why the atmosphere surrounding X-Plane seems to have a reputation.Cutting to the chase then: the product is simply unfinished. Developers and/or those representing Laminar Research's interests have since stated as much in various forums and blogs. Forgive me for pointing this out and being disappointed, and forgive me for not wanting to gamble with my money that it will be finished in a timely and complete fashion.Looks like I have my answers now as to when some of these concerns might be remediated.Be well!

We're STILL left wondering. No one said your criticisms were ridiculous. What's ridiculous is the discussions assumptions that the scenery is finalized.Please don't jump to conclusions.

greggerm, using your criteria for an unfinished product then FSX years after release is still an unfinished product, as is every flight sim released to date.I'd see $80 (less than the price of a night out for two) for a flight sim enthusiast as an excellent investment for XPX. Expecially considering many spend literally $1000's on their various forms of recreation.I think it's fair to say that no sim will fulfil your requirements for a quite a few years at least. Maybe you could take up fishing in the meantime.

It's pretty simple in my opinion.. if people are notified about lack of airport scenery and all that before they buy a product than it's nothing wrong. If they are not they have the right to complain.Who said the product is finalized?

using your criteria for an unfinished product then FSX years after release is still an unfinished product, as is every flight sim released to date.

Be it Microsoft, Laminar Research, Terminal Reality, or any other flight sim publisher past and present - you do expect bugfixes and perhaps feature enhancements to come through as time goes on. In that respect, it is entirely accurate to say that no flight sim is ever "finalized". Indeed with the X-Plane franchise, to its credit you see continual improvement to the system and engine over the months and years of its lifespan. But even with that history, I don't think it excuses Laminar from the condition XP10 was released in as a base product. We have come to expect a certain level of detail from our simulators out of the box. I'm not looking for miracles, I'm looking for a reasonable level of completeness.X-Plane 10 was released without essential components that make up its virtual world. Limited generic scenery models and model textures, practically no localized/landmark scenery models, limited ground textures and terrain, no seasonal textures, limited water textures, no airport buildings.... These components have been found natively in all other broad-based modern day flight simulation packages for decades, and even found in previous versions of X-Plane. For some, they will be able to look beyond this and fly to their hearts content! Great! For others like me, it's a non-starter and I've been looking for clarification since day one on it.If you return to the first post of this very thread, you will see that while I am critical of this situation, I am also simply looking for answers as to when and if such things will be repaired and even if there is anything that customers can do to help... (Hence my decision to ask this in the scenery design forum and not the general XPlane area) Until yesterday, no cohesive information was passed along about it - the closest thing we do have to official information is an indirect snipe from a Laminar developer in a different messageboard. (*Even though I have seen him participate here, he has opted not to acknowledge some of these concerns directly.) I've felt my criticisms to be fair and accurate, and while I know the missing content does almost nothing to prevent users from flying in XP10, it has a major impact on how I would enjoy it.

t's pretty simple in my opinion.. if people are notified about lack of airport scenery and all that before they buy a product than it's nothing wrong. If they are not they have the right to complain.

At last check, not a word about these issues exists on the X-Plane website, in the demo documentation, or on any sales pages or cutsheets. The only place to learn about this would be in forums/threads like these from people's experience with it, or if you are an enthusiast, the blogs of developers. The casual shopper would have little to no warning. (*Then again, the majority of current purchasers are probably not casual shoppers. They are simmers who might be following the developments, or in the eyes of some X-Plane users - should have known better.)Admittedly, my right to complain is diminished because I have not purchase the product - I'm not barking because I feel cheated out of anything. I'm barking in part to make sure attention is drawn to it, and to find out when I might find the product suitable for me to purchase.The fact that I am the only one making a fuss about it is not lost on me. My "crusade" is coming to a close in short order, don't worry. I've spent too much time writing about it which could have been spent fishing perhaps. I would hope that potential customers can see the current condition of the product and know what they are getting into, because first impressions count for an awful lot. I would hope that Laminar would conspicuously note prior to purchase the fact that certain items are incomplete at this time and being worked on, as Laminar's method of continually repairing, adding, and now back-filling content is not something often seen in the industry. I sincerely hope that these issues get fixed up so people like me who are waiting, and new customers alike can enjoy the new simulator! Some of the videos I've seen of XP10 in flight are downright beautiful - the state of affairs in some parts of the simulated world are an insult to those areas which are georgous!I actually debated purchasing XP10 simply so I could take screenshots to illustrate my points clearly. Alas, I'm not quite that rich or quite that bitter to go to those lengths. Once again - I see the potential for what XP10 can be. It's just disappointing to see so much of that potential left unfinished when XP10 pushed out the door, and now it depends on the team to play catch up.Now that some chatter has started on the dev blogs and other forums which directly or indirectly help answer my questions, I can start piping down here in the forums. The best laid plans of mice and men oft' go awry, so when it comes to the fixes, I'll believe it when I see it! And hopefully we all see it soon!-Greg

Hi gregI think your ideals of scenery that you were hoping for out of the box will eventuate but its a case of when. As you noted, XPlane is different from most with its rapid planned updates so who knows it could be looking better sooner than we think.

Greg,I can certainly understand your frustrations. I'm not exactly jumping for joy either. The one thing I'm most critical about, is that WED has not shipped yet. It's a crucial component, considering we're expected to use it to build up the plausible world. That's inexcusable. I'm impatiently waiting for the next beta. Maybe hiring out to do the grunt work would be a wise decision at this point.So you see, you're not alone with your thoughts, hang in there.

It's pretty simple in my opinion.. if people are notified about lack of airport scenery and all that before they buy a product than it's nothing wrong. If they are not they have the right to complain.Who said the product is finalized?

what? The fact that its released for commercial sales might be the clue that most use.

greggerm, Tierborn, I didn't read all the posts and threads here so I really didn't know that there is no warning about missing airport sceneries. In that case people have all the rights to complain about it and explanations about the product being constantly updated is more or less an excuse. Sure, there will be more scenery in the future but most people expect something out of the box.. we're talking about flight simulator here.. besides airplanes, the airports are also very important component.BTW... why is my spell checker not working anymore?

Sorry for the long post. There's a lot that sparked in my mind on this subject. Overall, I understand how people feel let down due to how XP10 is and what was expected and can sympathize, relying on users to flesh out the empty or misladen world is a stupid idea, and the future is undermined until it has come to pass - we only know the sim will be different in an aim to improve, but will the product at the end of the rainbow be what we have in mind?Let the thought-flow begin....The one thing I can't say is that LR were fully open about what the final version of XP10 would bring, the state of features. Their default area was an addon, specifically placed objects and scenery for the entire region. Why would a base package utilize an addon to demonstrate capability? To show what is possible, sure, but also to lend belief that the rest of the world would be similar. So we would assume certain things would be there (like the space needle in KSEA) in other parts of the world that weren't.Sure, XP10 is an evolutionary creature, but I agree LR jumped the gun on releasing XP10. Once a customer is able to have the full product in hand, the product is assumed to be at a feature-complete standpoint with bug squashing and slight improvements to begin once it is in the hands of the masses. Instead, we get a half-baked version that is usable, sure, but the level of completeness isn't there. There is much work to be done and I believe that if LR were open about where things stood prior to release, the details of my initial posts wouldn't have been a shocker and put off many people. I know what my expectations were and what I received (based on marketing plus what I saw in SeaTac) and was dismayed. I knew others would be too and to ensure people knew what they would be receiving once they placed orders, I made a few posts.I like the product as I can see where it could shine. It has some great features, but they're incomplete and premature. XP has always improved from base to final, sure, but it's never been as if the previous generations were as incomplete as XP10.The next point is only aimed at LR in part, but to various posts around the AVSIM forums re OSM data:Relying on users to generate the OSM data for most of the world's buildings to have realistic yet plausible cities (i.e. high-rises instead of lowly apartments and duplexes) is completely farfetched. I could spend a year just doing the city I live in, let alone Daytona Beach, Orlando, Jacksonville, Palm Beach, Tampa or Miami/Vero Beach/Hollywood (the whole thing is one big metro). I could spend the rest of my life doing Florida instead of working on my home cockpit or actually flying the product I'm instead working to improve. That is an unrealistic thing to say. OSM is a great resource being centralized, but those saying that "if the city you live in isn't good and it's not in OSM, then it's your fault" is **. If I'm making a program that requires data and I cannot find a source for that data, then I must find a way to get the data I need in a wholistic way (i.e. without having to go building by buiding, but instead, zone by zone). Find a way to map an area and flag it as "75%metro/25%commercial" where then autogen takes that data and places 75% high-rise and 25% commercial warehouses/stores/large foundation buildings. The area next to it would be maybe "25%metro/50%commercial/25%residential". That data could cover a large area quickly and give plausible results by telling the engine what libraries of objects should go in a polygonal zone. Imagine a ramp polygon draped over a city sector. A blue polygon represents metro-highrise, red indicates commercial lowrise, green indicates residential, yellow indicates industrial. This is something that could be added in quickly for 3rd party, but to expect people to go building by building and add it into OSM is too far-fetched.How will LR go? I don't know and they probably are only just beginning to figure out how to get to their end results from where they're at now. But to be open and honest, I would have expected some information to come out about some of the deficiencies at release that may not be up to users expectations instead of selling them a product and saying after the fact "what you see now will be better down the road", but leaves me with something that is far below expectations.I'm not saying that XP10 is a hunk of crap. It has many diamonds in the rough, but how long it will take to expose how brilliantly those diamonds can shine and if they'll even shine the way we expected them to at release by the end of the version run is always a question that is never answered "yes" but "maybe, if Austin decides to". That is what I believe is buggered up peoples rear ends about the state of things.I don't discount people for saying "you know, I'm shocked that XP10 was released in such poor quality" as what they see in the flight world is unrealistic and too ineffective for them to usefully use. I enjoy coming up to the stand at the end of the flight and maneuvering just right to get the jetway up to the doorway and shutting down, then "getting out" and "walking around" the bird and seeing the hustle and bustle of a busy airport. The buildings, the AI planes all trying to do the conga and get to the head of the line. Theres a lot of airports in this world left blank and to expect 3rd party to fill them all is a lot to ask. For someone to say "I'll wait until it's more rounded out" is a good honest reasonable thought. They're not satisfied with a product in it's current state, so they'll wait until it is more polished and has the features that are important to them rounded out before they make the financial commitment.For others, what you see in XP is a good start, good enough for you. When I fly over a WELL KNOWN city like New York or Bang Kok or San Francisco, I expect to see houses, sure, but also some high-rises (and masses of them of various heights - not just 1 or 2 in a square mile). This is unfinished and what will be the final result, is possible that the changes made may still not satisfy myself or others. The only truth of the matter is it is not done until it is done and we may tell LR what we don't feel is done, but we are not responsible for making the decision as to if development will continue on an item. With a product in development like XP is, it is difficult to sustain an argument that it will be better as better is a subjective term. What you consider better, I may think is worse or indifferent. I have hope. LR has not disappointed by end of run products compared to beginning products, but they also haven't released such an infantile software either. Much of what we think would be acceptable by end of V10 may be pushed into a V11 improvement cycle as the autogen may need a rewrite to achieve what we hope for and Austin may feel that would be a good thing to make users pay for as it is a rewrite of more than 50% of a base component of the sim.My $2 (inflation compensating for the value of 2 cents)

Is this better? Give us a little more time...

Its getting there, but you're adding static buildings to implement the cities as they should be, right? That defeats the purpose of the auto-gen system. Specific buildings like trump tower, sears tower, or very unique buildings is fine. But to ask you few to cover the whole planets major and minor cities with appropriate buildings is folly. I applaud your attempt to fill the void and it's yielding great results so far, but for the amount of work you've put in for the few buildings you've placed, how much more work would it take to bring the whole city up to par?I know that adding autogen art assets and tweaking the algorithm to place as determined by arbitrary information is needed and in process. One thing that I advocate heavily is to add a feature so we can tell the autogen a kind-of landclass for buildings, call it buildingclass and use THAT to place the autogen with specific landmark buildings placed as small auto-gen exclusion zones (i.e. something already HERE, don't put anything else here). That could be a powerful solution. The dataset would then be modified to include Austin's algorithm generated zones, where 3rd party could then modify the zones to be placed properly.

Limited generic scenery models and model textures, practically no localized/landmark scenery models, limited ground textures and terrain, no seasonal textures, limited water textures, no airport buildings.... These components have been found natively in all other broad-based modern day flight simulation packages for decades

Are you sure Greg ?I remember well that you have been very active in the Fly ! forums. So you should know that Fly! and Fly! II did not have airport buildings, seasonal textures,... which was the most criticized point at the time. History repeats. But many people, like you and me, found Fly ! great. How can it be ? :DPascal

I remember well that you have been very active in the Fly ! forums. So you should know that Fly! and Fly! II did not have airport buildings, seasonal textures,... which was the most criticized point at the time.

You indeed make a fair point, Pascal! But I believe that we do expect more out-of-the-box from our flight simulators a decade later than we did back during the days of Fly2 and FS2000.Fly2 was quite roundly criticized without doubt! It was released far too early by a publisher who seemingly didn't want to hear it from the development team, and then was left in the hands of the dev. team to clean up the mess as best the could. There are parallels that can be drawn about both product's state of completion no doubt. I liked Fly!2 in large part because it had the Terrascene (?) utility developed up for it - back in the day, this tool was revolutionary for making the default scenery of an area look FAR more realistic. The default terrain in Fly was generally on-par with its competitors in its time - but that utility stepped in and was able to provide something that no other simulator had. I LOVED the idea of Terrascenening my local area, plopping that into the sim, and flying over details which had never before been possible.Moving forward, the MSFS series picked up the idea of using better land and road data, then addon developers make a fortune off the same sort of thing with the USA Roads, culminating in the Ultimate Terrain series to bring together roads and landscapes, and now XP10 includes a global street database by default. Progress is good! But, even after 10 years of evolution within the flight simulator marketplace, it's the finishing of the basics which were skipped here with X-Plane 10 in what I can only assume was a rush to the holiday market.As someone who enjoys working on customizing scenery, I was actually most excited about XP10 because a much-touted scenery editor was going to be released to enable me to spruce up my local airfields. Much like my Fly2 experience, I was also excited about the exisiting apps like OSM2XP which can be used to further improve the local flying environment. I knew the other aspects of the sim, such as weather, night lighting, and overall performance were going to be good enough for me, so the scenery and physical environments took center stage.Once the product hit the shelves and we saw the state of affairs with the global scenery situation in XP10, I couldn't help but feel let down. I'll spare all of us the list. Each of the missing or incomplete components, taken individually, wouldn't be cause for major complaints for me. When put together, the amount of missing/incomplete/implausible items rose easily up to something worthy of discussion and criticism. The amount of work needed to bring XP10 up to the level that I would consider release-worthy seems quite significant.Echoing fvapres's thoughts - I certainly do see how XP10 can be a solid competitor. I WANT it to get there. It certainly does have many features worthy of praise, and those features will be greatly enjoyed by those who fly XP10 today. For someone like me who places a high value on the world outside the windows of my simulated airplane, the missing, incomplete, or mis-executed components all stack up against me. Here's to hoping it will rise to the occasion before us simmers get distracted by another new sim in the making...-Greg Ok - I really have to stop commenting. :) I'm over the initial disappointment in the product and we see that the devs are seemingly aware of the things missing, but there's nothing else worth talking about here on the forums so I keep coming here. Ack!