Hi,Anyone have FS Altitude Entire USA Bundle?. Thinking about purchasing the bundle for $79.90, I'm looking for user feedback as well as user photos and/or videos.Thanks

Hi Mike,I'm curious about this product as well. I do see there's an AVSIM Review - http://www.avsim.com/pages/0809/FranceVFR/FSAltitude.htmBob

Hi,Anyone have FS Altitude Entire USA Bundle?. Thinking about purchasing the bundle for $79.90, I'm looking for user feedback as well as user photos and/or videos.Thanks

Mike,Fs Altitude is very good, but keep the following in mind : you need to set your zoom to 0.33. Anything higher and it will get blurry. Also It will be sharp from 20.000ft and up.I own FsAltitude Eu and because I use 3 monitors as one wide outside view I and a zoom of 0.80 cannot use it. Even at 60.000 ft is still not sharp.So with one monitor and a zoom set to 0.33 you will enjoy it.Otherwise purchase SimSavy ( higher price, but higher resolution )

I was wondering if anyone else has any further comment on this product as today is the final day of sale ($79.90) on the Flight Sim Sale of the Day website ?? Normally, I would purchase without much hesitation; however, this is a fairly steep ticket item for me.Thank you.

I use FS Altitude Europe, have all of them but my flying is mainly in the old continent. This product is a low res photoscenery that looks ok when at high altitudes and with the usual distance haze etc...from meteo. If you are in the cockpit and glance in the windows the effect works and you get a (to me) very convincing photoscenery that covers a huge territory. If you use another more detailed photoscenery (like simsavy, or in my case Switzerland Pro and VFR Germany) it blends very well, there can be color changes from one product to another but if you are into photoscene you will stomach that no problems. On low altitudes you will get the default/ high definition photo, and the more you clomb the more FS Altitude will show up. It´s quite a specialized product, only useful when at high altitudes. VFR/low and slow flyers flee from this product asap!Now regarding cons, first thing it has no seasons. If you use non-photoscenery terrain you will get funny results in winter for example, with snowy terrain that changes into green and lush terrain the more you climb. Conversely, photosceneries blend well with FS Altitude, but non photo terrain not very good, changes are very noticeable and there´s a great disparity, most noticeable when you start descending and FS Altitude starts receding.Another con, it´s quite low res. It works (atleast for me, careful examination of pictures/videos highly recommmended) but it works only at high altitudes, and as long as you don´t start to change to outside cameras to get fancy photos. Other photosceneries mask this, but when using default terrain if you look down you will see the transitions between different terrains. In winter (remember no seasons) it can be even worse. I never get out of the cockpit, don´t give a damn about taking photos so it works for me, but not everyone will accept this.Third con: no night lighting. If you want to fly at dusk/night, you will have to disable it period. Else you will fly in pitch black terrain, except under the aircraft where the normal terrain will show up.So there, hope this helps (i think i don´t leave anything out). It´s a very specialized product, it has shortcomings and definitely it´s not for everyone. I´m a photoscenery junkie and to me it´s a nice way of having huge expenses of photoscenery without needing terabytes of data. It has its shortcomings indeed, and for USA maybe i would meditate about using Simsavy instead (both can work together).

Thanks for the additional info. everyone. Where is the link to the sale?

From what I read here then it could be quite interesting if you are a fan of photosceneries. You could be using it as you fly cross-country at 31,000 and then as you make your descent a higher res photoscenery, say like Megascenery or Bluesky would kick in as you make your appoarch. Would that be about right?

Coturnix,Thanks for the excellent review - appreciate the info - I think I'm gonna pass because of no night lighting or seasons. I prefer both even when flying at high altitudes, Blue skies to ya....Clipper Ocean Spray,Here ya go >>> http://www.flightsimdealoftheday.com/

From what I read here then it could be quite interesting if you are a fan of photosceneries. You could be using it as you fly cross-country at 31,000 and then as you make your descent a higher res photoscenery, say like Megascenery or Bluesky would kick in as you make your appoarch. Would that be about right?

Yep, it works that way. An advantage of FS Altitude related to Megascenery Earth is that it allows you to pick only those tiles adjacent to the airports you are using, the rest is taken care of via FS Altitude.

Thanks V. Carlo.Using a high altitude, low resolution photo-scenery instead always seemed like a good idea, so I like the basic idea behind the product. I really dislike the repetitive tile effect at FL. A question for anyone familiar with the product, I'm ok with the scenery being limited to late spring/summer/early fall and during the day, but is it easy to turn FS Altitude "on" or "off." If it is just a normal scenery controlled through the library, then that would be easy IMO.Another question, I'm using UTX/GEX and flying from a virtual cockpit (e.g., PMDG 737 NGX) using an add-on like AS 2012 which does a pretty good job imposing realistic visibility. If I used FS Altitude, would the scenery transition during ascent and descent from FL be jarring or something noticeable but "toned down" due to typical visibility limits/clouds?

Yep, turning the scenery on/off is via library. One entry for each of the products, very fast and simple.Regarding second question, clouds fog and those things will help no doubt. The main problem in vanilla FSX terrain is its browness, everything looks semidesertic or muddy. If the scenery adds more variables depending the location (farmlands in Kansas for example, or forests in west washington state that turn into farmland going east) it will blend better with FS Altitude, who will depict farmlands in Kansas and forests in west washington that turn into farmland when you go east. Being this photoscenery nut i haven´t bothered with other terrain programs, so you can figure what i get when i descend in non-photoscenery zone: a disgusting brown/sandy mess. Terrain programs that emulate certain geographic zones with a modicum of sense no doubt will atenuate this clash, altought it won´t be as nice as having more detailed photoscenery that matches (colour tone varying) exactly what it´s there.

Thanks Abat for the excellent info. Repetitive tiles are my number one immersion killer at FL, so I went ahead and ordered it. Worth a try. Seems like a decent deal for 40GB of photo-scenery (entire US).

Well, I installed it and from the few flights I have taken I can say it is a big improvement.

 

The transition from tile scenery to the high altitude photo scenery however is somewhat annoying during ascent from about 7000 ft to 18000 ft or so, but only if you dwell on it. For example, the view ahead (from a 3D virtual cockpit) nicely masks the transition and there are always other viewing angles available that avoid the transition lines.

 

Once you get past the transition though, the results are very nice. I flew two routes that always gave me unsatisfying results at flight level even though I have UTX and GEX North America -- KORD-KDFW then KDFW-KLAX. Leaving KORD southwest you enconter miles and miles of rich farmland quickly. With tiles, it is always miles and miles of repeating patterns. With FSAltitude, it actually looked like farm land down there and guess what....each farm was different! It is also nice to know this photo-scenery extends for thousands of miles in the direction your going.

 

Leaving KDFW and flying west, you encounter a gradual transition from vegetation to desert, something I never thought tiles convincingly pulled off. With FSAltitude you can't help but watch such an interesting transition. I'm actually looking for cities and other landmarks, to see how they look as I pass over them (i.e., sightseeing).

 

As discussed earlier, the scenery is a little blurry from flight level, but IMO acceptable at a normal zoom level of .7 on a single, 1080p 27" monitor. On real-world flights though, the surface when viewed from afar is indeed a little blurry due to eye limitations and acculmulated haze (even in high visibility conditions).

 

I find it helps to set AS 2012 so that maximum surface visibility is about 50 SM and maximum upper visibility all the way to the right (200 SM). You then get convincing panoramic views at flight level on high visibility days.

 

High-res mesh (e.g., FSGenesis) helps photo-scenery a lot too of course.

 

The transition to tiles during descent seems less noticeable, I'm not sure why. I think it is because I'm busier managing the approach and thus looking ahead more.

 

A good deal at the special price IMO. Thanks OP and those who answered the questions I had about the product.