Hi all low level flyers!

 

Was beginning to think France VFR had joined the ranks of the developers who had abandoned FS9 until this appeared yesterday - Haute Normandy (Upper Normandy) VFR. Yet again France VFR have excelled themselves and produced some beautiful scenery for this area of northwest France, basically for much of the valley of the Seine all the way own to the coast at Le Havre. France VFR arguably provides the best scenery available anywhere for low level VFR flying and unlike a lot of photoscenery, you don't have to be flying above four or five thousand feet to see it at it's best - it is still brilliant even at low level with lots of autogen. They have developed what they describe as a revolutionary new 3DTechnology for FS2004 and this is the first product (hopefully of many!!) to use this. It was a little heavy on the FPS flying a Carenado Cessna 206 over the cities almost certainly because of the amount of autogen present although it is still very enjoyable. I should however mention that I have everything maxed out on my system which probably does not help either!

 

Overall this is another brilliant addon from France VFR. I had no hesitation buying it as soon as it appeared as I already have all the France VFR scenery addons for FS9 and their quality IMO is unrivalled. If you like low level scenic flying then go for this - you will not be disappointed!

 

Bill

 

 

 

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_{(and much as though I hate to admit it - 178GB of FSX!)}

As soon as I saw the ad on the front page, I checked this out. A fantastic bit of work. But I seriously doubted my system could handle it and after reading Bill's post and seeing his system specs, I am even more reluctant to buy this product. I want to buy it - it looks amazing and I also appreciate VFR France for continuing to develop FS9 products, so I want to support them. But it's a fairly expensive product and unless I have a credible reason to believe my system could handle it, I won't be buying. So it would be really helpful if those who do buy it could give us some feedback on performance.

Bill

 

The France VFR website says that the airports and airfields are semi-detailed. How do rate them?

 

They also recommend 4 Gb of RAM and 2 Gb of GPU memory to get the best out of their product. Well, that's my Windows 7 32 bit i5 with 1 Gb nVidia GTX580 Ti system out of the window then. It's a bit pricey too, especially as it might not work at its best on my system either. I think I'll pass on this one.

 

David

The requirements from France VFR for their new scenery:

 

'The technology deployed in this product requires a configuration with at least 2 GB of RAM and 1GB for the graphics card to operate satisfactorily. However, to take full advantage of all features, it is advisable to have 4 GB of RAM and 2GB for the graphics card. These prerequisites are not directly related to the notion of fluidity but rather to the extremely large number of objects.'

 

Seems a bit excessive for an FS9 add-on - but from the looks of it they did a lot of work and there are a lot of objects over large areas. From the sound of it, it should work ok on a system with plenty of RAM and a reasonable 1GB graphics card.

 

It does look fantastic on the screenshots! - certainly among the best FS9 scenery add-ons I've seen. Although I can't see any detailed 'up-close' shots of the airports.

Hi Guys - just an update!

 

Perhaps I should have looked at the France VFR website before buying this as the graphics card requirement was not given on the SimMarket page and I did not realise that it was recommended to have least 1GB and preferably a 2GB card! Having used it for a while now I can see that my system is struggling somewhat, which is unusual for it, so I have reduced the autogen density to 'normal' which seems to help and still gives great scenery.

David, with regard to the 'semi-detailed' airports included, so far I have just flown between Rouen and Le Havre and I have to say that both of these are fairly reasonable, although LFOH is the better one - I am attaching screenshots of both of these airports for anyone who is interested.

 

Bill

 

 

 

 

Hi Guys - just an update!

 

Perhaps I should have looked at the France VFR website before buying this as the graphics card requirement was not given on the SimMarket page and I did not realise that it was recommended to have least 1GB and preferably a 2GB card! Having used it for a while now I can see that my system is struggling somewhat, which is unusual for it, so I have reduced the autogen density to 'normal' which seems to help and still gives great scenery.

David, with regard to the 'semi-detailed' airports included, so far I have just flown between Rouen and Le Havre and I have to say that both of these are fairly reasonable, although LFOH is the better one - I am attaching screenshots of both of these airports for anyone who is interested.

 

Bill

 

 

 

 

 

Just as I thought - graphics problems if you don't have enough grunt on board.

 

And many thanks, Bill, for posting the screen shots.

 

I'm definitely going to pass on this one now. It's a shame though as VFR should be supported for bringing out a new product for FS9.

 

David

:Nerd:

Does anyone know if a Basse Normandie was released by FranceVFR for FS2004?  

 

Greg

Greg,

 

No - they only released Haute Normandie for FS9. Basse Normandie is FSX/P3D only.

Thanks for confirming that Graeme.  It is really too bad because it leaves a very stark gap in the VFR regions along the coast and a sharp contrast with the default landclass.  It is strange that FranceVFR would leave this single region out when the others have dual versions for the two platforms, as far as I know.  I have to say the the FranceVFR regions for FS9 are really good and run very smoothly for me so it is indeed sad not to have more regions available.

 

Greg

 

 

It is really too bad because it leaves a very stark gap in the VFR regions along the coast and a sharp contrast with the default landclass.

 

The excellent Landclass France package by Arnaud Clere fits almost seamlessly with the FranceVFR photoscenery when installed correctly. The instructions are in French only but you can Google-translate a paragraph at a time which is well worth it:

 

http://arnaud.clere.gratisim.fr/lc_france.exe

Thanks for that tip.  Any chance you could post a screen shot from along the seam between the Haute Normandie FranceVFR and default so I can see how this landclass is supposed to look?  I must have lost something in translation because I still get the sharp contrast between the photoreal and landclass based on the default textures. I installed both the lc_france_std and the lc_france_opt.   

Hi Greg, the Landclass France package includes it's own textures and it's these which blend very well with the FranceVFR photo textures - which are summer only of course, whereas the Landclass France textures are seasonal. I'll post a screenie for you later today, I'm at w*rk at the moment.

Ha! Turns out I don't have the Haute Normandie scenery, but I do have Mont St Michel - here's a corner I found near St Malo in Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter:

 

 

 

 

Thanks a bunch for taking the time to do the screen shots.  I'll go back now and see if I missed a step.

 

Greg