I personally only have one addon Airport, why? Because it's my favourite and where I fly out of 95% of the time. That's EGLL by UK2000 V2, I also use AES with it as I can't use an addon Airport without it! I never saw the point buying another Airport that I'll go maybe once a month maybe less. But just my personal opinion, there's only one scenery I want and that's Dubai as I'll be flying the PMDG 777 out of there quite a bit. I heard Aerosoft have had further development with theirs but nothing further.

Another addon you can get with your airports wether being pay ware or fsx standard is gsx which works at all airports and its only a one off cost, you dont have to pay for each airport

Depends on what aircraft you fly if you fly using ga Aircraft than you see the scenery all the time when flying, so if your flying the ngx than probably not worth it. But if you got the any payware ga than its worth it

 

Sure, good point Peter. Flying GA in default scenery to me would be unbearable, but flying in Orbx scenery, even at 1000ft is unbelievable!

Sure, good point Peter. Flying GA in default scenery to me would be unbearable, but flying in Orbx scenery, even at 1000ft is unbelievable!

 

Very true Howard try flying out of kmcw great views flying between the mountains , try with low visibility test your flying skills :)

Very true Howard try flying out of kmcw great views flying between the mountains , try with low visibility test your flying skills :)

Dear Sam,

 

I estimate you are pretty new to Flight Simulator? Correct me if I am wrong and my apologize for it. :)

Thanks gents for some of the insights. With my current rig, I may stick to the AFCAD route.

 

With GSX - do you guys notice a big FPS drop??

 

I estimate you are pretty new to Flight Simulator? Correct me if I am wrong and my apologize for it. :)

 

Hi Steven - I've been playing FS for over 22 years now. I've generally focused on aircraft realism and procedure more than the aiport/scenery side. :)

 

Sam Kharey

Hey Sam, I do not receive much of an FPS hit with GSX, in fact, I do not think any at all. The only performance thing I notice is when you select your gate upon landing I get a quick stutter as it loads the 3-D models, but that goes away quickly and the FPS return to where they were.

 

As for the addon sceneries, I have to agree and echo what the majority are saying, watch out. Once you go payware it is mighty difficult to go back. I too am over $1000 in on just airport sceneries alone, having almost all of what Aerosoft, UK2000, FSDT, and FlyTampa have to offer. But, I do not regret it in the slightest. The quality of the sceneries for me adds so much more diversity and realism to FSX and especially when flying quality aircraft like the J41, NGX, Airbus X, QW 757, and so on. Default FS airports just seemed all the same to me and I needed a change, and that is what got me into payware sceneries when FSX came out. I had bought nothing for any of the previous versions of FS but started to get that inkling with FS9 a year or two before FSX came out.

 

My advice is limit yourself to start, and test the waters. Look at what Aerosoft, UK2000, FSDT, FlyTampa, and Orbx have to offer, and maybe choose one or two from each.

 

FSDT offers demos as another has pointed out, that is a great start to looking into their sceneries. The demos last for 5 minutes upon load, so start at the airport and do some quick exploring to give yourself an idea of the performance you will get.

 

With Aerosoft, everything is very high quality, but as said by others before, watch out for anything in the "Mega Airports" series, because they by far take the largest hit of any scenery I have come across. Everything else that they offer is above golden in both performance and quality.

 

As for UK2000, their sceneries are superb performance-wise, and you can also demo them, with all of the airport active, but with a large blue box on the runway which indicates it is in a demo mode, which disappears once you purchase and re-install/activate it.

 

FlyTampa is also a great company, their Princess Julianna being the obvious classic. At Tampa International I take a performance hit, but Athens I must say for its size.....amazing performance, and their best quality to date.

 

Lastly, Orbx. Careful with Orbx. If you fly GA once you go Orbx I guarantee you cannot go back. Orbx scenery can quickly become a money pit. I suggest trying their Pacific Northwest demo, which gives you a very sizable area to start and one full addon airport to go with it. Either way I assure you that you will be amazed, but also be warned! It's that good. Performance-wise it is very good in rural areas, but larger ones like the Portland and Seattle areas come at a cost.

 

GSX I say is an absolute must, and for airports that require AES for jetway operation it is a must as well. Like I said, start out slow, set a spending limit, and test the waters a bit at a time. Try the demos and go from there!

 

EDIT: As an addition to this, I should say that Europe is by far the best covered. The US has very few high-quality airport addons. I know companies like Blueprint and ImagineSim have quite a few addon airports, but they are a little dated quality-wise. For the Caribbean and South America, TropicalSim, Virtual Col, and LatinVFR have many sceneries out, but these also seem dated compared to what other companies are putting out. I will say though, even though I may gripe a little with the quality, I have quite a few from all of them, and they still outmatch the default FSX scenery by far, and the quality that they all have been putting out recently is improving.

Orbx airports tend to decrease FPS.

 

There's really only a few instances where I think this is actually the case - YBBN can get pretty low if you go nuts with the all the options, have autogen and water way up etc but I think it has more to do with seeing the city, water, etc all at once with the airport regardless of which direction you approach from. Most of Orbx's stuff I do not have FPS problems at all with - the new KJAC scenery for instance is amazing. (and a place I've been many times in real life, I was thrilled when they announced it)

Personally, I don't use payware add-on airports. I do download freeware AFCAD updates to make sure the airport layout matches the real airport. When I can't find one, and the default is inaccurate I make my own using Airport Design Editor X. The AVSIM library is a good place to find them.

 

I do use Ground Environment X, Ultimate Terrain X and AS2012(all payware) to update the textures, so all the airports look pretty realistic without having to buy any scenery. I also use Ground Services X to add ground services.

 

That said, I did once use FSDT's KJFK, but it was an FPS killer.

There's really only a few instances where I think this is actually the case - YBBN can get pretty low if you go nuts with the all the options, have autogen and water way up etc but I think it has more to do with seeing the city, water, etc all at once with the airport regardless of which direction you approach from. Most of Orbx's stuff I do not have FPS problems at all with - the new KJAC scenery for instance is amazing. (and a place I've been many times in real life, I was thrilled when they announced it)

 

That may be true, I've only purchased Australian airports from them. I've never had the privilege to try any of their new USA sceneries but like most companies I'm sure it's improved with time. I only have UTX\GEX for the USA.

Personally, I don't use payware add-on airports. I do download freeware AFCAD updates to make sure the airport layout matches the real airport. When I can't find one, and the default is inaccurate I make my own using Airport Design Editor X. The AVSIM library is a good place to find them.

 

I do use Ground Environment X, Ultimate Terrain X and AS2012(all payware) to update the textures, so all the airports look pretty realistic without having to buy any scenery. I also use Ground Services X to add ground services.

 

That said, I did once use FSDT's KJFK, but it was an FPS killer.

It all depends on what pc its installed on since i got all of the fsdteam airports and have hardly any fps hits at all the only fps hits i have on payware airports are of the orbox ones being as Ryan has suggested are ybbn and ymml but to solve this i just untick some of the options in the control panel

Here's a recent flight of mine using FSX (sp2), ActiveSky 2012, GSX (pushback/baggage/dudes walking around),FTX, Orbx YBBN, Ants Aussie Airports complete (freeware, YBRK), PMDG 737-700 NGX, Vatsim (FSinn). I'v also used Striking Software's Freeware fsx water configurator.

 

 

Things not included (but would make it better if I had them) would include something like TrackIR.

 

Trent Hopkinson

Yes, and somewhat yes.

 

I'd say goodbye to AI if you want 3rd party scenery. In FSX, high details airport aren't that bad since you can dock with gates anyways (but that's all airports)

Orbx airports tend to decrease FPS. FlyTampa and FSDreamteam can pull it off with a good trade off between extreme detail and fps

There's really only a few instances where I think this is actually the case - YBBN can get pretty low if you go nuts with the all the options, have autogen and water way up etc but I think it has more to do with seeing the city, water, etc all at once with the airport regardless of which direction you approach from. Most of Orbx's stuff I do not have FPS problems at all with - the new KJAC scenery for instance is amazing. (and a place I've been many times in real life, I was thrilled when they announced it)

 

This seems to be the thread I was looking for. First, I am in the similar situation as most here. The first add on scenery I purchased was ImagineSim's KATL (looking forward to the new version!). I then purchased FlyTampa's Kai Tak, and it was game over at that point. I was hooked.

 

I recently splurged and got FSDreamTeam's GSX and KJFK. One issue I have been having is memory. As my signature indicates, I have a quality machine (Ethan Rayhorn (Effusander handle) built it for me). When I use KJFK, along with GSX, AES, REX, SB4 (I cant figure FSInn out...) and of course, boot up the NGX, often I will run out of memory. This typically happens when I am leaving the airspace. On climb-out at around FL250 I run out of memory. From my research of this forum, it seems that this is simply due to the limitations of FSX and it's poor management of memory, rather than a limitation from insufficient hardware, RAM etc.

 

Also, I will often take massive FPS hits right after take off and suffer through some aggravating stutters. At first I thought this was an issue related to ASE downloading and implementing new weather, but I've come to guess that it relates to FSX being pushed to its limits, i.e., symptomatic of what is coming - Out of Memory.

 

Based on my add ons and machine, does anyone have a good feel as to what categories / values I should adjust my Graphics Settings to? Ever since I got my new machine they have all been cranked up to the max or near the max. From my understanding the Radius setting, water effects, and auto gen are killers. Whether that's accurate or not, has anyone experienced a similar situation, and if so, I would really appreciate hearing what you adjusted that nicked the 'out of memory' problem with such detailed sceneries as FSDreamTeam.

 

Thanks,

William