Normally I try and make a Needles post saying what neat but not very well documented files are available.This Needles is dedicated to my top 10+ Flight Sim Addons that I feel are essential to Flight Sim--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Here are my 10+1 "essential" addons for FS2004. 1. Ultimate Traffic or My Traffic 2004. Both these products dramatically improve your experience by adding real world region specific traffic to many global airports. Freeware packages exist that allow you to do the same, such as Project AI, but to get the number of flightplans and AI planes that these addons provide would take a long long time 2. FSGenesis Mesh and Landclass. Landclass greatly enhances the look and feel of the terrain as towns, forests and urban areas are more accurately placed and also tend to break up repeating textures that is used in the default landclass. Mesh greatly improves mountainous regions by adding more realistic environments. Due to inaccuracies of some of Microsoft's airports and lakes, some "plateau" or "crater" anamolies can exist, but overall the benefits far outweigh the anomolies. Of particular quality is the 38m US, 72m Canada, 72m Alaska, 9.6m Hawaii and 72m Europe releases3. FSUIPC (fsuipc.zip) by Pete Downson (registered version): Although this does little in enhancing the look of the product, FSUIPC offers a number of little tweaks and "bug fixes" to make FS2004 enjoyable. I especially like the enhanced ability to be able to map your joystick/throttle beyond what is available with FS2004. My throttle has idle detents as well as afterburner detents. These detents are not "mappable" using my joystick software or built in FS 2004. Yet FSUIPC allows me to program in the reversers so that when I land, I can pull the throttles back beyond the idle stops and engage the reversers. Also handy is the ability to manipulate weather and visibility to be more accurate and frame rate friendly.4. USA Roads by Flight 1. Replaces FS2004 default roads with an entire database of every road in the US. I personally like the major roads only option, but tastes in this vary. It is a kick to be able to find your exact home from Flight Sim by following the roads to your house. Some roads may appear in water, as Microsoft's "shoreline" placement for oceans lakes and rivers is not really that accurate. Also bridge objects are often misplaced, but over all a nice package. 5. North Cascade (us_wa_nc.zip), and Canadian Rockies addon (bcmesh9e.zip) sceneries by Holger Sandmann. (freeware) Every scenery Addon by Holger is a work of art and greatly enhances the areas he chooses to develop. Victoria falls in Africa,(vicfalls.zip) is also done wonderfully by him. 6. FSW Highest Clouds Performance V2. (hifpsv2.zip) (freeware) FSW makes a set of clouds that greatly reduce the size of the cloud textures with very little if any loss of quality. This allows more clouds to be generated with out the huge Frame Rate hits normally associated with dense clouds. A MUST HAVE if you fly in any weather other than Microsoft's default "Fair Weather" theme 7. AEU v6. (aeu6.zip) Airport Environment Upgrade by Chris Arrington (freeware) greatly enhances runway and taxiway textures, as well as replaces the textures used on airport terminal buildings, giving even the smaller airports a much more realistic look to them. Runways show simulated stress fractures in the pavement. 8. FSNight (fs2night.zip) (freeware): Chris Arrington wrote this as well and it dramatically improves the night time look. Includes different colored lights to simulate Low Sodum and Mercury Vapor lighting. Also residential areas have the common meandering look to them found in subdivision and cul-de-sacs. 9. GA-Traffic Marcus Brunner (ga-traffic_setup.zip) (freeware), A freeware traffic generator that allows you to greatly increase the GA traffic at smaller airports. Planes will fly touch and gos, and traffic is generally better distributed amongst all the airports. 10. Ocean FX. (OCEANSFX.ZIP and OCEANSTX.ZIP) Ed Truthan and Johan de Vries (freeware) Greatly enhances the look of FS water. Includes an automatic installer which allows the user to configure the swell intensity as well as the type of water. 11. (Tie) Replacement Waves by Bill Lyons. (Freeware) This meshed with Ocean FX provides one of the most realistic water representations available. Unfortunately, a DX8 compliant card is necessary and can cause quite an FPS hit depending on your video card. I use another file instead which is called Classic Water Reflection (classic_water_texture.zip, by Carlyle Sharp), which uses the same type of reflections used in FS2002. This is very frame rate friendly, and which one you use is really dependent on how beefy your system is.

Good post Will! I have everything that you mention(except UT) and agree with your assessment of these addons. Oh, I also don't have GA-Traffic as I just let MyTraffic 2004 take care of that.Cheers,Jim

I would have to say that with non-plane addons you are spot on.

Looks great! I have most of those (I esp like PAI & GA traffic) & would add:Active cameraFSNavhappy landings LPXO

Yea.....I'd definitely put FSNavigator at the top of my list. Then I'd throw the RealityXP Weather radar in there somewhere. I couldn't begin to imagine FS life without FSNav though. Its like having your own sectional charts, high alt. charts, low alt. charts, FMC for airplane that don't have one, and much, much more. I do notice however that all the items in your list has more to do with "eye candy" than actual flying. So maybe its a top ten "essential eye candy" list, as opposed to an absolutely essential list. Just my opinion :)

I love FSNav as well, but it would only make my list (of top 10) if I could use it outside of MSFS. Just think - using the familier FSNav system to plan a flight offline! *THAT* would be the greatest!I noticed there were no weather addons - probably a good call. Microsoft changed enough in the program to make weather addons a challenge - the winds aloft "instant-shifting" problem makes many aircraft throw a fit. -Greg

Good info, great post!Robb

You Forgot:1. Active Sky 2004 weather systemand2. FSBuild Flight PlannerSincerely,Dennis D. Mullert

Thanks Will, great post. Few questions here, guys: if I install UT2004 can I still use the GA generator from the Will's list?Did anybody notice FPS hit with AEU v6? In my case I had to remove it because of the FPS load (P4 3.2 FX5950u). I prefer autogen and scenery on very dense though.

How well does USA Roads work with MegaScenery? The roads in MegaScenery are already good. I guess I would like to hear that USA roads works well in the MegaScenry areas.TNXJim

Search here and simforums - a number of screen shots regarding this: NO USA roads in megascenery areas at all - the photo real roads only - best part: USA roads and photo scenery match perfectly at the seam between mega and non.Best,sg

I'd like to add real_stars from the clipper site (also here in the library) and Chris Wright's autostar program (search this forum for a link - sorry short on time right now!). Both free. Flying at night is just not the same without them! Increases stars 10 fold, and Chris' program add the naked eye planets in their correct positions in the sky...excellent stuff.Best,sg

Nice list, but think this all falls under scenery and AI. I for one am perfectly happy with Projectai, so no need for UT. Also dont like the "hiroshima" effect of USA Roads, so thats another off the list. FSNight is nice, but not as nice as Chris Willis's stuff IMHO...so there goes another one however the AEU stuff is good for sure. Markus's GA-Traffic IMHO, is a great tool, but unless Im missing something, is seldom used. (at least only occasionally I think.)I'd adjust the list to include...(understanding this is ALL personal opinion stuff!)1. AFCAD - defacto requirement.2. Active Camera for additional visibility in VC mode if nothing else, though this new french tool FSCopilot looks extremely promising, and freeware.3. FSnavigator. Extremely good for creating flight plans and also for moving map functionality. 4. Traffic Tools - See AFCAD above.5. ProjectAI freeware. Recent versions work great.Those go with your list.Eric

Greg,We haven't had instant wind shifts for months now!Hope this helps,JimActiveSky Supporthttp://www.hifisim.com/images/as2004proudsupporter.jpg

>I for one am perfectly happy with Projectai, so no need for UT.Project AI is great and in fact licensed the repaints for UT. If you like it great, but UT is a great turnkey solution for someone who wants nearly instant traffic with very little muss and fuss. Plus it is versatile enough to be easily modified. UT is a great time saver, Project AI is great but very time consuming. Especially considering time to download the repaints, research and get the flight plans and then manually compile the Traffic.bgl using traffic tools.>Also dont like the "hiroshima" effect of USA Roads, so thats>another off the list. Neither do I, but I find with using USA roads with the "Major Roads Only" option, you get plenty of roads to use as reference and it does not wipe out autogen in the cities. Also many of the "faux" roads in the urban and residential textures line up nicely to provide a nice effect.>FSNight is nice, but not as nice as Chris Willis's stuff IMHO...so there goes another one howeverChris Willis's work is fine, and I used it extensively for FS2002, but I find it too monochromatic. FSNight uses different color lights to simulate a mix of lights in the urban areas, and the residential roads have that meandering look about them that Chris' work did not have. He may have updated it since FS2002, so that may be different now, but you can't go wrong with either.>Markus's GA-Traffic IMHO, is a>great tool, but unless Im missing something, is seldom used. >(at least only occasionally I think.)Yes, but frequency of use does not make it any less essential in my book. With luck, you only run it once, then forget about it. But the results are stunning. UT only handles GA in areas close to larger regional airports. My Traffic, I don't have so I can't comment. However GA-Traffic puts GA in almost any available airport as long as it has parking, so the scope alone makes it better. Not to mention, the GA behavior is better with some GA flights acting as air taxi's and others just doing circuits around a field.As far as AFCAD's go, to be honest, I prefer the defaults. Don't get me wrong, they are great for my Gibraltar 2004 airport or any other nice addon airports, but unfortunately with third party AFCAD's I get too much traffic at the major airports and it kills my frame rates. If I lower the traffic percentage, like many suggest, then I lose traffic at the smaller regional airports as well. Lowering AI traffic at KSEA may only kill 20% at KSEA, but kills 80% at KGEG. And at really small airports not covered by AFCAD, with only 1 or 2 slots, it may make the airport barren. I use default AFCAD's as a way to artificially lower traffic density is heavy areas, while allowing for full traffic density in more "frame rate friendly" areas. Although this is an artificial means of doing it, and means I have to deal with aircraft disapearing after landing, I find that easier to live with than 7.0 FPS on approach to KSEA. Running default AFCAD's allows my traffic density to stay at 100% and still fly (and more importantly land) in most areas adequately.Reading from the other suggestions about FSNAV, I might have to try it again. I'm sure a lot has changed since I used it last for FS98.>Active Camera for additional visibility in VC mode if nothing else, though this new french tool FSCopilot looks extremely promising, and freeware.I've never been a big VC fan, so that's why active camera hasn't done it for me. But for those who are, I'm sure it is a god send.I want to stress that these items are not exclusive. I just wanted to share items that I "can't fly without" It is a testament to the designers and programmers that made all these wonderful addons. And if I left any out, it was not meant to be a slight towards those products. I left out aircraft specifically since each person's preference on aircraft vary so much. The products I mentioned, I felt were universally essential regardless of your preference of planes/panels/weather.