Did a few flights with her yesterday. VERY impressive! With one display I can easily lock at 30FPS, with three I am in the low 20's. I noticed on the Aerosoft forum several are complaining about AI road traffic. How if you even setit to 1% you can get road stutters. I say that with Surround but with one display I had my traffic at 25%. I mean, what is LA without traffic - it should be set to 100%, ha!

 

Here's something I did not expect, I have MegaScenery SoCal also loaded and when I run at night, the ground textures of MegaScenery are showing through US Cities? The look is great. I can still fly dusk/dawn/night and it is not all blacked out... well except for perhaps downtown LA where they did not add night textures to the skyscrapers. But is is very flyable and enjoyable to make, say night landings at LAX. I also have Night ExperienceX (those streetlights), so I am getting the twinkling of the LA Basin we all know and love. All we need is the smog effect. Don't know if you guys will see the same in FSX as I am running P3D.

I got this scenery and this is what I think.

 

1) The Catalina Island and its airport with slopey/uneven runway alone is worth getting this scenery.

 

2) The long beach area is nice

 

3) Downtown LA. Now, this is where the issue is.. yes, it hits your FPS and gives you jerkiniess. I'd rather have the car traffic over this down town. LA downtown does not come into the picture when approaching to land in LAX unlike downtown San Diego. So I am thinking, if I know which bgls to turn off so I can remove downtown LA, I may do that.

 

4) I'd also know which files are specific to aerosoft phototextures, so I can turn them off as well and use the megascenry textures that gives me night.

 

Manny

So what does this look like if you try to fly at night? How goofy or bad is it? Or is it just all dark?

I have a question. If anyone else runs UTX, does it overwrite it or does it still show up night lighting wise. I love my UTX lighting and don't want anything that will overwrite it or stamp it out.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

So when they put in the description:

"Major airports in and around the city are covered with new high res ground images with customized mesh terrain (no new building structures added with the exception of KAVX)"

 

No new building structures at the airports? What exactly does that mean. What did they do to the appearance of say Orange County/John Wayne airport? The description mentions KNTK Tustin MCAS, which is the closed former blimp base in Tustin with the two gigantic blimp hangars that are still historically preserved. In FS9 and FSX these hangars are not in the scenery. They are key visual cues for approach to John Wayne. I found an add on scenery with these for FS9, but have never seen them for FSX. So what could they (Aerosoft) do for KNTK if they didn't add in the buildings (blimp hangars)? That does seem to make sense.

Well I would think that means that if they are in the photo imagery being used, then you will see it, but with no additional buildings that were not already in FSX.

 

Somebody can correct me if I am wrong.

DTW is consistently ranked as one of the top airports in the country (2012 JD Power #1 Airport for overall customer satisfaction). The McNamara Terminal (Delta) is has a lot of natural light, local restaurants and very cool displays of public art. It has a great hotel (Westin) attached to the terminal with a dedicated TSA checkpoint. The curbside area is designed so that you rarely see traffic jams. I have never waited for than 10 minutes to get through security.

 

Wow. Lots of very inaccurate information about Detroit. As someone who works downtown every day, I can assure you that things are improving and there are a lot of really great things happening in the city right now. If you only experience the area by traveling to seedy racetracks or through the lens of mass media ruin porn addicts, it is understandable that you will come away with an inaccurate perception of the city I love.

 

Also, you need to remember that DTW serves the entire metro area and we have suburbs (and even parts of the city) that will make YOUR hometown look like the armpit of the country.

 

Don't get me wrong, Detroit does have some serious issues but other cities have the same issues. You can say the same things about a number of US cities so get your facts straight before you throw around insults.

 

As for LA - a souless downtown surrounded by massive sprawl, crippling traffic and suffocating smog? No thanks - night lighting or not.

Hmm, no night lighting is a no no for me. For me that is a biggie, 'cos I absolutely love flying into KLAX with all the lights below, it's superb! But hey, I have installed FSDT KLAX alongside MS SoCal, and to be honest I am extremely happy. I can't remember exactly where down town LA is relative to the airport, simply 'cos I fly into an airport and fly out... so having a detailed LA is of no real importance to me. IMO it's only of any use if you want to fly around these areas in GA. Not so long ago I got San Francisco from Aerosoft, I uninstalled it after a day, mainly because it played havoc with my framerates and secondly because it plays no real part of the airport as it is some distance away. I'm sure others may disagree, but that's my take on things for what it's worth...

My take on it is almost exactly the opposite. For me, part of the magic of flight is looking down and seeing the world spread out below. All of the world, not just the airports.

 

Not seeing the city's below would be just as much a downer to me as not seeing the clouds above. Or the water. Or the trees. Its all about immersion. For me, if I don't believe in the world, I might as well be flying over a featureless checkerboard.

 

As for the lighting, I made my feelings on that known at the time at the appropriate forum. They stated the reasons for it, and that was pretty much that; though I am glad they did decide in the end to get some lighting for Las vegas.

The night scenery of Aerosoft's LA is a non issue. I was worried that theie photo textures would be a dark blob within the Mega scenery. But thats not the case. I am unable to tell which phototexure is megascenery and which is aerosoft's LA scenery.

 

Night looks great while approaching to FSDT's KLAX.

 

The downtown builds are not lit up like Las Vegas. But it does not spoil the night scenery at all

 

Manny

So when they put in the description:

"Major airports in and around the city are covered with new high res ground images with customized mesh terrain (no new building structures added with the exception of KAVX)"

 

No new building structures at the airports? What exactly does that mean. What did they do to the appearance of say Orange County/John Wayne airport? The description mentions KNTK Tustin MCAS, which is the closed former blimp base in Tustin with the two gigantic blimp hangars that are still historically preserved. In FS9 and FSX these hangars are not in the scenery. They are key visual cues for approach to John Wayne. I found an add on scenery with these for FS9, but have never seen them for FSX. So what could they (Aerosoft) do for KNTK if they didn't add in the buildings (blimp hangars)? That does seem to make sense.

 

A very good question. I must admit that the description wasn't entirely right there. Being within the high detail coverage area of Irvine the KNTK hangars are included of course (see attached screenshot). Even KSNA is included with some additional detail and that balloon stationed at El Toro is also there.

 

Bests,

Sascha

Edited September 18, 201213 yr by firehawk44
photo too large (max 400KB, yours 793KBs

The more I fly it, the more I am impressed. This could also be because being a native here I see a lot of little things that stick out for me. Like the shot above seeing a more detailed Irvine, seeing familiar hotels as I fly into KSNA. Or seeing the most detailed Disneyland I have ever seen in a flightsim, that was a surprise.

 

Looks like what they did was start with downtown LA in detail and moved West towards LAX and South for a bit. Then the did certain areas in detail; Long Beach, Orange County, Anaheim, and then blended the borders nicely with either MegaScenery or default - whatever you are running. The amount of unique structures is mind boggling, but I believe they used a lot of Google type 'Sketchup' to create buildings. So they are unique they do not have high detail building textures for many. Which is fine for me, I see what they are doing here and the overall effect works well for me when you are flying.

 

I do see a glitch. looks like Newport Harbor back bay is filled up with land where there should be water. Are others seeing this? Anybody see the Hollywood sign out there, ha!

 

Clutch

I concur with Clutch.

 

Aerosoft's LA is a winner. And for $20 its a steal.

 

I see some folks are concerned about night ... No need to be concerned. If you have Megascenry So cal and FSDT's KLAX to go along with it, its one amazing locale to fly.

 

I love taking the PMDG 737NG from LA and landing in Catalina airport and then taking off from there.. Its now one of my challenging airport. I wish Aerosoft and others would do more and more of these uneven slopey runaways instead of that flat linolium FSX runways.

 

The best part of flying (real world and the sim) is the landing... and the most important thing is (I'll repeat this a million times) getting the Runway textures and the finer charachteristics of the runway right. Thats why I love LLH's Courchevel and Aerosoft's Luka and now Catalina.. so much.

 

Manny

Here's a suggestion I made to Aerosoft in the LA preview thread about the night lighting issue. I got no direct response and a -1 down vote but personally I think it's the best option for both the developers and the consumers. I mean, the developers say they could do it with enough money, and the consumers say they would be willing to pay extra for it. So here's how you possibly meet in the middle:

 

have you guys considered a crowdfunding approach to night lighting in your US Cities projects? Unfortunately Kickstarter is not available to you guys over in Europe (altho I hear the UK will be onboard soon) but if there is a similar escrow service you can use the idea is simple - get people to pre-pay for the night time environment development. I don't mean have people pledge money and tell you "when this is released I will buy it" but actually pay now for the eventual scenery update. I personally feel Aerosoft is a dependable enough publisher to trust such a prepay, although this opinion will vary. Anyways when enough people pre-pay to cover development costs you guys only then have to dedicate the time to update the product - which I understand is an entirely separate issue. Like Kickstarter, if the funding isn't reached within X amount of days the monies are returned. One way, I think, to ultimately determine if the demand is there...

 

Of course I have several friends and colleagues in the game dev business who have done Kickstarter projects and just listened to a panel on crowdfunding at a gaming expo over the weekend so I know it's not nearly as simple as I describe above (hidden costs ABOUND). But again, I think it's the best option if it's ever going to happen.

A large amout of work for very little money considering the time it took probably to create. :blink: