Some scenery questions.....

[Ben Cap 89]

Hi,

 

I recently have been looking into purchasing GEX, UTX, and FSGenesis.

 

Would someone be kind enough to answer these questions?

 

1. What does each product specifically do?

2. Any conflicting installs among these products?

3. Any FPS hit?

[Sweetwater 11]

Hi Ben,

 

GEX adds textures and some land-class changes to make ground textures look great at low level or at altitude. I did not get any framerate hit at all. Very cool IMHO. Won't fly without it. Check the Flight1 website for some screen shots..

 

UTX is great for accurate placement of roads, cities, railways and coastlines. It comes in several different versions for different areas of the world. I use UTX-Alaska as it is where I do my flying mostly. Very slight frame hit. Adds some airport scenery in the Alaska version. Very accurate. Also view at Flight1.

 

FS Genesis is a "mesh," meaning it builds the land variations in altitude, mountains, valleys, hills the like... This is also very cool and is very accurate. I use their products under UTX-Alaska and GEX. Think of it as a frame over which the GEX textures and UTX roads lay. This can hit frames a wee bit dependent on your settings for resolution of the mesh.

 

Very simple explanation but I hope it helped. I am sure others will add on to this. As I run all three I have to say no conflicts with these in concert.

 

Jeff

[CoolP 283]

Perfect description from Jeff.

 

On the compatibility, almost every addon dev takes UTX into account when designing his titles and it also comes with a neat setup tool to e.g. enable and disable features or reworked airports.

 

For example, you may want to turn some UTX airports off when running Orbx NA stuff. Again, due to the very common use of UTX, most forums already have a FAQ section covering those steps.

 

I had to turn down some UTX Alaska features around PANC to allow for the Aerosoft airport and a smaller fps impact. Other than that, I never saw huge drawbacks with the added UTX details.

 

GEX is a tip, same goes for some mesh. There is a chance that the higher detailed mesh causes some default airports to show their wrongness, so to speak. Means that if MS has set airport A to a certain altitude not being in line with the rw part, you wouldn't notice it with the faulty FSX mesh in that area.

 

But after adding a correct mesh addon, you may see it being too low or high, showing on a sort of plateau. But that's easily corrected, just be aware of it when flying to some remote places. The well known ones may already have received a correction when you install the mesh.

[Ben Cap 89]

Thanks so much for your help guys! Very much appreciated! ^_^

 

One last question, is there any option within UTX to disable/turn down street lights? - If so, how bad do they hurt FPS? (Specs in my profile on the left)

[level7 171]

One last question, is there any option within UTX to disable/turn down street lights? - If so, how bad do they hurt FPS? (Specs in my profile on the left)

 

yes there is an option along with disabling other things like residential roads and streams that will slow down the system

 

UTX USA is still a bit of a bog compared to running FSX without it (i3570K@4.2 + GTX670 here)

[Ben Cap 89]

 

UTX USA is still a bit of a bog compared to running FSX without it (i3570K@4.2 + GTX670 here)

 

Hmm.... Maybe I should just stick with GEX then... The OP also said that FSGenesis can be FPS bogging too.

[ZachLW 37]

GEX actually gives me better performance than default! Not to mention the wonderfully placed autogen.

[CoolP 283]

I wouldn't fear much impact with your system, Ben. I mean, you add detail like correct city layouts and the autogen and stuff, so there surely is 'more' for FSX to handle. But with the UTX tools, you can define if you want the lights, how detailed the road network should be an so on. So even if there was a high impact issue, you would be able to clear it up.

 

The tool even shows the assumed fps weight a feature has. The road lights being a hog. :lol: But there are two levels of them, so one can pick a favourite for sure.

 

On the mesh, there shouldn't be much on the fps, if anything. You will receive way nicer looking mountains and a correct setup for all the approaches around, so there's quite some gain. Keep in mind though, some addons already bring their mesh, take the Orbx stuff for example.

 

So if it was for just flying there, you don't need something extra.

[wims80 121]

There's a problem with GEX's autogen fix. It adds trees in some cases at places where there shouldnt be any, for example on runways. I believe its possible to disable this socalled autogen fix feature tho.

[ZachLW 37]

There's a problem with GEX's autogen fix. It adds trees in some cases at places where there shouldnt be any, for example on runways. I believe its possible to disable this socalled autogen fix feature tho.

 

Like where? I haven't had this issue.

 

Sounds like a landclass issue. I use FSGenesis US Landclass.

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

I wouldn't fear much impact with your system, Ben. I mean, you add detail like correct city layouts and the autogen and stuff, so there surely is 'more' for FSX to handle. But with the UTX tools, you can define if you want the lights, how detailed the road network should be an so on. So even if there was a high impact issue, you would be able to clear it up.

 

 

I second what CoolP said. I'm running GEX, UTX USA and Europe, and FSGenesis mesh (world wide coverage) and have no issues with FPS and I am still on an E8400 @ 3.85ghz, 2GB RAM, and Win XP 32bit, Having said that, the only thing on my rig that effects FPS using any of those 3 products would be using the night lights in UT. However, the night lights dont cost that much FPS. As an example, at FSDT JFK pictured below, using about 80% AI and the NGX I can still manage a nice smooth 25 FPS, plus it adds to the "immersion factor" if you will, by adding a bit more texture to a dull night as seen in the Las Vegas picture below it.

 

JFK

 

 

Vegas

 

 

 

Also, as far as FPS and mesh are concerned, I run the Mesh Complexity at 100 and Mesh Resolution a 1M (since its required by Flightbeam's KPHX) and notice no FPS hit. Although I used to run the mesh resolution at 5m since FSDT's KDFW required it, I have since lowed it to 1m for KPHX.

 

Lastly, as Zach mentinoed, GEX can if anything improve performance due to the better autogen annotation, plus it looks better than the default tiles imho.

 

With the rig you got you should be fine since my dinosaur handles all three addons with no issues.

 

BTW, dont forget to sandwich your landclass addons for UTX in the correct sequence, if your running an LC enhancements for the US like Scenery Tech, etc.

 

 

Good luck with your purchases!!

[DickB 6]

Agree pretty much with everything above. I run UTX EU, GEX EU and FSGenesis, and they run great together. I did find UTX roads gave me a noticeable hit in places, so I disable all of them - the GEX scenery looks much better without them anyway. And I find I can still fly VFR based on land and water features. I also found the UTX EU night lighting too bright, so I disable that too (unlike UTX US, you only have an on/off option in UTX EU). The FSX/GEX night lighting on its own is more realistic IMO.

 

And I also believe that GEX gives me better framerates.

[wims80 121]

 

 

Like where? I haven't had this issue.

 

Sounds like a landclass issue. I use FSGenesis US Landclass.

I can assure you that its related to GEX. This have been documented several places, for example on fsdeveloper.com and on Simforums.com. It looks like this in action :

 

[gizmosellsbunnys 106]

UTX is good. Gex, better in some regions and worse in others based on texture. Shut off minor streams and roads and fps hit minimal

[DickB 6]

I can assure you that its related to GEX. This have been documented several places, for example on fsdeveloper.com and on Simforums.com.

 

I have the GEX 'fix' active and have never seen a problem. But it's (very) well explained on the GEX support site at Simforums and easily disabled if necessary. As I understand it, the tradeoff is better overall performance versus the occasional anomaly which many never see. I certainly wouldn't let it put me off GEX.