I'd say KEYW - it's TROPICAL and part of the continental US - it's a pretty short runway - LatinVFR has a great scenery for it - and - real world 737's use it - both Southwest and Delta that I know of...

 

Regards,

Scott

I always look for interesting charted visual approaches.

Interstate Vis 33L at BWI - Not too difficult

Belmont Vis 22L at JFK - Also not too difficult

Parkway Vis 13L/R at JFK - More difficult because of the close in turns

Riv Vis 13 at LGA - More difficult because of turn and descent closer in

Expressway Vis 31 at LGA - Pretty difficult in a 73 with the tight turn at the end

Riv Vis 19 at DCA - Pretty difficult with the tight turn at the end

ILS31C Circle to Land 22 - not incredibly difficult, but it can a handful

LDA 6 at ROA - not too incredibly difficult, but turn on TERR and fly it in the soup (an experience similar to JAC, I assume, just not as extreme)

 

 

I-55 Vis 13C at MDW - Not too difficult, but you'll want add-on scenery (UTX/GEX) in order to see the highway better

 

Might try some of those as well...sounds like a good challenge. Besides KJFK, I'm not really familiar with those airports yet.

 

Also: missoula and KSUN look pretty good after a quick google maps view. Will try them out tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

Definitely!!! I just did this flight last week - all the way up to PANC. With OpusFSX, it was gorgeous!!! But, again, not lower 48 and not the best images available to make photoreal scenery for.

 

Yeah, you're on the right track there. My interest in the lower 48 states is because there's plenty of good satellite imagery available there. I tried going north or Washington state but that's where I start running into problems. And Alaska sattelite coverage seems really hit and miss. Amazing part of the world up there - but I'm also finding some pretty amazing parts of the CONUS states that I didn't know about - particularly over west. Thanks for the suggestions so far...

And Alaska sattelite coverage seems really hit and miss. Amazing part of the world up there

 

Yeah, it's just too bad there isn't some good imagery for up there. Can you imagine how beautiful Alaska would be to fly over in photoreal!!!!! The western US is amazing too but Alaska would be unbelievable I think. I know some newer satellites have gone up in the last 5 or so years so hopefully sometime soon we'll have some good imagery available to us for places that far north. Norway is another area that would be great in photoreal - similar to Alaska but again, not good enough data available.

Norway and alaska always get mentioned on Avsim as places we want good scenery for, but where it doesn't exist. How much does a satellite cost? I'm thinking that if we all chip in we can probably afford a northern lattitudes Avsim satellite...

 

Hey guys you really got me interested in this. I mainly fly in Europe but I would love to try some routes in north America, too. It's just that I have default scenery and I find it a bit dull I guess. I did some research and I really like ORBX terrain but as I noticed it covers only the NW part of USA. I also heard that UTX is good, some also use GTX in combination with SceneryTech landclass. And when my terrain gets better I would be interested in some good airport sceneries as well. So, what do you suggest?

 

My config:

Win 7 64-bit

Intel i5 2500K 3,3GHz

8 GB RAM

GeForce GTX460 1GB

So, the original post here talks about photoreal scenery(the OP is making PR scenery for the areas he flies in the US). That said, UTX/GEX is going to be as good as the Europe version and basically the same thing just with more US specific textures. Again though with that, you are stuck with the negative aspects of those products - that being it's still just repeating the same textures over and over again(GEX). UTX is worth it no matter where you are and what you use for scenery as even with photoreal scenery, you can still get the cars that will drive on your photoreal roads.

 

For me, I have SimSavvy for the US and to me, photoreal is now the only way I like to fly. Yes, it isn't great when you're sitting at the airport and look out over flat land(no autogen with photoreal) but, once you take off, there is nothing that even comes close!!!! What you see out the window is REAL(at least as of the time the photos were taken anyway, but still much more real than the patterns you get w/ either default or GEX textures). You can't buy SimSavvy any more. That product is now part of MegaScenery Earth which is only about 1/5 of the way done with the US(just northeast US is complete at this point).

 

Orbx is great but again, only if you don't want exactly real. From my understanding Orbx uses some photoreal stuff but you are more or less still stuck with the same repeating textures like in GEX/default. Albeit, at a much, much better quality. I think they are the top of the line when it comes to making scenery that way - i.e. not photoreal.

 

Of course, as I said earlier and I'll say again, the BIG difference between the photoreal options and the rest is the lack of autogen with photoreal. So, if you don't like that, then look at Orbx and UTX/GEX.

 

As for airports, anything by FSDreamteam, FlyTampa, or Flightbeam. I have most of them and they are all excellent airports!!!

 

Sorry, kind of a round about way of answering but I tried to stay with the photoreal part of the original topic too. Taking photoreal out of play, Orbx is best but obviously they don't cover the entire US. Where that leaves off, UTX/GEX is again going to be way better than just default.

Rob,

 

My buddy Marty and I like to fly the northwest US because we have all the Orbx scenery. That scenery set really makes flying into the medium sized airports in the NGX a lot of fun and is very appealing visually. I mentioned KSUN (Friedman Memorial) in my first post. It has mountains on both sides and is an airport that gets a lot of traffic for the ski resorts in the winter. The approach has a high ridge on one side that you have to fly close to for landing.

 

I applaud you for making your own photoreal scenery. I'm sure that takes some talent to do that.

 

An interesting airport you can try with great scenery would be to download the Orbyx Pacific Northwest demo scenery and fly into KCLM William R Fairchild airport. That gives you a great feel for the Orbx scenery as well. Just a thought if you're interested.

 

The screenshot below is from my recent UPS livery update for the -700. I'm departing KSUN. BTW...I have no issues departing KTEX in a -700 loaded with plenty of fuel. The challenges for KTEX is the strong crosswinds that make landing interesting. Great suggestions on this thread! I agree that some of the less traveled commercial airports can be a nice change of pace versus the large hubs. Happy Holidays!

 

Hi md911,

 

Good Landclass-based scenery - like Orbx - looks pretty down low, but boring for longer flights and once you get up a bit. And if you're flying the ngx realistically, you'll be spending most of your time up in the flight levels.

 

And if you want to see interesting parts of the US - landclass doesn't cut it. You're just seeing a 'game', not what's actually there. Which is why i and some others in this thread are using photoscenery for this particular type of flying.

 

You can buy something like Megascenery 2.0, or Vero-FS for parts if the US. I've bought a lot of photoscenery (and orbx) in the past. I've discovered, though, that it's easy to make your own using a utility such as FS Earth Tiles.

 

So i use custom US photoscenery, plus UTX to make the night lighting work.

 

Add a good weather program - opus - plus REX for weather textures.

 

Use the enb series mod to make everything contrasty, and you can even change the graphics a bit more using a small program called Shade.

 

That just leaves airports. For the US. I've got all of the FS dreamteam stuff and KSFO from flightbeam. However, i like flying into lots of airports, not just half a dozen - hence this thread. So rayher than spend your money on airports, buy GSX to provide ground services for your NGX.

 

You're almost there. You must buy FS2Crew to increase the immersion of flying the ngx over photoscenery. And you need an ATC program - i use rc4. And you need a flight planner - like FS build. And probably ten more apps as well

 

I'm sorry that this will be expensive - but that is why God gave you two kidneys. And the good news is that you need only spend money on one plane - guess which one - and the scenery will be free. Although you need to have saved up enough by 2014 to buy a longer-distance cousin for your ngx, which should be releasing then.

 

Just promise me that you will never, ever fly your NGX over FSX default scenery. It is the Devil's work, and must not ever be used, ever. At all.

 

Good luck!

 

And thanks to everyone for the suggestions for cool airports. I've tried most of them. Anyone thought of anything that we missed in the earlier ' cool airport' list?

 

 

 

 

Rob,

 

My buddy Marty and I like to fly the northwest US because we have all the Orbx scenery. That scenery set really makes flying into the medium sized airports in the NGX a lot of fun and is very appealing visually. I mentioned KSUN (Friedman Memorial) in my first post. It has mountains on both sides and is an airport that gets a lot of traffic for the ski resorts in the winter. The approach has a high ridge on one side that you have to fly close to for landing.

 

I applaud you for making your own photoreal scenery. I'm sure that takes some talent to do that.

 

An interesting airport you can try with great scenery would be to download the Orbyx Pacific Northwest demo scenery and fly into KCLM William R Fairchild airport. That gives you a great feel for the Orbx scenery as well. Just a thought if you're interested.

 

The screenshot below is from my recent UPS livery update for the -700. I'm departing KSUN. BTW...I have no issues departing KTEX in a -700 loaded with plenty of fuel. The challenges for KTEX is the strong crosswinds that make landing interesting. Great suggestions on this thread! I agree that some of the less traveled commercial airports can be a nice change of pace versus the large hubs. Happy Holidays!

 

 

My US NGX adventure started eighteen months ago with Orbx in the pacific northwest. I then realised that I enjoyed flying over a true representation of the world when using my 737 (as opposed to GA). So I switched to using commercial photoscenery.

 

Because if this, i know/knew the PNW airports best. It's a beautiful area, but I Iove the fact that the US has such diversity of landscape. So one of the things I'm hoping to get from this thread is a broader appreciation of the 'hidden gems' that i might not have thought of. It's been great to get suggestions of mpuntainous regions, interesting approaches and even well known lather hubs that people like because of a particular feature.

 

I took your KTEX suggestion on board, and made some 1m/pixel custom scenery to go with it. Have done three or four takeoffs there (pretty low viz last night). I am glad you do not have issues threre with your -700. All my -800 takeoffs have also been succesful, but the FAA may want to talk to me about the meter or so of tire tracks in the mud at the end of runway 27

 

 

Took a look at the SimSavvy stuff yesterday. For as much as it costs, I'd expect those images to be equalized (shadows on the sunny side of the mountain - come on now...), and same could be said for the rivers.

 

If you wanted undigested sat data, you could easily use TileProxy for free.

I agree that SimSavvy definitely is no where near perfect. And, there are much better photoreal sceneries out there(unfortunately not for the US though). The water masking is being addressed in MegasceneryEarth, though at a much greater cost now for the entire US. I also agree that color matching would be nice - hopefully being taken care of in MegasceneryEarth. As for shadows on the sunny side of the mountain, you're not going to do anything for that with any photoreal scenery. You get whatever shadow was there when the satellite flew over and took the picture. That just is what it is. That's going to exist in all PR unless you do some image editing to remove shadows. I don't even want to think about how long that would take to do. As if water masking wasn't tedious enough.

 

TileProxy, never tried it. But, I didn't want to be dependent on an Internet connection in order to get my scenery while in flight. So, I'd much rather have it all local and take that one extra link of potential failure out of the picture.

Try KHOU Houston Hobby - the Midway of Texas. You can get a really good freeware scenery with photo underlay here.

You get whatever shadow was there when the satellite flew over and took the picture. That just is what it is.

 

True, but if you look at some of the better sat imagery, it's been passed over several times by various sats, augmented with aerial photography for a more even picture. Even if it's not perfect, you're at least getting some definition other than completely black shadows.

 

TileProxy, never tried it. But, I didn't want to be dependent on an Internet connection in order to get my scenery while in flight. So, I'd much rather have it all local and take that one extra link of potential failure out of the picture.

 

As someone who used to teach Security+, I can appreciate taking a potential failure out of the equation, but let's be serious here...how often does your network connection go down?

Mine stayed up the whole time during hurricane Sandy.

 

Not criticizing, really, just making a statement.

Tileproxy is also dependant on the speed of the connection. My impression was that it gave blurries to most people with jets like the NGX, better for slow GA. The data transfer from my SSD is probably faster than my wireless internet! Also, living 2000k from the nearest decent city I don't get the world's most reliable broadband, though it's better these days than you might think out here. Lastly, if you download the data you know you can always use it, tileproxy only works until they change the login settings (like Google has already done).

 

Simsavvy is quantity not quality. At Klamal said, you'll never fix mountain shadows on that scale, but water masking is possible and that's what mse 2.0 is doing with the simsavvya data.

 

I flew KASE Aspen to KSUN (Friedman memorial in Hailey, Idaho) in the NGX based on some suggestions earlier in this thread. Taking off from KASE about an hour before dusk, I must say the mountains look great around there and the photoscenery source data for the region is pretty consistent.

 

KSUN was an RNAV approach through the valley with a late left turn on final (using approach plates from Simplates). Came in using LNAV and VNAV and went to manual control about 10nm out. Was a little later than I should have been with that left turn because in the fading light the road to the right of the runway (with UTX nightlighting) kind of looks like the runway! So landing was a little more rushed than ideal but still shiny side up at the end of it all - so all good!

 

I've really enjoyed trying out the suggestions in this thread, some like KSUN Friedman memorial and KMSO Missoula I'd never really heard of, others like KTEX Telluride I'd flown in FS9 or earlier but had forgotten about.

 

Any further suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Try KBBG (Branson, MO). I believe with the Southwest Airlines & AirTran merge, Southwest has begun flying that route which was once flown by AirTran's 717. 1300 FT elevation with a 7000 FT runway.