I've been trying to decide. A PMDG/LevelD plane or Ultimate Terrain? I've got the FeelThere Citation, EJetsV2 and the ERJs. Love flying these machines, particularly the ERJs.

 

I flew into an area I know well yesterday on an EJet and was looking for a familar landmark that was missing.. Looking into Ultimate Terrain, it removes the forest and houses right across the street that don't exist in real life that were Masking what I was looking for. How big of a performance hit does UTX throw onto FSX?

 

 

John

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(No OCs)

INTEL I7-3770K

SAMSUNG 840 120GB SSD

2x KINGSTON HYPER-X 4 GB DDR3/ 1600 MHZ

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 2GB\

Win 7 Home Prem

If you are referring to Ultimate Terrain X USA, i have it along with UTX Canada, UTX Europe, and UTX Alaska. They do a good job at placing roads and coastlines in their proper positions, i can see the main roads near my house. As far as an FPS hit goes, you would probably see more of a hit from an addon plane with a complex panel than you would from any UTX product.

UTX is the first thing you buy. Addon aircraft come later. Performance no factor with your system.

Thanks for the useful feedback. Exactly what I was looking for.

 

Flight Environment and Ground Environment must haves as well?

I also use GEX...but be careful when u install this stuff...you need to remember to install any Ultimate Terrain X stuff first then Ground Environment. Reason being is because the GEX installers have patches for a flawless sync with UTX

Or wait a few months a save your pennies for FTX Global?

Or wait a few months a save your pennies for FTX Global?

 

I was going to mention that Hellfire, but id like to see exactly that is going to work before i buy it.

Or wait a few months a save your pennies for FTX Global?

 

FTX Global will be more like GEX, rather than an alternative for UTX.

 

Like Ryan, UTX (USA in my case) was the very first add-on I bought so that roads, rivers and other such geographical landmarks were where they were supposed to be. FTX Global will not provide this. While I've since added a lot of scenery, both Orbx and photo, I'd still recommend UTX as a first basic enhancement to FSX, particularly if you want to do VFR flights and actually recognize the territory you're flying in.

 

Scott

i looked up FTX Global...and they are saying it will be compatible with UTX but not GEX products

i looked up FTX Global...and they are saying it will be compatible with UTX but not GEX products

 

That is correct, because they (GEX and FTX Global) are both the same thing - texture replacers.

 

Anyway, I too would recommend Ultimate Terrain as addon #1 in my opinion.

So UTX, FTX Global... Got it

 

What about Flight Environment? Is it king? or are there better weather/clouds/etc. generators?

There are a lot of Weather programs. Some only provide textures (clouds, seas etc), some only have the weather generators, and some have both.

 

FEX - Only textures. It's what I use (came out a long time ago). I still think it has some of the best textures and I prefer to run 1024 (lower res).

 

REX - Both textures and Wx generator... most people swear by their textures on this forum. I don't know much about it

 

AS2012 - Both... a lot of people prefer this weather generator and a combination of REX textures

 

OPUS - fairly new, ONLY a Wx generator but possibly the very best to come out... does some cool things with low level clouds/fog.

 

So as you see you could own all of them or a combination.

 

I'm using FEX textures with OPUS weather generator.

 

There are also freeware generators like FSRealWx Lite...

I used to use FEX some time ago, but then I moved on to REX for the textures and AS2012 as a WX generator. As Ryan mentioned, some of the FEX textures are really great, though!

Looking into Ultimate Terrain, it removes the forest and houses right across the street that don't exist in real life that were Masking what I was looking for.

 

UTX will also have roads running through houses and forests: only photoreal scenery solves that (ugly) problem. GEX and the upcoming FTX World will have the same problem too. Don't really know what landmark you were looking for but UTX doesn't add landmarks either. It primarily adds real roads and waters.

 

So before you buy something you might want to investigate if it really solves the problem you are having!

UTX will also have roads running through houses and forests: only photoreal scenery solves that (ugly) problem.

 

Indeed, that sort of thing will always happen with landclass scenery. We can point out problems with most scenery, including photo scenery which has its own set of issues that come along for the ride. Nevertheless, I would still suggest that UTX is the biggest "bang for buck" upgrade you can make to stock FSX to upgrade and make more accurate many of the things that do act as "landmarks" in many cases - accurately placed major roads, rivers, lakes, shorelines etc. And it does so over wide regions (US, Canada, Europe...).

 

Scott