Aerosofts Us Cities Scenery

[Kaboki 437]

Bought Us Cities Chicago yesterday just to have something to fill into FTX Global when released, I have always stayed away from these sceneries because I have heard how hard they can be on frames. To my big surprise Chichago performed excellent even in bad weather, I could fly the a2a P51 with max autogen sliders decent traffic and other settings with a constant 30FPS without stutters. I was so euphoric and impressed on how real it looked.

Went on to buy Las Vegas too, the same performance there too (even slightly better, and this scenery has night lightning to).

So I decided to get them all, and that's where the euphoria stopped. LA was unbearable and to get running I had to turn off so much autogen that it ruined the whole point in having such great scenery. Indiapolis the same although better then LA, Detroit was decent, didn't have too turn down to much, Manhatten was a nightmare, San Francisco worse than Detroit but I can live with it if I tune the settings a little and use a lighter plane just for sightseeing(but getting the NGX there I wouldn't even try), New Orleans was so bad that the textures didn't want to load and everything was a blurry mess although the frames was excellent and no stutters(weird) even paused I couldn't get the textures to load(in LA the opposite, textures was razor sharp but I was flying in a slideshow).

 

So my question goes like this, what makes Chicago and Las Vegas perform so much better than Detroit, Indiapolis, LA, Manhatten, New Orleans and San Francisco?(I can maybe understand Manhatten because of the insane amount of skyscrapers).Chicago has even more skyscrapers than LA, Detroit and Indiapolis(in these sceneries). Any toughts on this?

[FIVE-BY-FIVE 453]

you just put me more in debt :lol:  off to buy Vegas & Chicago. :drinks:

[tttocs 301]

 

 

you just put me more in debt :lol: off to buy Vegas & Chicago.

 

If you have Acceleration with its upgraded Vegas strip, you might want to hold off on Las Vegas.  Looking at the images, and comments from others, the upgraded default stuff may be better.

 

Love Chicago AND LA, however.  Unlike the OP, I get decent performance in both of these - don't know why but you know how this goes.  Different systems, different issues.  The nice thing about LA is that it enhances many of the major reliever airports, not just the "downtown" area, so you get things like the blimp hangars on final to John Wayne - AND you get the Santa Catalina airport as well.

 

BTW, as noted many times, no night textures on these if that matters to you.

 

Happy City-ing! 

 

Scott

[FIVE-BY-FIVE 453]

If you have Acceleration with its upgraded Vegas strip, you might want to hold off on Las Vegas.  Looking at the images, and comments from others, the upgraded default stuff may be better.

 

Love Chicago AND LA, however.  Unlike the OP, I get decent performance in both of these - don't know why but you know how this goes.  Different systems, different issues.  The nice thing about LA is that it enhances many of the major reliever airports, not just the "downtown" area, so you get things like the blimp hangars on final to John Wayne - AND you get the Santa Catalina airport as well.

 

BTW, as noted many times, no night textures on these if that matters to you.

 

Happy City-ing! 

 

Scott

ok will check it out first, I have LA also with descent fps above 25.

[Boomer 1,619]

Whether it be for heavy liners or GA, I cannot see the FPS hits to be worth this urban scenery...just curious:  what is the motivation?

[Kaboki 437]

 

 

you just put me more in debt off to buy Vegas & Chicago.

 

:lol: Sorry for wasting your money, but you wont regret(I hope), and Las Vegas looks amazing at night...These sceneries has started me fantasize about Prepar3dV2 after I saw an announcement on their forum that there would be backwards compitability on FSX sceneries but not planes. With better hardware support and DX11 these city sceneries is gonna be amazing and then I'll probably gonna make it into JFK with a complex plane, Manhatten X and high settings...the future looks bright.

 

 

Unlike the OP, I get decent performance in both of these - don't know why but you know how this goes. Different systems, different issues.

 

At what autogen settings? I can get LA to run but then I have to turn my sliders down from Max to Dense when flying a GA plane...and I didn't like that as I have always max autogen settings when flying GA. In Chigaco I took no hit and maintained stable ubersmooth performance with max autogen and others settings also very high...

Whether it be for heavy liners or GA, I cannot see the FPS hits to be worth this urban scenery...just curious:  what is the motivation?

 

If you read my post, youll see why I went on to buy all US cities scenerys. Because I had such great expirince with the  Chicago scenery I could get it to run better than any other scenery I have bought to date with excellent FPS smooth as silk and MAX autogen and it looks f.cking real....And I think I can get the NGX into O'Hare and KLAS also just by tuning the settings right.

[mslim 12]

Can't address other Cities X but I have a pretty lame system and the key (as noted below in the manual) to reviving frame rates of Los Angeles is to set the road vehicle traffic slider to 0%.  Yes I know too well, very unrealistic for Los Angeles a city notable (or infamous) for its traffic.  However I have Bluesky photoscenery underneath Cities X LA and the freeways aren't empty... the traffic just isn't moving.  Maybe ironically realistic?

 

With the traffic disabled you can fold in a little autogen to taste depending on your machine.  If this doesn't fix it, perhaps a reinstall is in order.

 

ref:

TRAFFIC MENU:
Road Vehicles: IMPORTANT SETTING for Los Angeles! Due to the high amount of traffic in the LA area you
might have to deal with major performance problems when activating road traffic in addition to the highly
detailed scenery. We recommend using the scenery without any road traffic activated at all at first. If you feel
your system can handle the scenery performance impact good enough you can gradually increase the traffic
slider.
We equipped some major roads within the city boundaries with additional road traffic. This will bring you a
better real-world feeling when flying over the scenery, but: FSX only knows freeway traffic, meaning that the
traffic doesn’t stop at intersections and other obstructions.
If you don’t like this do the following to remove our customized road traffic (this will bring back FSX’s default
traffic): Go to folder
FSX\Aerosoft\ USCitiesX-LosAngeles\Scenery and remove the file LosAngeles_Traffic.bgl from this folder.

[Kaboki 437]

 

 

, you might want to hold off on Las Vegas. Looking at the images, and comments from others, the upgraded default stuff may be better.

 

LOL, what have you smoked...  Have you seen this scenery? I'll can post a pic later if interested, but comparing it too default is just ridiculous....

[FloG 148]

I totally understand you, Las Vegas (despite Blue Sky Scenery, FSDT's McCarran and AI traffic) and Boston/Niagara Falls are the only ones that are OK for me. The only other I have is LA, though (horrible, as you said, but I consider it worth it, because at least Catalina island works well for me).

 

Whether it be for heavy liners or GA, I cannot see the FPS hits to be worth this urban scenery...just curious:  what is the motivation?

Not sure about the motivation for others, but especially at airports like KLAX, where you pass downtown at rather low altitudes on either approach or departure this could add some immersion, if performance is still OK. Like for example FlyTampa's Dubai or Kai Tak, it wouldn't be half the fun to fly there, if I only had the airport itself without the surrounding city.

[Kaboki 437]

Can't address other Cities X but I have a pretty lame system and the key (as noted below in the manual) to reviving frame rates of Los Angeles is to set the road vehicle traffic slider to 0%. 

 

I have already tried disabling traffic in FSX as well as UTX but didn't help very much. What did help was turning the autogen sliders down, but for me it ruined the beauty of this scenery(Im not happy unless I can have MAX autogen when flying GA and constant 30FPS for ultimate smoothness)

Boston/Niagara Falls

 

Yeah I forgot to mention that, bought that one too , excellent scenery with superb performance.

 

 

FSDT's McCarran

 

Why add that, haven't flown so much in vegas yet but as far as I could see a photoreal McCarran was already included in the package?

[tttocs 301]

 

 

LOL, what have you smoked... Have you seen this scenery? I'll can post a pic later if interested, but comparing it too default is just ridiculous....

 

Hey, just because I'm from Colorado where such things are now legal...  B)

 

Do you have Acceleration?  The Las Vegas strip was upgraded substantially in it, and the buildings are actually quite impressive and from screenshots I've seen higher detail than the Cities strip.  There have been a number of threads about this (including the need to make some changes to avoid doubling with the Acceleration buildings).  See, for example: http://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?/topic/55956-us-city-las-vegas-duplicate-buildings/ .

 

I guess it depends on what you already have, but I'm simply recommending a check before buying.  I also use MegasceneryX Las Vegas, and FSDT's KLAS, so it depends on where you're coming from as well.   Again, I'm not saying don't buy it, just check first.

 

 

 

At what autogen settings?

 

One below the max (Extremely Dense? - can't remember how they're labeled).  I also use it in conjunction with MegasceneryX SoCal, which also uses autogen, but as another poster noted, I set no highway traffic.  Doesn't make sense with photo anyway.  In my case, I actually get better performance in LA than I do in Chicago (where I have it overlaying MegaScenery Earth V2 Illinois, and with FlyTampa's KMDW), though both are very reasonable. 

 

Scott

[Kaboki 437]

 

Hey, just because I'm from Colorado where such things are now legal...

Lucky you   B)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do you have Acceleration? The Las Vegas strip was upgraded substantially in it, and the buildings are actually quite impressive and from screenshots I've seen higher detail than the Cities strip.

 

Yes I have acceleration, and cant say It gets even close to the awesome looking "US Cities X Las Vegas", are you sure where talking about the same products?

Haven't seen any photoreal in default where everythinh is lined up correctly in a photorealistic way...

 

 

One below the max (Extremely Dense? - can't remember how they're labeled). I also use it in conjunction with MegasceneryX SoCal, which also uses autogen, but as another poster noted, I set no highway traffic. Doesn't make sense with photo anyway. In my case, I actually get better performance in LA than I do in Chicago (where I have it overlaying MegaScenery Earth V2 Illinois, and with FlyTampa's KMDW), though both are very reasonable.

 

There you go, I probably get the same performance in LA by turning autogen down a notch but after running Chicago with Max I have a hard time lowering the settings when flying GA in airliners I can make some compromises with autogen(Im just weird in that sense), but as the performance is now I realized also that I would probably not get the NGX in there without turning off all the autogen that is my second reason for letting this scenery off my harddrive(Maybe I can use it later with Prepar3dV2 when it gets out and run it the way I like) And in Chicago its probably Flytampas scenery that drags down your Chicago performance..I don't have it so Im reaping the benefits of that. If Fly tampas scenery would make Chicago like LA I'll pass on that, I can live with landing on O'Hare with default airport as long as I have the nice Chicago skyline without it getting into a slideshow.

 

A little offtopic, but I seem to have some issues with flytampas scenerys aswell, they just don't like my setup, inside the airport fence I get razor sharp textures and there nothing wrong with the frames, but outside the fence It just getting blurry textures and they wont load no matter what, pause doesn't help either but the frames stay excellent. I have tryied taking the strain of my computer by setting the all settings at minimum! but it doesn't help at all, phototetures still don't load. This happens only in Flytampa scenerys. I bought them all, and uninstalled them all. Have no problem with other photoreal areas, running e.g France VFR and the textures there load uber quick without any blurries, the same goes for all other photoreal areas I have(and I have alot).

[Don t moderate me this way 882]

Manhattan X is a different concept, development-wise, and by a different developer. Just in case someone's wondering, why the Manhattan features differ from the rest ...

 

And there are bundle offers for the "true" U.S. Cities series at simmarket.com, in case someone would like to buy at least three of them at once ... (Not saying it's the best price in town, though!)

[tttocs 301]

Lucky you B)

 

Yeah, well...  smoking anything isn't my cuppa, but to each their own.

 

 

 

Yes I have acceleration, and cant say It gets even close to the awesome looking "US Cities X Las Vegas", are you sure where talking about the same products?

 

Yeppers. 

 

You've almost got me tempted to try it - if for no other reason than the upgraded outlying airports, but then I go back and read some of the comments that had put me off in the first place, like:

 

Edit:  Hmm... half my post got cut off.  Trying again: ... like: http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php?topic=4964.0

 

It's not just the compatibility issues that put me off, but the comments (which have been repeated elsewhere) about quality compared to the default Acceleration Strip.  Some of the postings I've read in the past did side-by-side comparisons - if I can find any of those, I'll post links.

 

Dunno...

 

 

Scott

[Kaboki 437]

Yeah, well...  smoking anything isn't my cuppa, but to each their own.

 

 

 

 

Yeppers. 

 

You've almost got me tempted to try it - if for no other reason than the upgraded outlying airports, but then I go back and read some of the comments that had put me off in the first place, like:

 

Edit:  Hmm... half my post got cut off.  Trying again: ... like: http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php?topic=4964.0

 

It's not just the compatibility issues that put me off, but the comments (which have been repeated elsewhere) about quality compared to the default Acceleration Strip.  Some of the postings I've read in the past did side-by-side comparisons - if I can find any of those, I'll post links.

 

Dunno...

 

 

Scott

 

 

here are some screenshoots I just took..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notice the frames these are taken after each other..I can't believe the default vegas looks as good as this

 

Don't have the dreamteam airport tough, so cant comment on that, and they have upgraded KLAS in this scenery to a decent level so Ill think ill stick with that, I don't wanna ruin the great performance Im experiencing..

 

There are some anomalies in my screenshots don't now what it is, and haven't noticed it while flying so must be some thing that happens beetwen the frames when pressing the v key. You see them in the bottom of the last pic on the road...they aren't there while flying.

 

And one shoot of Chicago just for fun: