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Gregg_Seipp

Scenery cost

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I have been surfing around looking for scenery...Europe, mostly, but just looking at what is out there.  What has floored me and kept me with my wallet in my pocket is the cost.  There is a ton of scenery out there...some of it looks really, really good...but you could spend thousands of dollars on it.  My question is, how many of you guys are like me...amazed at it all but just unable to afford it (except for cherry picking some locations).  I wonder if they'd sell more and make more money if the price were lower...the prices pushing down the demand.  What do you guys think?

 

Gregg

 

EDIT:  And what have you found that's worth the price?


Gregg Seipp

"A good landing is when you can walk away from the airplane.  A great landing is when you can reuse it."
i7-8700 32GB Ram, GTX-1070 8 Gig RAM

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I feel the same, I personally can't justify the cost. I only have bought 1 payware airport so far, the freeway stuff is usually plenty good enough for me.

 

Plus, many payware while looking great, drop my frame rates too much and I end up turning the graphics down anyway which mainly negates the payware purpose in the first place.

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I like France VFR..particularly the Northern French Alps. But its dated now...Hopefully they will come up with a new version. That and the Courchevel airport is one of my fav place to fly. They have a HD version of northern Alps (it doesn't quite cover the mountains)...it has no autogens..I merged their older versions agn files to the new HD textures and got this. This looks like Orbix PNW.

 

7949447258_bdf6d82e83_c.jpg

 

7949447706_5b1617a714_b.jpg

 

I have the UK photoscenery and the Autogen trees. I am not too happy with the VFR Germany series..The color is bad I am not interested in the Swiss or the Austrian series..they are quite dated..not worthy IMO.

 

What else have you been looking at Gregg?


Manny

Beta tester for SIMStarter 

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I don't know about sales, and hence I don't dare commenting on whether lower prices could help. But since I'm from Austria, I have started to get stuff for Europe at first, and getting one piece at a time isn't that expensive (I'd say the cost for a European addon is about the same as for a comparable one in the US).

 

If you're really looking into flying in Europe, I can recommend the two FlyTampa airports Vienna and Athens (FlyTampa, what else is there to say?). Other great sceneries developers are UK2000 (be sure to check out their demos at first, the airports are fully functional, except for some vertical textures pointing out that it's only a demo version) and 29Palms - they did/do some excellent Greek holiday islands (not only the airports, but the whole islands).

Also, SimWings have done a great rendition of the Balearic Islands and Gibraltar, and for Poland there's nothing like Drzewicki Design's Polish Airports series.

In case you're looking for a challenge, Aerosoft's Innsbruck is - although a bit dated already - it includes not only the airport itself, but also enhances the quite famous approach to the airport by adding a detailed mesh for the surrounding mountains, photoreal textures, and the city of Innsbruck with its landmarks.

Actually, Aerosoft offers a great variety of airports all across Europe, but since they were all done by different developers, the performance vs. level of detail differs quite a bit between each product.

 

I know that getting al this at once will indeed be very costly, but as said above, one at a time (or maybe better two, so you can make flights between those two) will most likely be affordable. And what is really great about Europe is that there are so many addons to choose from, that you can ahve anything from very short flights (e.g Vienna-Innsbruck) to quite long ones (Glasgow-Skiathos)

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What else have you been looking at Gregg?

 

Well, I was looking at France VFR but the cost was...woh.  For the rest I was looking at Aerosoft's site...vast amounts of stuff and no way to sort through it all, You have to try to figure out what's worth it or best for your money by looking at some screenshots.  There seem to be countries, parts of countries and airports.  Add it all up and it's a ton of cash.


Gregg Seipp

"A good landing is when you can walk away from the airplane.  A great landing is when you can reuse it."
i7-8700 32GB Ram, GTX-1070 8 Gig RAM

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As usual..you have to purchase them over a period of time rather than at one go to avoid a cash flow issue. LOL :)

 

Do you have the freeware for Netherlands... its one of fav spots to fly..along with EHAM from Aerosoft.


Manny

Beta tester for SIMStarter 

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Do you have the freeware for Netherlands.

 

Where do you get that?  Maybe, I should pick up freeware as a start.  In the US I have ORBX PNW, NRM, MegasceneryX SoCal,  CitiesX SanFrancisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans and payware airports from FlightBeam, FlyTampa (the best!), and one more.   The regional stuff feels like the best bang for the buck (Orbx and Megascenery)...the rest is just adding some more immersion.  I don't get much out of airports since it's such a small part of any flight and I spend most of the time with my eyes locked on the runway. 


Gregg Seipp

"A good landing is when you can walk away from the airplane.  A great landing is when you can reuse it."
i7-8700 32GB Ram, GTX-1070 8 Gig RAM

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along with EHAM from Aerosoft.

 

Has someone actually been able to fly there with acceptable FPS without reducing graphics settings too much?

 

I get around 25FPS with PMDG 737NGX + 100% UT2 AI traffic and high settings in Flytampa Athens, in Aerosoft EFHK I get around 18 to 20FPS with same config but in Aerosoft EHAM I struggle to get even 15...

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Has someone actually been able to fly there with acceptable FPS without reducing graphics settings too much?

 

Yeah..it is a stretch...but with the new IB PC, even 13FPS is managable for the duration you are around EHAM.


Manny

Beta tester for SIMStarter 

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As usual..you have to purchase them over a period of time rather than at one go to avoid a cash flow issue.

 

It was a bit easier to "pace" ourselves with scenery purchases for those who have been using FSX for 5+ years. When I switched from FS9 to FSX back in April '08 there wasn't really a whole lot on the market as far as scenery or a/c for that matter for FSX. I pretty much started with GEX and UTX and like 2 or 3 payware airports, which didn't cost a lot to begin with.

 

Through the years I have pretty much bought the majority of all the FSDT, FlyTampa, and Flightbeam airports, then have picked and chosen from LatinVFR, Imaginesim, BluePrint, Aerosoft, UK2000, Taxi2Gate, ORBX, and many other devs. 

 

The good part of having been in FSX for so long is that all this stuff came out gradually and purchasing these airports one at a time over the course of years made it seem like I hadn't really spent that much at all. Not to mention some of the airports I have acquired through time I have gotten during simmarkets and Aerosoft's sales. I have so many airports now that I can really pick and choose what I buy since I don't feel starved for good airports to fly to like I did when I first got FSX.

 

One time I counted all the add airports and photoscenery tiles (MegaScenery X) I have purchased and I think it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 85 or so airports including photoreal titles I have got. If I put an average price of $25 for each addon, it would amount to around $2125 spent on scenery over the course of 5 years, which is only $425 a year. And $425 a year to build my FSX install to what it is now is not really bad considering the cost of other hobbies. I play around 45 rounds of golf a year at an average cost of $50 a round, not including balls, range balls, refreshments, etc and that comes out to about $2250 a year, which is about what I have spent in 5 years of buying addon airports for FSX.

 

Makes FSX seem like a cheap hobby compared to golfing, skiing, real flying, motor sports, etc.


Avsim Board of Directors | Avsim Forums Moderator

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It was a bit easier to "pace" ourselves with scenery purchases for those who have been using FSX for 5+ years.

Exactly..not just addons software..even some hardware has longevity.

 

I spent around $3000 to build my previous PC (when FSX came out). It was a core 2 Duo. It couldn't run FSX properly and today its not worth $50. Around the same time I aslo spent $3000 or so for Flight Illusion gauges (Hardware) for the 8 Pack analog set.. and guess what.. I am still using these FI gauges and its fantastic..the $3000 I spent has not depreciated at all.. Today the same gauges would cost me more than $5000. I can say the same thing about the Go Flight modules as well.. Money that has gone into those retains its value. But money spent on PC components like Video card has a very short shelf life.


Manny

Beta tester for SIMStarter 

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Just go for the "bang for the buck" addons, like Ultimate Terrain. They cover a large enough area for "just" $50.


7950X3D + 6900 XT + 64 GB + Linux | 4800H + RTX2060 + 32 GB + Linux
My add-ons from my FS9/FSX days

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I have found that it is nice to buy the one or two airports that you will really fly into, and get all of the other airports as freeware.

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