I totally agree with OP. Also it changes by country so I have to pay 2.5 times more cause of exchange rate so when I compare addon prices to video games, they are kinda too much but some of them deserves it.

So, if you guys would recommend to me what regional stuff to get?  In particular, I'm looking for England, France, Germany, Austria and Italy.  Don't worry...I'll be taking it slowwwww.

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.

 

 

 

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?

That looks pretty good (pics are small).  What pieces did you put together?

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.

+1

Couldn't say it better.

 

 

I prefer to spend my alotted FSX money on the aircraft and utilities NOT sceneries. Since I mostly fly the big jets the scenery doesn't make a lot of sense to me.  It is simply too expensive too.  I mean once I start buying scenery there is no where to stop.  I could practically go broke buying scenery alone.   

Gregg

 

Some very good points you raised in your Topic Starter, and some interesting replies too.

 

Have you considered being wily and patient at the same time, and thus letting that patience pay dividends because every so often, scenery developers/sellers have 1/2 price or 30% upwards sales? That is when I have purchased my scenery purchases and thus reduced the hit on the wallet.

 

There are far better qualified forum members here who will be able to recommend which are value-for-money. Only a suggestion.

 

For UK, I find UK Scenery 2000 run by Gary SImmons good value.

 

 

Some very good points you raised in your Topic Starter, and some interesting replies too.



Have you considered being wily and patient at the same time, and thus letting that patience pay dividends because every so often, scenery developers/sellers have 1/2 price or 30% upwards sales? That is when I have purchased my scenery purchases and thus reduced the hit on the wallet.



There are far better qualified forum members here who will be able to recommend which are value-for-money. Only a suggestion.

 

Very wise and, yes, I'll have to be patient.  Still, getting some help weeding through what's out there so I can have it on my list seems like the best first step.  I'm thinking FTX Global and new regions will cause some price changes.

As others, only sales shopping. Also the big web shops sell the same cd/dvd usually cheaper than (for example) the Aerosoft. And even the mentioned developer/producer/wrapper has packages where the unit price comes tolerable. And for a GA flyer most small airfields are for free. Following the sales keenly I have had enough locations to fly and have that payware quality option.

 

Also it is good to have a plan or understanding where you´re gonna fly. There are lots of super sceneries available, but if their location is somewhere where I don´t usually fly - why bother. Also I have noticed that the regional airports get heavier use than the "mega" airports. From a regional you can have scheduled routes, GA etc. Just to narrow the selection and expenses.

 

And as I wrote some time before, have you been to pub lately? I went yesterday and bought a pint for my honey too, it was almost 15 euros...

Gregg_Seipp, on 20 Jul 2013 - 3:51 PM, said:

That looks pretty good (pics are small). What pieces did you put together?

I prefer flying around the Alps area.. and the the one I have is

 

A) ALPS

1) VFR France Northern Alps (they prorted their FS9 version over to the FSX). Its got phototexures + autogens. I merged it with their HD Northern Alps for FSX.

 

2) I have the LLH's Courchevel

 

3) FSDT's Geneva (which is close by)

 

4) I also have VFR France Southern Alps and

 

5) Aerosoft's NICE airport and Aerosofts Monoco.

 

So that gives me some nice area to fly around... near the alps..

 

I wish I had a good Italian And Swiss Alps in HD photo textures and autogen..but there isn't one.

 

 

I don't care for the other parts of France (mostly flatlands..except maybe Paris area if you are interested. VFR France have some set of sceneries.

 

B) GREECE

 

The you can get many of the Greek Islands (from Aerosofts)..since these are Islands, the ocean helps spread these airports around.

 

C) NL

The third set of location is the Neatherlands which I told you about NL2000 (Freeware)

 

D) UK

 

The 4th is the Horizon's Southern England and UK2000 airports for Southern England (London city and Heathrow and few more

 

 

E) FSAltitude

I also have FS Altitutde for Europe..this gives me the entire western photoscenery for flying at 30,000 feet.

 

Aerosoft has some good EU collection.

 

Then this freeware airport.. I love it... Wusserkupe, Germany

 

http://en.shop.aerosoft.com/eshop.php?action=article_detail&s_supplier_aid=11784&s_design=DEFAULT&shopfilter_category=Flight%20Simulation

 

 

If you have Aerosoft's Frankfurt..then Wusserkupe is closeby you can fly from Frankfurt to Wusserkupe.. Its a small airport for GA on a hill top with a nice slopped runway which is a challenge.

One of the great things about doing scenery design, it helps you justify whether the cost is appropriate based on what you get and how much work went into it.

 

I do lots of research unless i know the developer and know what to expect, Plus i also know that sales come often at the many different stores, so patience is also a virtue

I prefer flying around the Alps area.. and the the one I have is

 

A) ALPS

1) VFR France Northern Alps (they prorted their FS9 version over to the FSX). Its got phototexures + autogens. I merged it with their HD Northern Alps for FSX.

 

2) I have the LLH's Courchevel

 

3) FSDT's Geneva (which is close by)

 

4) I also have VFR France Southern Alps and

 

5) Aerosoft's NICE airport and Aerosofts Monoco.

 

So that gives me some nice area to fly around... near the alps..

 

I wish I had a good Italian And Swiss Alps in HD photo textures and autogen..but there isn't one.

 

 

I don't care for the other parts of France (mostly flatlands..except maybe Paris area if you are interested. VFR France have some set of sceneries.

 

B) GREECE

 

The you can get many of the Greek Islands (from Aerosofts)..since these are Islands, the ocean helps spread these airports around.

 

C) NL

The third set of location is the Neatherlands which I told you about NL2000 (Freeware)

 

D) UK

 

The 4th is the Horizon's Southern England and UK2000 airports for Southern England (London city and Heathrow and few more

 

 

E) FSAltitude

I also have FS Altitutde for Europe..this gives me the entire western photoscenery for flying at 30,000 feet.

 

Aerosoft has some good EU collection.

 

Then this freeware airport.. I love it... Wusserkupe, Germany

 

http://en.shop.aerosoft.com/eshop.php?action=article_detail&s_supplier_aid=11784&s_design=DEFAULT&shopfilter_category=Flight%20Simulation

 

 

If you have Aerosoft's Frankfurt..then Wusserkupe is closeby you can fly from Frankfurt to Wusserkupe.. Its a small airport for GA on a hill top with a nice slopped runway which is a challenge.

Thanks!  I'll save this and keep my eyes open.

So, if you guys would recommend to me what regional stuff to get?  In particular, I'm looking for England, France, Germany, Austria and Italy.

England: ORBX (or Horizon for photoscenery, whichever you prefer), and UK2000 airports; besides there are some quite nice freeware airfileds called something like "Alf's UK Airfields" in the Avsim library.

France: France VFR is the way to go, plus some airports like Nice(Aerosoft) and Alpe d'Huez or Courchevel (LLH)

Germany: There's VFR Germany (photoscenery), DEX (ORBX-like product, currently only Northern Germany), and of course loads of Aerosoft airports

Austria: Sadly nothing good at the moment, as the current Austria Professional is not that great at all, but the previews for V.2 do look quite good (although it'll only be summer textures, which is a pitty in a country like Austria)

Italy: There are some sceneries covering the Alps with photoscenery, e.g. Vale d'Aosta, which is available as freeware (not wure whether it's in the Avsim library), and there are some nice freeware airports for Rome FCO (it's a ported FS9-version, but it's great), Naples and Palermo (or was it Catania, I'm nto totally sure, but definitely some Sicilian airport). Besides, I believe I saw some photoreal Italian islands, but I can't rememebr where...

I just found (and installed) some very good italian scenery:

 

http://aussiex.org/forum/index.php?/files/file/1292-ozx-liguria-photoreal-x/

 

It is actually payware quality and is FREE, plus it comes with surrounding photoscenery, which matches nicely with THIS:

 

http://mazzokan.altervista.org/maindownload.html

 

and THIS version aof Romea Fiumicino:

 

http://newscenerygroup.forumattivo.it/

 

and THIS:

 

http://www.vvtorino.it/public/root/download.php?view.92

 

 

 

All of this is free, I just completed a flight from LIRF to LIMF over a photoreal italy. Very nice.

 

It really amazes me how much time and effort people put in this, just to make it available for us fellow simmers. So, if you use it, don´t forget to donate...

 

As for payware scenery, I try to buy older products like tropicalisms great Porto (LPPR) scenery or scansims EKCH Copenhagen, those are more in the 20€-ish area but still loads better than the default ones...

If it's the UK you want, I don't think that there is much disagreement that ORBX FTX England, Scotland and Wales are the tops, and compared to other VFR-custom autogen sceneries (France VFR, VFR Germany) their prices are slightly lower.  If however, you wish to fly from the UK and across Europe, other autogen based sceneries will not be compatible with the ORBX sceneries.  I purchased all of the France VFR autogen based regional sceneries (Nord-Pas-De-Calais, Haute Normandie, Alsace and Bretagne) and found that I cannot fly from ORBX England to any of these regions in the same flight.  I intend to purchase FTX Global when it is shortly released, and am aware (from the ORBX forums) that ORBX is working to cooperate with other European scenery developers to solve the autogen compatibility problem.  If you intend to use ORBX sceneries, you may wish to try to find out which developers have agreed to cooperate and which haven't.

I prefer to spend my alotted FSX money on the aircraft and utilities NOT sceneries. Since I mostly fly the big jets the scenery doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

 

Fortunately cost isn't an issue for me but what I get in return and how much use is.

 

I havent bought any scenery/airports for a while. Orbx are releasing addons fair quicker than they used to and for me I don't have time to fly in different countries, in/out of different airports and over differing scenery/areas.

 

I am in middle of reinstall - back to basics. The only guaranteed scenery I am installing is UTX USA, EUR and UKScenery EGCC. Keeping GEX off now for good. When Orbx Global is released that will be installed and the only airports I update then are using freeware afcads from the library here. I've got £100's worth of scenery/aircraft that I don't use or want to bog down my sim with so its staying off.

 

Although I am toying with the idea of having several ghost images of differing sceneries/aircraft so I can swap images depending on my flying -

 

ie 1) Orbx US/AU and all airports I have for those regions along with several payware GA aircraft

(my favourite approach in AU is into Canberra which is coming out as a city addon from Orbx)

2) UTX EUR and US with NGX and Orbx Global only

3) etc etc

 

Save on bloating my 256gig SSD with stuff I don't need and keeps me well away from 4gig VAS and keeps things tidy, just swap on the fly. Can keep custom settings depending on what I have installed without having to faff around changing cfg files etc Only takes 10mins to restore ghost images.

Hi Gregg

 

Head over to flightstore for 30-50% ORBX FTX sceneries.