Surprised some 3rd party has not made airports for rural Indiana or Ohio its short VFR flying paradise lots of small and midsize towns with airports available. 

UTX, Scenerytech AND Cloud9 landclass? Well there's your problem right there, you have too many landclass products competing with each other. And Cloud9 is the worst of the bunch, get rid of that and make sure to set the scenerytech between the urban and rural scenery.cfg lines like the utx forums say.

 

 

Oops!!  Sorry I wasn't clear.  My landclasses are positioned correctly and I was switching between Cloud9 or S-tech--not both at once.

The only way to eliminate the repeating patterns most noticeable at high altitude, without using photoscenery, is to have accurate landclass.  Even with accurate landclass, though, there will still be some areas of the world where indeed the landscape *is* composed of repeating terrain types. If you fly over some parts of the country you will actually only see the same grassland for hundreds of miles with little variation, or the same square and rectangular agricultural fields for many miles.

 

I have to say one other thing in regards to the Scenerytech landclass for the U.S. I find it to be unrealistic and definitely not worth the money. I have spent many hours over several years comparing the default landclass + Ultimate Terrain X for urban and suburban landclass, and Scenerytech, and the default is actually a better representation most of the time. I'm not saying it's accurate, just that it's better than Scenerytech.  I've used satellite maps, the top-down simulator view, and just looking out the cockpit in areas I'm personally familiar with to make the comparisons. 

 

Scenerytech's landclass selection algorithm tends to choose textures which just aren't ideal for many areas and has an inherent bias against forest areas.  Take a look at the Ozarks and the middle part of Tennessee and you'll see that it calls an unrealistic, repeating pattern of textures which just aren't appropriate.  I informed the developer about this years ago and he said he'd fix it but he never did.  Moreover, the default landclass is actually *more* varied in some areas than Scenerytech is.  I will concede that Scenerytech is slightly more accurate when it comes to agricultural areas, i.e. it calls crop textures whereas the default just has grassland or forest, but this doesn't make up for it's other shortcomings.

 

I'm sticking with default landclass + UTX until ORBX openLC comes out. 

Pardon my ignorance, but am I to understand that without photo scenery like FS Altitude, the vast, flat soybean and corn fields of the Midwest are always going to be represented by uniform sized tiles that endlessly repeat? That FSX is tied to a certain-sized tile and while a dev might monkey with what goes into that tile, we're still stuck with the tiles themselves and will always see a Nazca lines pattern of squares no matter what?

 

If that's the case, NO landclass change is going to make any difference for this particular problem.

 

It's not that I object to endless soybean fields. Believe me, I have driven from southern Illinois (which has proper hills and woods) to Chicago many a time. Boring, boring, boring. So that's as real as it gets -- Illinois IS boring. (Except for politics.) The problem is the pattern in FSX. If there was a way to make the tiles propagate without a visible edge, it would go a long way to fixing things. Would that be so hard?

 

I actually wrote a review here of FS Altitude three years ago. After re-reading it, I am thinking that's the only way to go. I have Australia and Western U.S. If I buy Eastern U.S. I ought to be good. It really works as advertised, and you can easily disable it if you want to fly low.

 

For some reason, other parts of the world, like Europe, don't seem to have this problem. It's the vast deserts and cornfields that are the problem.

 

 

southern Illinois (which has proper hills and woods) to Chicago many a time. Boring, boring, boring. So that's as real as it gets -- Illinois IS boring. (Except for politics.)

 

speaking as one who lived near Peoria for 10 years, +312 Tim.  LOL

Is there any advantage to adding UTX USA to FTX Global or would it be better to just wait for openLC to come out?

You need UTX or something it for roads, coastlines and rivers.  Open LC replaces Scenery-Tech or Cloud9 landclass.  FTX Vector will replace UTX when it finally arrives.

 

Open LC, S-tech and Cloud9 are landclass programs that tell the FTXG where to place towns, cities, fields and forests.  At first the differences can seem subtle but they really are quite different programs.  You need UTX (Orbx Vector when it arrives), a landclass program, and FTXGlobal (replaces GEX) and in addition you need mesh programming.  Mesh makes the hills, valleys, and flat lands have lumps and bumps.

Pardon my ignorance, but am I to understand that without photo scenery like FS Altitude, the vast, flat soybean and corn fields of the Midwest are always going to be represented by uniform sized tiles that endlessly repeat? That FSX is tied to a certain-sized tile and while a dev might monkey with what goes into that tile, we're still stuck with the tiles themselves and will always see a Nazca lines pattern of squares no matter what?

Yes. Pretty much this is what we are stuck with. It's pretty much impossible to create the unlimited number of real world combinations of things like you'd see in real life. There's only so many textures to choose from for developers. Maybe Orbx FTXG/OpenLC can add to the palette of choices, but it still won't come close to what mother nature(or humans) can do in real life.

You need UTX or something it for roads, coastlines and rivers.  Open LC replaces Scenery-Tech or Cloud9 landclass.  FTX Vector will replace UTX when it finally arrives.

 

Open LC, S-tech and Cloud9 are landclass programs that tell the FTXG where to place towns, cities, fields and forests.  At first the differences can seem subtle but they really are quite different programs.  You need UTX (Orbx Vector when it arrives), a landclass program, and FTXGlobal (replaces GEX) and in addition you need mesh programming.  Mesh makes the hills, valleys, and flat lands have lumps and bumps.

 

Yea I meant Vector sorry. So I guess I will just wait for that and get that then since it will do the same as UTX USA and hopefully better if possible!

Want to see fake Soybean field and corn fields fsx never or any payware minic it much. 

I have 2 solutions for flying the midwest......

 

#1 I don't

 

#2 If I HAVE to fly there, I make sure I have only do it when there is plenty of 'weather' so I can at least break it up with clouds   :rolleyes:

Is there any advantage to adding UTX USA to FTX Global or would it be better to just wait for openLC to come out?

UTX really adds nothing of value for me after installing FSXG.  Big roads had a beige underlayment that really looked bad no matter what I set the road variety in UTX control panel.  Interestingly, when I disabled UTX I found no real downside and overall things looked more realistic, w/ the exception of small roads which for me is not so important as I typically fly tube liners.  I am intrigued a little w/ FS Altitude though so will have to take a look there.

Midwest boring? Perhaps.

 

But with GEX I see nothing of the "tiling" even with default landclass.

Midwest boring? Perhaps.

 

But with GEX I see nothing of the "tiling" even with default landclass.

 

Can you please post a screenshot? A texture repeats, it's the nature of textures.

Midwest boring? Perhaps.

 

But with GEX I see nothing of the "tiling" even with default landclass.

+1

 

I think one of the methods ORBX botched big swaths in the US were to use highly contrasting repeating patterns so that the checkerboard effect is MUCH more prominent compared to GEX.   I'm only going to stick with it until after OpenLC & Vectors comes along and hopefully improves it enough, otherwise I probably will reenable GEX.   I can enjoy FTXG outside of the US, but that leaves out good 3D lighting for the US ;o(.