FSX-MS Seriously thinking to ditch all payware airports...

[Pe11e 812]

This thread is interesting. The reasons the OP states for wanting to not use payware add-ons are the very same reasons many simmers "want" to purchase add-ons, ha!

Wait, what?

To spend hundreds of bucks risking to witness very low fps and very high vas usage? I'm not referring to all payware airports of course. I was chasing payware EU airports mostly because I had a lot of trust in developers, thinking they know what they are doing, that much details eats that much fps and vas, let's leave these details out, pilots will barely see them, etc. But no, they are competing most of the time who will develop most detailed and most photorealistic airport and in the same time easy on resorces. But lets be realistic, 20% of addon airports will fall in this category.

[TurboTomato 90]

Agreed. Who cares if the inside of the terminal is massively detailed containing hundreds of detailed 3D models? Probably just those who make those flashy youtube videos that we're all jealous of when, in fact, they're having to create them at 50% speed to make the frame rate seem super smooth. For the other 99%, we don't care and they will always be performance detractors for something we never look at. You're correct in saying that this is currently the biggest flaw in current scenery developers.

[Patriot3810 182]

after many many days of testing, if you use default airports and the hd package along with orbx globa series, there is no drop in framerates,the pmdg 777 can knock you from 100fps down to 40 by itself but butter smooth.i will be following this thread to see whats else is said.also asn running with cloud draw distance at 100 when i did that test,and the dx10 fixer of course,i own probably 30 payware airports and that pretty much ruined my experience.p3d can do that with just a payware plane installed.

 

hardware test was done on a haswell 4790k at 4.6 ghz, 16 gigs of ram and a gtx 780 standard 3 gig card, along with all that installed on windows 7 and 2 ssd's, one 128 samsung 840 pro as my boot drive and a seagate 480 gig ssd dedicated to flight sim, and also running another 480 gig ssd dedicated to x-plane 10 for the a350.

[carlito777 712]

 

 

Who cares if the inside of the terminal is massively detailed containing hundreds of detailed 3D models?

 

Unfortunately, this is exactly the direction in which payware airport developers are going. I find it ridiculous because if anything then internal modelling will hurt fps and VAS. I also enjoy looking at the airport when taxiing around but todays payware airports often have an excessive amount of detail. And at least for me, I don't need all the detail when it comes at the cost of poor performance. The new Aerosoft Heathrow is a good example. Great looking airport but performance is poor. I'm wondering why there are no developers who go for payware airports with only medium detail. Still better than the default ones but much less detailed than most of todays payware airports. If those were cheaper (which they could be due to shorter development times) and have better performance than I would be happy to buy them...

[Dazkent 113]

It would be nice to have some GSX-like for GA.  It'd be an awful lot smaller.  A marshaller (one of those guys with flashlights)...maybe a fuel truck driving over and standing by...a guy with a clipboard...a follow-me truck sometimes.

 

That sounds like a brilliant idea!

 

[Gregg_Seipp 568]

 

Unfortunately, this is exactly the direction in which payware airport developers are going. I find it ridiculous because if anything then internal modelling will hurt fps and VAS. I also enjoy looking at the airport when taxiing around but todays payware airports often have an excessive amount of detail. And at least for me, I don't need all the detail when it comes at the cost of poor performance. The new Aerosoft Heathrow is a good example. Great looking airport but performance is poor. I'm wondering why there are no developers who go for payware airports with only medium detail. Still better than the default ones but much less detailed than most of todays payware airports. If those were cheaper (which they could be due to shorter development times) and have better performance than I would be happy to buy them...

 

Fully agree!  There are so many commercial/private joint use airports or, at least, airports that GA is commonly flown into.  Vast numbers of airports...great places to fly a 737, citation, duke, cessna, everything.  Places near a coast, in the mountains, by rivers, lakes, cities.

[Alan_A 1,650]

Interesting thread.  I've just been thinking about stripping out my (few) large-scale payware airports.  I own and admire a couple of very good ones (FSDT KJFK v2, Flightbeam KIAD) but am wondering if I spend enough time on the ground at either for me to want to deal with some of the airport-management issues (couatl updates, the pause on final approach while KJFK loads its textures).  Obviously very much a personal question, depends on how/what you fly among other factors (recently I've been spending time with ill-tempered high-performance singles like the A2A Spitfire that boil over if you don't get them off the ground in five minutes, therefore am not spending much time at airports).  

 

Yes, there's less of a buzz for me if I arrive at a default airport, but that's a relatively small part of the flight, so the tradeoffs are worth thinking about.

 

I agree in principle about the value of GA fields and have downloaded most of the Orbx freeware packages, but mostly haven't gone so far as to build my flights around them and routinely fly from enhanced to default or vice versa.

 

Understood that others' mileage my vary but it's nice to know I'm not alone.  

[LAdamson 240]

Bought close to $200 worth of half price ORBX airports when they were on sale. Haven't tried them yet,as I don't have access to the computer with the 980 card.

 

In RL, I lived next door to the airport and kept a plane there. Toured the mountain west extensively. Scenery and airports, as well good aircraft such as Realair, is what makes a simulation for me. Just imagining I'm airborne with default, wouldn't last long.

[Kuragiman 227]

I own 18 payware airports and don't seem to suffer the frustration.   I file my flight plan, use SceneryConfigurator to check if I have updated AFCADS or Payware airports installed for the arrival and departure then I switch off all other airports, APPLY, Fly.   No hassle.   No OOM crashes.   I don't really have to think about anything.   Literally takes less than 60 seconds to get my payware/updated airports ready for flight.

 

My problem is night stuff but that is Nvidia's fault for breaking the latest drivers in regards to Prepar3D night lighting.    Some of my airports are a bit harsh on the FPS on my setup but as long as I stay smooth and at least 20 FPS its all good for me.

 

There are many great AFCADS updates out there if you don't want to go Payware like you said and those airports are always frame friendly... well.. most of the time.   Heck, I even make my own AFCADS if I am not happy with a default airport so I am with you there but nothing beats a picture perfect airport with properly designed buildings and texture overlays in my opinion.      

 

I was looking at the HD Airport pack but so many of the textures are already covered by  REX4 I just couldn't spend the money.  I would love to have my jetways and terminals HD prettified but all those other textures would be wasted.   I don't know.  Should I still?   Can you tell that Airport HD package NOT to install certain textures so they don't override REX4?

[~Craig~ 10]

I think we are seeing a huge opportunity in the development market for some "balanced" scenery.  I say "balanced" as opposed to words like "Extreme" and exotic, elobarate renderings of everything from the check-in desks to the terminal toilets.

 

What happened to the multi-airport products that we used to see for FS9?   (Scandinavian Airports, German Airports, etc). Where detail level was balanced with development load and performance considerations.   It seems scenery developers have favoured huge (in terms of detail, not necessarily size) single airport projects.     

 

I have to say that I think a lot of this is mere self-indulgence on the scenery artists part.  Some of these guys are extremely talented and are certainly artists.   But no artist wants to comprimise their art with other considerations.  Some recent releases are desperately lacking the balance and consideration of performance.    Look at Drziewiecki New York Airports.   It's a disaster of a product from a performance and usability perspective, and let's face it, who loads up the sim and goes to an airport, just to look at the detail for 2 hours?

 

I really hope scenery developers are reading this thread.   We value and count on your skills but it must be remembered that your works of art need to work in a simulator that is already heavy on PC resources, alongside other complex addons.

 

I would absolutely love to see more multi-airport scenery packages for FSX/P3D, that for example, offer 4-6 airports at medium level detail.     I'd buy those in a snap, and get so much better value from them than something like FlyTampa Copenhagen or Aerosoft Heathrow, where the detail level is exotic, but mostly wasted when I fly to/from there perhaps a handful of times per year.

 

I mentioned Drziewiecki Design above as an example of a bad product, where design and visual consideration was not balanced with performance considerations........ well on the other side of the coin, a couple of years ago, Drziewiecki were releasing the perfect addons;  Polish Airports Vol 1:   4 good quality, well textured, but not excessively detailed airports, for the price of one system-taxing "mega airport".

 

Please give us a little more quantity, and a little restraint on the "quality" (by which is really meant "complexity").

 

 

Can you tell that Airport HD package NOT to install certain textures so they don't override REX4?

 

No, unfortunately not.   It installs everything.    It does make a backup of default textures, and replaces these when the uninstaller is run.

You would need to install HD Airport Graphics, and then your REX4 stuff.

[carlito777 712]

 

 

Can you tell that Airport HD package NOT to install certain textures so they don't override REX4?

 

If you install the REX4 textures into Prepar3d AFTER installing the other ones, it should not be a problem. The only thing REX does when installing textures is overwriting the necessary files. So the add-on which installs the textures last will be the ones you see. But this is just a theoretical answer. I don't own the Zinertek add-on.

[Patco Lch 1,465]

Love this thread. I started one similar a couple months ago with the same resolve and have bought four more since then. When it comes to eye candy I'm like a boozer who resolves to give up the bottle until the next happy hour rolls around, then one more wont hurt. After a flight, it's satisfying  to spot view around and hit the v key a couple of times. Sort of a little reward. But every thing stated above is true. A lot of money could be better spent else where, fps and space taken up on your hard drive for stuff hardly used.   

[Need-To-Know 34]

BTW - GSX does send out a little van and stuff for GA. It always has for me at least. Marshaller too.

 

(just returned to FSX last month).

Funny this thread too. Since I finally had my first full flight last night without any problems and good frame rates - not a slide show or OOM.

Taking off from Orbx Alaska "stock" PANC landing at Orbx paid PAYA. With real time weather from OpusFSI, REX, REX Clouds (heavy clouds and rain with icing) in the PMDG J4100.

I have done A LOT of work to get here.

 

I now debate whether to reinstall my payware PANC that was so heavy on the performance back in the past when I first bought it. Darn it you guys are making me think twice and I should just be happy my setup is finally working so do not install it. Waa but I paid for it.....waaa. Kidding I totally agree - "stock" Orbx PANC is not that bad - focus on the plane....focus on the plane....I keep telling myself.

[Bjoern 1,157]

Come to the poor man's side; we've got nothing.

 

 

 

Well, actually we do have something: Consistently bad looking airports with always up-to-date ground layouts and terribly easy editability.

[Gregg_Seipp 568]

Has anybody dared to try their Natural trees?

 

http://www.zinertek.com/flightsimulator/treeenvironmentx.html

 

I'm using FTX Global and a bit scared to try that.