fsx-ms Making sense of the FSX addon world

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

FTX Global and others like it add 3D lighting models but they add it to the Autogen layer which gets suppressed by Photoreal scenery so you can't use that either for night lighting. You will see nothing but darkness.

 

 

I have FTX Global with the vector road lights turned on and attached to UTX roads and they work at night over photoreal. The only thing I lose is the FTX autogen night lights. Since I use the older MegaScenery title like Dallas, Phoenix, SoCal, etc., that include photoreal night textures, the FTX road night lights still look good albeit, even though I have autogen, I don't have the autogen night lights, only roads and freeways.

 

One disadvantage of using lots of photoreal packages that I hadn't seen mentioned is that they consume a lot of VAS if you leave them all turned on at once. May or may not be an issue depending on what type of a/c you're flying, what size cloud textures your using, how far your LOD settings are and things like that. If you have many full states turned on, fly something like the NGX or T7, use addon airports, then you may not have enough VAS left to complete your flights prior to running out of memory. I like photoreal as well, so to over come this I usually just buy city ppass of photoreal, mainly the older MegaScenery products since they have night textures, and then only leave the cities enabled that I am going to be using for that flight.

 

The reason photoreal consumes more VAS is because the scenery loads no matter where your are. For example, if you own photoreal for the whole US, start a flight somewhere in the middle of the US, then go to top down view and start zooming out until you can view the whole US, you will see that the photoreal scenery will be displayed for the whole country.

[Kuragiman 227]

I have FTX Global with the vector road lights turned on and attached to UTX roads and they work at night over photoreal. The only thing I lose is the FTX autogen night lights. Since I use the older MegaScenery title like Dallas, Phoenix, SoCal, etc., that include photoreal night textures, the FTX road night lights still look good albeit, even though I have autogen, I don't have the autogen night lights, only roads and freeways.

 

One disadvantage of using lots of photoreal packages that I hadn't seen mentioned is that they consume a lot of VAS if you leave them all turned on at once. May or may not be an issue depending on what type of a/c you're flying, what size cloud textures your using, how far your LOD settings are and things like that. If you have many full states turned on, fly something like the NGX or T7, use addon airports, then you may not have enough VAS left to complete your flights prior to running out of memory. I like photoreal as well, so to over come this I usually just buy city ppass of photoreal, mainly the older MegaScenery products since they have night textures, and then only leave the cities enabled that I am going to be using for that flight.

 

The reason photoreal consumes more VAS is because the scenery loads no matter where your are. For example, if you own photoreal for the whole US, start a flight somewhere in the middle of the US, then go to top down view and start zooming out until you can view the whole US, you will see that the photoreal scenery will be displayed for the whole country.

 

All 100% true.  You are not meant to fly with all your photoreal packages turned on.  There is a lovely program called SceneryConfigurator that is 100% free that allows you to organize all of your scenery add-ons and turn them off and on at will before each flight.   When I take a flight, I file my flight plan, see what states my path will take me over and then I turn on only those states and the starting city and ending city Ultra Res packages and then the departure and arrival payware/updated AFCAD airport.   This allows me a good 4 hours worth of flight no matter what plane or weather I am in and you can pretty much fly from one side of the US to the other, up or down, in 4 hours.   Most of my flights are 2 hours long though so I never worry about OOM crashing.  We are still able to load up to around 6 states before we have issues because we don't have to deal with costly autogen eating up the VAS.

 

The reason why you get night lighting with Vector/UTX is because those lights are slaved to the Vector layer, rather than the Autogen layer.  Your cities will still go black but the roads will be lit.  For some that is enough night lighting but I want not just the roads to light up but the entire city.  Night lighting enviroment packages do this very well.

 

MegaSceneryEarth has cleverly hidden their legacy products from view or maybe I am not seeing them.   I have the older Dallas Mega City but oh man is it butt ugly compared to their new Ultra Res city.  The older photoscenery is not very sharp.   They sacrificed quality to give you the night lighting in the same package as the day textures.  The other problem is I think they ditched the old method long before they competed the United States.

 

Also of note, If you are a Euro flyer, the good news is that MSE is working diligently to provide photoreal of all of Europe and the UK and have already made great strides in completing this.

[walterg74 0]

Lots of great info, thanks to everyone for the feedback.

 

Related to my original post, besides understanding it better thanks to the feedback received here, as luck would have it I registered yesterday on the Orbx forums, and on one of the stickies, they *just* uploaded yesterday v2 of their "ultimate guide" to FTX.

 

It contains exactly what I asked here, explaining all the layers, elements, etc. A very good read besides containing also info about their products of course.

 

I won't upload it here without permission but all you need to do is go to the forum and you'll see it right away. I'm sure most of you are probably already registered

 

Edit: niw all I gotta do is learn to setup and calibrate my controls correctly (saitek pro flight yoke, quadrant and rudder pedals)

[Kuragiman 227]

Lots of great info, thanks to everyone for the feedback.

 

Related to my original post, besides understanding it better thanks to the feedback received here, as luck would have it I registered yesterday on the Orbx forums, and on one of the stickies, they *just* uploaded yesterday v2 of their "ultimate guide" to FTX.

 

It contains exactly what I asked here, explaining all the layers, elements, etc. A very good read besides containing also info about their products of course.

 

I won't upload it here without permission but all you need to do is go to the forum and you'll see it right away. I'm sure most of you are probably already registered

 

Edit: niw all I gotta do is learn to setup and calibrate my controls correctly (saitek pro flight yoke, quadrant and rudder pedals)

 

Glad we could be of help.  I am telling you this right now.   Get FSUIPC and setup ALL your controls through it.  Don't use FSX/P3D's controller setup system.  FSUPIC is extremely powerful and can setup controls on a Per Plane basis which is epic.   You aren't stuck with One Scheme Fits All.  Because it doesn't.   Prop planes, Twin Engine, Jets, all require different settings to be accurate and life-like and FSUIPC allows that.

[sjgold 0]

@

Kuragiman

 

you mention the lighting to add in over the mega scenery, can you give me the full names of them, a quick google search did not give me much love,

[walterg74 0]

Glad we could be of help.  I am telling you this right now.   Get FSUIPC and setup ALL your controls through it.  Don't use FSX/P3D's controller setup system.  FSUPIC is extremely powerful and can setup controls on a Per Plane basis which is epic.   You aren't stuck with One Scheme Fits All.  Because it doesn't.   Prop planes, Twin Engine, Jets, all require different settings to be accurate and life-like and FSUIPC allows that.

Ok, I will look into it. Does is have to be the registered version for that functionality?

[Kuragiman 227]

@

Kuragiman

 

you mention the lighting to add in over the mega scenery, can you give me the full names of them, a quick google search did not give me much love,

 

http://www.nightenvironment.com/    <--- Solution #1

 

http://secure.simmarket.com/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=NIGHT+3D   <----- Solution #2

 

These are the two I am looking at.   I tried out Texas for NIGHT 3D but the frame rate got completely trashed and I don't know of any easy way to tone down the settings.    It looks amazing.  Does not perform amazing.  I am told Flight1's Night Enviroment is better and easier to configure for less FPS hit but it is lacking in US coverage at the moment.  They are working feverishly on it though.

Ok, I will look into it. Does is have to be the registered version for that functionality?

 

Not sure.  Have a look at the website and find out.  I just bought the thing outright since it came so highly recommended to me.

 

http://www.schiratti.com/dowson.html

[sjgold 0]

http://www.nightenvironment.com/    <--- Solution #1

 

http://secure.simmarket.com/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=NIGHT+3D   <----- Solution #2

These are the two I am looking at.   I tried out Texas for NIGHT 3D but the frame rate got completely trashed and I don't know of any easy way to tone down the settings.    It looks amazing.  Does not perform amazing.  I am told Flight1's Night Enviroment is better and easier to configure for less FPS hit but it is lacking in US coverage at the moment.  They are working feverishly on it though.

 

Aren't those two links both the Aerosoft Product? Or am I missing something...

Edited February 3, 2015 by n4gix
Moved reply *out* of the quote box!

[Kuragiman 227]

These are the two I am looking at.   I tried out Texas for NIGHT 3D but the frame rate got completely trashed and I don't know of any easy way to tone down the settings.    It looks amazing.  Does not perform amazing.  I am told Flight1's Night Enviroment is better and easier to configure for less FPS hit but it is lacking in US coverage at the moment.  They are working feverishly on it though.

 

Aren't those two links both the Aerosoft Product? Or am I missing something...

 

No.  Two different products.