I am a little mixxed up when it comes to the type of "add o scenery" and the direction to head that will allow the type and volume of scenery that one can chose from.now and in the future, (future; realizing we cant see into a crystal ball but rather the most propable outcomes based on the knowledge at hand today.I think I I know just enough about "add on scenery" (AOS for this document forward) market to realize I really dont know much at all. At. my very basic learning curve my point of understanding is:1. Scenery-Buildings, runways, maybe a barn with some images of people standing/sitting around. This can include noise such as people talking, birds ect.. as experinced in "Emma Field".(Whew, there I mentioned a name of a product,, that should keep the gatekeppers here happy, maybe they wont move or delete this post now?). Kidding, LOL," hey its' Friday".. 2. Mesh-The best way I can explian this is to mention the work (some free and some commercial) of Justin Tyme and his FSGenesis work. You can get to this example by going to the top menu here under partners. This to me means just what is says. A scaled (38.2 or what ever the scale may be) re-work of terrain for a given area that basically measures the the terrain elevation of the stated area resulting in more realistic views we can see when we are in Flight Simmulator (FS). The number used here 38.2 is a referance to the data This seems to be more appreciated to me when in the mountians and areas that are more detialed in the real world. It is important in my veiw to keep in mind that at this point that popular mesh is referenced alot of AOS produced by whom ever may or may not match up with the mesh you use. This can result in a building to appear "floating,in mid-air, or looking to appear sunk into the ground". Usually you are ok (ok here means things should worl the way you are lead to expect from the material discussed in this forum post) with defualt mesh, but this results in a lack of detial you can enjoy from mesh produseres like "FSGenesis" Now "a-days" a lot of AOS will make a point to state that it was made to work with particular types of mesh. One of the reasons for mentioning 'FSGenesis" is that it appears to be one of those mentioned alot by AOS developers.OK, now we move into what I call the next generation of AOS. I say this becuase in my opinion yiu used to be able to read the instuctions of a add on product under the mntioned heading and understand if it was "scenery or mesh". It "appears to me that in FS2002 I started noticing new "types" of packages that at first looked like scenery but really was a bit more. The best example I have of this is the "Emma Field" commercial package. The package ended up having sounds such as people talking and birds singing ect... Please note that many of the packages that highlight sounds require an additional package from another vendor that in this case example means an additional expence. Now the pakage mentioned here would function w/o the addition of the program that allows you hear sounds, but, you get no extra sounds like the birds ect. as mentioned. This is important to noye becuase the more the AOS market develops the more you will see new and really cool features like the mentioned sounds and also things such as push-back tugs and other visual "eyecandy". Now some of these require additional packages to get the full impact of the "extras" you will tend to find in the overview of the product. One of the add ons one would need to enjoy extras that I have noticed recently is FS Enhancer from Lago. I know a couple of recently purchased AOS packages mentioned that I would need FS Enhancer to enjoy all the features they mentioned in the product overview and mentioned it in more detial in the product read me. FS Enhancer was an additional expence.Now packages that recently come to mond are the "scenery packages that mention the words photo real", one group use the verbage "mega" to discribe the add on package as well as the word "mega" as part of the title of the package series. More recently a new add on for the AK area was released that cuased a small conflict with a previous released package that was covering a smaller area of AK. The problem appeared to be that where (this is using the example that both packages are installed on the same system while running FS) the two scenery area meet there was not a smoth transition between them. The result was a quick colaberation between the two organisations and a fast resolution. To futher this thought process here, there are other AOS packages for AK. Do they work with one of the other packages that exsist in AK?, My questions seem to revolve around what are the meanings of some of the terms used by the various develpoers, such as "landclass". This may be used by one organization to mean one thing and by another group or developer to mean another.. Is photoreal just buildings, is it mesh a combination of both or what? I have read in different forums some attempts at some type of definition to each term but nothing that seems to be a so called "industry standard". Dose one exsist?I welcome any thoughts and or things to keep in mind to get a handle on what is going to work with what.Thanks.

Hello,I am new in the forum and hope the repley is not to basic. As I consumer I get confussed when it come to picking out add on scenery to buy. I would be intrested if there were a page that reflected what works with which add on scenery package and so on. To me this stuff really makes the FS world come alive. Your favorite plne and add on scenery for you favorite part of the world and you are in for some real enjoyable simming.Thank you.

I would say there is an industry standard for what it is, but not how is is designed and marketed. MS has SDKs that tell designers what parameters they need to use, but it's not always to clear.PHOTOREAL refers to using actual photos for the textures that are applied to the 3D object as opposed to painting or making your own in a paint program. Pros - more real looking, cons - more detail and more of a performance hitMESH is the actual contour of the land, LANDCLASS is the texture definition of a specific area of land. there are many and with a few programs you can assign a texture (which many times comes with certain autogen (houses - trees) assigned to that texture) to that spot to recreate a look other than what was there before (ie forest to city)FSE is a program that uses Direct X technology to let you place certain items in a scenery from inside FS. I don't care for it as you need to have the payware version to see any scenery that is created with it and if you create a scenery, anyone can take it apart with their editor, kinda defeats the purpose.hope that helps, spend some time in the scenery design forum here, really a wealth of info there.Good luck finding scenery that is tailored to work with others, just to many variables for this to happen everytime, and very few designers feel the need to try, especially with the scope of projects nowadays, it is a lot more work. Holger Sandmann goes above and beyond to make his projects work with others, but you don't find that kind of dedication everywhere.Regards, MichaelKDFWhttp://www.calvirair.com/mcpics/mcdcvabanner.jpgCalVirAir International