Looking for suggestions for Mesh, Landclass and ground textures.

[duckbilled 310]

Hello,Although I have a ton of add on scenery, I have avoided augmenting my terrain features in for a few reasons:1. I am concerned that a lot of my add on scenery will not display correctly once I install third party mesh.2. It doesn't seem like there is a one stop shopping solution for mesh, landclass and textures. I have the impression that I will have to download 50 separate files for every part of the world for 9.99 a pop and spend a weekend installing everything.I would like to change the entire globe if possible, but I will settle for the US at this time just to get my feet wet.So the question is, what is the easiest/best way for me to do this? I don't care if it is payware, I just want it to be easy and have good results. Furthermore, I want textures for every season and I like the look of some of the photo real textures out there.Sorry if I sound really demanding but there are so many products out there and I am not sure which products (or combination of products)will produce the best, most complete results for the least amount of work.Thanks in advance for your help.BTW, I am using FE so I don't need water textures. I also have USA Roads but I am thinking about un-installing it.

[Jimmy Angel 19]

It can be pretty confusing.You understand the basics. There are three primary types of scenery upgrades: mesh, landclass and textures.To this you can add the "vector" data: water data, road data, etc.For me, the following four products cover all of the bases for the United States:FS Genesis Mesh + FS Genesis Landclass + Ultimate Terrain USA + BEVThe result from installing these products is an accurate mesh (FS Genesis Mesh), a reasonably appropriate placement of city/suburban/rural textures (FS Genesis Landclass), complex coastlines, rivers, roads and train tracks (Ultimate Terrain USA) and more detailed terrain textures with better placement of autogen (BEV).There are comparable freeware options for mesh, and perhaps for landclass. For me, the FSGenesis stuff is inexpensive and worth it in terms of quality/support.If you're looking for textures for every season, you might consider FS-Scene though that can get awful pricy. I don't have any personal experience with that product. The screenshots haven't really captured my attention.Megascenery offers satellite textures for limitied geographical areas. Some people like these, some don't. I have Megascenery LA but uninstalled it because I feel that it sort of breaks the immersion of FS9's psuedo-reality. It's interesting, but like flying over a pixelated photo.Perhaps you might want to start small. For me, the biggest bang for the buck has been Ultimate Terrain USA and Alaska/Canada. The coastlines and rivers make a world of difference for me. I believe that there is some sort of potential discount for you based upon your previous purchase of USA roads. If you don't like the roads, you can always turn them off. The configuration utility has plenty of options.Getting all of these products to interoperate and behave can sometimes be a bit daunting, but there is plenty of support from users and developers on the forums.

[duckbilled 310]

Thank you, That was very helpful. I think you are right that I might want to start off small. I usually fly in the US, Mexico and Caribbean so I might want to concentrate on that area first. I already have the mesh that came with EAM2004 for Mexico.Should I expect a lot of compatibility issues with airport scenery? I have just about every major US airport that has been released in either payware or freeware.

[Jimmy Angel 19]

>Should I expect a lot of compatibility issues with airport>scenery? I have just about every major US airport that has>been released in either payware or freeware.Well ... possibly. Ultimate Terrain adds coastlines and rivers that can cause trouble with existing airports (putting them in the water if Microsoft had them misplaced in the first place). This is rare, and to my knowledge they have tweaked most of the issues with big airports. I haven't seen much problems in the continental US, but I do run across an occasional Alaska airport that stretches out into the water.With mesh, you may see airports on unnatural looking plateaus or valleys. This usually isn't a deal-breaker, but can look a bit odd.Payware airports might have more of an issue with the mesh than the default airports. I mostly fly GA so I don't have a lot of airports, but--as an example--I had to do a bit of tweaking with my payware KORS to exclude the mesh from the area around the airport ... otherwise buildings were getting buried.The good news is that you can try all of this stuff without inflicting any permanent harm on your FS9 installation. Also, FSGenesis has released some free 38m mesh for the Continental US (available here at the library). Both BEV and Ultimate Terrain are available from Flight1 and if you run into too many issues you can opt to use their 30-day refund policy.If you fly mainly heavies, I'd suggest mesh and ultimate terrain to start. BEV will have less of an impact since it's ideal for the low-and-slow fliers.Good luck!

[swambast 0]

>>Also, FSGenesis has released some free 38m mesh for >>the Continental US (available here at the library).Sounds Great!!! Where, I can't seem to find it...

[LAdamson 240]

>>>Also, FSGenesis has released some free 38m mesh for >>>the Continental US (available here at the library).>>Sounds Great!!! Where, I can't seem to find it...Link to FSGenesishttp://portal.fsgenesis.net/Look under community on the left side, then downloads, and freeware

[swambast 0]

Thank you kindly LAdamson, was searching all over in the AvSim libary...!

[swambast 0]

By the way, just in case I'm not missing something, is the 38m mesh freeware for the entire United States? If so, where might this be located? Or, as browsing the web site above, is the 38m mesh available as freeware only for SELECTED geographic regions of the U.S.?

[Holger 0]

Hi there,actually, not all of the FSGenesis files available here at Avsim are also on the FSG website, and vice versa. To find the recent FSG freeware mesh files here in the library search for "Justin Tyme" and sort by date.Cheers, Holger

[Guest popcorn33]

Geez !usa 38 m terrain is freeware at flightsim.com - complete coverage - recently compiled -do not waste your money to pay for it - Lol !marc

[LAdamson 240]

>Geez !>>usa 38 m terrain is freeware at flightsim.com - complete>coverage - recently compiled ->>do not waste your money to pay for it - >>Lol !>Not all mesh terrain is alike. Some will have voids, gaps, unusual spikes in terrain altitudes, etc. Sometimes a few bucks is worth the difference, since an author might continually update the problem areas.L.Adamson

[duckbilled 310]

Thanks for all of the help. This is what I think I am going to do.I just purchased the FSGenesis Galaxy 3-year membership. I think I am going to start working on mesh and landclass. After I am done with that, I am going to move on to UT and BEV. Is that a good plan? I hope so. I already bought the Galaxy membership.

[Jimmy Angel 19]

>Is that a good plan? I hope so. I already bought the Galaxy>membership.If you can afford it, I don't think you can go wrong with the FSGenesis membership. It gives you a trusted, supported, one-stop-shop for worlwide Mesh, including the "buffer" mesh that gets rid of those "blue slivers" seen in the distance.

[swambast 0]

>>usa 38 m terrain is freeware at flightsim.com - complete coverage - recently compiled - do not waste your money to pay for it Ok, thanks Marc. I went over to find it, but am baffled as to where it would be. Geez, you would think you could just type in usa 38m mesh and it would work, but I'm obviously missing something.

[duckbilled 310]

Thanks, Still downloading and installing. I think the Galaxy membership was a good idea. It was really what I was looking for from a mesh standpoint - 43 files, 500 MB each with USA landclass and worldwide mesh ranging from 306m to 9.6m + buffer mesh and 3 years worth of updates for $100.00. That is a pretty good deal and it is truly one stop shopping.