This gentleman wrote a great article... 

 

http://www.ontheglideslope.net/2016/12/31/how-to-get-started-with-x-plane-11-for-those-coming-from-p3d-or-fsx/

 

I took his suggestion and downloaded the 3 areas for Hawaii... However on my initial install of x-plane 11, I only clicked on the eastern half of the USA... Do I need to go back and download the other area?

 

So that's my general question. When I install P3d (as was also the case for FSX), it installs the world- not parts of it. For x-plane, should we never fly into areas that aren't installed? Or download airport addons for those areas, without first installing the base x-plane scenery?

I only installed the default scenery for the Western USA, then I installed the HD v3 mesh everywhere else I fly like Europe/UK and New Zealand with no underlying default mesh.

 

This does work, but you may get an error message when changing to one of those scenery areas, saying that scenery isn't installed and asking if you want to just start on a runway in the water. Click Okay, and the HD mesh loads fine. It's not a problem when starting a flight, but it can be annoying if you're flying over a transition between tiles. The sim pauses to show that message, and you have to click through it to continue.

 

I don't know if there's a way to disable that message, so I'm considering just going ahead and installing the default scenery under the HD v3 mesh.