To make the most of a new startup experience with FS9, what are some of the more popular add on's for scenery/"look" rather than aircraft?I was thinking maybe FScene for general textures.Not sure about terrain mesh though, suggestions?Ultimate traffic for some realism around the skies.Megascenery for some segments of the US for realism.What are your picks for impressing a first time simulator user? What gives the biggest Wow! factor for you?

Ultimate Terrain USA is the single biggest thing you could get to make the sim look more real - the roads, accurate coastlines, and city landclass really make things look much better.FSGenesis Mesh and Active Sky V weather would also be good choices.

>Ultimate Terrain USA is the single biggest thing you could>get to make the sim look more real - the roads, accurate>coastlines, and city landclass really make things look much>better.>But, of course, only if you actually fly in the USA (and/or Canada, theres a Canada version too)! You need to check for an equivalent if you fly elsewhere. There's fantastic scenery for most of Europe dotted around.>FSGenesis Mesh and Active Sky V weather would also be good>choices.Active Sky V for the weather, Flight Environment for clouds. FScene for global textures (but there are new ones out soon from the makers of Flight Environment and in the meantime the Bluesphere re-textured originals are substantial improvements on default - and free!). Also free, if you can still track them down are Lennart Arvidssons texture sets.If USA based then consider Birds Eye View - they have released Suimmer and Autumn already and winter on the way.GA-Traffic for, unsurprisingly, GA traffic (free, in the library)But what I would do is fly around with the default everything for a while. no rush to change anything until you know what types of flying rocks your boat - new trees and autogen buildings will be low on your priorities list if you see the ground from 30,000 feet!Hope this helps!Allcott

Rather than jumping into payware, try some freeware options first to see what you need. FSGenesis has part of its US mesh for free here in the library, Bluesphere have good free textures, etc. Take your time and don't go addon crazy too fast. Figure out what you want and do your research. The best resource is searching the forums here. Then when you are ready to move onto payware, you will be able to make a more informed decision. Scenery addons depend on a lot of personal preferences. Where do you fly? Do you stay in a general area or move all over? For me, I don't like spending a lot of money on a small area, since I don't "stay put". I tend to go for larger coverage area addons like Ultimate Terrain and Birds Eye View textures. I also recommend FS Genesis mesh as it really adds to the sim.

The first two thing I would get would be Active Sky 5 and Ultimate Terrain if you fly in the US or Canada along with Flght Enviorment. Then I would get some FS Genesis 38 mm Mesh. All this and you will have one great looking sim.......

Very good advice here, both about what to get and when to get it.

Thanks alot everyone.I'll go slow and low, both with the planes and the plans.

What others said:1) Start with the Freeware FS Genesis mesh2) Then add Ultimate Terrain3) Active Sky for weather4) Flight Environment for cloud/water/etc. textures...then buy Flight 1's Piper Meridian or Aeroworx's King Air. ricardo