FSX-MS New FSX install, what should I choose to add

[Mike Huijser 0]

Hi all

 

 

Today I've reinstalled my PC and now i'm looking into what I shall choose for updating the base textures etc. I've some money to spend and that makes my choice more difficult.

 

At this moment i'm considering FTX Global base in combination with OpenLC Europe and either FXT Vector or UTX. So, what will be the best combination?

 

I've also a lot of payware (aerosoft/flytampa/BDO/Justsim/Jennasoft etc) addons which I want to install, but are they fully compatible with FTX, UTX etc?

 

Right now I have the change to make a nice clean install of my FSX, without the uncontrolled mesh of addons I had previously.

 

Waiting for your support...

 

Regards, Mike

[Rocky_53 1,566]

Hi all

 

 

Today I've reinstalled my PC and now i'm looking into what I shall choose for updating the base textures etc. I've some money to spend and that makes my choice more difficult.

 

At this moment i'm considering FTX Global base in combination with OpenLC Europe and either FXT Vector or UTX. So, what will be the best combination?

 

I've also a lot of payware (aerosoft/flytampa/BDO/Justsim/Jennasoft etc) addons which I want to install, but are they fully compatible with FTX, UTX etc?

 

Right now I have the change to make a nice clean install of my FSX, without the uncontrolled mesh of addons I had previously.

 

Waiting for your support...

 

Regards, Mike

Hi Mike, it's a personal thing, but as far as I'm concerned Orbx make simply the finest sceneries for FSX or P3D. I've used UTX and IMO it's not a close second to Orbx. So, for me, all the Orbx global addons are important, followed by their regions and of course REX for weather textures.

 

ie. FTX Global, then FTX landclass of your choices, FTX Vector, if you decide only to fly in an Orbx region, then none of the previous are necessary. REX essential, REX soft clouds, Active Sky for real weather. 

[scianoir 610]

Hi Mike,

 

The scope of the topic you have raised is very big and If you trawl through the forums you will find lots of advice, particularly with regard to the compatibility of various addons with either FTX or UTX. As a general rule, if you add airport scenery addons from another developer, more often than not you will have to delete/deactivate some files from the FTX or UTX folders. Usually these just amount to one or two AFCAD files, which, if duplicated for an individual airport are likely to cause significant issues. I use a payware addon called AFX to detect duplicate AFCADS but I think there are freeware addons available which will do this also, if you don't want to manually search FSX for them.

 

With regard to choosing between FTX or UTX, as you know, they both essentially do the same thing. Although I already had a few of the UTX and GEX addons, I went down the FTX pathway as I was very impressed by the first few detailed Orbx/FTX regional scenery areas which I bought. I installed FTX Global and subsequently the various OpenLC packages, but did not install FTX Vector as it seemed to have quite a few issues when it was first released (although I think these may have been resolved now). Instead I used the vector data from UTX which remained installed on my system but I did of course uninstall GEX which would have clashed with the various FTX addons.

 

My current basic set up therefore consists of FTX Global, the FTX Open LC areas, the FTX regions and UTX for vector data and I am very happy with this. I think the decision between FTX and UTX might be a little easier if you plan to do a lot of low level VFR flying as FTX gives you the option adding their regions for additional detail and 'eye candy'. If however you mainly fly high level IFR, then the UTX/GEX combination would probably be a reasonable and possibly slightly cheaper alternative, still giving you excellent landscape and terrain features.

 

Bill

 

Edit: Posted this almost simultaneously with Howard's post and I would agree with his advice to get a good weather engine. I didn't bother adding a payware weather engine to FSX for a few years but was truly amazed at the additional degree of immersion that Rex provided when I eventually installed it. I don't use Active Sky but could I ask Howard how does this add to what I already get from Rex Essentials?

[electricman 5]

Hi Mike,

FTX global is good but Vector causes heaps of issues difficult to solve, especially with airports. UTX looks just as nice and the ports are way better, with FRX Vector ports are no more then a grey piece of concrete as with UTX they have containers stacked and other stuff so you can actually see it is a port.

FTX understands under " support" the solutions given to you by fellow simmers for as long as they don't reveal the truth about FTX which is that it is kind of designed so it won't work with stuff from other developers trying to force you into buying only their stuff,

another thing is that every time you open up the FTX central that it will rewrite your terrain.cfg causing a lot of problems with trees and houses on airports, reason is that their terrain.cfg rewrites the render priority from the airport backgrounds in that .cfg from 200.000 to 20.000 ( default LC is 30.000 ) and the lower this priority the lesser the chance you are going to see it and if the airport background if of the typ "maskclass" then they change the "landclassremaptype" from "airport" into "none" which is why you see the trees and houses.

I put the FTX central on a far outer corner of my HD so I can never open it accidently anymore and I stopped buying any of the FTX stuff, it just causes to much hours correcting FSX again and that causes a lot of headaches.

 

Herman

[Rocky_53 1,566]

Hi Mike,

 

The scope of the topic you have raised is very big and If you trawl through the forums you will find lots of advice, particularly with regard to the compatibility of various addons with either FTX or UTX. As a general rule, if you add airport scenery addons from another developer, more often than not you will have to delete/deactivate some files from the FTX or UTX folders. Usually these just amount to one or two AFCAD files, which, if duplicated for an individual airport are likely to cause significant issues. I use a payware addon called AFX to detect duplicate AFCADS but I think there are freeware addons available which will do this also, if you don't want to manually search FSX for them.

 

With regard to choosing between FTX or UTX, as you know, they both essentially do the same thing. Although I already had a few of the UTX and GEX addons, I went down the FTX pathway as I was very impressed by the first few detailed Orbx/FTX regional scenery areas which I bought. I installed FTX Global and subsequently the various OpenLC packages, but did not install FTX Vector as it seemed to have quite a few issues when it was first released (although I think these may have been resolved now). Instead I used the vector data from UTX which remained installed on my system but I did of course uninstall GEX which would have clashed with the various FTX addons.

 

My current basic set up therefore consists of FTX Global, the FTX Open LC areas, the FTX regions and UTX for vector data and I am very happy with this. I think the decision between FTX and UTX might be a little easier if you plan to do a lot of low level VFR flying as FTX gives you the option adding their regions for additional detail and 'eye candy'. If however you mainly fly high level IFR, then the UTX/GEX combination would probably be a reasonable and possibly slightly cheaper alternative, still giving you excellent landscape and terrain features.

 

Bill

 

Edit: Posted this almost simultaneously with Howard's post and I would agree with his advice to get a good weather engine. I didn't bother adding a payware weather engine to FSX for a few years but was truly amazed at the additional degree of immersion that Rex provided when I eventually installed it. I don't use Active Sky but could I ask Howard how does this add to what I already get from Rex Essentials?

Hi Bill,

 

Sure, I made a slip up, as there are so many darn variations of software these days! I do have REX essentials, but I now fly with REX texture direct. The difference between the two is that texture direct is exactly what it says on the tin, just textures, so no weather engine. I went down that road because I found that Active Sky, IMO, is superior to the REX weather engine. I find it renders the weather in a more realistic fashion. At the time I made the move, I found AS didn't have a big visual change/jump when the weather updates, as it does it slowly so you are unaware of the change. I have also found with AS that it doesn't suffer with streets of duplicate textures when flying at high altitudes. This was prevelent on 50% of my flying with REX and it really spoiled the immersion for me. All in all I find AS does a first class job of injecting weather. Although, currently there seems to be an issue that the devs are working on in relation to big performance hit during flight. But no doubt they'll get to the bottom of things.

 

 

As for differences in weather textures, I defy anyone to tell the difference. I certainly can't.

[electricman 5]

Hi Rockliffe, AS doesn't come with textures, it's only a weather engine like OpusFSX and OpusFSI and if not installed 3rd party cloud and sky textures they both show the default textures and no more then that.REX does have textures but like you say, the REX weather engine is s...t

 

Herman

[ArjenVdv 190]

I am going to jump in and give you this advice: FTX Global + FTX Trees + UTX will be the perfect combination.

 

FTX Global is superior to GEX and absolutely amazing. It improves FPS and helps with blurries. FTX Trees is great too. But then I got FTX Vector, and obviously I expected the usual great quality from ORBX, but was highly disappointed. I noticed the roads were extremely inaccurate and some of them where even missing. In my area there is a road that leads into a city, and with FTX Vector it justs ends randomly in the scenery. Also, this road is on the wrong side a of a canal. UTX however, depicts these roads perfectly, and has even modelled the roundabouts that are there. 

 

I also bought OpenLC Europe, and again was highly disappointed. Where FTX Vector doesn't do much to performance, OpenLC is a little bit of a recourse hog and might causes very annoying microstutters. I am never experiencing microstutters but this is the only add-on that made things horrible. Even the ORBX Regions run perfectly smooth, even though it causes an FPS drop.  A friend of mine has OpenLC as well, and he had the microstutters too, but he considered it as "smooth has silk". It sometimes surprises me how people only look at FPS and still perceive microstuttery motion as "smooth".

 

I recommend buying UTX, as far as I know it does pretty much the same as FTX Vector + OpenLC together. In my opinion, it even looks way better. The only downside is that UTX covers only a continent or region, such as Europe, USA, Canada, and the Caribbean, while FTX Vector covers the entire world. For textures get FTX Global, you'll not be disappointed.

[scianoir 610]

Sure, I made a slip up, as there are so many darn variations of software these days! I do have REX essentials, but I now fly with REX texture direct. The difference between the two is that texture direct is exactly what it says on the tin, just textures, so no weather engine. I went down that road because I found that Active Sky, IMO, is superior to the REX weather engine. I find it renders the weather in a more realistic fashion. At the time I made the move, I found AS didn't have a big visual change/jump when the weather updates, as it does it slowly so you are unaware of the change. I have also found with AS that it doesn't suffer with streets of duplicate textures when flying at high altitudes. This was prevelent on 50% of my flying with REX and it really spoiled the immersion for me. All in all I find AS does a first class job of injecting weather. Although, currently there seems to be an issue that the devs are working on in relation to big performance hit during flight. But no doubt they'll get to the bottom of things.

 

Thanks for clarifying that Howard. I might give AS a try as a weather engine if it provides better rendering.

 

Bill

[Mike Huijser 0]

Thanks to you all for the time you take writing those excellent advices.

 

I regret that I forget to mention that I'm already using ASN and have purchased REX4+soft cloud yesterday.

 

After reading many different story's about the good and bad things of the different scenery developpers and using it combined, I came to the conclusion that for me personally the best option is FTX Global base and FTX trees in combination with UTX, exactly what ArjanVdv is also using.

 

 

I hope that I'll have the sim ready to fly this evening and will test my new environment and come back here with the first impressions :smile:

[Rocky_53 1,566]

Thanks to you all for the time you take writing those excellent advices.

 

I regret that I forget to mention that I'm already using ASN and have purchased REX4+soft cloud yesterday.

 

After reading many different story's about the good and bad things of the different scenery developpers and using it combined, I came to the conclusion that for me personally the best option is FTX Global base and FTX trees in combination with UTX, exactly what ArjanVdv is also using.

 

 

I hope that I'll have the sim ready to fly this evening and will test my new environment and come back here with the first impressions :smile:

Good move  :smile:

[scianoir 610]

I regret that I forget to mention that I'm already using ASN and have purchased REX4+soft cloud yesterday.

 

After reading many different story's about the good and bad things of the different scenery developpers and using it combined, I came to the conclusion that for me personally the best option is FTX Global base and FTX trees in combination with UTX, exactly what ArjanVdv is also using.

 

That should give you a very nice FSX environment. Looking forward to hearing what you think of it when you have set it up.

 

Bill