17 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

I think many people buy tons of airports, especially at the beginning, then taper off and become increasingly more selective as they begin to realize how many of them they only fly to a few times and then pretty much forget they even have them. 

This is me exactly. Applies to aircraft as well.

I've got a few payware ones, but not that many, maybe 20 in total. I'd tend to see if there was a freeware one first.

The sight of a green square airport just causes me to look the other way and I don't think I've ever once landed or took off from one, even in an emergency I'd rather just crash.  It's a shame MS couldn't come up with a better way to texture in an airport or Orbx Global doing a world wide exclude Airport background and replacing with a texture that meshed in with the terrain better.  I can deal with square mostly flat top buildings, but my imagination is not what it use to be and the payware airports add so much to the immersion with their variety and bells and whistles it's worth it.

The only thing better than a payware airport is the work A2A is doing with their COTS line.  Having a crew and passengers is the bomb for immersion something sorely missing from the heavy iron line although I guess FS2Crew helps there somewhat.  Hearing passengers scream as you roll a connie was on my bucket list.  That actually happened by accident on a dark dawn with fog, I got the horizon screwed up, sky looked like ground and ground looked like sky and I trusted my eyes over the horizon indicator... to much fun.  If it wasn't for them screaming I would have had a heart attack when I suddenly saw trees coming up from above.  Amazingly no passengers, including the crying baby were injured in this flight or so my lawyers tell me. I've had to leave BOAC though and after changing my identity I now fly for Lufthansa.

I really want to go back to small biz jets but A2A has ruined that experience, it's a sweet pain but I do have to caution, if you try COTS, beware you may never want to fly anything else.  Betty also really does need to go into more detail about that dream she had, I can't stop wondering.

 

 

 

What works best with me is give yourself a monthly flight sim addon budget. It could be X amount of dollars or X amount of addons, whichever works best with your income. I myself try to limit to just one addon per month, whether that be a scenery or aircraft. Scenery releases tend to be a little more frequent than aircraft so I typically will get one airport per month. When you break that down it comes out to only $20-30 per month spent which as far as hobbies go, isn't very much.

I just did a count and I have 47 Payware airports and then on top of that I have all but one ORBX region. Everything I have is within North America. That seams like a lot of airports but like I said before if you just tell yourself, I'll buy one airport per month, you do this for a lot of years like I have, it all adds up very quickly.

Another thing I do is I base my scenery purchases in regards to what aircraft I have. I will look on FlightAware and see what routes those aircraft I own actually fly and then see if there are corresponding payware airports that I can buy. 

Once you start....it's hard to stop.   I have limited myself for the most part to airports I regularly like to fly to, which are mostly in the United States.

Although some my lament the "stock" airports, one refreshing thing to be noted in that regard is that the frames per second are higher, and this at a time when FPS is of particular importance (landing / taking off).  My last purchase was Toronto Intl and that airport gives my system a real run for its money.

Flying into an airport at night, for me, the stock default ones are just fine.  In fact if you want a real treat in high control fidelity, setup a night flight, dial every slider back to 0, and fly into a stock airport.  Buttery smooth happiness.  You'll be surprised at how well you can land when you're running at high framerates.

If you're flying the heavy iron (The Big Passenger Jets), a lot of the intricate detail in the payware scenery passes by really quickly on approach.  You'll barely have time to notice any of it.  Taxy way operations though are improved but I've always found that part of the flight a bit boring anyhow.

Now that I seem to have made case *against* payware airports, I do have a couple hundred dollars invested in them...if you're new to it all I'd start with something close to your heart, or hometown.  Then branch out to neighboring airports you tend to favor.

Although it is in the middle of nowhere, I do love the payware airport at St. Maarten.  It is quite small, but has a "personality" to it that I like.  It can also handle the big jets.

Although this post is getting long, if you've not purchased any scenery add-ons yet, you may want to consider REX 4 Texture Direct first, then ORBX Global Base and ORBX Global openLC North America as a starting point, it replaces the basic scenery textures in the sim.

And to ALL flight simmers out there who go "back in the day...." you owe it to yourself to get the ORBX Meigs Field...it puts back into place a historic flight simulator icon of an airport that was rudely ruined by then Chicago Mayor Daley in the middle of the night.  Add FlyTampa Midway to the mix and you've got two wonderful add-ons that are within 30 miles of each other for great touch and go practice with a wonderful Chicago skyline the entire time. 

Mark Trainer

 

On 3/11/2017 at 10:29 PM, w6kd said:

I have literally hundreds of them accumulated, all over the world.  For me, flying a finely crafted add-on airplane from/to a fuzzy default airport is like having a steak dinner served on the lid of a garbage can. 

Regards

The same here...

Hi Folks,

I'm sure I have a bunch but the actual purchasing usually happens once a year over the holiday sales season - outside of that I don't buy addons very often...

Even with my paid addons - I spend the bulk of my time exploring the literally hundreds of ORBX Freeware Airports (I'm not a "bravo" guy) - they add just enough detail to seem plausible and since there are so many - I avoid "default" airports like the plague...

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=16TLldaoxxmFv7wOWfYyM8zV-bgM&ll=-3.81666561775622e-14%2C0&z=1

Regards,

Scott

I don't buy that much anymore. It's hard to buy $40 airports. Especially after buying AeroFly FS 2 and getting a pile of highly detailed scenery and airports for $50; then I found a bunch of airplanes in there as well and then discovered it was a full blown simulator! Just trying to compare the development effort between the products...can't get my head around it.

On 3/11/2017 at 4:36 PM, HiFlyer said:

I think many people buy tons of airports, especially at the beginning, then taper off and become increasingly more selective as they begin to realize how many of them they only fly to a few times and then pretty much forget they even have them. 

I keep a set of regional maps on my sidebar PC (used for flight planning, wx injection, ATC etc) that I overlay in Photoshop with icons that indicate where I have add-ons, color and shape-coded to indicate characteristics like whether it has SODE/AES gateways, is P3D native or an FSX port etc.  That way I get a good visual once-over of the landscape and can quickly answer that burning question "where haven't I been lately?" or "what kind of plane (cargo vs airliner, jet vs turboprop etc) works best here?"

For those that can't afford or don't want to spend money on a lot of add-ons, just changing the weather (winds particularly to change the runway/approach patterns) or time (day vs night) can be enough to make two flights between the same city pair seem like using completely different airports.  You can make just a handful of add-ons go a long way like that.

The detailed add-ons do something else for me, though, and that's bring back memories of flying into those places for real.  Flew the PMDG 777 into ORBX's Pago Pago in American Samoa a while back, a place I've been quite a few times in my active flying days, and the detail had the memories kicking in and the hair standing up on the back of my neck.  I could literally smell the banana fritters cooking in the flightline restaurant as I taxiied up.  Lots of those high-quality add-ons do that for me.

Regards

FYI, the folks that make UTX have released a new product, XpressSim which is basically low priced ($5USD) airports and cityscapes. They are not meant to compete with the high detailed major airports but they are a good sight better than the defaults. I like them and have found no performance hit.

 

Vic 

Hi Folks,

Regarding keeping track of your airports (in case some people are unaware) - that incredible FREEWARE app called "Little Nav Map" has the neatest feature well worth the cost of admission - it reads the actual "scenery.cfg" file of your sim and loads all the found airports into a localized database - so you can display ONLY those airports that you actually have addon scenery for - with all the options for various maps displayed below it... I've been in hog heaven since discovering that feature - as it makes keeping track of your loaded airports and picking your next flight a breeze... It's the first app I've seen that done in... It has a powerful search tool as well so you can specify runway lengths or a myriad of other options in a query... Well worth a look if you haven't...

Regards,
Scott 

Hahahahahah! I went to simmarket to look at an item called ENVTEX, and realized I already had an account there. Checked it out and saw a crapload of stuff I can just barely, barely remember (as if in a dream) purchasing. Nope. I'm hopeless; I should just stick with what I have. 

I purchased wayyyy too much stuff in the past, and probably own all sorts of crap I've completely forgotten in God knows how many stores.

Which reminds me.... I have a ton of Megascenery I haven't thought about in years. 

I'm just about to buy two more sceneries and so far I've gone through 4 consecutive airports without default scenery and just demos and it makes an entire world of difference. Now that I've discovered what an extreme difference payware airports make for the experience, I think I will be investing more into the "hubs" I fly out of most, which fortunately and unfortunately, there are a lot of.

 

I happened upon a way to make my sim experience as immersive as possible without totally breaking the bank. To be perfectly clear, I have realized this AFTER breaking the bank for several years now, and finally understanding that I use less than 10% of the scenery and aircraft I own.

I have set up GA PAX routes in AirHauler 2 that run to and from high-quality airport addons that I own. Orbx KMRY to KPSP, for example. I load my flight with the Orbx scenery activated. Once I takeoff and reach FL60 or so, I unload the Orbx scenery, and load the free BlueSky photoreal scenery for that specific region. When I get close to arriving at my destination, I deactivate BlueSky, and reload Orbx. All of my operations are on the west coast.

For my taste, this method, combined with A2A aircraft, delivers the most rich experience possible in P3D.

It also keeps my purchases focused on airports I'd like to service with my regional virtual company in AirHauler2.

Whenever OrbX release an airport, LOL 

Actually since I only fly in their "full fat" regions and mainly in the US, I've been able to skip a few of the FTX Global airports, which my wallet is thankful for.