The first thing I notice is that the installed size is 28.1GB which is almost 4x the 2010 version at 7.66GB.   I took off from my current default airport at Big Bear City, CA and immediately notice there is more detail, more hills, in the terrain.  I use photoscenery so there are no trees or buildings to obscure the view. They are as if foothills have been added to the larger mountain ridges/peaks surrounding the city.   Before they were probably there, but not as "full".  

FYI, I am viewing this in a VR headset, Pimax 4k (Business Editon, 2k pixels not 4k), so the changes are more visible than in 2d.

Using SimLauncherX I move the A36 to NW Houston where I am more familiar because I live there.   Flying up hwy 249 I notice that the viaducts where 249 goes over crossroads there are indentations, as the roads go down below more than 249 rises above on some.  Flying north to the Tomball area where there is more happening in the terrain it is definitely clear that there is much more detail in this terrain set than there was in the 2010 version.  The creek valleys are present, where if they were in 2010 they weren't really noticeable even in VR.  The "hills" in the parks I know are where they should be now.  This is exactly what I was looking for in this upgrade.  With photoscenery a good terrain mesh is essential, and I would say that this particular version is the essential one now.

I'll know more when I get some FSEarthTiles scenery for Wisconsin, another place I know well.  I lost that part of my collection in a drive failure, I don't back up photoscenery.  Kinda wish I did now.

As far as load times I am not sure I saw a difference yet, it seemed to take longer, BUT I am running an NVME cache drive with PrimoCache, and it may not have been moved to the cache yet.  I'll know more on that later.  I can say that I didn't see much of the popping terrain, probably less than I did before.  I would notice that a little more in California, particularly around San Francisco, another place I fly frequently.  

This is a Great product.  I'll know more later, but much to do not related to FS today, so may be a day or two.  Right now I would say, as it is a product you will see in Every Flight, and you only buy it every 7 years or so, so at the current price it's $10 a year, BUY IT!

And if  you're looking for a phenomenal photoscenery for the Southwest US for purchase, complete with excellent night lighting that shows up at long distances, and water masks, take a look at Ultimate VFR.

There is terrain detail Everywhere that wasn't there before.  I'm very satisfied with this purchase.  And I bought this without getting prior "clearance" from my wife.  My little budget hawk has not noticed it yet; only a matter of time.  No buyers remorse here whatsoever.  I Can defend this purchase!  Must Have!

I had FTX Global 2010 too, very old version. Bought FTX Global Ultimate few days ago and can say it is worth it if you care about airport elevation. With the delivered tool AFM2 you can now set up properly all airports what need elevation correction. Only for that it was worth it.

Overall the coverage could be slightly improved compared to Global 2010, but I would say you could not tell the difference. Alps Rocky Mountains looking almost the same I would say.

The loading times are faster especially when you speed up long haul flights to 16x or 32x and switch down to normal, the mountains are detailed within seconds. Texture looks of course blurry a minute or so until its loaded.

But as I said the AFM2 tool is very nice, alot of airports needs elevation corrections :)

Been running with it for a few days. I told myself I'd hold out for FreeMesh to finally release something for the US but alas, my impatience got the better of me. I have to say, I'm very, very pleasantly surprised. So much detail seem to have sprung out from the ground, instead of all those smooth ridges and featureless areas. Really can't wait to see the final result when Vector is released.

For my needs, I am not only interested in mountains.  Houston is a relatively very flat area, and only begins to see elevation details to the far north and west of the metropolitan area.  Those details did not show up in a recognizable way in the 2010 version.  They most definitely are in this one.

Just loaded it up in P3D v4, again in VR.  The default location is a flight in SF Bay in the foothills just WNW of Silicon Valley.  One word:  WOW!  The detail here is probably about the same as I saw in Houston, but with the effect of being on top of mountains that I've already seen it's quite a change.  There are a lot of houses in this area, and all the sudden the roads and yards these houses are on make much more sense. The effect is as if I have 4x the data points stimulating my mind.  The effect on this 30cm custom photoscenery is to make it look more real than ever.  Even the shading in the photos make more sense now.  And Prepar3d v4 ground textures show up so much farther in the distance at just the default setting, it is much more realistic; in v3 it kinda breaks the immersion.  And I'm not running great equipment, just a 3077k at 4.6 and 2 GTX 780, I think that makes 1 1070 or so.   I might be able to do more when FlyInside v4 comes out because I have extreme judder and FSI helps with perfromance enhancements; They're making a huge mistake not rushing their Prepar3d v4 version.  With AS16 and ASCA, This is as real as it gets!  I am glad I rushed in to get this.  Immediate satisfaction.  Well, other than a days worth of downloading.

Yeah downloading this stuff was very annoying due to their slow servers. Maybe its better now because it was shortly after release where I bought it. I was downloading 5 straight hours because their servers gave only around 500 kb/s average per file. In average I downloaded with only 30 Mbit/s or so...

Yeah, their servers are awfully slow. I sort-of wished they would have added a torrent, so we could help each other seed it and improve speeds.

4 hours ago, denali said:

LOD  1 =  19520m
LOD  2 =    9760m
LOD  3 =    4880m
LOD  4 =    2440m       
LOD  5  =   1220m
lod 6 612m
lod 7 306m
lod 8 153m?
lod 9 76m
lod 10 38m
lod 11 19m
lod 12 9.6m
lod 13 5m
lod 14 2m
lod 15 1.19m

Which is the most prevalent LOD around the world on this release, do you know?. Appreciate feedback.

Thanks

 

I think we can only trust their marketing department: THE LOD varies from LOD 8 to LOD 15. LOD 8 for "flat" areas (you don't need higher LODs there, since flat is flat, whatever LOD you will render it in) and more to LOD 14 for mountainous areas (data availability permitting). Some showcases have been rendered in LOD15.

With that being said, Alps, Rocky Mountains, Pyrenees look all great like in. Extremely good rendered is for example Yosemite and Yellowstone National Park. As well the mountain areas in SoCal and NoCal. Well it does look a bit better because I have ORBX NoCal and SoCal landclass but the mountains definitly come from FS Global Ultimate...

Now, is it worth to upgrade from FS Global 2010? Hard to tell any direct difference. But that AFM2 tool to correct elevations is very nice + loading times are a bit better in Ultimate that I can tell you.

Here I did a video how airport elevation looks like for example in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia...

 

All I can say is that around South Western British Columbia, Global Ultimate is much more accurate than Global 2010.

For other areas of the world I couldn't honestly say ;)

1 hour ago, Nytro said:

I think we can only trust their marketing department: THE LOD varies from LOD 8 to LOD 15. LOD 8 for "flat" areas (you don't need higher LODs there, since flat is flat, whatever LOD you will render it in) and more to LOD 14 for mountainous areas (data availability permitting). Some showcases have been rendered in LOD15.

With that being said, Alps, Rocky Mountains, Pyrenees look all great like in. Extremely good rendered is for example Yosemite and Yellowstone National Park. As well the mountain areas in SoCal and NoCal. Well it does look a bit better because I have ORBX NoCal and SoCal landclass but the mountains definitly come from FS Global Ultimate...

Now, is it worth to upgrade from FS Global 2010? Hard to tell any direct difference. But that AFM2 tool to correct elevations is very nice + loading times are a bit better in Ultimate that I can tell you.

Here I did a video how airport elevation looks like for example in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia...

 

Orbx is more than just landclass their mesh at a higher resolution is giving you the elevation data.

6 hours ago, denali said:

The first thing I notice is that the installed size is 28.1GB which is almost 4x the 2010 version at 7.66GB.   I took off from my current default airport at Big Bear City, CA and immediately notice there is more detail, more hills, in the terrain.  I use photoscenery so there are no trees or buildings to obscure the view. They are as if foothills have been added to the larger mountain ridges/peaks surrounding the city.   Before they were probably there, but not as "full".  

FYI, I am viewing this in a VR headset, Pimax 4k (Business Editon, 2k pixels not 4k), so the changes are more visible than in 2d.

Using SimLauncherX I move the A36 to NW Houston where I am more familiar because I live there.   Flying up hwy 249 I notice that the viaducts where 249 goes over crossroads there are indentations, as the roads go down below more than 249 rises above on some.  Flying north to the Tomball area where there is more happening in the terrain it is definitely clear that there is much more detail in this terrain set than there was in the 2010 version.  The creek valleys are present, where if they were in 2010 they weren't really noticeable even in VR.  The "hills" in the parks I know are where they should be now.  This is exactly what I was looking for in this upgrade.  With photoscenery a good terrain mesh is essential, and I would say that this particular version is the essential one now.

I'll know more when I get some FSEarthTiles scenery for Wisconsin, another place I know well.  I lost that part of my collection in a drive failure, I don't back up photoscenery.  Kinda wish I did now.

As far as load times I am not sure I saw a difference yet, it seemed to take longer, BUT I am running an NVME cache drive with PrimoCache, and it may not have been moved to the cache yet.  I'll know more on that later.  I can say that I didn't see much of the popping terrain, probably less than I did before.  I would notice that a little more in California, particularly around San Francisco, another place I fly frequently.  

This is a Great product.  I'll know more later, but much to do not related to FS today, so may be a day or two.  Right now I would say, as it is a product you will see in Every Flight, and you only buy it every 7 years or so, so at the current price it's $10 a year, BUY IT!

And if  you're looking for a phenomenal photoscenery for the Southwest US for purchase, complete with excellent night lighting that shows up at long distances, and water masks, take a look at Ultimate VFR.

You are talking about a different product to Ultimate NG. Ultimate NG is 73GB. Global FTX Mesh has less detail for smaller size.

3 hours ago, 777200lrf said:

You are talking about a different product to Ultimate NG. Ultimate NG is 73GB. Global FTX Mesh has less detail for smaller size.

I'm speaking only of the NAM portion of the product I paid for yesterday, downloaded overnight in 18 1/4 4GB segments, and installed today.

7 minutes ago, denali said:

I'm speaking only of the NAM portion of the product I paid for yesterday, downloaded overnight in 18 1/4 4GB segments, and installed today.

sorry! I think I am going to buy it on the sale before the middle of next month. Unless freemeshx America is released before.