I am surprised reading all the discussions about the quality of the different payware texture sets. They are all good and it's a matter of taste which one to prefer. There is only one payware texture out there which is real crap and far too expensive and that is FScene, but I hope that by now everybody is aware about that fact and steer away from them. I've made the mistake and got ripped off by them, so be aware!! So some of us prefer BEV to GE, others GE to BEV and some stick to FS generic and/or freeware stuff such as Voz. Again it's all a matter of taste! So to conclude there's definitely no shortage of very well done textures. However that's only part of the story.What I'd like to see (and buy) would be professionally done landclass, highly detailed down to tile level (1,2km x 1,2km is the smallest one can go). People tend to forget that it is the landclass telling FS9 which textures where to use and if you really want to recognize your home area, you need to work with detailed landclass.I did a few very small landlcass bgls for my personal use and it is quite time-consuming. Could that be the reason there are so few payware landclass addons available? Obviously I am not talking about the US,there are some OK landclasses around for that specific area, but what about South America, Africa and Asia?Maybe we should start a poll to find out whether there are other users out there with a similar wish, so developers will take note.Roland

I agree that landclass holds the key to better looking scenery however even with better landclass there are serious limits today simply because there may not be enough regions or landclass ground types in FS arsenal (hence for example Arizona desert looks like Nevada desert). I think they may do something about in FSX.Michael J.http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/pmdg_744F.jpghttp://sales.hifisim.com/pub-download/asv6-banner-beta.jpg

Hi Roland,yup, realistic land class is both a great enhancement and an incredibly tedious task.All my landscape add-ons, freeware and commercial, include land class files made on a tile-by-tile basis. While those areas seem small compared to the scale of a continent or the globe, some of them contain 30,000+ manually placed tiles. It only takes about 2-3 seconds per tile but still... you do the math ;-) The only other landscape development task I can see as being equally boring is placing autogen for photoreal textures, like FlightScene or MegaScenery. Interestingly, there are quite a few freeware land class files available that tend to be very good and detailed, probably because they were made by people who know the area first-hand. For example, I listed a whole bunch of great European files in this thread: http://forums.simflight.com/viewtopic.php?t=49134 Actually, it isn't true that we are limited to the texture types that FS offers by default. Anyone can add their own land class textures and place them via local land class files. I'm currently working on custom texture sets for muskegs, wetlands, and large forestry cutblocks and these will be placed via such a local land class file. The only real limitation is that we can't provide local autogen types, like specific tree species or, say, burnt stems for a recent forest fire.Cheers, Holger

Hi Holger,Very interesting what you're mentioning regarding special textures and local landclass files. I didn't know that. Where do such self-made textures go and how do you do the numbering (landclass value number and the appropriate texture number)???Does this mean that I can create special textures say for a specific vegetation type in Africa, give it a name and an available texture number and link it to some new landlcass value?Roland

FScene has been around since FS2002. Until recently it was the only kid on the block. Without competition Ruud was free to set a steep asking price (which people where willing to pay). To my knowledge there has always been a demo to test the product and review scores have always been good. It was always clear what the asking price was so buying FScene is your own choice.The only thing we could possibly

Hi Roland,all you need to do is supply the custom textures in a parallel texture subfolder and FS will use those instead of whatever textures you have. Those textures will only be shown in the places specified in your local land class file, not globally! In fact, using local land class files means you are not bound by any of the class types that FS picked. You can take what is a residential type in default FS and turn it into a vegetation type. Why would you want to do that? Because it allows you to generate custom autogen placement files, while most of those files are hard-coded for vegetation types and can't be changed. An additional factor to consider is the automatic switching of land class types that the FS engine has hard-coded for most classes. Some types will have the first switch at ~10 degrees slope gradient while others only at ~40 degrees. Thus, if you want to place a texture that is restricted to a valley bottom, like a wetland, you'd pick an "early switcher", and if you want to place a type that runs up the slopes, like a forestry cutblock, a "late switcher".Lots of possibilities... ;-)Cheers, Holger

It's a big, big world, and knowing what land class to assign to all parts of it is quite impossible at the moment. If there were some highly accurate source for world land use, then that could be used as a basis for a nice global land class. But, there isn't.So, for the moment, the only good land class will be one that is created by someone who either knows the area really well and is working with detailed aerial images and maps, or someone who spends a lot of time looking at detailed aerial images and maps! Hard to cover the entire world like that.It is not hard to modify the land class and if more people were to try their hand at it, there would be more offerings and better coverage. But, there will not be an accurate global land class in the near future.However, when people do take the time and make the effort, like Holger, then the results are very nice. Just wondering, Holger, it is possible to use a custom autogen texture sheet for annotating tiles, so is there something preventing the display of tree stumps, etc.?Best regards.Luis

Hi Luis,I'm all ears: how would you provide a local custom texture sheet for vegetation? I know that Annotator offers that for buildings but I haven't found a way to include custom vegetation sheets. Don't tell me I just have to place local versions of trees*.bmp in my textures subfolder for this to work, that would be so d'oh! ;-)Cheers, Holger

No, I guess you are right. It simply seemed that if a building texture sheet could be used, then so should a vegetation sheet. Put it down to wishful thinking!Maybe the next version.Best regards.Luis