Chris raises interesting points. I own BEV and was an early adopter. I am seriosuly considering GE (but procrastinating because of the havoc it may cause if I have to uninstall/reinstall add on sceneries and American Data Roads as i understand it.) What we need is a side-by-side comparison by disinterested parties. The screen shots are hard to compare because of differences in locations and settings (and apparently use of add on meshes, etc.) There are also some utilitarion tradeoffs: BEV allows complete customization (tile by tile), but I just use the default BEV theme as this is too much decision making for me personally. GE has one "theme". But GE has all seasons, BEV is still awaiting Hard winter and fall as I recall. GE is cheaper. Autogen is important and handled differently etc.

Hi Chris,I'm also a BEV user and have no plans to change based upon what I have read. I think the number of posts here concerning GE reflect two points. First, ground textures are important to the majority of simmers and second, we are add-on junkies. :) GE is new and the thought that a new and better add-on exists drives many of us to ask questions to ensure we are not missing the latest and greatest. Bob... :)

For me it's not a question of ditching anything, but of providing more variety and greater simplicity. I'm keeping BEV and will continue to use it. I bought GE because of the worldwide, 5 season coverage, and because of the simplicity and people who developed it. BEV was a revolution, but it also came with some complexity, and it is not a complete solution. GE is also revolutionary, but it is a complete solution at a very, very reasonable price. It's about choice and variety for me, not being better or dumping anything.

I'm certainly going to stay out of the which product is better debate. :) I do want to clarify that BEV Summer, Fall, Winter and Hard Winter are all available currently. Vol 5, Spring is targeted for release around March 8th. As for many Bev users this will be their 5th volume, they can get it for free if they wish. Due for release a few days after Vol 5 will be a special supplement that though completely optional, allows the user even more customization. During early spring you'll see patches of snow throughout the textures instead of the stark white and then all of a sudden spring green. Mid spring will add young crops and a splash of color representing mountain meadow flowers. Late Fall will provide patches of snow, so that you'll be able to transition the season rather than simply go from bare trees to white snow. The supplement pack will sell for $7.On target for release Mid-March is Volume 6, The Rest of the World. It will have all seasons for the rest of the world. With the current buy-one-get-one-free deal, as well as the two winter volumes being priced at $9 each, Bev users will be able to have all seasons for the entire world for about $54, not including the optional supplement.Tony=http://www.flightsim-bevs.com]

There is one very important feature of BEV that seems to get very little "press" in these discussions and that is, with BEV, you have a huge variety of textures that you can choose from to build your own "theme." This allows you to use textures that fit your personal preference for look and feel. It does give a great deal of flexibility.-dave

Yeah, the customization thing was my main reason for going with BEV. I tend to get hung up on flying a particular area for a while, so being able to really tweak, say, the Wash/Bos corridor for a few days is really neat. GE looks great, but then again, so does BEV. Not sure I could really justify owning both - my incremental 30 bucks boight me the Dreamfleet Baron instead, so I have a chance to try out all the Reality XP stuff (me like).

Fall, Winter, Hard Winter for USA & Canada have been out for a while. The next textures will be the spring ones and according to the BEV new site, they will be released this month (March 06').Scott

I use BEV and am very happy with it. GE looks cool too so I am tempted to give it a try, but I think I will buy that C130 over at Captian sim first since I have been holding off on that one for a while.Better use of my $30 for now.Scott :-)

The BEV - GE comparisons are not only a horse that has been beaten to death and then some, but this horse has now been turned into Hungarian horse salami. All your questions and concerns have already been answered:1) The reason why BEV is getting "less praise" now is because GE is new, and new products tend to get a disproportionate amount of attention on this forum. This slowly goes away.2) GE comes from the team that released the ground breaking FE - so naturally people are going to be interested. 3) Comparison shots between GE and BEV suggest that the choice between the two is, in the end, a matter of taste and preference. (As is the choice between GE. BEV, and FSScene). 4) The advantage of GE at this point is that it comes with all seasons and regions. BEV will get their eventually, at which time this advantage of GE is going to go away.etc. etc. What I don't understand is why every choice has to be turned into a contest. Completely unproductive, if you ask me; and certainly not fair to either GE or BEV.I have them both, and intend to use them both; just as I use both FE and Active Sky.ricardo

BEV only covers USA/Canada at the moment and not yet all seasons. I do most of my flyng in Europe, so the obvious choice for me is GE, which as someone says above is a complete solution covering the whole world and all seasons in one package. In terms of the artwork, in my view, they are both superb, and they both do great things with autogen. We simmers have a choice and with the introduction of BEV and GE, what a great choice too! When they go to work on FSX, I think we can expect something even better.

I have identified 4 reasons why I would use GE over BEV any day of the week.1) GE is orders of magnitude cheaper than BEV, which goes to show that the pricing scheme used by previous texture packages was excessive at best and extortionate at worst.2) GE appears to have better support. You get all 5 seasons simultaneously without any wait, the GE team fixes (promptly) any user criticisms, and support has been implied to continue after the release of FSX.3) GE gives you a single texture set that covers the entire world. Some people seem to think that BEV's texture selection utility is a "feature", but as far as I'm concerned its an inconvenience and I would much rather just start up the sim and have textures that already look good no matter where you are in the world.4) GE's textures look far superior to BEV's textures in my mind. The reason I bought GE on the first day of release is because the screenshots convinced me that these textures would improve the appearance of the scenery. After weeks of studying side-by-side comparisons of BEV and default textures by both the BEV team and BEV customers, on the other hand, I never could see a difference.I know it sounds like I'm slamming BEV pretty hard but I am trying to deliver my observations as objectively as possible without a preference to any particular developer. Case in point, although I love Peter Wilding's ground textures I opted out of his sky textures because I didn't think they offered enough of an improvement over ActiveSky's textures to justify the additional cost.

I dont know....Free will?Gary HayesLevel-D Simulations Development TeamNo im not a "real" pilot, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.P4 3.0ghz w/HT & FSB..Radeon X850XT 256MB..1 gig PC3200 DDR RAM..Sound Blaster Audigy w/5.1 THX

:-hmmm

>1) GE is orders of magnitude cheaper than BEV, What a crap. Do you even know what orders of magnitude means?. One order of magnitude would be 10. Many orders of magnitude would be 100 or more. At the moment BEV seems to be about twice as expensive (if you include the whole word and all seasons). That is not even close to a single order of magnitude. BEV offers many customization features. For you that may not be worth extra $20 for some it is. It is one thing to say "it is a bit too expensive to me" and another to say it is "extortion". Try to use language that is order of magnitude closer to reality.Michael J.http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/pmdg_744F.jpghttp://sales.hifisim.com/pub-download/asv6-banner-beta.jpg

Gary Hayes wrote "I dont know....Free will?. . "When all's said and done this is probably what it's really all about!;-)