Looking for advice/opinions for better scenery/textures

[alhefner 28]

I'm running P3D V4. I fly out of the Reno-Tahoe international airport a lot and am quite disappointed in the way the stock scenery represents the high desert terrain... just looks like a muted, solid, coloration on the ground. So, I'm looking to improve that representation! Some brush and realistic trees would be nice. Better looking, and better represented, rock formations too.

However, I'm fairly new to all of this so, I'm really sort of unsure what to look for, where to look for it, and what I might get out of any addon that I would chose.

A bit of advice is greatly appreciated!

Thanks

Al

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

I would start with Orbx Global and North America Landclass.

If you fly west, the Northern California Region is really nice

[PWJT8D 446]

ORBX FTX Global BASE Pack, FTX Global VECTOR and FTX Global openLC North America are three things you can add to your simulator to really make the earth below look a lot better. Their product pages give you a good idea of what each does and how they work together.

Two things you can do for trees are ORBX Global Trees HD or Turbulent Designs Terra Flora. Both products do the exact same thing which is replace the default autogen trees with better looking more realistically placed plant life. So that is completely subjective to which one you like, it's all a matter of your opinion and which you think looks better.

And if you wanted to get even more precise you can look into ORBX NA Northern California. The border of it's coverage area comes right up to Lake Tahoe, not quite Reno, but very close. Then if you were looking into an airport, ORBX also makes a really good KTVL Lake Tahoe Airport. 

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

39 minutes ago, alhefner said:

I'm running P3D V4. I fly out of the Reno-Tahoe international airport a lot and am quite disappointed in the way the stock scenery represents the high desert terrain... just looks like a muted, solid, coloration on the ground. So, I'm looking to improve that representation! Some brush and realistic trees would be nice. Better looking, and better represented, rock formations too.

However, I'm fairly new to all of this so, I'm really sort of unsure what to look for, where to look for it, and what I might get out of any addon that I would chose.

A bit of advice is greatly appreciated!

Thanks

Al

If you want it to look real you could use MegaSceneryEarth photo real for that are but you won't have autogen trees or buildings but it will look real from altitude.

The other choice would be to use ORBX Global ground textures with ORBX OpenLC US and ORBX Vector (for roads, freeways, water bodies, etc) This won't look as real as the photoreal MegaSceneryEarth but you'll have a fair representation of the area and will have trees and buildings.

Or, you could use GEX with a land class/vector program like UltimateTerrain USA. Similar to the ORBX setup mentioned above.

[alhefner 28]

Thanks folks! I'll look into those on my next day off of work.

[sfgiants13 83]

PacSim will be releasing a RNO airport which will include the surrounding area as well.

[alhefner 28]

4 hours ago, sfgiants13 said:

PacSim will be releasing a RNO airport which will include the surrounding area as well.

Thanks for the info! I've got a freeware version that uses 2011 data and imagery now that is man times better than the stock version.

[ThommiTechnik 0]

And don't forget FreeMESHX :)

[JYW 2,977]

17 minutes ago, ThommiTechnik said:

And don't forget FreeMESHX :)

Warning:   O/T comments about FreemeshX, and Bittorrents.  (Apologies for the o/t!)

Whilst I can't begin to imagine the server demands involved in hosting such larges files, it's such a shame that they've suspended offering FreemeshX as a direct download and now only offer it by "bittorrent".   I'd never ever used a Bit torrent client before but only yesterday was desperate to get my hands on FreemeshX again (I lost it after a HD failure last year).

I was nervous about the whole bit torrent thing but tried downloading a client (called simply "Bittorrent"). It seemed one of the less dubious looking clients.  I installed it, then went back to the Freemesh site to download the torrents.   And what happened......   "Bittorrent" had installed an Ad bloatware that was popping up ads on my desktop and that was automatically closing down my browser (it happened with Firefox and Chrome), a few seconds after I launched them.

Game over.   Even the fabulous FreemeshX is not worth those risks.   I uninstalled the lot (including some hidden folders that needed to be manually flushed out).    BT may be a valid, genuine means of file distribution but the fact is, most of it's application in the real world is in the murky realms of questionable content and piracy - and the available BT clients seems to reflect that.

[ThommiTechnik 0]

Completely nonsens - First of all, there's a direct link on ninetwopro. Second, a torrent itself brings no bloatware, that's error 99, failure in Layer 8 ;)

[alhefner 28]

21 hours ago, ThommiTechnik said:

Completely nonsens - First of all, there's a direct link on ninetwopro. Second, a torrent itself brings no bloatware, that's error 99, failure in Layer 8 ;)

I see that they DID have a direct HTML download. However, going to the downlaod links page, you see that the poster above is CORRECT. They HAVE suspended direct downloads except for the USA hot fix. Thanks!

[JYW 2,977]

5 minutes ago, alhefner said:

I see that they DO have a direct HTML download. Thanks!

They don't.   Click on those links - and the link that appears confirms that direct download is currently suspended.     I assume you just looked at the "Direct Download" link and didn't investigate further..........  See screenshot below.

 

21 hours ago, ThommiTechnik said:

Completely nonsense - First of all, there's a direct link on ninetwopro.

See below - care to reflect?

[alhefner 28]

Bill, I edited my post. You are correct.

[whitav8 98]

Take a look at bluesky.com for reno imagery. Beautiful and free 

[alhefner 28]

20 hours ago, whitav8 said:

Take a look at bluesky.com for reno imagery. Beautiful and free 

Hmmm.... that url is just some sort of shopping site with day planners and calendars...