FSX-MS Missing Airports

[Rosner 0]

have no problem finding airports in ILS but in VFR get to where airport should be and nowhere in sight. VFR is 

a bit new for me so have no idea what I can do to correct this; Any help most appreciated

[nuNce 2]

Well, flying VFR in default FSX would be quite hard without some addons. First things that come to mind are ORBX sceneries which improve the overall layout, but in particular Vector would give you actual roads, rivers and coastlines. It really depends where you want to fly. There are also country specific sceneries which might include landmarks which you would then use for VFR flights. Another great addon with country specific sceneries is OpenVFR which is based on OpenStreetMap data.

You also need to plan your route, you need to fly between places you can easily recognize in the simulator. When reaching a waypoint you then fly a specific bearing for a specific amount of time until you spot the next one. This might be a town, a bend in the river, a large intersection. Well known planners are VFRFlight and Plan-G.

This is to give you a really general idea, you can find many guides on how to fly VFR on the net.

Edited April 17, 2018 by nuNce

[scianoir 610]

Mateusz has made some very useful suggestions above but in addition you could use either the default GPS or one of the payware addon GPS systems such as the very useful GTN650/750 series as an aid to your VFR navigation and to help you find airfields.

I do however agree that the default FSX scenery does not lend itself to VFR navigation because of the lack of accurate landmarks and other features which you need when flying VFR and it is certainly worth adding some enhanced scenery at least for the regions you like to fly in.

The Orbx range is excellent but another very good (and somewhat less expensive) option is the Flight1 UTX/GEX series. A third alternative to would be photo real scenery such as the MegaSceneryEarth series which would excellent for VFR navigation because of its accuracy but may have VAS related issues in FSX particularly if you have a lot of it installed.

Bill

[nuNce 2]

11 minutes ago, scianoir said:

The Orbx range is excellent but another very good (and somewhat less expensive) option is the Flight1 UTX/GEX series. A third alternative to would be photo real scenery such as the MegaSceneryEarth series which would excellent for VFR navigation because of its accuracy but may have VAS related issues in FSX particularly if you have a lot of it installed.

That also brings up another subject i forgot to mention. There are two schools of thought for this matter which are vector based sceneries (ie. ORBX Vector, GEX, OpenVFR Terrain) and photorealistic sceneries (ie. MegaSceneryEarth). Vector based sceneries draw the environment using textures, objects and landclasses which are present in FSX and which can be upgraded by other tools to give them a fresh look (ORBX and Global UTX which replace the textures). The advantage by using them is a more contiguous feel to the scenery between various zones, autogen (which is usually not present in photo scenery) and disk usage which is far smaller.

If you want absolute fidelity you can get photoscenery which is basically satellite imagery of the area, but normally comes with minimal or no autogen (buildings, trees) and has far bigger disk usage and download size.

It is a matter of personal preference, but if you plan flying low to the ground I would avoid photo scenery due to autogen absence.

You can find more informations here.

Edited April 17, 2018 by nuNce

[scianoir 610]

35 minutes ago, nuNce said:

It is a matter of personal preference, but if you plan flying low to the ground I would avoid photo scenery due to autogen absence.

Yes, that is another reason why I don't use photoreal scenery in FSX (although I did use it for a while in FS9). Although the appearance can be excellent at about 3000ft agl, once you start to fly very low photoreal can become a bit too flat and featureless due to lack of autogen. I know it is possible to buy additional autogen packs adding trees etc to some photoreal scenery and indeed I tried some of these in my FS9 days and they provided a very definite improvement when flying at very level.

On this subject, I notice that Orbx are now developing photoreal scenery regions called Orbx TrueEarth which I think also include autogen and which look absolutely amazing from the preview screenshots. I just wonder however whether these may just be a step too far for FSX in terms of VAS usage.

Bill

[HighBypass 2,339]

Might I also suggest a decent mesh in addition to photo or vector based scenery add-ons? If the mesh is detailed enough, then the topography becomes recognisable which can be helpful when flying VFR.

[Anthony Salvino 10]

On 4/17/2018 at 3:51 AM, nuNce said:

Well, flying VFR in default FSX would be quite hard without some addons. First things that come to mind are ORBX sceneries which improve the overall layout, but in particular Vector would give you actual roads, rivers and coastlines. It really depends where you want to fly. There are also country specific sceneries which might include landmarks which you would then use for VFR flights. Another great addon with country specific sceneries is OpenVFR which is based on OpenStreetMap data.

You also need to plan your route, you need to fly between places you can easily recognize in the simulator. When reaching a waypoint you then fly a specific bearing for a specific amount of time until you spot the next one. This might be a town, a bend in the river, a large intersection. Well known planners are VFRFlight and Plan-G.

This is to give you a really general idea, you can find many guides on how to fly VFR on the net.

I'm going through similar issue right now trying to find "Flor fr Oro" airport in Bolivia on the FSX map, its part of a Rolling Cumulus bush mission I'm supposed to be flying to, but its not appearing on the map or the GPS map, its as if its not in the FSX database. Hope you find solution to your problem.