I came across this image in the AVSIM Library for the Northwest A320 repaint for FSX. Look at that detail! I wonder what settings (and system) the designer had?!!

Now that is the way I wish FSX looked like. Amazing power that must be required. However I saw an alienware computer for about $10,000 that would run anything.

Photoshopped.....Look at the blurring of the background. FSX doesn't do that. Note too that the distance blurring is not even done properly, the gate in the middle of the image beyond the second plane is in perfect focus near the bottom, yet blurry at the top, even though it's all at the same distance from the 'camera'.So yeah, photoshopped. The plane itself could be real though.

It looks a lot like FS9 with some payware addons, with obvious photoshop blur. But yes, I do think FSX could look like this, and actually expect it will!One of the most impressive graphical enhancement in recent releases of DirectX and hardware advances, has been depth of field buffers. If you have used Black & White, you will know how impressive it can be.The speculation regarding the DX10 update has recently been focused mainly on preformance, but there is a lot of special-effects that "could" make FSX into something better than that screenshot.

Being as one of the jobs I do on a regular basis, is to train advanced courses in Photoshop, if any one of my students did such an appallingly clumsy retouch as that, I would be mortified :-)As I always point out to the people I train, the two things you won't find on the Photoshop toolbox are a brain and a pair of observant eyes, you have to provide those yourself!I would certainly like to see the camera that had such wierd depth of field characteristics as that.A far more convincing touch would have been to adjust the shadows on the buildings, aircraft and vehicles, as the shadows are one of FS's weakest assets from a realism point of view.Incidentally, a friend of mine has a really expensive Alienware PC, and it had trouble reading the FSX DVDs to actually install the program, and it runs about the same on that as it does on my considerably cheaper PC :-)

This thread make me wonder if there are other photoshopped images out there - especially any relating to payware?

I should think that there probably are quite a few tweeks done for screenshots of stuff, this is after all one of the purposes of Photoshop and other similar programs.I for one will admit that I tweeked an image for a downloadable adventure I created for FS9 that you can get hold of on the AVSIM file library, but I seem to recall that I admitted this in the explanatory 'read me' file, because it had some FS special effects in it and I enhanced the appearance of one of these for the 'poster' pic which appeared on the download page.There is of course nothing wrong with doing such tweeks if it is obvious that it's been done, but if an attempt is made to make a product appear better than it actually is in use for a product which is sold commercially, then that would certainly be illegal, hence the 'artist's impression' and 'actual screenshot' tags you tend to see on a lot of things.Generally speaking, if I am posting screenshots on a forum to illustrate a point, I tend to tweek them to improve the clarity, but I always mention this if I have done so, as to not do so might lead someone who is considering buying FS to think it is doing something it can't do.Anyway - top tips for all you Photoshop tweekers of screenshots out there - use the Film Grain filter, it will make your stuff look more like a photograph if you use it with subtlety. And if you want to emulate depth of field effects in a manner similar to the original picture link posted on this thread, duplicate the layer, then use the Gaussian Blur filter on it, then change the layer mode to Overlay and knock the opacity back to about 20 percent. When you've done that, add an Layer Mask to the duplicated layer and use a black to white gradient fill on the Layer Mask's alpha channel (with the black bit at the bottom) to blend the effect.

A $10,000 Dell....oops Alienware - would be mismanagement of funds if you ask me. Now, give me a $5,000 custom built rig and I would have high quality components and performance, something they might actually charge 10k for... Alienware used to be good (pre 2000), now they are glorified dell's...sad.d- -