Good evening community and happy new year, hope everyone got to 2021 well and safely.

I have the following case...

By the time Xplane 10 came out, i stepped away from FSX and flew in Xpl 10/11 since then.

Now i bought P3DV5 to be able to fly and enjoy the FSLabs airbus.

Besides being rather impressed with the Airbus itslef, i am rather neutrally impressed by default scenery of P3D and all glitches i completely forgot over the years.

Now I have following question:

Which Scenery AddOns in Europe are worth buying and are also compatible with P3dV5? Obviously there are still a lot sceneries not or only partly working with it?

Does it make sense to buy the big airports like EGLL/EDDF etc? I read somewhere that those are only port overs and have missing stuff and serious fps issues.

Are there any secret tips or must haves?

Following stuff is already abort here:

ORBX Global Base package, FSGlobal Real weather (had the XPL11 Version thus a massive discount for P3D), Chaseplane, Aerosoft EDDK (my homebase so a serious must have :) 

Obvisouly that is not much regarding Airports but i seriously don't want to spend money on stuff I either regret or what will be obselete in short time because something new will come out shortly.

 

Thank you guys for any tip and advise you have here :) 

Maybe also my system specs:

i7 8086k @4.9GHz

32GB DDR4 3400

RTX3070

 

Rgds, Patrick

Although not graphically stunning, but still pretty good looking, UK200's UK airports are fairly inexpensive and decent enough in looks for pretty convincing UK destinations for your Airbus, and being not so over the top in details, they are not taxing on your system.

If you like ultra-realistic airport add-ons for Europe, I can recommend Aerosoft's Cologne/Bonn and also Pilot's Spanish airports such as Alicante and Almeria. If your computer is up to it, France VFR's Ile de France add-on is a lot of great scenery for the price which upgrades very many airports as well as adding fantastic scenery for the entire region in and around Paris and a must have if you are flying into and around Charles De Gaulle, but be aware that it can make even a pretty good computer struggle graphically.

Add-on weather-wise, I think most people would agree that Active Sky is the one to go for. It's not exactly cheap, but it is almost certainly the best, so you do get what you pay for.

Orbx scenery offer a lot of bang for your bucks, so it's worth picking the ones which suit your preferred destinations to fly to and from.

All kinds of FS2Crew stuff is definitely worth a look, as is Multi Crew Experience and GSX, all of which can add a lot to the airliner operations experience. So check those out.

 

For the UK i have purchased both Orbx True Earth and JustFlight NextGen 3d. Personally, for me the JustFlight scenery wins hands down with colouring, detail and autogen, so much so that I have removed Orbx altogether.

Best to all for the year ahead.

Phil

Hi Patrick,

For scenery I would definitely consider ORBX openLC Europe, as you already have Global base:
https://orbxdirect.com/product/global-openlc-europe

As you mentioned the FSLabs as your main reason you should, as Alan already mentioned, definitely add FSDreamteam's GSX Ground Services. This sofware is deeply integrated with the FSL Airbus:
https://www.fsdreamteam.com/products_gsx.html

For airports:
Missing features mainly mean that they not have PBR. But to make it simple have a look at the screenshots. The ones that look nice on the shots (i.e. visually on a similar level to Aerosoft EDDK) and are sold for v5 are also most likely good airports. Performance should not be so much of a concern with your hardware. You might want to reduce the texture resolution to 2048 to save VRAM (the new kind of CTD you might remember from FSX). A nice one for Europe is EDDN.
https://shop.flightbeam.net/collections/frontpage/products/flightbeam-eddn

All products mentioned here should be on sale at least until January 4th. That should make it a bit cheaper to get started.

Edited January 2, 20215 yr by Wolkenschreck

 

1 hour ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Things to look for in the Scenery/Airports:

• Use of PBR (Physically Based Rendering)
• Use of Dynamic Lights (volumetric lighting)
• Use of Material Scripting (seasonal changes and weather changes visually impact environment)
• Sloped Runways (native to P3D V5.x now)
• Dynamic Reflection support

I don't use anything coming out of Aerosoft lately due to their rather bizarre public comments against P3D, so I'm not likely to see updates/supports from that publisher anytime soon.  Those developers above seem to be able to produce scenery/airports for multiple platforms without finding the need to trash any specific platform.

 Cheers, Rob.

I know that sloped runways are possible with P3Dv5.x but I'm not aware that any of the major producers has implemented it. Are there any larger airports with sloped runways? Which did I oversee?

Thank you all for the comments and suggestions! 🙂

The EDDN(Nürnberg) Tip is great and that many shops currently have some nice discounts, really helps.

Just shopped at ORBX, 29Palms and GSX.

 

Again thank you, really helped me a lot here! 

Stay healthy and happy landings, 

Patrick

Sloped runways P3Dv5 Aerosoft EDDF every node has a height value.

 https://www.flickr.com/photos/154944674@N05/50794023726/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/154944674@N05/50794147467/in/dateposted-public/

 

12 hours ago, Nemo said:

 

I know that sloped runways are possible with P3Dv5.x but I'm not aware that any of the major producers has implemented it. Are there any larger airports with sloped runways? Which did I oversee?

Sloped runways are available in FSX and all previous versions of P3D. They have to be built on a model or a sloping flatten used. The only change introduced in V5 is that AI aircraft can now deal with them.

 

52 minutes ago, Reader said:

Sloped runways are available in FSX and all previous versions of P3D. They have to be built on a model or a sloping flatten used. The only change introduced in V5 is that AI aircraft can now deal with them.

 

In v5 you can have undulating runways not just sloped like real runways.

Sloping runways can slope up and well as down.🥱

Gentlemen, 

I think we are derailing this thread a bit with the sloping runways. But after having worked with Evgeny (Digital Design) on Tenerife I can assure you that the way sloped runways are included in P3D are a pain in the back to work with. The way LM included them was the most effortless possible and I remember to have read that ORBX for instance was not happy about the implementation. XPL and MFS are far far easier to work with. GCTS was somewhat easy and Evgeny thankfully passionate enough to tinker around with this. But doing something like Atlanta for example would be a whole different effort. And I think that this is the reason why we only have now two airports that use this feature natively; DD's GCTSv2 Tenerife and Puljevic's LDSP Split. There is also LatinVFR's KFLL but this one is using a trick to simulate the sloping runway but not using the P3Dv5 native feature. And if you have the feature in ADE active it will show the altitude points for every node. But the airport like EDDF is still pan flat. Doing the undulating terrain requires you to change all the nodes in ADE to the desired altitude and then one needs to cover it with a custom, matching 3D model. The latter is the challenging part, as there is no easy way to tell the 3D model the exact high of the underlying AFCAD nodes. 
V5 has great features like PBR, material scripting, and the other features Rob mentioned. But the undulating runways are certainly not a feature to praise. 

@Patrick @DLH9KA
Glad to hear that you found some good ideas here. Those addons should keep you busy a bit in the next weeks. If you enjoy the sim and the FSL Bus you might want also to look at ORBX Germany South and North. Köln is included in Germany South, but just on the border of Germany North.
If you mainly fly in Europe you should also have a look at some more recent airports like FlyTampa Copenhagen v2, FSDreamteam LFSB Basel, Digital Design Lyon (disclaimer: I am a beta tester for them, so I might be biased), MK Studios Dublin, Helsinki, and Dublin.

If you mainly fly in Germany than have a look at SimWing's Hamburg Pro and Munich Pro. Aerosoft's Frankfurt is a bit aged. But structures are mostly up do date and it has a very German feel to it (cars, textures, etc.). For Germany still a Must have that I would get in a sale. Another nice one for Germany is FSDG's Bremen. 
What I would avoid is anything named Aerosoft - German Airports - XXX Professional. This series is heavily outdated.

Edited January 3, 20215 yr by Wolkenschreck

Honest question and not meant provocative (I respect you and your knowledge far too much to engage in any dispute here; really missed your content when you took some time off from this forum): What would be a simpler way to do sloped airports in P3D? Is there any way to produce a custom, terrain conforming ground poly with less work?

The SDK is very vague in that respect. However, I am only used to working with ADE (being only a beta tester and not a developer). But I think you mentioned a good point that we might continue in the other thread that I stirred here with my comment above:
Accessibility to the SDK (which allows more than MFS, no doubt) is not as easy as in MFS. Yes, terraforming in MFS does also require a lot of tuning. But at least one can see the result in real time in the sim. P3D does require countless reloads whenever you try something. P3D have the features, but it no easy task too utilize them. I am sure that something like MFS's developer mode would make it easier for content creators to engage more with P3D.

2 minutes ago, Wolkenschreck said:

Honest question and not meant provocative (I respect you and your knowledge far too much to engage in any dispute here; really missed your content when you took some time off from this forum): What would be a simpler way to do sloped airports in P3D? Is there any way to produce a custom, terrain conforming ground poly with less work?

The SDK is very vague in that respect. However, I am only used to working with ADE (being only a beta tester and not a developer). But I think you mentioned a good point that we might continue in the other thread that I stirred here with my comment above:
Accessibility to the SDK (which allows more than MFS, no doubt) is not as easy as in MFS. Yes, terraforming in MFS does also require a lot of tuning. But at least one can see the result in real time in the sim. P3D does require countless reloads whenever you try something. P3D have the features, but it no easy task too utilize them. I am sure that something like MFS's developer mode would make it easier for content creators to engage more with P3D.

This is a really good point to sort out. There must be a way to let devs more optimized working. This will take away some pain (time) and hopefully sharing outcome (supply different platforms, minimalize work) could be good for them and us.

Marcus