I have certainly acquired a large number of addon sceneries so far, mostly airports.  MSFS airports look pretty good until you have been to them in person in real life.  What individual developers have done to improve on that is very much appreciated at my end.  Most of my flying is out of regional GA type airports.

I bought my home airport KDEN but that is about it. It is a huge world and i don’t want to be limited where i fly because i bought some add-on. No weather add-on either. I’ll save my money for aircraft. 

5 hours ago, Ricardo41 said:

don't have much of a future

thought that myself - some months ago. nonetheless by now I have some 10 to 15 scenery addons bought via the marketplace. stupid me, especially since I primarily fly the neo (i.e. not necessary below FL50) plus spawn on the rwy ;-). but in some rare cases of precious spare time I even start cold and dark at a gate or at least taxi to a gate after landing. depends on how far away the terminal is. yep, as I said, stupid me

I much prefer airports with real buildings to the generic versions in MSFS.  I've downloaded a number of freeware airports and bought UK2000s version of my home airport (though it looks like a poor cut down FSX portover to me and a very disappointing piece of work).

I have a few sceneries made from Google data that are very good. John Lovell and Mark Taylor have done some nice ones. Superspud has done some nice airports along with his Scilly and Channel Islands makeovers.

Then of course a number of bridges are missing and I've downloaded the Severn bridges, Menai Bridge, Sydnet Harbour Bridge (can't believe ASOBO left that out) to name but a few.

Additionally, I have some freeware for Spain and France along with Meigs Field and a few US airfields and don't forget the free watercraft from ORBX for the Channel Islands.

Add to that a few POI packages, liveries, UK radio phraseology, live sea traffic and a few landmarks and you can see that there is plenty of room for addon developers and long let that continue.

When I have the time and a few more tools have been developed, I intend to have a go at making a few of my local airfields and learn how to do and optimise Google imports for some photoscenery.

Edited April 20, 20215 yr by cianpars

5 hours ago, Ricardo41 said:

I spent thousands of $$$$$ on various scenery addons for FS9, FSX, and P3D.

I've spent exactly $0 on scenery in MSFS 2020, with the exception of Zinertek's airport ground textures. 

IMHO, companies like ORBX don't have much of a future

You do know that Asobo contract Orbx directly for internal work...

The main issue with the default buildings is many of the hangars don't even look like hangars. The generic building choices by Asobo was very very strange. The default control towers are ok, but they should have made more variety. They actually do ok on the modeling, they just didn't design the buildings correctly for generic placement, some of them stick out way too much.

 

I think there‘s still a huge market for addon airports (as the numerous releases show) and I don‘t think it will dry up anytime soon. The default airports might look better than in other sims, but many people still want their favourite airports to look as realistic as possible. I for example am one of them.

Also cityscape addons still seem to sell. As long as MS/Asobo doesn‘t offer better photogrammetry I don‘t think this will change. 

Sceneries such as Orbx’s True Earth series on the other hand seem to have become obsolete, at least for now. I still wouldn‘t write them off completely though. If a developer were to come up with a new superdooper Switzerland Professional X, for instance, I‘d probably get it (I wouldn‘t pay 150$ for it though). But yes, the market for those kinds of addons is probably tiny. 

I don‘t know if the SDK allows it yet but addons that offer region-specific autogen buildings might be an interesting alternative.

Edited April 20, 20215 yr by Shack95

Anyone who thought scenery add-ons would be straight up obsolete, didn't know what they were talking about.  That's overheated hype talking, not logic.

I thought you'd probably see things like "TrueEarth" go away, since MSFS is good at capturing the look of places on a macro level (and sure enough OrbX haven't released any for MSFS yet).  But no AI or group of developers was ever going to be able to create every point of interest or airport on the entire planet, and there was always going to be a role for that stuff.  We knew there were going to be tens of thousands of airports not properly modeled, even if the default "premium" ones were perfect

I thought you'd also see a lot of add-ons centered around making sims look better go away, for obvious reasons - not all, but a lot of them.  I still think that's the case, and still for obvious reasons.  MSFS doesn't need a lot of those add-ons, because it starts at a much higher visual baseline than something like P3D.

As someone said above, MSFS is going to fuel the add-on industry more than anything, because once you've seen the higher fidelity of the world, you become hungry to push the realism envelope out just a bit more.  Asobo are even directly contracting companies like OrbX and Gaya for their world updates, lol.

So yeah - some third-parties may go out of business. More still will need to tweak their business model.  But otherwise the scenery makers will have plenty to do for years.

5 hours ago, Ricardo41 said:

The big difference between P3D and MSFS 2020 is that in MSFS 2020 even the default airstrips look great. In P3D every default airport was a complete eye sore, and you had to spend the money just so the sim wouldn't look so word not allowed ugly. IMHO, P3D loaded up with addon scenery still looks uglier than default MSFS.

So what are bringing scenery developers for MSFS 2020 bringing to the table? Not much, except some pretty buildings, or modeling stuff that probably nobody really cares about like the inside of terminals. 

I have to agree fully w/ this impression.   Within a week or two of release I purchased Orbx's KSBA & KTIW, then Flightbeam's KPDX.  I quickly learned all of these airports omitted the piece that puts ILS freq into Waypoint Info > Airport > Freq tab, and I really liked that feature accessible in the TBM's G3000 MFD.  I tried to get folks' attention (Asobo Zendesk & Orbx), and was essentially shined on.  I had hoped someone at Asobo would pay attention so future airport addons did not omit this, but alas they didn't and so presumably most all did omit this.  I told myself I would not buy any more airports w/ functionality omitted and I haven't save FSDT's CYVR because Umberto described this issue and did not omit this in his CYVR.  But truthfully, the default airports are so impressive unless you really personally know the airport in question, it's kind of a wash to pick up new airports as they're hardly any better than default.  That is probably not fair, but again if you don't know the terminal you're in, it's hard to tell just how accurate it is.  

I'd like to see more wildlife and other features not currently present:  lots more birds that actually can strike the plane, herds of caribou, elephants, hot air balloons and hang gliders where they normally will be found.  Years ago while in Annecy, FR we took a bicycle ride around the lake there and despite thunderheads appearing high attop the mountains we saw several hang gliders flying right under those dark clouds!  Oy!   Here's the area I'm talking about at Annecy and hang gliders were just coming over the mountain at the top end of the big lake.  Those peaks when right below them are quite high which you can't tell from this wide angle view from town:

Off-topic, but I'm also struck with how low CPU utilization was a few updates back.  I'm about double this now yet scenery has not improved.

And road traffic w/ headlights/tailights at night!  Can't wait for GSX which I read is under development.  Lots of room for new airplanes but I think scenery addon developers will likely shrink bigtime unless they offer something dramatically better than default, and I'm not sure how you can do that.

Haven't bought a single scenery for MSFS and most likely I never will. With the amount of high quality freeware airports and Asobo knocking out scenery/airport updates like there is no tomorrow, I just don't feel the need to buy anything.

Third-party scenery addons are useful temporarily, but only until MSFS patches come along to fix a particular area, at which point the addon becomes superfluous. I have experienced this repeatedly, for example with Washington D.C.; London and the U.K.; Paris and the rest of France; and so on. When this happens I discard the now-unneeded addon(s) to save disc space. Looking to the future, I think eventually the world will be so well covered in the updated MSFS  scenery that addons will be useful only for very specialized objects or areas. Anyone care to create a scenery file for my house?

6 minutes ago, cobalt said:

Third-party scenery addons are useful temporarily, but only until MSFS patches come along to fix a particular area, at which point the addon becomes superfluous. I have experienced this repeatedly, for example with Washington D.C.; London and the U.K.; Paris and the rest of France; and so on. When this happens I discard the now-unneeded addon(s) to save disc space. Looking to the future, I think eventually the world will be so well covered in the updated MSFS  scenery that addons will be useful only for very specialized objects or areas. Anyone care to create a scenery file for my house?

I am not sure what you mean, but I doubt Asobo is going to build a bunch of airports going into the future. They may make a few more.

They will rely on 3PD mainly. I've never had any add-on go obsolete, especially not an airport. There are a few exceptions, like KDEN and the default KDEN are way too similar looking, and I cannot believe so many people bought KDEN, it's basically identical looking to the free one.

Edited April 20, 20215 yr by Alpine Scenery

Hey, I'm a scenery junkie and I'm not ashamed of it. Probably got several hundred folders of scenery addons at the moment, probably 60/40 payware/freeware, all managed via the addons linker. I've said may times here that for me this is primarily a world sim, so the more detail and interesting addons I can get the better. Big airports, little airstrips, out of the way places, city PoIs, if I like the look of it I'll probably get it. Retired old git with no other major hobbies/spending (apart from a few books).

Admittedly there's some rubbish out there, and I have been burned a couple of times, but overall very happy with the general state of play. I tend to keep wishlists on the various sites and grab stuff when it comes on sale, which has been surpisingly often, but occasionally there are some must have now items. There are a few things I've got my eye on that I absolutely won't buy at the current price (FSDG is an example), but in general a lot of reasonable stuff is out there at a reasonable price, or I get a good discount because I already bought a version for P3D or whatever. And some of the freeware out there is stunning (but no Google PG stuff for me, way too ugly), and I'm happy to donate for good freeware.

Ashamed to say (but not that ashamed, to be honest) I've got several airports I've bought that I've never visited yet.

Yes, the default airports in MSFS are mostly way above all the other sims' defaults, but they can still mostly benefit from an upgrade. One notable exception for me was KATL. The enhanced version with the US update kicked the payware version right right in to the long grass for me.

There are some addons I fly out of all the time ...

Freeware - 

•  Milford Sound
• Rotorua  (so pretty)

Payware - 

• Brindas France (soo short .. and has dairy cows and balloons)
• Princess Juliana St Maarten (with the beach party) and the Orbx Vessels boats addon
• Dundee Scotland 
• Southport QLD

 

 

 

Edited April 20, 20215 yr by Glenn Fitzpatrick

7 hours ago, Ricardo41 said:

The big difference between P3D and MSFS 2020 is that in MSFS 2020 even the default airstrips look great. In P3D every default airport was a complete eye sore, and you had to spend the money just so the sim wouldn't look so word not allowed ugly. IMHO, P3D loaded up with addon scenery still looks uglier than default MSFS.

So what are bringing scenery developers for MSFS 2020 bringing to the table? Not much, except some pretty buildings, or modeling stuff that probably nobody really cares about like the inside of terminals. 

If I look at the default De Luxe airports the most irritating thing I immediately see :

The runways are not flat. Full of bumps

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ni9oruojmw87mji/Foto 25-01-2021 20 39 10.png?dl=0

I have purchased several Addon airports and am very happy to see good quality without non flat runways.