Aerosoft have a demo of APS Luxemburg athttp://www.aerosoft-shop2.com/products/aps...luxembourg.htmlThis is a demo of a tool that downloads Google images adds custom autogen and creates the scenery on your computer.In effect for each scenery area you pay aerosoft for the tool & custom autogen ( approx 10 euro per area) and then it downloads the google earth images & creates the scenery to seemlessly integrate into FSX.Just run the demo here now , its taken about 15 mins to creat the scenery.Just done a tour of the area covered and I am quite impressed especialy because it has autogen Buildings and trees , they are going to get a lot of requests for everyone's local area!Try it out , I think you'll like it.Len

Ha, that's interesting... Pity the Google Earth data for the place I live in is rather crappy. As it is for a lot of places. And I understand that although you 'create' the scenery yourself, Aerosoft has to make autogen and so on for the scenery you want. So you have to be VERY LUCKY if they happen to create those files for your own city. Unless you are living in New York, Paris or Londen, I guess... Still, it is an interesting development! Specially when Google Earth gets better.

From Aerosoft's website...Although the downloading of images from the servers to your computer is fully legal, sharing the resulting files is fully illegal and even the posting of images from the scenery is on the edge of illegality. We strongly advise you not to do so.Now Aerosoft is trying to say that *THEY* are not using the Google images, but *YOU* as an end-user are. This is a really sketchy way of skirting around the copyrights in place for the Google/MS Live imagery. Although I love the potential of this software, I can't help but pause at this legal questionmark.True - Aerosoft is not PROVIDING you the scenery, but they are providing a very direct (and VERY technologically cool!) method for getting it. It will be interesting to see how this pans out, but what I cannot determine is if you can *SPECIFY* which city/area to create, as opposed to Aerosoft designating which areas they will assist you with. If I can create my own photoreal scenery based on image extents that *I* define, (with or without autogen), I will purchase the tool. If I am restricted to cities they designate, I will not. :)-Greg

>>.....but what I>cannot determine is if you can *SPECIFY* which city/area to>create, as opposed to Aerosoft designating which areas they>will assist you with. If I can create my own photoreal scenery>based on image extents that *I* define, (with or without>autogen), I will purchase the tool. If I am restricted to>cities they designate, I will not. :)>>-GregThat was what I was thinking too. If I can define my own area. Cause i would like a 7cm resolution phototexture of my local airport that I fly for real. If I am able to add autogen building and trees to it myself... that would be cool too.Manny

No, you can't define your own area. The site says that Aerosoft will "start to deliver other sections that will mostly cover full cities (but other areas are also possible). You will be able to buy those for a small price and then proceed to create your own scenery!"First of all this indeed just seems to be some sort of way to avoid legal problems with Google Earth. You have to do on your own computer what normally should be done by the devs of scenery themselves. Secondly, if 10 bucks is indeed that 'small price', I wouldn't call that small. For instance the VRF Generation X sceneries from Horizon, that covers the whole of England and Wales (quality textures: no Google crap!) costs 100 euro. I do not want to count all the cities in that region, but if you have to recreate that area using Aerosoft's software you will be bankrupt by the time you completed a small region of it...The ONLY situation in which this software will be of interest to me is if they plan to deliver the region I live in myself! But since that is NOT a big city, I don't think that will ever happen...

Is Google earth maps via the google.com working?Suddenly I can't view the Satellite images anymore.Manny

Download their free Google Earth software.http://earth.google.com/download-earth.htmlor maybe you already have that?I used it just this week and got great satellite imagery.Allen

"Is Google earth maps via the google.com working?Suddenly I can't view the Satellite images anymore."I'm glad you said that, I was beginning to think I was the only one out there that was experiencing this.Anyone else experiencing this?Cheers,Chris Porter:-outtaPerthWestern AustraliaCheck out my 5th Around the World flight with MS FSX at http://members.iinet.com.au/~portercbp/fly...W_05/index.html

I think it is working ok now. The Google photos are indeed quite poor in many areas. San Francisco looks like someone paid some attention to it. However, the very wide variations in coloring, in most areas, are not suitable for FSX. You can, in some cases, re-balance the colors but many are so bad that there is too little data for RGB changes. As you go higher in resolution the watermarks also become a pain. GOOGLE on top of your house is a bit odd. However, their coverage is the best on a world wide basis. I am not going to pay for Google data though. I get all I want down to 1.2m/pixel now. No photo autogen tool is a big minus!Regards,Dick BoleyA PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yoke

One 'funny' thing about the information in Aerosoft's site: they say (in red) you need 'Microsoft Flight Simulator FSX Professional' for their program... Anyone here own's FSX PROFESSIONAL...? I didn't think so. ;) If they already make such a big mistake with this, it makes you wonder how good their program is... ;)

>One 'funny' thing about the information in Aerosoft's site:>they say (in red) you need 'Microsoft Flight Simulator FSX>Professional' for their program... Anyone here own's FSX>PROFESSIONAL...? I didn't think so. ;) >>If they already make such a big mistake with this, it makes>you wonder how good their program is... ;)Aerosoft is one of the best Addon vendors out there. They have some amazing addons. Their own as well as others which they publish?Manny

Hello,you must remember what you are talking about. 10 bucks for a much bigger city than the demo and believe me: 10 bucks for a really hard work, with many many thousands of manually placed autogen . So you would pay a very fair price for very hard (and not so funny) work, if you were interested in that area. The developers work is still the same and immens.In the scenery from Horizon is no autogen. What do you think you would pay for this scenery, if somebody would place all autogen for this scenery? Of course, everybody would only buy a scenery, if it covers an area of interest for the person.This program can be a chance to get new sceneries in areas, where less people live because of the lower price and it could make those sceneries more interesting for more people. You cannot use this program for large areas covered in Horizons Sceneries for example. I think it won't be possible in the next years for no one or no program else, too, because the download and the resampling needs much to much time.Kind Regards,BoerriesAPS-Developer

Hello Manny,I answered you before in the Aerosoft-Forum, but I answer here again as information for the other Avsim-users here.When Google blocks your IP/access to the imagedata, they block access for all Programs to that service, except Google Earth Browser self. This is possible, because (you may have noticed) this images are not the same as shown in Google Earth. They sometimes block (beside that Virtual Earth does it, too) you, because they want give every user the same ammount of access per day.So if you use Google-Maps the whole day and load many data and maps, they will block you there, too. Kind Regards,BoerriesAPS-Developer

They translate directly from German a little too freely is all.allen