Hi Derek,Thanks for the feedback and appreciate the open discussions. I agree that the default landclass overloaded on the ice by default for most of the mountain regions, as I also feel that the ST understates the amount of mountain rock & ice especially as you go north, for my preferences. I do like the idea of using a elevation to determain perma ice as a blanket. Maybe the same could be done with rock in some cases?I have been playing on and off with the landclass and my texture swaping to try and come up with a combination (that suits my idea of realistic) since OCT for these stupid ranges. I keep getting myself in a rut with the defualt textures and the slope switch choices (and when they switch in come classes). As my preference, idea (or utopia) is to have forests, with a darker mountain rock (with green highlights) on the higher slopes, then rock or ice on top. I find the default FSX rock textures all to light or brown. Thus I ended up darkening a bunch of them and switching them around from different region/classes. I'm still not happy, but I preservere.I do not feel dissapointed in any way and am glad to have bought the ST product, as it does add many improvements in "many" other areas. I'm just pointing out my opinions and what I am looking for. Pretty hard to get what I want to happen from source data I guess, I fully understand that thus no complaints. I do look forward to seeing this product evolve, and am going to work with it.How about you just hand paint all the ranges and give us a "free" update ... Shouldn't take but a few months if you start tonight, oh and dont forget to through in more textures ;) LOLI'd like them to look something like this please: (My rendition of Twin Lakes, AK - N60*39 / W153*49)RegardsGaretthttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/171385.jpg

Many thanks, Derek, for the answer.

Hi again Garett, I've made considerable progress with the new rock (and perma-ice) algorithm. I reached the conclusion that the "rockiness" of mountains wasn't being depicted satisfactorily in the current version of the ST landclass so the next version (which should be out within a week if everything stays on schedule) will resolve this issue, along with a couple other things. And of course high elevation rocks will be marked with perma-ice. Below is a screenshot of Mount Robson with the new rock scheme (please forgive the poor quality of the default mesh I'm using though :( ):http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/171508.jpg

Great to hear !!Wow, talk about responding to customers constructive criticisms and opinions (in short order I might add)- I'm very impressed. :DI'll keep an eye on your site for the update and give it a whirl soon as its ready.Regards,Garett

Are we going get a patch?

I agree-very impressive!http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

Derek, what you're doing is above and beyond, it's greatly appreciated. I was unhappy with Xclass's representation of my home town of Nampa and Boise. Even with the updates it was way off. I installed your landclass, I was in awe at how realistic it was. Thank you very much and I look forward to the update. :9

I'd also like to chime in and say I'm pleasantly surprised by this dialogue, an ideally direct approach to user feedback. I'm looking forward to the improvements and even happier that I went ahead and splurged on this latest landclass, despite the fact that I already had those of the competition. What you are doing, Derek, seems to me more progressive and sophisticated, showing the way to the future of the sim itself. Tileproxy is clearly a breakthrough, but given that photoscenery is limited for most areas, landclass has an equal place (if not quite as sexy). Sometime soon they will be unified with some very complex autogen and water body algorithms. In any case, it's obvious that SceneryTech is dedicated to this one aspect of the sim and not willing to settle for less.

Could someone post some pics of the KTUS and KPHX areas using this landclass? (views of the city with the mountains in the background) I'm not happy with how Arizona looks in the Cloud9 one and I'll buy this immediately if it fixes that. Our ground here does not look like sand dunes in the Sahara! FS9 had it pretty much right actually - it's a lot greener than you'd expect for a desert and the mountains have a rusty reddish-brown color to them, not the tan sand-dune type look you see in FSX...Thanks!

Sure Ryan, here a couple screenshots:Tuscon, looking northhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/171568.jpgPhoenix, looking southwesthttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/171569.jpg

Technically it won't be a patch, the landclass will be repackaged in it's entirety as version 1.1. People who have version 1.0 installed will simply need to unwrap the new version from the Flight1 wrapper using the key they got during the initial purchase, then reinstalling the product with the installer (the previous version will be uninstalled automatically). All of this will be explained on the SceneryTech website when the update is made available.Derek D.

Yes TileProxy is an impressive achievement, there is no denying that. I think it's fair to say though that landclass scenery will still have its place in FS for the duration of this version as well as the next, while the shortcomings of satellite imagery remain to be resolved.

I have all three for the U.S. / North America - XClass, Scenery Tech and FSGenesis, here are my thoughts;FSGenesis - Best for lower 48, most accurate, good on the population areas, great job of capturing mixed natural areas, seems to be a little light on building / population coverage in some towns and cities.XClass - Actually have the world, great value for the price, seems to place too many buildings especially higher than three stories where there really aren't any and, it uses the european court yard type buildings in the U.S., which kind of look out of place, the natural areas are pretty good though.Scenery Tech - Might be good in some areas, but the areas I tested (Bend OR and Spokane WA) it left too much out of the populated areas kind of cut em off close to where the default does, which does a bad job. Also seems to strugle with mixed trees / sagebursh / farming areas which are pretty common in the test areas, so, was actually kind of disappointed in Scenery tech given the other possitive comments. The other two got these areas substantially better. Kudos to Scenery tech for picking up Mexico which the other products don't, FSGenesis doesn't claim to, but XClass World seems to have left that chunk of the World out of any of their products.Happy siming.

I think just depends on where you test. For instance-I always go to Sierra's of Northern California where two of the products show desert the Scenery tech correctly shows forest.Then on the other hand-for where I live-the fs default does the best job over the 3 add ons (I have all three).Then there is is Tileproxy-which does it perfectly if the sat images are available for the area you want...http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

>Sure Ryan, here a couple screenshots:Yeah see that's the same type of look that I'm talking about... Does FSX just define those tiles with a different texture than FS9 does or something? The real mountains are far darker - check these pics out:Is it possible to make it look similar to this in FSX with landclass alone or am I gonna have to wait for the texture addons to come out?http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...rizona_USA1.jpghttp://freelargephotos.com/000983_l.jpghttp://www.book-of-thoth.com/portalsupport...cs/image002.jpghttp://localphototours.metroshot.com/photo...-photograph.jpg