I thought fsx was supposed to add realistic terrain mesh to the world. If this is true why is fsgenesis selling fsx terrain mesh?

Mike,It's not only FSGenesis who provide mesh for FSX. So maybe your question should be "Is mesh from other providers better than the default FSX mesh?".If your'e happy with the default mesh, why bother? If not, you could go for the North America mesh. I found this on the FSGenesis site:"Featuring an incredible 9.6m resolution for the United States (default is 38.2m), 19.1m resolution for Canada (default is 76.4m), and 38.2m resolution for Mexico (default is 306m), FSGenesis North America Terrain Mesh has been compiled from the latest, best available 10m NED, 23m CDED, and 30m INEGI source data."I guess this is FSGenesis' answer to your question. If you invest in this mesh I would be happy if you came back here and posted your opinion on the mesh.Ulf B :-)

>I thought fsx was supposed to add realistic terrain mesh to>the world. Please define the term "realistic mesh"? Is 50 m resolution realistic or is it 15m or perhaps 1m ? 'Realistic' means different things for different people.Michael J.http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/9320/apollo17vf7.jpg

True: and, whereas "realistic " means nice, sharp, well-chiselled mountains for most people - not just rounded hills - it also means airports and airfields that blend into same level as the surrounding scenery. I do not want to see cliffs and plateau'ed runway extensions, etc. . This is something that makes it (for me) almost unusable around Seattle. In FS9 FS Genesis NA Mesh causes this with the FlyTampa airports at San Diego and Seattle: fortunately they have patches and fixes, which work very well, but I've seen nothing for FSX default yet. I love Justin's products, but have not reinstalled it into FSX until this issue is overcome.

I don't see any fix for that except handling on a case basis.scott s..

>True: and, whereas "realistic " means nice, sharp,>well-chiselled mountains for most people - not just rounded>hills - it also means airports and airfields that blend into>same level as the surrounding scenery. I do not want to see>cliffs and plateau'ed runway extensions, etc. . This is>something that makes it (for me) almost unusable around>Seattle. In FS9 FS Genesis NA Mesh causes this with the>FlyTampa airports at San Diego and Seattle: fortunately they>have patches and fixes, which work very well, but I've seen>nothing for FSX default yet. I love Justin's products, but>have not reinstalled it into FSX until this issue is>overcome.While I don't particually like the airport plateau's either, but well understand the reasons; mountains are my number one priority in regards to flight simulation. They just have to be as authentic as possible for the area I fly in. Therefor, FS Genesis wins, and is always installed. However, these are my personal reasons, and certainly won't apply to all.L.Adamson

>hills - it also means airports and airfields that blend into>same level as the surrounding scenery. I do not want to see>cliffs and plateau'ed runway extensions, This will always happen until airports in FSX are no longer "flat". This is another reason why using too good a mesh will actually cause terrain around airport looking worse. Michael J.http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/9320/apollo17vf7.jpg

I am nearing the completion of my review for USA Extreme Landscapes from Abacus, which is a repackaging of the FSGenesis NA mesh. I spend a fair amount of page space trying to make the concepts you folks are talking about as clear as I can. I hope you will like the review, when it comes out.Jeff ShylukAvim Product Reviewer

>This will always happen until airports in FSX are no longer>"flat".Not necessarily true. Sure, non-flat airports will be great, but mesh vendors can eliminate the plateaus around flat airports if they massage their data appropriately. The default mesh in many places uses 38 meter data and it would certainly show plateaus around airports if we had not smoothed the mesh by interpolating between the airport elevation and the mesh elevation within a kilometer of the airport. It's fairly simple to do with a good GIS software package.-Adam

Hi Adam,Seems strange then that the good GIS software package isn't used. Is GIS software too expensive?Ulf B

It seems to me that the issue of airport oddities referred to 3rd party products (fly Tampa in this case). Is it reasonable to ask a 3rd party mesh producer to investigate and resolve issues with respect to other 3rd party scenery products?Seems highly unworkable to me.Bob

Maybe getting all of the builtin airport data from the FSX library is impossible due to undocumented file formats. So third party mesh vendors don't have the same information as Microsoft had when they "massaged" their terrain data ;)

Why doesn't FS "massage" :-) the elevation-data between airports and the surrounding mesh automatically? This would have to be programmed just ONCE and would look good ALWAYS.

Hello Gottfried,it's an interesting idea but has a couple of potential drawbacks:* if FS was to interpolate an area around the airfield at run-time it would take additional resources during a flight* if the interpolation was done during installation of the add-on terrain mesh files, ACES and mesh developers would have to agree on a standard process for doing so* for bigger airports the plateau issue is usually due to the requirement of flat runways but for smaller airports the mesh issues are more likely due to the airport itself being placed incorrectly. If third-party add-ons fix the airport placement then that could "mess up" the interpolation processCheers, Holger