Quick Scenery Question, Please and Thank You

[Guest AggiePilot]

Howdy all, I've been looking at some of the photo realistic add-ons available for FSX, like megascenery, and the upcoming Flight Terrain X, and as incredible as these sceneries look, I'm wondering how they sync up/if they sync up with autogen? From what I've gathered from the forums, there are two camps, those who like the ground image detail, and those who like autogen, suggesting you can have one, not both. Me, I'm selfish ;) and think both add greatly to immersion. Is there any way to allow for syncronizing the autogen and scenery, or would it be too tedious, or is it just impossible due to the FSX engine? Please bear with me, I have absolutely no clue what would be involved trying to pull this off, just curious what the current state of affairs was. Thanks!-Josh "People who are willing to give up a few freedoms to gain a little safety deserve neither and will lose both."

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Josh.Photoreal scenery requires it's own autogen files. If these files are not included in the scenery package, you will have no autogen. It's certainly not impossible to have both. In fact, since FS2002, both are intended by the Aces team.Most photoreal packages not only have no autogen, but they usually have only one season.... in FSX, we can have a different season for every month with photoreal. So the sortcomings are a result of the designer, not of the abilities of FSX.The design intent of photoreal scenery is for rather small areas. When an entire continent or country is rendered, the amount of work and the size of the files can prevent the designer from producing a full package with seasons and autogen.Dick

[Manny 1,293]

Josh,You are right on the mark and you are not unique. Most of us want both. Speaking for myself, I like high resolution photo sceneries when I am flying above certain altitude. The lower the resolution the higher you need to fly to enjoy it. But no matter how good the resolution is, You simply cannot fly below 1500feet and not realize you are flying over a flat piece of whatever. It works pretty good if the terrain is mountainous, it give that 3D feel to it.The default autogens generally do not seem to work over the photo texture addons unless the add on vendor has provided the autogen files specific to the scenery. I think I am right. There are few good sceneries utilizing both. There are quite a few good ones for FS9. For FSX there are a couple.1. Aerosoft recently came out with Germany West. It has both. The color of the phototexture is a little drab in some spots, but it may be ok. You may want to check that out.2. Megasecnery has some amount of autogens but its not as dense as the default. And in some cases there are hardly any like their Dallas Fort worth. But they did pretty good with their Hawaii and So Cal X.3. VFR France has some FS9 addons that are compatible with FSX. They sell two separate products. One a phototexture scenery with some autogens and two, a separate autogen package for those phototexture sceneries. I love their Northern Alps scenery. It also compliments the LLH Courchevel airport scenery.For FS9, the best one out there is Flight scenery's Portland package and their Providence, RI package. Its by far the best.Manny

[Geofa 108]

Along with Manny's great advice I might suggest starting with Megascenery's Hawaii.Imho it is the most faithful to reality in the Megascenery department, is fairly cheap, and will give you a taste of photoreal along with autogen.http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpgForum Moderatorhttp://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/

[Guest AggiePilot]

Hey Dick and Manny and Geofa,Thanks for the quick reply guys! I guess the situation is better (and worse) than I thought. That makes alot of sense that most developers would not have the time/resources to "paint"-in where autogen needs to be, but it's encouraging that some have, and I'm definately going to have to check those out.I live in Texas, so the fact that the DFW scenery has omitted alot of the autogen is a little dissapointing though. Thanks again for clearing that up :)-Josh