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scott967

Warning: FSX Scenery Packages and AI

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Everyone always talks about the marketplace and the money it takes to deliver superior scenery products to the market. OK, let's talk about the money. Here's a scenario - people purchase airport scenery packages, people find out their AI does not display, word gets around, other people stop buying scenery packages that don't display AI traffic.Now, we can debate all day long the advantages and disadvantages of backwards and forwards compatibility and whether or not these technologies can be achieved. But, I'll tell you up front - there are a whole bunch of new FSX scenery packages that work just fine with all of my AI (more than 400 aircraft types and more than 7,000 texture sets). Personally, I don't care whether those aircraft come from FS2, FS5, FS9, or from some other planet. I vote with my wallet and I can tell you that I'm not purchasing any more scenery packages that use this ground technique which prevents my AI environment from displaying. Note: I'm not picking on Aerosoft but if I don't see a statement included in a product's description that legacy AI will display properly, I'm not going to purchase it. That goes for any other developer.Also, forget about all this nonsense about SP1, SP1, or Acceleration. Gentlemen, the train has already left the station. ACES is moving on to the next version and some people are still talking about FSX in its original form. That is gone. If your products don't work using FSX Acceleration then you can bet people will stop buying these products. I say that because Acceleration has the DX10 preview in it and that is going to change everything. As developers, you can't rest on your past achievements. As someone here said, just because it looks good does not mean it will sell - especially if it doesn't work.So, my advice to any airport scenery developer - find out how the others are doing it and get it in there. Forget whether someone rants about they didn't like a runway texture or a light. What we need is ground textures, airport lights, and AI that works. This is not rocket science. See what Cloud9, Blueprint, and others are doing. Those packages work.These are my personal opinions concerning products and development of scenery packages. I am not trying to dissuade anyone from buying any particular developers' products. My purpose here was to point out that some airport scenery products do not display AI properly.fb

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The people who are so insistent on no backward compatibility, rewrite the engine, etc should expect the likely death of the hobbyist part of FS development. It looks more and more like just the default FS with highend payware addons. Who exactly is going to remodel and repaint all those FS9 AI aircraft? It's been a year already. How many have you seen? Same for freeware airports. How many are there?How many freeware hobbyists are going to test with three different FSX configurations so that they don't get jumped on by users? I love the FSX visuals as much as the next guy, but for a hobby FS9 stays in play for me.Take a look at the top 100 downloads for the month in the library: 8 FSX downloads (4 FSX aircraft, replacement grass, replacement wave effect, aicarriers2, and a mission). Doesn't look too promising.scott s..

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From Umberto's response, I presume that the scenery that lets you use your fs9 ai must have no custome runway polygons/textures. Is that true.If so, it may be an option for folks to compile those seperately so that the user could decide if they'd like to disable one given bgl.Just a thought.

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