Looking for payware Airports

[CAP1234]

I use Orbx/Aerosoft/Flytampa/Fsdreamteam/MK Studios/Latin VFR sceneries on P3D and they all look and perform reasonably well. Many of these developers have abandoned P3D development and further updates but many of them still appear in monthly sales - you can potentially pick them up then. Have a look at simmarket frequently under current sales scenery section (P3D) to see which ones are available. 

[Bob Scott]

If having a completely current scenery isn't all-important, then there's quite a cornucopia of options.  There are tons of high-quality airport sceneries for P3D, but go into it knowing that progress in updating most of them after 2020 has slowed to a crawl or stopped altogether.

The most problematic ones are where runways have been added since the last update, as that's not something you can do for yourself easily.  Changes in runway numbering due to the shifting magnetic declination is an issue, but the internal runway designation used by ancillary programs like ATC add-ons are easily-enough changed using Airport Design Editor.  You just have to tolerate the incorrect markings and signage, but I don't find telling myself that having rwy 22 marked as rwy 23 to be show-stopping.  Approach navaids can also be easily updated with ADE. 

More and more P3D scenery is showing up heavily discounted...if you're not in a hurry you can build a nice, yet inexpensive library of airport destinations.

As to the best developers...there is lots of information in the forums on the topic.  I'm not a fan of one you mentioned (FSXcenery), as it seems like every one of his airports uses the same textures and is plagued by generic sameness, and some (like KCOS) have really awful terrain blending around the scenery edges.  I consider them something of a last resort and only when deeply discounted.

[Ray Proudfoot]

1 hour ago, Bob Scott said:

More and more P3D scenery is showing up heavily discounted...if you're not in a hurry you can build a nice, yet inexpensive library of airport destinations.

I picked up a couple of African airports this morning - Dakar and Nairobi. Both under 10GBP by FSDG. They're classed as "Lite" meaning just the airport with nothing beyond the fences. That suits me fine.

Dakar was a refuelling airport for Air France Concorde from Paris to Rio. With the time accel feature of the PMDG777 these airports are easily reachable in a reasonable time.

[ywg256]

9 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I picked up a couple of African airports this morning - Dakar and Nairobi. Both under 10GBP by FSDG. They're classed as "Lite" meaning just the airport with nothing beyond the fences. That suits me fine.

Dakar was a refuelling airport for Air France Concorde from Paris to Rio. With the time accel feature of the PMDG777 these airports are easily reachable in a reasonable time.

Ray you will like both. FSDG did a nice job. Pic up Matthias' photoscenery and autogen and they are nice approaches.

[Ray Proudfoot]

18 minutes ago, ywg256 said:

Ray you will like both. FSDG did a nice job. Pic up Matthias' photoscenery and autogen and they are nice approaches.

I find the default terrain to be very good. It’s not an area I’ll fly into on a regular basis. I do have ORBX GB Earth which is excellent.

[ywg256]

Fair but the Senegal photoscenery is stunning. For kicks i will try to take a screen shot or two. Its quite stunning on approach. Matthais really did a great job with Africa. Not sure what kind of hard drive space you have etc but worth at least activating when you do have a hankering to hit Senegal.

[Ray Proudfoot]

@ywg256, when you’re flying Concorde on approach to an airport at 190kts slowing to 158kts at 500ft there isn’t much if any time to admire the view. It’s an aircraft like no other that demands your full attention.

My occasional trips into Dakar will be purely as a refuelling stop enroute to Rio. 😁

 

I’m sure it’s lovely scenery but not for me thanks.

[Zylx]

10 hours ago, ywg256 said:

With patience you will find sales from everyone. Especially US Thanksgiving for companies like FT, FB, islandsim. And please stay away from that fsxscenery. Their stuff is overpriced word not allowed unless you are desperate to fill a need where no other option exists. FSDT has permanently reduced their prices on a lot of stuff as well. For Canada I highly recommend FSimStudios.

Good to know about the sales, I never paid attention to airport sales since I was more interested in buying either aircraft or more scenery.

I picked up 5 LatinVFR airports and 5 Flightbeam airports for half the price so I think I'm starting out pretty good 😀

I did buy one fsxcenery airport and I like it, I took a helicopter and flew around every inch of it checking out the details close up and I don't see nothing wrong with their airports.  It's not LatinVFR or Fly Tampa quality but it's still a thousand times nicer than default airports.  I want their airports because they have dozens of U.S. airports that no one else ever made that I want.  I will probably wait for the sales to buy more of them.

[Zylx]

5 hours ago, Bob Scott said:

If having a completely current scenery isn't all-important, then there's quite a cornucopia of options.  There are tons of high-quality airport sceneries for P3D, but go into it knowing that progress in updating most of them after 2020 has slowed to a crawl or stopped altogether.

The most problematic ones are where runways have been added since the last update, as that's not something you can do for yourself easily.  Changes in runway numbering due to the shifting magnetic declination is an issue, but the internal runway designation used by ancillary programs like ATC add-ons are easily-enough changed using Airport Design Editor.  You just have to tolerate the incorrect markings and signage, but I don't find telling myself that having rwy 22 marked as rwy 23 to be show-stopping.  Approach navaids can also be easily updated with ADE. 

More and more P3D scenery is showing up heavily discounted...if you're not in a hurry you can build a nice, yet inexpensive library of airport destinations.

As to the best developers...there is lots of information in the forums on the topic.  I'm not a fan of one you mentioned (FSXcenery), as it seems like every one of his airports uses the same textures and is plagued by generic sameness, and some (like KCOS) have really awful terrain blending around the scenery edges.  I consider them something of a last resort and only when deeply discounted.

Yeah I know what you mean about incorrect runway numbers and errors like that but I can live with it.  I have heard of ADE and I want to learn how to use it to fix airports that badly need it.  If an airport is a little off, it doesn't bother me, but if it's way off, I want to fix it if I can.

Regarding fsxcenery, they all kind of do look similar in a way I guess but all scenery developers as well as aircraft developers seem to have a certain "look" to their products.  I have only tried one of  their airports so far and I am satisfied with it.

The very old, low resolution screenshots they show in the stores like simmarket don't do their airports justice imo.  The one I bought looks way better in person then it does in the old screenshots.  As I said before, they may not be top quality but the fsxcenery airports are still a thousand times better looking than default airports.  I will likely wait for the sales to buy more though.

[Zylx]

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@ywg256, when you’re flying Concorde on approach to an airport at 190kts slowing to 158kts at 500ft there isn’t much if any time to admire the view. It’s an aircraft like no other that demands your full attention.

My occasional trips into Dakar will be purely as a refuelling stop enroute to Rio. 😁

 

I’m sure it’s lovely scenery but not for me thanks.

I wish I could stand using just default scenery but to me everything looks the same everywhere and I can't stand it.  While I do enjoy airliners and fast planes, much of the time, I like to fly low and slow and just kick back and watch all the beautiful scenery I've collected go by.  I'm in no hurry to get to the destination when there's so much to look at.  I have many hours in the A2A J-3 Cub for example and even having hardly any systems at all and with it's top cruise speed of only about 85 mph, I still have lots of fun flying it.  It's all about the journey man 😀

I look at flight simulation as a  way to explore the world, not just fly planes and with no scenery, that's not really possible.

To each their own I guess, some people can use P3D with little to no scenery improvements then there's others like me that have been slowly collecting scenery's like Orbx (I own almost all of their non-airport scenery, and collecting VFR type scenery (photoscenery with good custom autogen coverage) like from FC Scenery, Realworld Scenery or Mega Scenery Earth + Nuvecta autogen packs and others.

[UrgentSiesta]

Wait for sales.

I rarely buy airports at full price, and wait until the major holiday sales when sceneries go on sale for up to 40% or more.

[Zylx]

2 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Wait for sales.

I rarely buy airports at full price, and wait until the major holiday sales when sceneries go on sale for up to 40% or more.

That's my plan 🙂

[Ray Proudfoot]

8 hours ago, Zylx said:

To each their own I guess, some people can use P3D with little to no scenery improvements

V5 had massive improvements over earlier versions to the extent that I stopped using the Ultimate Terrain packages. The whole world’s terrain has improved massively. If you fly low and slow I would have thought the other sim would be more appropriate. I’m a high and fast pilot.

[Zylx]

6 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

V5 had massive improvements over earlier versions to the extent that I stopped using the Ultimate Terrain packages. The whole world’s terrain has improved massively. If you fly low and slow I would have thought the other sim would be more appropriate. I’m a high and fast pilot.

I did read that the default landclass scenery and vector scenery for P3Dv5 is much improved (I don't know about the mesh) over FSX and older P3D versions but nothing comes close to Orbx Global range scenery.  I never tried UTX but I have Orbx Base, Vectors and all openLC continents as well as many of their regional scenery's and some True Earth as well.  I also have FS Global Ultimate mesh.  All of that combined cranks up the visuals of the P3D world to a whole new level of eye candy.

I prefer flying in P3Dv5 over any other simulator.  It may not look as pretty as MSFS or even X-Plane 12 (with the new update to the scenery) but I actually prefer the way P3Dv5 looks with that scenery installed and I prefer flying low and slow in P3D over the other sims.  What I really like about P3Dv5 over all other modern flight simulators is with the right adjustments, I can make the autogen in P3Dv5 go all the way to the horizon and everything looks crystal clear.

Both MSFS and especially X-Plane 12 suffer from what I call the bubble effect, where it feels like your flying in a bubble because the scenery far off in the distance in every direction is very blurry or not even drawn.  And just like X-Plane 11, X-Plane 12 also has Anti Aliasing issues, even set to 8x AA, you can still see lots of shimmering and jaggies everywhere which destroys the immersion for me.  This is why I prefer P3Dv5 over the other sims.

[Patco Lch]

7 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

If you fly low and slow

On my desk P3DV5 excels here as well with addons and simple aircraft as stated by the OP. On a side bar version 6 default seems to be an improvement over past versions but not to get off on a rabbit trail.