FC Scenery v Orbx

[tktheo93]

5 hours ago, dave2013 said:

Thanks a lot for answering my questions. 

I'm likely going to get at the the USA and maybe Europe as .

Dave

No worries; it is my pleasure to help. I'm so thrilled that P3D actually got a decent photoreal covering of the world - it keeps the sim alive for a long time, and perhaps LM will eventually get their act together. I have hundreds of airports and I'm enjoying the sim like never before. Actually, so much so that I renovated my storage and will set up a sim rig there. I can also finally concentrate on flying, which is much more fun than troubleshooting autogen..  🙂

The developer is basically doing this project alone, and I'm more than happy to provide him with feedback and spread the word about his work. With that said, I'm just a happy customer, I don't expect anything in return. 

I actually contacted FC Scenery regarding your demo proposal and it seems that it was a brilliant idea. Florida, Switzerland, and Taiwan are now available as free demos. Not bad. 🙂

https://www.fcscenerys.com/aboutus-demoproducts

 

Btw. There is also a promo for 10 people to get the world for 280$. That is really cheap. I paid over 600$ for the US and Canada alone. 

Cheers 

Théo 

Edited March 19 by tktheo93

[Ian S]

On 3/19/2025 at 7:22 AM, tktheo93 said:

 

Here is a pros and cons list of all of them:

best,

Théo

Thanks Theo, that's what I was looking for, an objective comparison.

[deeknow]

Great to see this seperate thread firing up. Is always useful to get some first hand feedback from folks who own the product in question. Thanks also Theo for sharing those great screenshots and your observations.

I have some of my own on the webpage following with side-by-side comparisons of FC Scenery vs Orbx at various locations in Switzerland and in some cases a Google Earth screenshot to compare to them both. If it's not obvious when you hit the page you need to grab the wee green circle on the right and drag it to the left to compare one image to another. The image that loads on default is the FC Scenery one.

https://www.deeknow.com/notes/games/P3D/FCSceneries/SUI/

I bought Switzerland a few weeks back and have been very pleased with it. I also have UAE and Turkey (could do a side-by-side with those if any interest?). You can make your own decisions after looking at my shots above, but in a nutshell I feel the auto-gen placement is loads more accurate and realistic (alignment, sizing, positioning) than Orbx, the photo-real colouring I feel is also brighter and more pleasant (if a touch over-saturated for my taste). Water and forestry boundaries look more natural and match closely with real world. Generally the whole environment just seems a little more believable. One gripe is the underlying Orbx roading is covered with the photo-real and in some cases doesn't look great close up but I think that's hard to avoid w photo-real right? and looks fine on approach, or higher up.

Oh and Ian asked about 3rd party scenery, I have LOADS of freeware and pay-ware airports in the 3 regions I bought photo-real for and they all play perfectly fine with it from what I can see.

[Patco Lch]

I have a question for those who have purchased the world or even an entire continent at once. Seems downloading and installing would take a very long time, no? Like several days? Quite an arduous task?

[Rein2]

Great to see there are a few demoproducts for free. I'm gonna try some of them in the next few weeks. 

[DChockey08]

I purchased the entire US/Canada, Europe and some of east Asia....All I can say is that it is single-handedly the best add-on I have purchased for P3D in ages. 

I understand, as some have said, that the purchase method is a bit tedious (Paypal + Link sending), however, from what I understand, it is a one-man operation, so I'm willing to cut some slack there. Never waited more than 18-24 hours for a link.

And yes, download and install can be tedious because the packages are so large, but again, what do you expect? it's photoscenery and autogen for the entire world. 

 My recommendation would be to purchase a large external SSD (I have two 4TB ones I got on Amazon), and link them to an internal hard-drive using JunctionLink Magic. Works like a charm. 

Edited March 31 by DChockey08

[ywg256]

I too went for the entire world sale....It will be a heck of a process but slowly going one by one...His stuff is terrific.

[Patco Lch]

After some struggle I’m getting my slow wit around the install process and am ordering countries I Want one at a time since  I already own most states in MSE. I find that his scenery IMO makes P3D on par with FS2020 as a scenery sim while keeping my extensive aircraft collection I’ve accumulated over years and at a good bit of expense. Really fun flying some of my old prop liners over the Andes and seeing towns and villages as they are. FC Scenery I think is giving P3D all versions a whole new life.  This fellow may have started something good and I hope it catches on.

[Ian S]

I've just watched Adam Pestridge's YouTube video. He is very positive, but did mention OrbX LC is best for low flying, FC Scenery for higher altitude flights. I tend to fly higher altitude, but am concerned how things are going to look on approach and climb (too blurry?) How do you find it? I presume you don't pause your flights to adjust settings as you go?

[G-RFRY]

FC is not for low flying it`s optimised for a certain hight. I have some I purchased a few years ago mostly east coast USA I no longer use it. I fly the plane not the scenery mostly IFR.

[Daube]

53 minutes ago, Ian S said:

I've just watched Adam Pestridge's YouTube video. He is very positive, but did mention OrbX LC is best for low flying, FC Scenery for higher altitude flights. I tend to fly higher altitude, but am concerned how things are going to look on approach and climb (too blurry?) How do you find it? I presume you don't pause your flights to adjust settings as you go?

I would be careful with that "high altitude" comment. I think he meant something around 3 to 5 thousand feet, which is quite low.

I understand the photorealistic ground textures are not the best resolution and there are not much details on the ground due to the limited autogen objects that are added to the scenery tiles, ok. And yes, and OrbX LC terrain tile certainly would have a higher level of detail and higher variety of autogen objects... but this would still be a generic terrain tile texture, with fields that shouldn't be there, roads starting from nowhere and ending in the middle of nowhere, buildings that shouldn't be there, etc... So the added value of these fake details is quite low anyways. 

At least with the photoreal textures, roads, trees and buildings are located where they are supposed to be. The value of these FC sceneries is extremely high, to be honest. Like the youtuber said: it's night and day.

[Daube]

2 minutes ago, G-RFRY said:

FC is not for low flying it`s optimised for a certain hight. I have some I purchased a few years ago mostly east coast USA I no longer use it. I fly the plane not the scenery mostly IFR.

Is it really that bad ?

I mean, the few screenshots I've seen were looking quite good, even at altitudes around 2.000 feet only, so quite suitable for VFR flight already ?

[G-RFRY]

24 minutes ago, Daube said:

Is it really that bad ?

I mean, the few screenshots I've seen were looking quite good, even at altitudes around 2.000 feet only, so quite suitable for VFR flight already ?

Try 500ft and below. If I want to fly the scenery I use Google Earth, I put some new fence panels up last summer and I can see them on Google Earth and my car parked outside the garage. Your never going to get see it that good in Flight sim.

Edited April 2 by G-RFRY

[Patco Lch]

57 minutes ago, G-RFRY said:

Try 500ft and below. If I want to fly the scenery I use Google Earth, I put some new fence panels up last summer and I can see them on Google Earth and my car parked outside the garage. Your never going to get see it that good in Flight sim.

How do you use google earth for sim scenery?

[Daube]

51 minutes ago, G-RFRY said:

Try 500ft and below. If I want to fly the scenery I use Google Earth, I put some new fence panels up last summer and I can see them on Google Earth and my car parked outside the garage. Your never going to get see it that good in Flight sim.

I'm not sure I understand your comment... I was asking if the FC scenery was really so bad that it couldn't be used for VFR flights ? Again, on the screenshots I've seen so far, the scenery looks reasonably good at 2.000 feet, and I cannot really see how generic textures from OrbX LC could look better.

I've used default terrain textures, OrbX regions, and OrbX TrueEarth (and also photoreal textures made by other companies, with freeware accurate autogen added on top), so I'm well aware of the differences. I reailze that FC sceneries don't match the quality and accuracy of an OrbX TrueEarth scenery. But when it comes to comparing with landclass-based sceneries, the generic textures with a precise landclass sure are nice, but in the end, I feel the inconsistencies in the details make them look worse than lower-resolution photorealistic textures + accurate autogen.