Hey @Ray Proudfoot I've got 20 or so of the FSC titles now so feel free to ask away and I'll see if I can help. 

Re package size, depends on the country, bigger areas generally have larger downloads as you'd imagine.

e.g. Argentina 190GB, Chile 115GB whereas Bolivia is 65GB .. and if looking at say states in the US, Alaska and Texas are around 145GB while Virginia and Wyoming are around 25GB

I'm also running Orbx Global and no issues that I've noticed.

Re True Earth, I'd say stick with the regions you have, FSC wont be any better I wouldn't think.

I've tended to buy FSC titles for areas that have been underserved by pay-ware or photo-real etc, so have bought countries in Africa, South America and drier or more rural or mountainous states in the US like Texas, Colorado, Virginia, Wyoming etc. Other than those areas Japan and Mexico have been my faves so far.

I haven't bought many in Europe or Oceania as I feel the Orbx titles are pretty good there so seems redundant.

I would suggest buying the V2 titles where available. I bought a couple early on that were much improved in V2 (typically a $5 upgrade from V1 to V2). There's really only been one that's been disappointing for me so far and that's Indonesia, and from talking to the developer sounds like its been tricky finding decent data to drive the auto-gen and photo-real tiles for that area.

 

Edited September 24, 2025Sep 24 by deeknow

Hello @Ray Proudfoot and @deeknow, I don't think you're in the right Topic ☺️

Is Prepar3D an end of life sim?

@deeknow, thanks for the info. Those file sizes are pretty large making the purchase of a single continent prohibitive. There doesn’t seem much point in buying one or two areas only to revert to my existing scenery for the remainder.

FTX Global and FS Global do a decent job for me.

59 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I’m curious about the FC Scenery but have a few questions.

1) What size is each package? No mention of that.

2) How does it interact with ORBX FTX Global?

3) Is it as detailed at ORBX True Earth? I have the 3 packages for GB.

As mentioned earlier, due to the size of the data, you'd need some external storage. You don't need either Global or Vector activated, which brings a notable performance improvement. Perhaps think of it as Orbx True Earth on a global scale. 

Not sure if you have True Earth Florida, but there is a free download of FC Scenery Florida if you wanted to do a like for like comparison. There's also some  You  Tube videos linked on their site where performance and Orbx comparison is discussed.

@Ian S, external storage would slow down loading times compared to an internal SSD. Having paid a fair bit for FTX Global and FS Global I’m not about to deactivate those. Thanks but having seen more info it’s not for me.

The only TE I have is GB.

@Ray Proudfoot sounds like you do a lot of long-haul flying? I tend to do mostly regional within one country or region, so having an entire country or one or two that are adjacent means same enhanced photo-real and auto-gen experience without jarring effects of going between one vendor and another. PS the auto-gen is very good, more accurate and current than any of the Orbx global stuff.

Internal storage is pretty cheap now right, I slapped another 2TB in recently, when I decide it's time to do some flying elsewhere I swap the regional FSC stuff in from an external drive to the SSD. It's fiddly yes but only takes a few mins to setup for the next week or so of simming

Edited September 24, 2025Sep 24 by deeknow

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@Ian S, external storage would slow down loading times compared to an internal SSD.

That's a bit of an old wives' tale these days.

Photoscenery files have not shrunk though. 
This is my relatively modest FSX and P3D collection.

Heresy warning: That is way larger than the entire MSFS and MSFS 2024 installations
together and just a handful of countries and US states.

Edited September 24, 2025Sep 24 by Reader

@Ray Proudfoot on the FC Scenery site he also offer a couple of small free samples of Switzerland and Taiwan if you want to try them. Pretty quick and easy to download and install and just uninstall if you so decide. 

3 hours ago, deeknow said:

@Ray Proudfoot sounds like you do a lot of long-haul flying?

Internal storage is pretty cheap now right, I slapped another 2TB in recently, when I decide it's time to do some flying elsewhere I swap the regional FSC stuff in from an external drive to the SSD. It's fiddly yes but only takes a few mins to setup for the next week or so of simming

I do hence why I don’t feel it’s something I want or need. LM improved the default terrain significantly in v5 including detailed coastlines. In the early days of v5 I had Ultimate Terrain X installed and it was only when I made a screenshot of it enabled and disabled I realised that P3Dv5 had caught it up. I uninstalled all the UTX addons. This offering seems along the same lines.

So with 90% of my flights being in a 737, 777 and Concorde I don’t feel these addons will do much for my flights.

2 hours ago, Reader said:

That's a bit of an old wives' tale these days.

Looking at your numbers the external seems to be half the speed of internal.

1 hour ago, Patco Lch said:

@Ray Proudfoot on the FC Scenery site he also offer a couple of small free samples of Switzerland and Taiwan if you want to try them. Pretty quick and easy to download and install and just uninstall if you so decide. 

See my earlier reply Vic. I fly in so many different parts of the world it’s not something that interests me.

14 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

See my earlier reply Vic. I fly in so many different parts of the world it’s not something that interests me.

But those are just free examples. If you’re impressed most of the world is available. If not, nothing lost. 

46 minutes ago, Patco Lch said:

But those are just free examples. If you’re impressed most of the world is available. If not, nothing lost. 

I thought I made my position perfectly clear Vic. Free is irrelevant if I’m not interested having read the website info.

15 hours ago, Ian S said:

For those like me who are very happy with P3D but looked for a scenery upgrade, consider a combination of P3D  + FC Scenery. 

There are some free samples to check out - https://www.fcscenerys.com/

I tried FC Scenery and it disappointed me.  I wasted over $100 on it.

I bought Tennessee, some Middle East countries, and China.  In China and the Middle East there were many shortcomings and errors.  The stock landclass was better in some cases.  In TN, there were large swaths with no autogen trees.  

In all cases the autogen vegetation and buildings were too sparse.  I don't blame the developer as he must manually annotate all that autogen which is a huge task.

The cost is reasonable for what you get, but I just prefer the ORBX Global textures and landclass.

Dave

4 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I thought I made my position perfectly clear Vic. Free is irrelevant if I’m not interested having read the website info.

We’ll forgive me for trying to help a friend.

geez, no good deed goes unpunished.