I believe the main reason for the tag is during conversations about products being good/bad or to buy/don't buy and/or opinions, users will know they may have vested interest in said conversation knowing they are a commercial member.

21 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Start with an Orbx TrueEarth regional scenery. Click "install". BOOM - done!

IIRC, they have a free demo area of TE Great Britain South, and it's gorgeous.

Thanks! I see all the True Earth regions are on sale, so that might be a good choice. I'm familiar with these packages in X-Plane 11 and they look great indeed. I do want to fly in other parts of Europe and the US too, so if I decide to get X-Plane 12 I need a world wide solution.

19 hours ago, Mike_CFII_MEL said:

Would be nice if we had a global true earth HD!

I would prefer that streamed 😁

12 hours ago, Mike_CFII_MEL said:

I believe the main reason for the tag is during conversations about products being good/bad or to buy/don't buy and/or opinions, users will know they may have vested interest in said conversation knowing they are a commercial member.

Yup this is my understanding too - it's just developers disclosing their potential conflict of interests, in terms of everything else it's the same as non-commercial member from what I understand.

Edited May 28, 20251 yr by Maya2

3 hours ago, Rimshot said:

Thanks! I see all the True Earth regions are on sale, so that might be a good choice. I'm familiar with these packages in X-Plane 11 and they look great indeed. I do want to fly in other parts of Europe and the US too, so if I decide to get X-Plane 12 I need a world wide solution.

"World wide solution"...

Well, thats the rub... 😕

AFAIK there's only one sim that offers at least a passable global scenery in terms of landclass you actually want to see.

That's pretty much why all of my X-Plane flights are only over True Earth or some other similarly improved Ortho (and there's only one or two, IMHO).

 

For globally improved autogen I highly recommend FSD Global, by the renowned MisterX. It is originally for xp11 but on the support forum you find several fixes and recommendations for 12.

Edited May 28, 20251 yr by soaring_penguin

1 hour ago, UrgentSiesta said:

That's pretty much why all of my X-Plane flights are only over True Earth

Funnily enough, I just installed TrueEarth south and actually prefer the Map Enhancement Tool maps!

 

1 hour ago, UrgentSiesta said:

AFAIK there's only one sim that offers at least a passable global scenery

You don't find the MET maps at high quality good enough?

1 hour ago, soaring_penguin said:

For globally improved autogen I highly recommend FSD Global

Instead of SimHeaven?

1 hour ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

unnily enough, I just installed TrueEarth south and actually prefer the Map Enhancement Tool maps!

Same here, the problem is that orbx true earth use custom autogen. So, that’s why I use that, but man the ortho used by true earth is way out of date. I wish I could use the true earth autogen combined with the map enhancement maps… 

1 hour ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

Instead of SimHeaven?

Simheaven is nice if you use Ortho, but is lacking otherwise. It is really meant to be used with satellite imagery.

SFD Global is  replacing the default autogen with regional buildings, but is way more diverse for Asia, Southern Europe, Northern Africa etc.

When I am using default landclass, I prefer SFD Global, but if I use autoortho or orthoXP, I prefer Simheaven. They are two distinct things.

The other day I found an update in the support forum for SFD Global which replaces the 2D style vegetation with the new 3D models for XP12, I only tested South of France but it is very convincing.

PS: you can install only the buildings from SFD Global, and use the default XP12 ground textures, because those are not updated for XP12 seasons and variety.

5 hours ago, soaring_penguin said:

For globally improved autogen I highly recommend FSD Global, by the renowned MisterX. It is originally for xp11 but on the support forum you find several fixes and recommendations for 12.

I would love to be able to take FSD Global buildings and place them in autoortho replacing SimHaven buildings! 

6 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

Funnily enough, I just installed TrueEarth south and actually prefer the Map Enhancement Tool maps!

 

You don't find the MET maps at high quality good enough?

I looked at some MET videos awhile ago and didn't see enough there to make me want to replace TrueEarth in the slightest.

And TBH, the MSFS v2024 scenery experience more than suffices when I feel like exploring.

So I didn't even try MET...

But, if you guys say it's good, there are some non-TrueEarth places I'm interested in where it'd be worth giving it a first hand test drive.

27 minutes ago, UrgentSiesta said:

I looked at some MET videos awhile ago and didn't see enough there to make me want to replace TrueEarth in the slightest.

And TBH, the MSFS v2024 scenery experience more than suffices when I feel like exploring.

So I didn't even try MET...

But, if you guys say it's good, there are some non-TrueEarth places I'm interested in where it'd be worth giving it a first hand test drive.

I have been using MET with high quality Apple Maps over the UK and USA with very good results.  MET allows brightness, contrast and saturation to be changed for the terrain tiles.  This is good because you don't have to globally adjust these attributes and ruin the global scene.  If you buy the Pro version of MET (very cheap), you can use High Quality tiles, which are higher resolution than those found in TrueEarth.

5 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

If you buy the Pro version of MET (very cheap), you can use High Quality tiles, which are higher resolution than those found in TrueEarth.

Ah! Excellent hint - and I do own the Pro version, but I didn't know about this.

5 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

I have been using MET with high quality Apple Maps over the UK and USA with very good results.

Ive been using Bing. I notice that the google ones are awful.