14 hours ago, Murmur said:

I can picture some simmer going like:

"I just tried the latest B737 level-D simulator yesterday, thanks, but no thanks. The scenery was not good enough."

The casual-gamers are easily recognized, aren’t they? 😃

In 2001 I had the chance to "fly" the A320 Level-D CAE simulator at TAP HQ.

For that time the scenery quality was very good, at least at Lisbon and Madeira, where I spent the 1 hr making takeoffs and approach & ldgs 🙂

Much better than whatever I had for fs2002

18 hours ago, Murmur said:

I can picture some simmer going like:

"I just tried the latest B737 level-D simulator yesterday, thanks, but no thanks. The scenery was not good enough."

2 hours ago, jcomm said:

In 2001 I had the chance to "fly" the A320 Level-D CAE simulator at TAP HQ.

For that time the scenery quality was very good, at least at Lisbon and Madeira, where I spent the 1 hr making takeoffs and approach & ldgs 🙂

Much better than whatever I had for fs2002

The first time I was in the MD11 sim (2011) I remember that in EDDF the scenery was (almost) flat, only a few cars were driving along the Autobahn near the airport and very few high rise buildings were visible in the CBD. Then I wanted to land in GCXO but as that airport wasn't part of the LH MD11 network, the instructor gave me GCTS. The Teide was not (much) more than a triangle with textures. I asked for a refund, due to the bad scenery 🤣.
The second time in the MD11 there was a kind of funny occurrence. There were 2 other participants like me sharing the cockpit for 20/20/20 mins. The instructor searched for a certain function in the cockpit buttons, but didn't find it immediately (he was actually an Airbus pilot). One of the other participants proudly showed him without searching which button to press. Explanation: he was an PMDG MD11 user. Then, it was his turn to land the plane - the first attempt went badly wrong, near the rwy and the instructor had to cancel the landing. The second attempt was better and the third one acceptable.

Later, in the B737 sim I was also in LPMA, LOWI and some other challenging airports. It was a lot of fun.

 

11 hours ago, Litjan said:

Every few years (basically with major new X-Plane versions, although there WAS a new Global Scenery Recut a year ago or so for X-Plane 12 mid-run).

For Simheaven I can say that IIRC, some years ago, Armin* did (partly) every 6 months a new version. Meanwhile, the latest version is from 2023, probably he hasn't so much time anymore.

* He lives around 20 km away from me, so that I know him personally and that's the reason why I helped him (among others) with some buildings for X-America. Apart from that, the vehicles and trains which I created more than 10 years ago are meanwhile part of X-World, so nobody has to download my libraries separately.
I met him around 10 years ago at his local airfield, where several users of the German Aerosft forum met, among them also Andras Fabian (for the ones who don't know him - he was one of the 'scenery gurus' for LR back then). Andras also lived/lives around 20 km from my home.

 

Edited August 5, 2025Aug 5 by uwespeed

19 hours ago, uwespeed said:

Not entirely true 😉. I helped him (although around 2 years back).  Maybe he even wanted to have more variety later but didn't get more support.

Probably that, yes.

 

16 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

@Bjoern

do either of you know how often XP takes a fresh snapshot from OSM?

The last was for XP11's global scenery in. I think Andras (of HD Mesh fame) was responsible for the global XP11 scenery, but left Laminar later on. My theory is that only he knew how to correctly process source data globally in order to produce inputs for XP's DSFTool. Hence why we only saw recuts against airport boundaries and expanded autogen definitions.

 

12 hours ago, Litjan said:

Every few years (basically with major new X-Plane versions, although there WAS a new Global Scenery Recut a year ago or so for X-Plane 12 mid-run).

Those don't roll new source data in though and only get recompiled against the latest airport boundary recut. The scenery update that introduced the euro style apartment blocks in 12 was mostly just expanded autogen definitions that still use the same source data.

 

9 hours ago, jcomm said:

Been intercepting this thread here & then, from week to week ...

What's the verdict after all?

A) Use Map Enhancement pro standalone, with Pro maps;

B) Use both MEP and Sim Heaven X-World;

C) Use only default and X-World;

D) Use default scenery only;

E) Orthos and X-World.