Request for a FSX scenery add-on

[asquel 2]

Dear fellow simmers,I was flying yesterday from Texas to Mexico, and I am using for a long time UTX. I was deeply disappointed when I crossed the mexican border, to find myself back in an environment with coarse coastlines, rivers and lakes, in the middle of the detailed FSGenesis mesh terrain.I read somewhere that Scenery Solutions is not planning to extend the UTX series to other areas than Europe and North America, due to the high cost of Navteq and Teleatlas data. But I would be very pleased to find a product containing hydrographic data only : I mean without the roads data, which seem to me the most expensive ones, since they are used for GPS navigation systems. I think that the scenery realism in Asia, Africa or South America depends more on hydrographic data than on roads. Anyway, there are not many highways in Bhutan, Bolivia or Burkina Faso !Therefore, I would surely buy an add-on improving the details of coastlines, rivers and lakes outside Europe and North America.Am I the only one ? Are there other potential customers on this forum ?If there are enough, will a developer maybe start such a project ? What is your opinion on this idea ?Alain

[Guest jshyluk]

What you are looking for is terrain mesh. Extreme Landscapes comes to my mind, but there are plenty of others. FSGenesis has a very good track record.A good terrain mesh makes coastlines much more realistic. The better ones tend to be based on LIDAR data from the space shuttle. However, there are a couple of caveats:All terrain mesh does is adjust the altitude of any given point of land. It won't create new textures or anything like that. That's actually really good for coastlines, but it can mess up mountains, especially in remore regions. And as far as messing up is concerned, most large terrain meshes will also cause problems with airports by placing them on plateaus or in trenches. This is because of a three-way conflict between the older terrain flight simulator data, tne requirement that runways and taxiways be on flat ground, and the newer LIDAR-based (or other) data which superecedes the FSX terrain mesh. It's possible to fix those problems, but the fix must be done manually. Either you crack open the SDK and make the adjustments yourself, or trust that the developer will get around to fixing your favourite airports (some do!) Jeff ShylukAssistant Managing EditorSenior Staff ReviewerAVSIM