3 hours ago, Litjan said:

Or how about XP 13 limits the flying area to a small but well crafted patch of the world...hmm, maybe Hawaii? One island in the chain should be sufficient.

It would be free-to-play, but additional scenery could be DLC for purchase.

 

woah woah woah... I actually liked MS Flight. Them be fighting words 😁

5 hours ago, jcomm said:

à-lá DCS World ! Would be cool !!! 

I think he’s riffing off the failed MS Flight (or whatever it was called…)

DCSW is FREE and has a different value prop than a general flight sim. 🤙

1 hour ago, UrgentSiesta said:

I think he’s riffing off the failed MS Flight (or whatever it was called…)

DCSW is FREE and has a different value prop than a general flight sim. 🤙

Yeah I thought that too but decided to turn it away from MS FLIGHT which was one of my preferred MSFS franchise sims ever!

Well, FS 2024 won the first place among the MSFS franchise now.

But, jokes apart, I would perfectly accept a model like that, where a highly detailled scenery area or areas are offered by default anf if the simmers want thay can get additional detail for the rest of the World pyaing for it, maybe subscription model based since the access to that data is actually subscibed also by companies using it, or purchased in large, expensive blocks, I guess....

This has been tried in the past, Flight Unlimited was a long time my favourite. I believe the same can be achieved with a better, more diverse landclass system. Third party could then fill in the gaps much better than what is possible today. For example the mountain sceneries by Frank Dainese and   Fabio Bellini are very detailed but not compatible with some other sceneries, due to the 1 arch limitations in the xplane landclass.

This is probably out there but i think the entire way the world is generated needs to be scrapped. Massively inefficient. 

I think shader “magic” is pretty impressive. You can add a lot of variety just with vector manipulation and there is so much more. 

I’d expect a kind of split-and-refine approach to generation where each generated cell can be split into refined subcells to add more detail. That could be rules based or more recent tech. It could even extend their current 2d grammar for autogen.

I’ve done stuff like that and you can mix designer scenery and gen easily at any cell/sub-cell size. 
 

Edited November 2, 2025Nov 2 by Ecton

There are two things that would improve X-Plane scenery as it currently is:

1) better coastline smoothing so that they're not "jagged" 

2) better road/river/railway smoothing so they have curves in them

Bonus 3) .. less prominent roads that are not just grey lines.

It would make a huuuuuge difference even with the current scenery assets. I don't mind the scenery as it is to be honest - sure, it's a bit repetitive in places but I rarely fly VFR and if I do I find it easy enough to get immersed in what it is.

10 hours ago, FPVSteve said:

There are two things that would improve X-Plane scenery as it currently is:

1) better coastline smoothing so that they're not "jagged" 

2) better road/river/railway smoothing so they have curves in them

Bonus 3) .. less prominent roads that are not just grey lines.

It would make a huuuuuge difference even with the current scenery assets. I don't mind the scenery as it is to be honest - sure, it's a bit repetitive in places but I rarely fly VFR and if I do I find it easy enough to get immersed in what it is.

Yes but not everybody flies big birds, there'a good percentage of users flying below 5000 feet.

Anyway, any improvement is welcome, I just wished @DeltaWho gave us an idea if these scenery improvements are something for XP13 in a few years or if we might be seeing them sooner in small doses to keep our addiction going. 

On 10/31/2025 at 12:16 PM, jcomm said:

But, jokes apart, I would perfectly accept a model like that, where a highly detailled scenery area or areas are offered by default anf if the simmers want thay can get additional detail for the rest of the World pyaing for it, maybe subscription model based since the access to that data is actually subscibed also by companies using it, or purchased in large, expensive blocks, I guess....

Perfect! I only fly in the US anyway, plus it would save space on the drive.

10 hours ago, peroni said:

Yes but not everybody flies big birds, there'a good percentage of users flying below 5000 feet.

Anyway, any improvement is welcome, I just wished @DeltaWho gave us an idea if these scenery improvements are something for XP13 in a few years or if we might be seeing them sooner in small doses to keep our addiction going. 

My guess is we’ll see some improvement in the current XP12 cycle, but the major update for XP13 in 2027 😮

22 hours ago, FPVSteve said:

There are two things that would improve X-Plane scenery as it currently is:

1) better coastline smoothing so that they're not "jagged" 

2) better road/river/railway smoothing so they have curves in them

Bonus 3) .. less prominent roads that are not just grey lines.

It would make a huuuuuge difference even with the current scenery assets. I don't mind the scenery as it is to be honest - sure, it's a bit repetitive in places but I rarely fly VFR and if I do I find it easy enough to get immersed in what it is.

Interesting that I feel kinda the inverse. I can put up with the jaggy coasts and road blending, but I really need sat ground imagery for immersion. and, generally, a lot more trees  

definitely has to do with my penchant for helo, short hops, & low alt flights. 

🤙

Interesting discussion.  I just read 7 pages of comments in this thread, all of them focused on scenery realism, not on flight simulation as such.  My perspective is a bit different.  JMHO

I use an international database of aircraft accidents to "assign" my routes to be flown.  That encompasses a vast range of aircraft from Piper Cubs to the big Airbus and Boeings and everything in between.  My flying is from the cockpit, not in chase plane mode watching scenery.  My fun is in flight planning and learning to be proficient in over 100 different aircraft.  So I don't spend a lot of time looking at the ground.

X-Plane does a good job of terrain and weather display with version 12.2, and better with 12.3 when it gets out of beta with increasingly better weather.  The volunteer Gateway artists (of which I am one) spend countless hours keeping the nearly 40,000 airports up to date with regard to runways, taxiways, ramps, buildings, navaids and all those things that matter to pilots.  What I want to see on the ground is an accurate portrayal of an airport that any local pilot would recognize on approach.  I don't care if I can't find my house.

Those of us who fly "big iron" are seldom out of clouds, so ground detail is largely a waste of computer resources at FL380.  And while exact placement of buildings and customized bridges and landmarks are nice in a C172, the challenge for me is to navigate the terrain, obey altitude and speed restrictions, and nail the approach.  Doesn't leave me much time for sightseeing.  

There is a significant number of users who fly GA. For them, accurate scenery is important for navigation, not merely for nice-looking aerodromes or finding their house. How do I know? Because when I learned to fly, GPS was an idea in the mind of God. I believe real-time ATPLs will agree, too. They also started by looking out of the window.

Florida  with ortho4xp ,simheaven and us forest looks great. But many other US states are no go for me , either the Ortho colors don't match with the trees or something, California turned out great looking

31 minutes ago, Melchie said:

Florida  with ortho4xp ,simheaven and us forest looks great. But many other US states are no go for me , either the Ortho colors don't match with the trees or something, California turned out great looking

CA looks amazing at altitude, but at ground level it's a dump 😵‍💫