10 hours ago, GoranM said:

And the ants and grass have to both be driven by CFD.

Great, 5 years of CPU time for rainbow colored leaves that grow upside down and dark specs with legs that float into orbit.

Edited November 7, 2025Nov 7 by Bjoern

Some more thoughts

For General Generative Scenery:

1. OSM-level street and building footprints ala SimHeaven
2. Culturally correct buildings and road types based on locations. Flying to a remote village in the Dorien Gap and seeing streetlights, paved roads with sedans, and Victorian houses tends to lose the sense of adventure in VFR flying. I realize their are cultural and political sensitivities here. Stuff within reason. 
3. Better forest densities and representations. 
4. Recursively refined cell generation. Multiple depths for sub-division of generation cells with more detail in smaller grids.
5. LOD depth for VFR. Rules for LOD extras in the near field at very low altitude. Rocks, ants, ant lions, individual flower petals, etc. 😛 
6. Next-Gen tree/plant tech that responds to LODs. 
7. Maintained high quality of roadways and traffic. It is terrific. Maybe add traffic variation by time of day?
8. Fauna. I know, some people hate it. But in my area, deer, deaf ground hogs, turkey vulture swarms, hawk swarms when migrating, etc, are a big deal. THe current Partridge Family is just one kind of hazard.
9. Low-altitude effects in response to terrain mesh and generated buildings. Get ready for your Amazon UAS projects.
   1. Generational response for orographic local wind effects from buildings and ridges, etc.
   2. GPS shadows and reflections for low level flight.

For WED

1. Telephone poles and wires. Lots of rural airports have this problem. I'm working on one now for Gateway where in reality there is an electric line that runs 30 to 50 feet to the right of the runway! Details like this give private airports, cough, character. But I can't add them.
2. More regional hangars and buildings using the above resources

2 hours ago, Ecton said:

Culturally correct buildings and road types based on locations. Flying to a remote village in the Dorien Gap and seeing streetlights, paved roads with sedans, and Victorian houses tends to lose the sense of adventure in VFR flying. I realize their are cultural and political sensitivities here. Stuff within reason. 

This to the 10th power! Some of us like bush flying in remote area and you don’t see villages in Central America that look like neat rows of houses with neat manicured lawns in suburban USA. I like flying a Caravan load of my favorite coffee bean shade grown in the highlands of Nicaragua to Managua for export as well as personal consumption. I start every morning with a pot of freshly ground Nicaraguan coffee. Best bean in the world.😃

One area where MSFS surpasses XP12 are shadows.  There are no shadows around ground features in XP12 unless very close, where MSFS displays shadows at far greater distances.

The lack of ground shadows makes autogen less 'connected' to the terrain and this removes some realism from the scene.

16 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

One area where MSFS surpasses XP12 are shadows.  There are no shadows around ground features in XP12 unless very close, where MSFS displays shadows at far greater distances.

The lack of ground shadows makes autogen less 'connected' to the terrain and this removes some realism from the scene.

Hmmmm, I actually never thought about that. There were many times when I was flying about ZL17 ortho with SimHeaven autogen, perfectly matched, and yet it felt so fake, like you said - unconnected. You probably found a ultimate culprit - the shadows. Not sure how I didn't noticed that before. I have couple hundreds of hours in MSFS20, and never thought "yes, I see shadows, that is why the scenery I'm looking at feels more real".

 Alot of folks (simmers) at least I talk to like default XP12, but almost all say first right off the default ground scenery is horrid, it's the one thing hindering XP, and why they stick with MSFS 20/24, even though they both have too much nonsense to be considered serious, they have better default ground scenery, shouldn't have to install third party scenery in 2025.

3 hours ago, jymp said:

Alot of folks (simmers) at least I talk to like default XP12, but almost all say first right off the default ground scenery is horrid

I have spoken to many about this. Even though one can install the Map Enhancement tool to have the same Bing maps, it seems too much effort when they have a working sim with MSFS.  The 'crawling ants' and aliasing issues put off more.  Fixing the crawling ants and aliasing will see many more in XP12, but many will not bother without Satellite scenery regardless how good the next iteration of default scenery is.

 

7 hours ago, jymp said:

shouldn't have to install third party scenery in 2025.

You dont have to, there is no haves to its your choice. I dont have no need

6 hours ago, mjrhealth said:

You dont have to, there is no haves to its your choice. I dont have no need

Lol, of course it's a choice but most people do install 3rd party scenery! I love XPL12, but the default scenery is definitely dated to say the least.

And the 2024 scenarios are also outdated. I'm given too much credit for your brother-in-law's house than for having minimally decent default airports and vegetation that looks like you're playing Minecraft. 

Most of those who complain only do so because they've listened to a fanatic of sim A telling lies about both sim A and sim B to suit their own agenda.

19 minutes ago, Aglos77 said:

Most of those who complain only do so because they've listened to a fanatic of sim A telling lies about both sim A and sim B to suit their own agenda.

Could not be further from the truth

8 hours ago, brinx said:

Could not be further from the truth

I, along with many others, beg to differ.  

MSFS, if I dare compare, is "better" in respect to ground scenery from a features perspective, but that doesn't mean the overall portrayal is perfect.  MSFS too can and should be improved.  Right now, MSFS can look picture perfect and at the same time placid and artificial.  Meanwhile, with its less capable feature set, X-Plane at times forces a literal double take as something of the scene is so lifelike and mimics reality (and, Yes, there are moments of the opposite...for both sims).

Feature for feature, its easy to give points to MSFS, but at the end of the day its how the sims perform and the moments you can enjoy.  For that I can say, as my sim of choice,  X-Plane is doing allot of things right - in comparison to reality.  Any improvements to better this is only welcomed.

Edited November 13, 2025Nov 13 by rparson99

7 hours ago, rparson99 said:

MSFS, if I dare compare, is "better" in respect to ground scenery from a features perspective, but that doesn't mean the overall portrayal is perfect.  MSFS too can and should be improved.  Right now, MSFS can look picture perfect and at the same time placid and artificial.  Meanwhile, with its less capable feature set, X-Plane at times forces a literal double take as something of the scene is so lifelike and mimics reality (and, Yes, there are moments of the opposite...for both sims).

Feature for feature, its easy to give points to MSFS, but at the end of the day its how the sims perform and the moments you can enjoy.  For that I can say, as my sim of choice,  X-Plane is doing allot of things right - in comparison to reality.  Any improvements to better this is only welcomed.

It’s often said that MSFS offers “better” ground scenery. It's true if we’re talking about default XP12. But once you use satellite scenery (and there are several excellent options available), that claim doesn’t really hold up. Personally, I use the Map Enhancement tool because it’s straightforward to install and use. The only aspect I’d say MSFS does better, in my opinion, is the shadowing around autogen-it helps anchor the objects more naturally to the ground.

I still use MSFS, mainly for the excellent aircraft available in that sim. Back when I used MSFS 2020 exclusively, I often said the aircraft felt “dead,” like they were flying on rails. That has improved over time, but even now, when I load it up, the aircraft still feel less alive compared to XP12. A good example is during takeoff — in XP12, you can feel the aircraft bounce and move as it accelerates; in MSFS 2024, it’s more like gliding over glass, with very little sense of ground contact.

There’s definitely room for both sims, and I understand why some might prefer one over the other. But the old claim that “MSFS scenery is better” just isn’t accurate anymore. Yes, XP12 takes a bit more effort to set up, but once you’ve done that, it looks absolutely stunning.

One major aspect of MSFS scenery is the autogen that is linked to the ground color. Thanks to this, there is a natural variation of the trees colors in a forest in accordance with the underlying ground texture, and I think the roofs of autogen houses are supposed to match the roof color on the ground texture as well... but I haven't checked that in a while...

But for the forest I'm 100% sure. This is the main thing that's missing from the XPlane autogen forests, especially when using orthos.

Edited November 13, 2025Nov 13 by Daube