Is Megascenery for FS8/9 as good as FU3?

[Christopher Low 5,400]

I disagree with you here. I have both FS2000 and FS2002 (and strangely enough, they were installed on my PC....once), so I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the Seattle area scenery in these two versions of MSFS is nowhere near as good as that in FU3. The only part of the MSFS scenery that might be the exception is Mount Rainier, which does look rather good. However, the coastlines and generic ground textures just do not match the quality of FU3's satellite mapped terrain. In fact, they don't even come close. Yes, FS2002 might have had Autogen, but so what ? Seeing lots of buildings and trees is great in principle, but all I see are the ugly ground textures beneath.Chris Low,ENGLAND.

[Guest]

I conclude with much mirth is that flight sim frame rates are a major motive factor for developing more powerful PCs. I think that optimum performance for a given sim can be achieved about 4 years after it is released.

[Guest otter55]

here's a shot of some more of those ugly ground textures :)donhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/36074.jpg

[Christopher Low 5,400]

Don,First question.....is that FS2002 or FS2004 ?Second question.....is that anywhere near Seattle ?I don't deny that those textures in the screenshot look good, but they aren't those ugly green "forest type" textures or the very bland, generic city textures that Microsoft provided us with in FS2002. Autogen trees and buildings in FS2002 do not blend in very well with those types of textures, which results in a rather unconvincing appearance (in my personal opinion).It all depends on what you consider to be pleasing to the eye. Unconvincing textures ruin everything for me. Not that FU3 doesn't have its own problems in this area. There are patches of lower resolution terrain textures in certain areas, and rather strange bits of landscape that don't even appear to have any textures AT ALL :-eek. Still, these are extremely rare.I am also talking about flight at rather lower levels than that demonstrated in your screenshot. No offence mate, but the Seattle area TERRAIN in FS2002 looks rubbish compared to that in FU3.End of rant.Chris Low,ENGLAND.

[Guest otter55]

chris1. i removed fs2002 15 minutes after installing fs2004 so all shots are fs2004 with default scenery (except for megascenery in socal).2. no, that is about 8 miles northeast of juneau alaska where i spend 90% of my fs timei totally agree with you about some of the fs textures. they are really ugly and i dont understand why they cant come up with textures for some areas.and yes, we all have our own definition of what is pleasing to the eye :)i have attached pics taken about 50 miles east of seatac. they are not as good as the alaska textures but i have seen worse :)have a good day donhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/36077.jpg

[Christopher Low 5,400]

Sorry Don. I didn't want you to think that I was "having a go at you". I just get very defensive when anyone suggests that the scenery in FS2002 is better than that in FU3 :-)Chris Low,ENGLAND.

[Guest otter55]

chrisno offense takenback when everyone else was raving about fs2000 and fly being so great i (after buying both and flying them) was simply amazed that these same people would bad mouth fu2/3. to me there was no comparision. but i realized that all of us do not see the same object the same way.i just wish there was a fu4. there is plenty of room in the marketplace for a dozen top knotch flightsims and i can always keep adding hard drives :)don

[Lars Peter 0]

Hello Don.The new scenery addons for the Ms. sim is great!!,- I have noticed this from the beginning.What I really want to discover for the ms. sim is the real weather changes, and flight behavior of the aircrafts involved.The reason for me to stay with the Flight unlimited series is the great feeling of flight.You have all options here, and I do not understand why the producersof Microsoft DO NOT ANYTHING to the source code of flight behavior,-and the eviroment for their sim.It has been the same all over again and again.Those ms. people sitting on their descs, and are not listening to the so called"MS.pilot experts".If they did, the MS. series flight sims would kick #### everywhere.It is possible.we have seen it from looking glass studios.A good article to this was posted on the internet some days ago.You can try this link:http://www.flightsim.com/cgi/kds?$=main/op-ed/ed316.htmBest regardsLars Peter.:-wave

[Christopher Low 5,400]

Yep, the low speed handling characteristics of the planes in FS2002 are very strange. I can't comment on FS2004 in this regard, but there are plenty of other aspects of FS2002 that I hate.....which I will not elaborate on here ;-)Chris Low,ENGLAND.

[Guest twsimfan]

Lior,I have no frame problems with the LA/SD scenery... I guess my 2.8ghz machine has something to do with that... but I do find the load times with the scenery pretty bad.

[Guest twsimfan]

Chris,I'm not going to talk about FS2K or FS02... but the FS04 scenery has a much better look to it. Is it better than the FU3/FU2 scenery... NO... but it is generally quite pleasing. FS04 runs faster and smoother than and any of the FS line going back at least to FS95. The planes also have a much more neutral feeling to them. It is good stuff.

[Guest twsimfan]

Chris,"I don't deny that those textures in the screenshot look good, but they aren't those ugly green "forest type" textures or the very bland, generic city textures that Microsoft provided us with in FS2002. Autogen trees and buildings in FS2002 do not blend in very well with those types of textures, which results in a rather unconvincing appearance (in my personal opinion)."I felt that way about FS02 also. The textures and autogen in FS04 are much improved. Would they be up to your standards? That would hardly seem possible. :-lol

[Guest twsimfan]

Chris,"Yep, the low speed handling characteristics of the planes in FS2002 are very strange. I can't comment on FS2004 in this regard"As we have discussed before the FS02 planes need trimming... the FS04 planes start out with a very neutral trim... not to say that further trimming wouldn't result in better performance but that is true of FU3 aircraft as well."there are plenty of other aspects of FS2002 that I hate.....which I will not elaborate on here ;-)"Thank you! :)

[Guest twsimfan]

Don,"i removed fs2002 15 minutes after installing fs2004"I have often kept older versions on for long periods of time after installing the new one. In the case of FS02 I decided to get rid of it several days ago as I was tired of having Norton scan all those files each time. The problem being that when I removed FS04 it got confused and took out major sections of FS04 with it. I had to uninstall/reinstall FS04... I'm still not finished re-editing my aircraft.cfg files to get them where I like them.I will say the same thing about FS04 that I said about FS02... it looks pretty good in an area that you are not personally familiar with... but for FS04 I say it with much more affection. :)

[Guest R_Driscoll]

Thanks for the link Lars! There are quite a few good articles there, and I was surprised that not all were complimentary to MSFS! There was serious debate about the cost of flightsimming due to the need for purchasing upgrades, add-ons and computers, a lot of comments about what should have been included in FS2004 (such as cloud shadows - included in FU3 but you need to set a flag in the flt3.cfg file to switch them on), the lack of feel of realism in flight sims, Lars article on turbulence modelling, vertical airflow (you have to read this one glidernut!) and adverse yaw, some very childish articles praising MSFS (at the level of wow, when I crash the plane it makes a boom sound and the wings fall off and when I crash the plane on water and open the doors it sinks! - I liked that one), complaints about the lack of support for the original adventure programming language in MSFS. And one guy (from Canberra) explaining that he had packed away FU2/FU3 because of autogen (obviously he'd never seen Chris' scenery). Typical Australian. But he was also explaining that he would like proper air modelling in MSFS!It was the slow rate of upgrade of MSFS that killed my interest in this sim. My disappointment with FS98 turned me off flightsims for some time - it was utterly utterly boring. MS should not have to be playing catch-up and copying other sims ideas, but leading the pack, putting in correct flight modelling based on lift and drag properties of individual parts, proper air dynamics, and adding the eye candy after the basics have been correctly achieved. Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox.But I like the point about payware. Hmm, how much could I charge per model? Now, Parliament House, that must be worth a bit xxxxxxxxHey stop throwing things guys