Observations (FUIII vs FS2002-2004) Plus A Question

[Guest]

Hi! First time here and thought you might be interested in a multiple sim user's observations about the scenery in the above 3 flight sims PLUS I need your help with a question. First the scenery. I purchased FUII and FUIII when they first came out, but was disappointed with both the frame rates and the quality of the graphics. I just had too slow a computer. Then I bought a PIII-700 and thought "now FUIII will be great"! Wrong! Frame rates were no longer a problem, but the graphics were ugly, probably my Nvidia GeForce 256 (I'm VERY fussy). So last Christmas I buy a P4-2.53 with an ATI 9700 Pro and get FS 2002 for Christmas. Now I was in flight sim heaven. I now have FS 2004 also and purchased the new Megascenery LA-San Diego package. Beautiful! So suddenly I decided to take a look at FUIII again and wow! Now the scenery is beautiful-sharp with no more shimmers, etc. So how to compare? Well...I like the Megascenery in FS (either one) much better for the natural look ala color, water textures, etc., but I like the detail (I'm a low flying vfr type) in FUIII much better. Nothing compares! Trouble is the colors are so boring. So I'd like to see the best of Megascenery, FS 2004 and FUIII. Don't want much, do I?Now to my question (if you haven't fallen asleep yet or abandoned my long-winded post): is there a way to extend the detail/sharp scenery graphics radius in FUIII? The scenery is only detailed a relatively short distance from the plane and I can find no way to adjust that. I have all graphics sliders to the right. I know that would take more cpu and graphics card power, but I have it now and would love to see the detail out further. Is there a way?Thanks for reading this and welcome your opinions, help, etc.Dick T :D

[Guest glidernut]

Hi Dick T,Welcom abord.All the setings in Options can also be changed in a filefound in your mane Flight3 folder, in a file named flt.cfgYou can open this file with Notepad or a Text Document, andmake meny mor changes than you can in the Options setings.For exampl.You can put this line anywhere in your mane Flight3/flt3.cfg file, to giv your models mor detale ferther out.model_detail_scale 1000.0Every line is a diferant seting.But there are so meny lines or setings that can improov yourFU3 usualy at the expens of the fram rate, that we all makediferant compromises.In othere words, meny of us use very diferant cfg files.Sum fo them are very good indeed. So if you prefer, you can use my cfg file insted.just be shower to make a backup copy of yous first, soyou can always go back to useing your owne if you dontlike myin.In any event, if you scroo up your cfg file, then juststart FU3 without one, and FU3 will creat a new difalt one.Ps, Puting this ; in frunt of a line stops FU3 from reading it.glidernut.:-wave

[Guest glidernut]

Sory, I forgot to giv you my cfg file.Hear it is.

[Guest R_Driscoll]

Glidernut, do you mind if I download that and give it a try too?RobD.

[Guest R_Driscoll]

Interesting comments Dick! Especially that you were impressed by FU3 AFTER using MSFS2002 - usually people seem to stop at MSFS and not copme back to FU3. Glidernut's distance slider (following post) helps with viewing models in full detail at distance, but I have not heard of a slider for viewing scenery in high detail - despite the options slider I think this is hard-wired into the sim.RobD.

[Hans_Petter 1]

Just adding to the above, please keep in mind that real life visibilty tends to be limited to 20 nm or less. Hans Petter

[Guest glidernut]

RobD.Help your self, be my gest. If I remember right, your clouds are very diferant to myin.I would like to try your cfg file agen but Iv lost it!Can you put it hear agen for me and others to try agen?Your cfg works beter with sum grafixs cards than others. Dick T,I think RobD is right about the scenery detail setings inoptions being all you can get.But its werth looking in options agen to make shoower youhav thees setings in options.TERAIN DETAIL to HIGH.DISTANT MOUNTAINS to ON.This last seting is not a slider, its on the other side of the page.Also, its werth menshoning that this last seting "like sum others" sumtimes dus not alway take efect imideatly, or even at all.Sum tims you hav to giv it a cik start, so to speek.This hapend to me when I had a new grafixs card.You can usualy cik start it, or get it to work by puting the relevantline at the top of the cfg file as aposed to the botem.This is the relevant line to put at the top of the cfg file.show_distant_mountains 2Or just changing a cfg file for another one can also shok stuk setingsinto working agen.glidernut.:-wave

[Guest R_Driscoll]

Glidernut, you don't want to try my config file again. It was never meant to be a finished product, just a facilitator so you smarter chaps could twiddle the settings a bit more easily. We've gone way past that now, and maybe you or some other expert could now make available the next level of development by putting an improved version of flt3.cfg on avsim. And I think you've just done that.(But I still maintain that the troposphere only extends to 50,000 - 65,000 feet, depending mainly on lattitude. So our atmosphere thickness should be governed by this. Ignore this if it doesn't make sense - I'm thinking out loud, but this affects sunset effects quite a bit - down low (eg on the ground), your get glorious "high" colour transitions, but above 2000 - 5000 ft the "height" of the sunset decreases towards a thinner line near the horizon, all determined by two flags, the atmosphere depth and the density decrease with height. This is correct and realistic, but maybe the sunset height fade-off is a bit too quick. Doering's sunset height is doubled, to give prettier effects. But the LGS and my default are set to the actual troposhere height.)RobD.

[Guest]

>Interesting comments Dick! Especially that you were impressed>by FU3 AFTER using MSFS2002 - usually people seem to stop at>MSFS and not copme back to FU3. Glidernut's distance slider>(following post) helps with viewing models in full detail at>distance, but I have not heard of a slider for viewing scenery>in high detail - despite the options slider I think this is>hard-wired into the sim.>>RobD.Rob,Please don't misunderstand my comments. There are many things in FS2002 and FS2004 that, imho, are far superior to FUIII. For example, even in FS2002, the 3D scenery is much more detailed and clearer/sharper farther out than in FU3. With FSGenesis' mesh and landclass, both FS's have "better" looking scenery than FU3. Problem is, all you have to do is, for example, take a low altitude (say 3,000 ft) flight from San Diego to San Francisco near the coast and, although you will see some beautiful, sharp scenery, you eventually realize that it is mostly fake and repeating scenery tiles and something just seems wrong. I guess, as a low and slow vfr type simmer who is uninterested in flying the big jets at 50,000 ft, I finally realized that I needed REALISM to be satisfied. Unfortunately, the current state of the art in computer hardware is such that really detailed (even at ground level) photo quality scenery is impractical: requires HUGE amounts of disk space and much faster processors (Pentium 10?). So...in the meantime, I will have to be satisfied with flying the San Diego-LA Megascenery area in FS 2004 and the Seattle/San Fran areas in FU3. And I'll have to be willing to spend many $'s for additional Megascenery if I want to expand my scenery areas. In order to overcome the above restrictions, I've become extremely interested in flying helicopters in FS which opens up a whole new world of flying experiences so I guess there's no danger of becoming bored. So why am I taking the time to write this to all you FU3 devotees? To let you know (those what are interested) that imho FU3 still fills an important place in the world of flight simming for at least FS 2004 user and I suspect there are many others.

[Christopher Low 5,338]

That's why I think that the lack of a Flight Unlimited 4 is a massive disappointment. The Flight Unlimited series has always concentrated on a relatively small area, but with extremely detailed terrain textures....and it is the ONLY series of flight simulators that has done this. In my opinion, Fly was just a different version of MSFS, and X-Plane (although possessing a very impressive physics model) has crap graphics. Flight Unlimited 2 and 3 provided that tight, detailed, realistic, believable flight environment that I prefer. Unfortunately, my future choices are currently limited to a total of ZERO products.....and I honestly can't see that changing.Chris Low,ENGLAND.

[Guest]

Chris,I unfortunately must agree with you. I see my future choices as only one in the long run: Microsoft Flight Simulator with paying $29.95-$39.95 for each Megascenery release, each one being a relatively small area. Will get very expensive. This is definitely NOT the perfect choice, but the only one for me as I see it. Now if only Microsoft would change their terrain/scenery engine to allow a higher resolution than 5 (I forget the term). I understand that this is the only limitation to improving the detail in the Megascenery packages.Dick