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Reference photos can still plays some part, by sticking to their name, and be used as a reference only. The old practice of sticking a photo on a 3d object it's showing more and more its age in the days of physically-correct rendering, it's really a legacy of the old days, were the graphic engine could only do very limited lighting, so you had to put as much information possible in the texture, to overcome the engine limitation. This was already an issue with FSX, but with PBR (and the availability of PBR painting tools), photos shouldn't be used in the actual texture. Just put them in a window on the side of the monitor, and look at them, to get a feeling of what *material* you should use. That's the only usage for photos I see now. A photo used as a texture is like a broken clock: it shows the correct time only twice a day... Getting the hang of when using actual modeled geometry, or artificial detail added with normal/height maps is also key to efficient modeling. With "efficient" meaning both things: from a performance point of view, but also to how your time is spent. And, with all PBR painting tools, the trick is trying to be as procedural as possible, and reduce manual painting as much as possible. Your goal should be doing 90% of the work done with pre-made materials (just learn to tweak their parameters to fit your project) and pre-made procedural generators like wear, scratches, dust, etc. and paint only the finishing touches, like spot corrections, decals, signs.

Yes, the normal format is still the same in P3D, so you can either export them in standard DirectX format and have them converted to the swapped channel format with Imagetool, or do a custom export profile in Substance or Quixel, to export the texture to be already in the format required by the sim.

Yes, that's what you normally do, and it's what products like Substance Painter are designed for: to create multiple layers of different PBR materials, which use *masks* to map cover different parts of the object polygonal mesh. It's not so much different than having multiple Photoshop layers, each one with a mask (to create a composite) just that, in PBR, you are not just setting "colors", but also height, normals, metalness, roughness, opacity, emissive, all at the same time. Approach #2 is still useful, for optimization. For example, if you have a transparent material you use only on a very small part of an aircraft/scenery, it's usually best to separate it and make it a different material and have it assigned it only to those polygons that are supposed to be trasparent, so you are not calling the more expensive shader (the transparent shader is more complex to draw) for the whole object, just because you have a small transparent window.

If you want to create new PBR materials from scratch, I think Blender has the ability to paint in 3D, and specify PBR properties for materials. Never used it, just saw a couple of tutorials on Youtube about it. If you have existing textures you would like to convert to PBR, there's a free tool which has been just released, called Materialize, which seems nice: Don't expect the same results of a material made with properly calibrated PBR material libraries, like those included with Substance or Quixel. These are made by taking multiple pictures of the material from different angles, to record how it reacts to different light angles, and to extract the pure color with no shadows (the Albedo), which is one of the trickiest parts which usually cause most of the trouble when trying to convert an existing Diffuse texture (which doesn't contain *any* shadows), to an Albedo texture, which is the pure color with no lighting information in.

"put" or "replace" is the key difference here. If the addon added its own textures with their own name, even if they are in a folder inside the sim, they won't be removed when uninstalling. if the addon replaced textures (or any other file) that belong to the simulator with its own versions, using the same file name, it will have to be reinstalled. Or, possibly, just reconfigured. Case in point: GSX Level 2 patches the default airport_objects.bgl file to remove the default jetways. While it doesn't require a reinstall, it will be necessary to start the GSX Control Panel utility to repatch the default airport_objects.bgl, which has been restored reinstalling the sim, because this was a file that belongs to the sim.

I want to better clarify this: It's not "really" a problem if an addon installed INTO the sim. It IS bad practice, which could generally be prevented, but is still not the end of the world, and you CAN still Uninstall/Reintall the sim using the Full installer, and still not being forced to reinstall such addons. That is, of course, if you don't ALSO *manually* wipe the P3D folder yourself! This because, like any standard installer, the P3D uninstaller will only remove things it has installed itself. It won't remove any of your preference, including any DLL/EXE.XML files which might still be used by those addons still using the legacy method (no add-on.xml) An obvious example are PMDG aircraft. Yes, they don't install outside the sim, and don't use the add-on.xml method. But if you JUST Uninstall and Reinstall the simulator (without wiping any folders manually), they WILL continue to work as they were. This because the default Uninstall/Reinstall hasn't removed the DLL.XML file were PMDG added its own software module, and hasn't remove the Simobject\Airplane folders were the airplanes were installed. I did this full Uninstall/Reinstall dozen of times during the Beta cycle, and I never had to reinstall ANY of my addons. I always uninstalled/reinstalled using the full installer, never the Client only. HOWEVER, if an addon replaces some of the default files of the sim, this is an entirely different matter, and it's very likely that addon will have to be reinstalled. And, if you want to clean up all preference, trash the Prepar3d.cfg, wipe the installation folder and basically start from scratch, you will have to reinstall all the addons that don't use the add-on.xml method.

Nothing will work better automatically, textures must be remade, and the object must be recompiled with the new SDK. Recompiling is not a big deal (for the original developer with the source files), but textures requires more work, depending how they were made. If a developer made all its textures by hand, using any traditional painting program (like Photoshop, Gimp, etc.), they are not easy to convert to PBR. There are some utilities that can help doing that, but they still require some manual work, if only to indicate which parts of the texture are supposed to be metallic. But they won't ever look as good as if the texture was designed to be PBR from the start, using PBR-aware painting tools like Substance, Quixel, 3DCoat, etc. which use pre-made libraries of PBR materials, which are calibrated to conform to Physically-Based Rendering (PBR), and require proper normal maps to obtain the full effect. Some developers already use such tools, and they had to dumb down the exported textures to support the current P3D version or FSX. Those that saw were the market was going (including those that were already accustomed to PBR, because of X-Plane...), might have an easier time and some headstart.

To enable the Auto mode in GSX, you use the GSX Settings menu, under the Simulation tab. But, nothing else will change in the menu. If it's enabled in the settings, it will be triggered by calling Boarding, which will automatically call baggage loaders, load passegers, call Refueling and Catering. If you start from Deboarding, it will do the same, but it will still your responsibility to start Boarding, which will then proceed automatically as above. Airplane doors will never controlled by GSX (but 3rd party airplanes can interface with it to do door handling), but you can also choose to ignore all doors in Auto mode, which might be useful if you are busy in the cockpit and don't mind having crew possibly passing through the airplane bulkheads if you don't remember to open the doors, but GSX won't nag you in this case if they are not.

Your math doesn't add up, because you are comparing the normal net price with the final price with taxes. The normal price would have been 23.84+20% VAT = 28.60 so, you ARE saving 30% now. Of course, we don't pocket your taxes. Esellerate (after deducting his service fees), will pay us based on the NET price, and will send your VAT in Europe (they are VAT registered in Ireland), which will then end up in the UK through the Intrastat balancing.

Yes, GSX by itself will work without SODE but, regardless if you want Level 2 or not, the GSX installer will install SODE in any case, since almost all FSDT sceneries now require both GSX and SODE. So, basically, the Level 2 features are both free *and* mandatory at FSDT airports. You can of course decide to re-enable the default jetways at default airports, but SODE must be kept installed for almost all FSDT sceneries. And, of course, lots of other 3rd party airports out there as well. That's how GSX always worked. But with no passengers, without Level 2.

The Basic GSX ( without the Level 2 expansion ), will work both with default CTRL+J jetways or 3rd party jetways, using CTRL+J OR SODE, and will also work on aprons with stairs and a bus. The existing jetways of the scenery, whatever method they use, won't be changed by GSX. There will be NO visible passengers to be seen in basic GSX. The Expanded GSX ( with the Level 2 expansion ), will REPLACE default CTRL+J jetways at default airport automatically with SODE jetways, and will give the option to replace CTRL+J jetways at 3rd party airports with SODE jetways. You'll see animated passengers with both SODE jetways (either replaced by GSX or provided by the scenery ) and with passenger stairs+bus. The current GSX installer will install both SODE and the Level 2 features, which requires a separate license, so the expansion features will work in Trial mode (free at FSDT airports and some Trial airports), until purchased. You'll have all default jetways of default airports replaced by GSX but, as long the Level 2 is in Trial, they won't move outside the Trial/FSDT airports. Animated passengers will also work on Trial/FSDT airports only. If you are not interested in animated passengers and replaced SODE jetways, the GSX Control Panel utility will let you easily restore the default jetways, so they will go back to their old model, but they will be animated again. The rest of GSX will continue to work with all Basic features.

It's Shift + 4 ( on the normal keyboard, not the num pad )

GSX Level 2 sold in its first month more than the original KORD in 10 YEARS. And than the original GSX in its first year... - Users have voted with their wallets. - Users are always right. - As I predicted, while the most obvious new feature (and the main reason why people are buying it) in GSX Level 2 is the animated passengers, the one that took us more effort, and the one which is *really* the most interesting feature, is the Jetway editor. Unfortunately, user perception of what is easy and what is not, and what is worth their money, doesn't always (if ever) match the real development effort. Of course we changed them! I believe there are some ground markings still left to fix with the old numbers, but the runway numbers have been updated. You said "Navigraph", may I remind you that is a SUBSCRIPTION service, while KLAS is not and it was updated for FREE? Would be ok for you to pay for a subscription service, similar to Navigraph, but for scenery ? This is a serious question. Navigraph only has to pay to license the data, and share their costs with users but, after the software works, the update cycles don't require much human intervention. Doing this for a scenery could probably be more expensive so, I'm not sure how many users would be prepared to pay for it, especially considering that a scenery developer could only conceivably keep updated his own stuff, nobody could possibly offer a global service, which is probably the only thing users would be prepared to pay monthly fees for.

Those names, like this one: <Path>C:\Windows\맨_ -x.exe</Path> Looks VERY suspicious. I'm afraid you are possibly infected by a virus. They usually appear exactly this way: like an .exe with a strange name in the Windows folder.

SLI will help when you need more FILL RATE in the sim. All these things requires (and thus will benefit from SLI) an high fill rate: - 4K screen resolution. Or multiple 1080p screens. And multiple 4K screens, of course... - Higher quality Antialiasing modes - Lots of transparencies in the scenery, like glass windows, multiple glass windows, cloud layers, multiple cloud layers, smoke, flames, lots of special effects, etc.