dtmicro

The best scenery I've seen so far in FSX is the new Bozeman Airport in the Central Rockies from Orbx, but I don't have all the Orbx stuff yet (will soon though, just haven't installed it all). Honestly I think the Bozeman, Montana and some other parts of Idaho in Central Rockies and immediate surrounding area are better than the PNW, but I haven't flown everywhere in PNW. The only problem with PNW is some of the tree textures get too repetetive and the over-use of that black checkerboard ground texture. I've been to the Pacific Northwest in REAL LIFE many times, and I do realize the real ground has that black checkerboard look to it sometimes, but just not everywhere like Orbx uses. Mostly those areas exist only in certain areas. The Bozeman airport also has less blocky looking trees, I think OrbX should replace some of the trees in their other airports with the Bozeman ones by a MASS find and replace. For a good near-payware quality aircraft that isn't buggy, try the JustFlight Freemium 757 (free at their site). That is a pretty fun one to fly, and the ILS is easy to use to make automated landings, whereas some planes you have to deal with those complex flight computer issues before the ILS works. Be careful about some freeware aircraft, a lot of it causes crashes in the game or doesn't fly correctly. There may be better "FREEMIUM" add-ons available in the aircraft category, but you can literally spend your entire life installing and removing them and testing / crashing them. Most of the problem is you end up downloaded 1000 different ones and don't have time to find the best ones, then it's just easier to go to payware from a proven company. Rex is a good deal in the sale for $25, but I don't like its textures for anything other than clouds, though maybe I did not refresh / apply the textures over FSX correctly as I was still in the process of tweaking my new video card when I was messing with it. Rex weather engine is fine for general uses, but the way it updates clouds can take away from the immersion experience on occasion, but the cloud textures it uses are good. I think the FREE FSX Water Configurators, like FSX: Flight Simulator Water Configurator v3.15 have better water than REX, but that said I haven't flown over Tropical Water areas or places that Rex does have better water in a very long time. I am about to get rid of the water REX uses for rivers, it looks way too plain. For Clouds There is also a free download called HDE v2.0 sky textures and Oscar Clouds, combined those two fr free can sometimes produce clouds that look as good or better than REX, though Rex has much much more variety and more realistic layering. Whereas HDE just has more a few variations and no live weather updates.

Do the trees and texture in FSGlobal look as good (or better) as the best textures in Orbx's best looking region (whichever region that may be)? I know the airports and regions are more varied and detailed, but I mean if you just compare texture to texture and trees to trees in one instance. Currently I only own Central Rockies, PNW Demo, Pacific Fjords, and a few airports. So far out of the three, I think Central Rockies looks the best but I haven't flown the others that much. The new Bozeman airport is pretty nice simply because it is bigger than most of Orbx's other US airports they did. Landing on tiny strips in a jet is good practice I suppose, but not realistic to a real-life attempted landing...

Sorry for my ignorance, but quick question. When people say an airport is compatible, are they talking about it works without problems, or do they mean it's compatible in the sense that it keeps using OrbX textures instead of a custom set of textures of a specific airport region? Thanks.

Thanks, a few questions for you before I buy more of the old stuff, maybe I should switch to Global... Very true, do you also have some of the old Orbx stuff to further enhance certain areas? Does FTX Global play nicely with all Orbx stuff (I assume yes)? Do the aiports in FTX Global look "almost as good" or "good enough" other than the little grass and painted decorations that Orbx adds to the custom-designed airports? Do the trees/mountains look better in FTX Global than the old regional stuff, or is FTX Global more or less the same as their current regional scenery as far as "away from the airport"? Thanks for any comments.

I think the issue is more about how a company responds to peoples' posts in forums, rather than whether or not they immediately address it. Business is always tough and a competetive thing, and they have to allocate their resources wisely, so they will not please everyone. They will make mistakes as they are only human. I'm not specifically speaking about Orbx, but I've seen this "forum politics" issue pop-up a lot between companies in software and other tech fields. That is why I do not believe the CEO of a company should generally be responding directly to people in forums, unless that CEO has a VERY VERY thick skin and can let even the most harsh comments roll off them. Even if a CEO and a company is attacked, in most cases he simply should not respond. I know this sounds harsh, and I'm sure most people (95%+) have enough etiquette to have a good discussion directly with the company members/founders/management, but it is always that 5% that ruins it. It ends up becoming a nasty emotional thing and both sides end up distracted. I have not visited OrbX forum enough to know how they respond, but they should only let very "soft spoken" easy tempered employees handle the forums. It is their right to respond in whatever manner they choose, but I am just saying it is NOT smart business, either don't respond at all and moderate the post out, but do not make snarky comments at customers, it hurts sales. Not that they really did, I'm just saying IF they ever did and as a general policy.

Thanks for the input. Why 2 years too late? You mean because I've been peddling with the other stuff and finally just now went ORBX? I suppose, but the old machine I had was a Q6600 2.4 ghz and I didn't want to spend the money until I bought a new machine... I saved a lot of money by not buying all the ORBX stuff the day it comes out, it's a lot cheaper now than it was before. I hear what you mean though, maybe I'll try FTX Global next, but for now I'm still collecting the old stuff. @Adam I started to read Nick's Bible the other day, but it was so long and so much ranting that I got tuned out. He should make a Cliff Notes version, but maybe one day I will sit down and read the entire thing. BTW, I didn't have any add-ons when I got the shimmering, it was a clean install of FSX then REX then Orbx, because I just bought a new PC. I only have 3 planes installed atm even after installing that stuff, but nothing else.

For a few years I have messed with FSX and always had in some situations received those flickering / flashing problems on textures and buildings (not just like the mosquito noise of what Land Detailed Textures causes, but I mean full flickering and/or shimmering). That was until I discovered the below document. I followed the below guide and installed a third-party tool called Nvidia Inspector, and basically copied his settings. http://#####.wordpress.com/fsx-software-and-hardware-guide/ I finally after years bought a new comp (nothing fancy, just i5 @ 3.1ghz w/ GTX 660 2g + 8gb System Ram), I was dissapointed at first because even though my frame rates were higher I couldn't get scenery looking much better. Don't get me wrong there may be better tweak guides out there, and possibly a bunch of the settings are hurting my FPS from that guide, but for now I don't care because I am getting 25-30 fps 80% of the time except in congested or unique areas, and FINALLY the shimmering/flashing of textures is 95% gone. And that is using ORBX + Rex with only an I5, and no shimmering, so not bad at all. I wasn't tweaking for an increase in FPS, first I just wanted to see HOW GOOD can it look, then another day I'll go back and remove one thing at a time and see if I get any reverse benefit from removing some stuff I added. BOY let me tell you it made all the difference in the world for Orbx stuff. It literally looks close to PhotoReal now except for the mountains and some trees, but at certain distances in some areas the trees look PhotoReal at times (KBZN - Bozeman Airport probably has best looking trees). I'm a semi-casual "fair weather" simmer. I was using TileProxy for a year or so on and off but had partially lost interest with FSX due to Tile Proxy's inconsistent performance and its issues with having to re-load areas that were already cached. I knew about OrbX, but I didn't want to dump tons of money into because I still thought even in the videos that the trees and mountains really needed to look less pixelated / blocky. I still think Orbx could improve the look of mountains, and maybe trees in some places, but let me tell you this is GOOD ENOUGH now that I got this tweaked, and I'm finally having fun again in FSX. Orbx is worth the money and is a nice change from using PhotoReal Scenery, just make sure you tweak. Also, definitely REX is a must (or any of the similar weather engines), I had used the FREE stuff like Oscar and HDE-v2 for a long time, those do ok for clouds (and sometimes could even arguably look better), but the majority of the time they lack the variety of Rex textures. The REX real-time weather engine isn't the best, but it's not that bad, and I'll get one of the other additional weather add-ons later. New PC + new REX version + ORBX Stuff = WIN WIN!