fscottee

If you like cookie cutter pieces of land that only represent the type of scenery, with sprinkles of actual scenery, then ORBX is for you. There is no personal identification to the land like you would have in real life. OTOH, if you like the real stuff with great looking building representations of the buildings, then XP is the future. FSX/P3D is stuck in the past - it's an old engine that version 3 has finally shed light on that fact. Think about it for a moment... version 1, version 2, version 3 - all costing as much as brand new sim, and version 3 still basically looks and acts very much like FSX.... XP has some similarities to the DCS 2.0 engine. It's because they are newer technology.

Actually the right formula is XP+10=

Before and after at KLWM:

I think I'm gonna upload this to Google Drive and just let folks use it for now. There is so much small work to be done and I can only do so much at a time. For the time being it should be fun for low flyer (helos or small GA) to fly from KLWM to Lowell, and then back. I hope people at least take a look at it. KLWM has been completely revamped. Not a default autogen building left. Custom placed trees and custom buildings all the way around. I added lots of detail to the field. To be honest, I love flying this airport more than anything I've ever purchased. Maybe cause it's mine. It's almost 3 GB in size. I'll post the link here and then update the package as I go along.

It may be system dependent then, as I suspected. Myself, I've been tweaking flight sims since 1994. I know how to make them look clean, or blurry. Version 3 wasn't bad... but the overall look was just fogged over. Perhaps more powerful systems would be fine, but I don't have one. So you have to try it yourself.

Yes, I found 2.5 cleaner and sharper as I mentioned earlier. 3.0 was "blurry" and foggy looking no matter whether I had HDR on or off.

I think his VFR scenery is the most consistent out there. Very nice full state coverage. I'm a little concerned about the full state tree coverage however. I don't know the process he is using, but little things like trees on roads, or sitting in areas where there would be water or a building is sloppy. I know it takes time and manual corrections to get trees out of the way. Otherwise, just having massive amounts of trees statewide is counter-productive to the point of having photoscenery.

Good Job Tony.

Yes you have to applaud LM for having such a great refund policy. That was why I went or P3Dv3 as well. But in the end it's not enough right now.

As I did with v2, I got a refund. I eventually re-purchased v2 and that's what I'm sticking with for now. I cannot and did not see the justification of $60 for bug fixes and hardly any framerate increase on my rig. I fact, I don't think I saw any fps increase. So for now, it seemed like a waste of $60, and I'm a little disappointed that they even charged a price for it. I may revisit v3 in the future when there seems to be a justification for basically purchasing a brand new sim. With that $60, you could keep using v2 (which is perfectly fine) and then download DCS World 2.0 and buy the Nevada map, and save $10... Now you have 2 brand new sims, instead of 2 of the same.

I've played them all - DCS as well. I've been combat simming since 1942 Pacific Air War. Member at SimHQ since 2001. I just don't understand the point of doing any comparison at all here at the Avsim Screenshot forum. I think it's more detrimental to the civilian sims we have now, P3D V3 just released, and XP 10.40 getting huge. It takes the focus off the core civilian sims. There are hundreds of combat simming forums that have been posting awesome screenshots since 1994. Perhaps that is the better place. There is literally nothing new here.

I understand - but what I am saying is that combat flight sims with great flight dynamics have been around for a while. Heck even the original SU27 Flanker which I still have, has great flight dynamics. Lock-On had great FD, the original IL-2 had great FD, we could really go on and on. When comparing all these combat sims to FSX/P3D/XP, they all have great FD - precisely for the reason you mentioned; they aren't trying to model the civilian flying world. What I'm really seeing is this - DCS has come to America - that's the appeal. Prior to this NTTR theater, it was ho hum, not as popular, faddish. You're really just in love with the scenery. Which unfortunately you'll grow tired of when you want to take a flight from Las Vegas to Chicago, sorry, not gonna happen in DCS. All I'm saying again is this - no need to the excitement. It's a limited sim when compared to FSX/P3D/XP. It offers a very tiny smidgen of what is needed in a civilian flight sim. It will never be a replacement.

Every card has revolutionized the gaming industry. Just ask Nvidia.

Appreciate all the great comments, it keeps me going. It's evolving out from the Lawrence Airport, now I'm building up scenery within the immediate area. There's a wonderful lake that will get some love just south of the airport. Ok just a tad of ORBX effects... They're kinda addictive.. And this is the extent of the area with some details. Not sure how many square miles, but enough for general GA VFR. This has full building placement based on Massachusetts GIS data. And update on current size is 2.4 Gb. I'd like to keep this under 3 Gb if possible.

Until it decides it wants to be a flight simulator, it's another in a plethora of military combat simulators. The IL-2 series was great for the feeling of flight as well. It's a massive leap from modeling a small region to making it a world wide flyable environment. All the towns and airports, roadways, etc.. and in between. And the same goes for all the next gen flight sims - all vaporware until we see something where I can fly from say San Fran to New York with all the stuff in between.