Bob Tildesley

I have had probably 10 PC's over the years. Never had a problem except a blown power supply which was replaced economically. My reason for upgrading was always to get better performance for my flight sims. But a few years ago I got a mac mini just for music recording purposes. Used it for a couple years sparingly, then the hard drive died. The first HD failure I ever experienced. I replaced it with a new SSD but then there were major problems trying to get the latest OS installed. Never got it working. Sure, it's possible to solve these problems but it's obvious Apple just want us to buy the latest supposedly greatest. The mac proprietary philosophy is nuts. Get a new app...oh gee it doesn't work with that OS..surprise! That's the last Apple computer I will ever buy....

Personally I can't fly unless it's over orthos. Check the downloads at the org for Forkboys pre made orthos if you don't feel like getting a handle on Ortho4XP right away...there is a bit of a learning curve. But well worth it, since you can make your own ortho tiles for most of the world. There are many, many things you can do to enhance XPlane. It's basically a big open sandbox to play in. Cheers!

And by the way, make sure you use Mister X's HD trees. Fantastic difference!

I installed Trees West and have been flying around the Seattle area and some of the islands around KORS. Excellent! I created tiles in Ortho4XP using Bing at ZL17/19 it looks wonderful. I created overlays using alpilot's UHD mesh and put Trees West above that. Thanks Brian!

Perhaps you don't know...XEurope includes an optional library txt (in the X Europe scenery 2 folder) to use if you are using orthos. It doesn't display golf courses and a few other things.

I had a weird blue tinge mixed into the decals in my orthos so I reverted back to stable 11.11. I guess it's time to try the betas again :) The beat goes on!

I will do but first I must download that part of UHD4...To be clear, I only used UHD4 to create the overlays for Ortho4XP so we shouldn't see a massive hit for FPS, should we? Sesquatchtoo, you are running Ortho4XP aren't you? Sorry, I'm a little confused.

Flying over some orthos with the overlays made with UHD 4 I'm seeing a very nice improvement especially with greater forest data (and less random trees) with no effect on FPS. This is in the Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta area. An excellent upgrade. Thanks Andras!

If you want to fly in Europe I am loving Simheaven X Europe, which is like w2xp but places default autogen according to OSM data. Over top of Orthos (using Bing or BI as a source for the photos in the ortho4xp options) it looks fantastic, aligning perfectly with the orthos. But it is dependent on good OSM data. I have been flying around Geneva, Switzerland, Austria and the Nice, France area and it is dense, accurate, and fps friendly. I also highly recommend Mister X HD forests. BTW all free things available to the curious (and motivated) lol. And I recommend using zone level 17 for the orthos with ZL19 around the airports (which you can enable automatically in the ortho4xp global config settings. Have fun! Cheers

Yes a great mod, thanks. However I have found that with Simheaven Europe x the resolution of the roads, at least in Austria and Switzerland, and Nice, France, the only places I have tried it, have been exquisitely improved. The roads follow the orthos perfectly! They blend in with the orthos so well that at a bit of altitude there is no longer that ugly discrepancy. So my roads are on in Europe again. I used the mod to remove the autogen yards and that also looks great letting the orthos shine through. Amazing at ZL 19!

In the developer menu you can select sky color presets. It does give some options to change the look of the sim easily.

I have been flying the ASDG Supercub for the last few days. It's very nice. Although I don't watch the FPS counter I would say it's slightly heavier on demands but still very smooth even in high object areas such as Vancouver and Seattle. It seems a bit twitchy on the ground at slow speeds but hey, it's a taildragger and you have to be on the rudder like a river dance sometimes. I even watched some real life taildragger training videos (Flightchops on youtube I believe). Watch what you feet need to do in a real Supercub. Ground looping is a possibility for sure! It ain't easy to be a taildragger pilot! But I don't think the flight modelling is perfect, maybe it's my MSFF2 joystick, but I think it noses over too easily at very slow speeds ie when you need to make it stick to the runway in a crosswind slip landing, for example.

So far I have redone overlays using V4 in a couple areas- Vancouver, BC, and Calgary and Edmonton Alberta, Canada. Over top orthos at 17/18/19 (Bing). V4 is fabulous in these areas. Most of those pesky trees that were shooting up everywhere are gone, and the forests are much more accurate. The terrain appears much more varied and interesting because those trees are gone and the orthos can shine through. Roads are lining up great with the orthos, too. Great work Andras. Thanks again.

Thank you Andras! Most of us greatly appreciate your efforts. I for one, don't find it a hassle to download parts of the whole individually, and even if I did the last thing I would do is complain about something that is given to me entirely FREE. People complaining about free stuff that obviously gives them great enjoyment.... blows my mind. Reminds me of the music business. But let's not go there...LOL.

This is great, I love it. It really helps make the whole ortho scenery blend together and look more natural. Especially at ZL 17 or higher when you can see some detail to the yards. The autogen lines up great with the orthos where I have looked (only Alberta and BC, Canada so far). XPlane seems to sometimes draw too many row houses along roads that shouldn't have them and eliminating the green yards really makes things look more realistic. Thanks!