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It's gotta look good!

C

codeseven

Charter Member
While awaiting a copy of XP Home SP3 to arrive in the mail for installation on my new computer, I want to gather a few Addons to have at the ready. I want to be able to install FSX, Acceleration (I have the Gold Pack), the best Scenery Addons and at least one of the best Addon Aircraft. I want to fully enjoy the fun of seeing/playing FSX on an upgraded system (it's not the best you can get but it's still a big jump from my old specs) for the first time.

What best Scenery and Aircraft Addon would you recommend I buy? Thanks
 
FSAddon/Bill Womack's Plum Island is one you'll want to look at for scenery. Aircraft - depends what you are interested in!

Ian P.
 
For my money the best money spent was

FSGenesis mesh

GEX
UTX
FEX (REX is out now)
MyTrafficX


ASX is nice for better sky and weather(with X graphics or REX)
 
If your new to FSX IMO leave the enviromental add ons alone for awhile. Default FSX looks pretty good by itself.

For scenery as stated Plum Island is superb. Aerosofts Tahiti is pretty sweet as well.

If you like the vintage warbirds then the RealAir Spitfire & A2A P40 & are incredible.
 
Boomer said:
If your new to FSX IMO leave the enviromental add ons alone for awhile. Default FSX looks pretty good by itself.

For scenery as stated Plum Island is superb. Aerosofts Tahiti is pretty sweet as well.

If you like the vintage warbirds then the RealAir Spitfire & A2A P40 & are incredible.
Click to expand...

Hi Boomer.

Actually, I've been around here for awhile, mostly a lurker. I've been waiting for my old comp (which couldn't handle much in the way of Scenery and Addon's in general) to crap out as an excuse to build a new one but 'Santa' cut that wait short for me. So now I'm anxious to try some of the Addons I've been missing out on.

Keep the suggestions coming guys. Thanks.
 
If you want the best looking scenery Orbx FTX is the way to go. They only cover Australia right now in four region packs, with the US pacific northwest to come next, but like many once I experienced FTX I've found little reason to fly anywhere else. The only exception to that is Plum Island, which I'd say is the best package for a localized area. So FTX and Plum Island are the only sceneries I fly over these days. In addition to the regional scenery packs Orbx also makes the best airports around, which are ussually 30cm/pixel photoreal areas that extend far beyond the airfield, with the best autogen annotation in the business. Products like Coffs Harbour are mind blowing.

http://www.fullterrain.com/

At a very minimum you need to download the free FTX Tasmania demo from Orbx. It's all of Tasmania, one season only, and there is no time limit. Here's a shot from the demo to give you an idea of how stunning FTX is:

golddecathlon30.jpg



As to aircraft, I like high performance single engines my self, along with military aircraft. I have pretty high standards, so I don't really use any freeware, and even among payware it has to be the best of the best to keep my attention for long. My two favorite developers are RealAir Simulations, and A2A Simulations, and I buy everything they produce. The Aerosoft F-16 and Hughes Racer are two more I call the best, as well as the Captain Sim C-130.

These are most of my top picks for aicraft:

RealAir SF260
planes1.jpg


A2A P-40
planes2.jpg


Acceleration P-51
planes3.jpg


Captain Sim C-130
planes5.jpg


RealAir Decathlon
planes4.jpg


Aerosoft Hughes Racer
planes12.jpg


Acceleration F-18
planes6.jpg


RealAir Spitfire
planes9.jpg


Aerosoft F-16
planes11.jpg
 
I'd suggest flying around for a week or so in default configuration.

That will give you a good idea of what you're going to baseline addons against :)
 
Panther_99FS said:
I'd suggest flying around for a week or so in default configuration.

That will give you a good idea of what you're going to baseline addons against :)
Click to expand...

Agreed. Other than some funky landclass issues (lots of desert, LOL), default FSX is rather nice and addons just bog down the sim for the most part.
 
Panther_99FS said:
I'd suggest flying around for a week or so in default configuration.

That will give you a good idea of what you're going to baseline addons against :)
Click to expand...

Thats true. It also allows for a certain appreciation when you do addon scenery.



SolarEagle,

Thanks. I have to say I'm also not easily impressed. Thats why I really did mean the 'best' addons otherwise it's a waste of money to me.

As a side note. I saw the beautiful, fully accurate full sized Hughes Racer replica at Oshkosh and attended the lecture put on by it's builders and pilot. Really something to see and behold in person! Unfortunately, on the way home from the same Oshkosh airshow it was destroyed in a crash killing the pilot.
 
Everything SolarEagle is recommanding are must have add-ons but don't forget the Realflight F6F Hellcat, it's on par with the Realair spit and A2A P-40.
 
Coming from FS2004 I can tell you that FSX is far more detailed and accurate when it comes to scenery. FSX features major highways and roads (with animated traffic, but that can bog a computer) as well as a fairly decent representation of secondary roads, commercial areas and residential areas. It's not perfect, but far better than any previous version of Flight Sim. I do agree about the desert texture issue, MS dropped the ball, but the Adam Mills set (there's one for North America and one for Europe) fixes much of that problem.

There is a fair amount of freeware scenery for FSX. I've installed the excellent holiday gift from Ground Environment, some replacement light and airport textures, and replacement clouds. To my eyes, FSX looks just fine without payware scenery.
 
stansdds said:
To my eyes, FSX looks just fine without payware scenery.
Click to expand...

I'd agree to a large extent, but when it comes to airports, that goes from looking very good to "oh, look, another two runways with no taxiways, no parking spots, just a fuel pump, a tower, and an American beacon tower in the middle of a French airfield"...

That's the reason I got into (very basic, admittedly) FSX scenery design... I got fed up of landing at non-entity airfields.
 
One of my favorite things is, water. The FS series has really come up short of the rest of the gaming industry in that area, specifically, shoreline. I have seen some nice water rendering in FSX, here and there, but most screenshot's I see that have shoreline in them are sorely lacking even though the land masses look great. Much older games such as Pacific Fighters and Crysis had fantastic water rendering to the point that it looked as though your monitors screen was going to pour onto your lap. I'm really hoping FS11 fixes this.

Are there any Scenery Addon's or a 'fix' that renders water (shoreline) like it should look?
 
I will say that I am a bit disappointed with the stock FSX shorelines. A flight over Norfolk and Newport News, VA shows a lot of grass, trees and houses in spots that should be occupied by commercial shipping and military docks and beaches don't look quite right either.
 
If the shorelines in FSX bug you, you will be thrilled with Ultimate Terrain X. In fact, I had UTX installed when I was designing Plum Island, which uses aerial photography for the terrain. At all the edges where my phototerrain ran out, it blended perfectly (and I mean perfectly) with the UTX shorlines and waterways. You can't get any better than that.
 
Crap, looking at your shots, your FSX seems to be in a totally different league than mine is, very well done!
 
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