Classic British Flight Sim

Recently had a quick look at Aboyne in FTX Scotland with the GFA Gladiator - in P3Dv2 - and was suitably impressed.





Luvvly shadows



It's nice that you get this kind of detail in the FTX scenery, with any airfield, not just the ones you pay extra for








It's a shame it's spoiled somewhat by the poor river texturing:




I always said that, no matter how detailed the airport scenery, it will never seem realistic until there are warm bodies present - preferably moving ones. Looks like OrbX were listening!

Watch the bloke on the right:



The Likely Lads:



The GFA Gladiator is fantastic in P3Dv2 - the only very slight downer is the iffy altimeter - it is readable, but keeps flickering:

Hmm.. ORBX



That scenery would look a shed load better if their statics had shadowing. Bunging in a few vans and caravans is all very well but they'll always look like they don't belong if you see daylight underneath. None of the statics on those shots had shadowing which is a shame. The treelines looked good though

ATB
DaveB

and all those Schweizer 2-32's littering the place which is what most scenery designers do that don't know a bl***dy thing about gliding - as a R/L gider pilot it really irks me - you won't see a 2-32 outside of the USA - there weren't that many of the thing built anyway - well less than a 100. Perfectly good statics models of gliders are available that would be found at these sites i.e. ASK-13, Puchacz, ASK-21, Discus.

Poor Orbx.

Brian

It's right though isn't it. What did they have parked alongside in the pool of London.. an American destroyer/cruiser.. a perfect substitute for a WWII Cruiser I think ORBX concentrate more on hanging baskets and moving people than detail which would have a bigger positive impact on their scenery.

ATB
DaveB

I think there's two ways of looking at it. Some of the individual airfields are very cleverly done, but with the large areas its a bit of a compromise between the default FSX and stuff that's much more detailed. If your looking for something to cover the world relatively inexpensively, its not a bad option. The down side is that it makes it very difficult to customise in the standard way at a later date. I'd rather have the accuracy of photo scenery in the UK and put up with default FSX elsewhere, knowing that if I decide I want a more detailed Zurich or something later on I can buy it and not have to worry if it will be compatible, but I get that for others, something that covers great swathes of the world better than FSX default might be more there bag...

Have I just been reasonable about ORBX, I think I need a pill.

Well, what I do know is that flying there as in these pictures was a nice experience - better than the one offered by the Scotflight scenery and infinitely better than the default FSX tosh.

My pockets don't run deep enough to keep paying for small patches of the UK in photo scenery. Didn't like paying the £25 per volume for the England and Wales ones I have, let alone then splitting Scotland into several more costly sections. This scenery cost me a mere £12-odd and covers the whole country.

Before P3D I, too, was an FTX skeptic - I ain't any more!

Why 'before P3D' JD? Is P3D Scotland worse than FSX?

I'd tend to agree that Horizon/Playsim milked Scotland for far more than it was worth.. higher res or not. England and Wales complete in 3 parts.. Scotland in 5!!!!! WTF is that all about

ATB
DaveB

"Before P3D" because I could never get an FTX product (or demo, to be precise) to work in FSX without one error or another cropping up, so I stuck with UTX, GEX or Photo scenery and was quite satisfied with it.

When I had some issues with those in P3D, I tried FTX again, especially as I'd read over at LM that OrbX had been privy to the development, or conversion, of P3D from an early stage. and this time it worked without any issues.

I completely agree it's not perfect - but it's good enough for me, and the price is well within my affordability margin.

By the way - the reason that the scenery doesn't have any shadows is probably because I don't enable that in the options. I fear it will drop my framerates, but I may give it a try, just for kicks.

Ah.. I see

No.. what I mean by shadows is not having scenery casting it's own shadows turned on (as you can do with FSX/FS9).. it's the static models themselves not having a shadow drawn beneath them. Gary Summons has been chipping away at his statics for a while now and the vast majority of things you see at his airports have their own shadows.. regardless of having scenery casting shadows turned on or not. I prefer not to have scenery casting shadows.. it just doesn't look real to me. I have my own aircraft casting shadows and of course, AI will cast shadows but I turn scenery casting shadows, off.

BTW.. having all 5 GenX areas for Scotland is too rich for my income too. I have vol4 installed as it sits out on it's Jack Jones and the version of Scotflight I have (v2.1 Photo) is designed to work with it. I also have GenX vol6 (Scotland North) bought in a sale but as yet not installed because it would require me having to buy Scotflight v3 to have the airports in that area match. It seemed like a good idea at the time but turned out to be money wasted. It won't have been for the first time! That said, I refuse to exchange one 'artists impression' of Scotland for another and flatly refuse to buy FTX Scotland. For the amount I fly up there.. Scotland looks like Scotland to me using the default scenery (and we know how accurate that is!) but it would be no more accurate with FTX Scotland though it may (arguably) look better

ATB
DaveB