NZFF

Hi rob
First off, thanks for all the work you do for NZ flightsimming and good luck with the job hunting. I will be getting around to ordering
some software- hopefully in the next week. I have finally been able to start back on getting work done on the sim now the renovations
are out of the way (mostly).

Anyway... I have been trying to map out where I want to go with the set up and have been wavering over FSX (old) and P3d V2 (new) both from the point of view of what will run with opencockpits gear and the various sceneries about. I was thinking about VLC and P3d.

Thought I'd ask someone who knows way more than me. What, in your opinion, makes for the most realistic NZ with all the combinations out there at the moment?
Not a priority but just thought I'd ask.
Cheers
Craig.

I'm running P3D and really like it. I bypassed FSX altogether. To me FSX is dead in it's original form. If anything, FSX steam would be the way to go, if you are not interested in P3D, although as yet I don't know how serious they are in supporting the hard core simmer or if they are just trying to attract the gamer market.
Most FSX software will work in P3D and the Estonia migration tool has made this very easy, however, if an aircraft or scenery contains any FS2004 files then it wont work properly so keep that in mind.
The downside to P3D is that there is almost zero purpose built freeware products aside from the FSX ones that can be migrated.
I have both VLC and ORBX and they each have their pros and cons.
VLC has good elevations and a lot of Snowmans sceneries work with it. ORBX has a lot of incorrect elevations that make using other 3rd party addon sceneries difficult.
I also find the ORBX colours a little over saturated (The green is too green imho). I tolerate this by only flying in the summer season.
The good thing with ORBX is that it does have some quite good airport sceneries included as well as things like people flow and now you can even add very good HD trees.
If you go the VLC route then make sure you disable the night lighting option in the config tool or it will bring your PC to it's knees......even in the daytime.

Some great points there, covers most of what I would recommend. I'm sure there would be plenty of opinions out there, so I'll just talk about what I actually use for fun, rather than work.

I would have to say I am still blown away by Prepar3D, even although I use FSX a lot for testing things out, screenshots etc for my website, etc. But that's just because Prepar3D makes the scenery a lot more realistic, I know that a lot of users don't care so much about that.

I really need a lot more nice little Prepar3D-compatible aircraft, as it seems that I have a lot more aircraft in FSX, but I guess that's just lack of funds, and time to convert stuff over.

I have Orbx NZ installed in FSX, and Vector Land Class in Prepar3D. Orbx is modern and beautiful, but it has no future in NZ. Vector Land Class lacks the custom landclass textures and vegetation, but I do still love it for flying around NZ -- it looks more like my idea of New Zealand, although of course with the default textures I need to squint a bit in places to keep the realism factor high. Ideally I'd love to create a set of custom landclass textures for VLC, but that would be a major job. Still, it would be doable, so I wouldn't rule it out. Maybe if I won Lotto, I'd have the time for that...

One thing I have which improves my Prepar3D/VLC combo is FTX Trees HD. Orbx do great trees, so being able to drop them on top of VLC is a real bonus. I do use the Godzone Subscription Native Bush textures (same as VLC's custom bush) though. Although some of the more recent screenshots on the Subscription site show Orbx bush, I have changed it back since.

I've always preferred VLC for finding my way about in areas I know in real life. It gives me an instant recognition of places I know, and helps me find my way about. Although there's plenty of detail in Orbx NZ, it never looks to me like the places I know. But to be honest, I'm not a huge fan of Orbx landclass-type scenery, it makes any place look like any other place, but they do some very nice custom airports. I haven't yet tried Milford, but one day I'll have a few spare bucks, and it does look nice in screenshots. I do own Queenstown, but it's hard to gauge things from owning just one airport...

Thanks for the feedback guys. Looks like I have still got a lot more research and decision making ahead of me.
That being said, I think I am leaning toward the VLC/P3d combo as I will be doing my simming from the home cockpit Baron so won't
be worried about any other aircraft which cuts out quite a few of the mentioned obstacles.
cheers.