UK Scenery

[IslandBoy77]

It seems I've inadvertently made myself a little project. It all started with my brother asking me if I had FSX loaded onto any computer at the moment (which a month or so back, I didn't), as he wanted to show me the approach to Schiphol in the Netherlands - as done in a 737-400. Spurred on by that comment, I discovered and downloaded the excellent NL2000 stuff (well, not quite finished the download yet). As I was thinking about it all today, I thought to myself: wouldn't it be great if my brother could show me the whole trip from push-back at Gatwick, all the way to the gate at Schiphol? That was a dangerous thought. I've spent the whole afternoon trolling about the net, trying to figure the most cost-effective way to get the necessary scenery on the route that would be taken.

I know there are a few on NZFF who are from the UK - and there may be others who fly over that way. Does anyone know if there is a free-ware photoreal scenery project that covers at least the SE of England? What about the various countries between Gatwick and Schiphol? If there is nothing freeware, what's my best / cheapest plan to achieve a reasonable "view out the window" experience up to the Dutch border?

So far, from what I can tell, I'm going to need:
http://www.justflight.com/product.asp?pid=200#
http://www.uk2000scenery.com/newsite/My_Ho...les/Page31.html
and either
http://www.flight1.com/products.asp?product=utxeurope
or
http://www.flight1.com/products.asp?product=gexeurope

Which all starts to add up, after a while.

Any thoughts, comments?
Ta

[deeknow]

QUOTE (IslandBoy77)

What about the various countries between Gatwick and Schiphol?

What other counties? there are no others between Gatwick and Schiphol, she's direct across the straight

There's a pretty good freebie SRTM mesh for all of europe, should still be on avsim/flightsim etc, grab that.
If you want payware VFR coverage of western Europe though the UTX and GEX combo you mention look lovely, certainly dresses up what looks pretty horrible in the default FSX.

I can certainly vouch for the UK2000 stuff if you decide to buy other airports than EGKK, the stuff he makes is fabulous, and pretty good on framerates, I've got a bunch of them.
Be careful about buying EHAM though, although it does look nice its a real killer on framerates and is getting on these days, really needs a revisit from the developers. If you have a mega-fast PC though you should be ok.

Drop some screenies back here once you get settled in, be really interested to see how the UTX/GEX stuff looks.

[IslandBoy77]

Cool - I'll look into that. Although I'll have to double-check, I thought the flight from Gatwick had to dogleg over France, then head up through the various airspaces from there. If it is a direct flight, that will certainly remove the need for anything other "in between" countries.

If you want the NL2000 stuff on DVD when I'm done downloading, I'd be happy to make it available for the cost of the DVD and the postage - same goes for anyone else who doesn't want to d/l 34-odd GB of stuff

I'm just going to going with basic EHAM for the mo (I found a basic free upgrade on AVsim - the NL2000 guys are working on their own version, they just haven't released it yet) - this little project is already more than I'd planned: the Aerosoft EHAM does look brilliant, but I agree that it also looks to be the type of airport where one would want a serious sim machine. I had to sell my FSX PC last year due to needing the money, so I've only just started building up a new one from odds n sods. Currently only AMD 5200 2.7GHz Dual with 4GB RAM and 1GB GeForce 210 - am constrained by PSU and case size at the moment, but am working my way slowly towards a better setup. I'm mainly playing Battlefield 2 at the moment, and the PC as it stands does ok with BF2 - not so well with FSX (although having just reinstalled FSX I've done little tweaking so far).

Once I get myself organised I'll be sure to post some screens and let everyone know what sort of performance I got out of a lower mid-range setup.

Anyone else who has ideas and tips relating to my original question is welcome to put their oar in, too.

[zkcav]

I think the JF product is resale of Playhorizon which is great, I have Vols 4 & 5 of Scotland and the Northern Islands and rate it very highly for VFR. I have Vols 1,2, & 3 on back order from Flightsim store FSS. WhichI found was cheeper than getting it from the UK.

If you want to save your bandwidth I've downloaded all NL2000 stuff about a year ago (not sure how up to date it is) so drop me a PM and can send it your way.

AS EHAM is also very good and not too heavy on the Frame hits, UK2000 is also very good - I don't have Gatwick but have Stansted.

My advice would be get the 2 Airports and dont worry about the scenery too much 'cause I guess that would be flown at about 15 - 20,000 in 734 - unless you really want to showcase FSX to your brother.

If I get my PC reassembed tomorrow I'll fly it and post a few shots for you....

[IslandBoy77]

Awesome - thanks for your info. From what I understand and can tell from the NL2000 website, all the big photo stuff is 2010, most of the rest of it is late 2011 or early 2012.

I did wonder about skipping scenery given that we would probably be flying fairly high for most of the trip - but I figured that a least a bit of the outbound from Gatwick would make a difference having something other than default. I'll at least get Gatwick, but the change from the localised scenery to default will probably be so jarring as to be nasty - I dont think the Gatwick localised stuff extends very far from the boundary.

If you get chance to drop some pics, that would be awesome. I've got until late May to get myself organised: this is the preliminaries - reading reviews (done that), asking people (doing that), buy it & try (next step).

I find the trickiest thing when starting cold on a project like this is simply not being familiar with what's out there and then being able to tell what's good from not so good from very average. I keep a close eye on NZ scenery, so am quite familiar with what's available and how good it is (and the bulk of it is very good). But since I've never "flown" outside of NZ, nor tried to get just the right aircraft with just the right sound etc, it's very much having to learn everything from scratch.

[AdrianPetford]

You might like to look at the freeware Gatwick offered by Gary (UK2000) Summons. These tend to be cut-down versions of his excellent payware airports:

http://www.uk2000scenery.com/free/My_Homep...iles/Page1.html

The Just Flight and Horizon VFR products were the same for FS2004 (Visual Flight, the developers evolved into the Horizon team) but are distinct products in FSX as Just Flight redid their packages using new aerials which are only a few years old. However, the Just Flight volumes are very luridly green and quite blocky which looks very unnatural. They have been totally eclipsed by the Horizon VFR Gen X range which is now at version 3.0. It's fully watermasked, has night lighting and some 3D objects and is properly colour matched. It's also got much wider coverage with the new Scotland scenery plus they've done the Republic of Ireland as well. The only disadvantage is that for England and Wales it uses the same aerials as the FS2004 release, which are now around ten years old. Also bear in mind that unlike NZ sceneries, UK photosceneries tend not to be autogenned so can look very barren and flat low down (there's a good partial solution listed in my post below though).

It probably wouldn't be too expensive for you to buy Horizon VFR Gen X volume 1 which covers the south of England. This still looks really good at high altitude. Horizon offer volumes for the Netherlands in the same quality as well.

Hope that helps,


Ade

[AdrianPetford]

For those who may be interested, this is what I use and would recommend for the UK and Ireland in FSX (all payware except where noted):

VFR Photographic Scenery Generation X (v3.0) Vols 1-3 - England and Wales (Horizon)
VFR Photographic Scenery Generation X (v3.0) Vols 4, 5, 8 - Scotland (Horizon) - not fully covered yet
VFR Photographic Scenery Generation X (v3.0) Vols 9-10 - Republic of Ireland (Horizon)
Treescapes Volumes 1-3 - adds autogen trees to the equivalent VFR scenery volumes, based on Ordnance Survey mapping data - makes a huge difference! (Earth Simulations)
VFR Airfields Vols 1-3 - adds airfields to the equivalent VFR scenery volumes (UK2000)
VFR Airfields: Sutton Bank (UK2000) (freeware for UK2000 customers)
VFR Airfields Scotland Vol 1: adds airfields to VFR volumes 4 and 5 (Scotflight)

Angel of the North (Earth Simulations) (freeware)
Bodmin Airfield (Tony Meredith) (freeware/optional donationware to Help for Heroes, British Legion etc)
Cardiff (David Morgan ) (freeware)
Compton Abbas Airfield (Tony Meredith) (donationware to Help for Heroes)
Emley Moor Transmitter (Earth Simulations) (freeware)
IWM Duxford (Airfield Construction Group) (freeware)
Liverpool (Paul Derbyshire) (freeware)
RAF Bentwaters & RAF Woodbridge (Airfield Construction Group) (freeware)
RAF College Cranwell (Airfield Construction Group ) (freeware)
RAF Coningsby (Airfield Construction Group) (freeware)
RAF Marham (Airfield Construction Group) (freeware)
RAF Mona (Airfield Construction Group) (freeware)
Shawbury Fields (Earth Simulations)
Stonehenge (Earth Simulations) (freeware)
VFR London (Horizon/Aerosoft)

Alderney (Earth Simulations)
Fort Houmet Herbe, Alderney (Earth Simulations) (freeware)
Guernsey, Herm and Sark (Earth Simulations)
Isles of Scilly (Earth Simulations)
Longships Lighthouse (Earth Simulations) (freeware)
Needles Lighthouse, Isle of Wight (Earth Simulations) (freeware)
Wolf Rock Lighthouse (Earth Simulations) (freeware)
FSX Power Project (v4.0) (Ray Porter) (freeware) - adds power stations, pylons (UK only), wind farms, earth satellite stations and other landmarks worldwide, including NZ.

The Earth Simulations and Airfield Construction Group stuff is absolutely world class - I couldn't recommend it highly enough. They've raised the bar as high as Orbx but as a small company and freeware group respectively are far less known.

Hope that helps,


Ade

[zkcav]

Awesome Adrian - thanks for the heads - up. I'm planning a UK tour so will download your recommendations. Page is now bookmarked.

[zkcav]

As promised.... after a few delays getting the software sorted first time 732 and VOX ATC used for a flight. Sorry about sizes of pics have cropped and resized from native res of 5760 x 1080.

There are quite a few pics to showcase the software.

CS Boeing 732 Ver 0.9 EGSS - EHAM

UK2000 EGSS with GSX













Taxi Rwy 04















SID Clacton 4S with default








Approching Dutch coast







Clearance ILS Rwy 36C NL 2000







A bit high Aerosoft EHAM









Cant recall parking now think it was B17 with GSX









UK2000 EGSS, GSX ground services, REX, Vox ATC, NL2000 Dutch area textures, Aerosoft EHAM, Ultimate Taffic 2 and Captain Sim 737 - 200.

Hope that gives you some idea of what is out there and what it looks like. I took big Frame hits on landing EHAM, but sliders are all the way to the right except water textures.

[IslandBoy77]

That's awesome - thanks for posting those. Just waiting for next month's Visa cycle to roll over now so I can start purchasing...

[Ian Warren]

Great Screens and a flight , one of my fav flights many years ago was Gatwick to Hahn just after FS2000 was released .. Hahn being a ex-AF base , the scenery was was a gem .

[Mynameisnemo]

QUOTE (AdrianPetford @ Apr 14 2012,5:09 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Liverpool (Paul Derbyshire) (freeware)

There's also a UK2000 version out of this, I had the freeware EGGP one quite a while ago but found it was quite a FPS hit on both the desktop and laptop!

[AdrianPetford]

QUOTE (zkcav @ Apr 15 2012,1:15 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Awesome Adrian - thanks for the heads - up. I'm planning a UK tour so will download your recommendations. Page is now bookmarked.

You're very welcome zkcav. Glad it was useful. I'll post any new gems I find as I'm building up my UK installation while the NZ scenery scene is quiet.

Thanks for posting those great screens. They really showcase the flight well.

QUOTE (Mynameisnemo @ Apr 16 2012,10:12 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

There's also a UK2000 version out of this, I had the freeware EGGP one quite a while ago but found it was quite a FPS hit on both the desktop and laptop!

Oh yes, I should have clarified that as I use the UK2000 version of EGGP as well. The Liverpool mentioned on my list is Paul Derbyshire's excellent scenery of the city centre and suburbs rather than the airport. The same's true of Cardiff, it's city centre and Cardiff Bay locations combined with the UK2000 airport.


Ade