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WUS Expansion scenery

Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2017 12:31 pm
by bbuckley
What scenery add ons would you recommend for the WUS area? I'm flying FSX Acceleration (without issues except for a minor scenery issue at LVFR KSNA in a Carenado Archer), but I'll probably go to P3D someday especially if they go 64 bit and RXP releases the GNS for P3D. I have a bunch of MSE including South California, but was thinking of getting some regions of ORBX like PNW or NORCAL. Any thoughts on those or other areas?

Re: WUS Expansion scenery

Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2017 5:48 pm
by Dean33
Bruce
I have SOCAL, NORCAL and PNW.
They are great but as I fly P3D with a modest laptop I tend to predominantly use FTX Global with Vector and Open LC NA.
I have to say the quality of these appears (to me) quite close to 'full fat' regions and I would recommend trying the basics first.
Cheers.

Re: WUS Expansion scenery

Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2017 6:47 pm
by dvlourie
Bruce, I fly the Archer in PE and real world. I have Orbx Southern Californina and use SweetFX for some tweaking of colors and other factors. Start small and slow. One add-on at a time and keep us posted!

Re: WUS Expansion scenery

Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2017 7:58 am
by bbuckley
dvlourie wrote:Bruce, I fly the Archer in PE and real world.
:) I fly an Archer RW from FL KMLB, love it!

Thanks guys. I may get ORBX PNW region and try it out. I love flying into KPDX from various non towered fields along the Columbia River. I mostly fly Archer or when I need a faster ride, the Phenom 100 so some nice scenery and some airport upgrades would really be nice.

Re: WUS Expansion scenery

Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2017 8:02 am
by bbuckley
Dean33 wrote:Bruce
I have SOCAL, NORCAL and PNW.
They are great but as I fly P3D with a modest laptop I tend to predominantly use FTX Global with Vector and Open LC NA.
I have to say the quality of these appears (to me) quite close to 'full fat' regions and I would recommend trying the basics first.
Cheers.
Dean - I have a pretty high end machine, but I've heard some of the ORBX stuff (SOCAL?) can be pretty hard on frames. I'm a little confused about ORBX though... I assume I don't NEED FTX Global with vector or Open LC if I get a region like PNW. Is that true?
Thanks!

Re: WUS Expansion scenery

Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2017 7:00 pm
by Dean33
SOCAL is stand alone.

If you don't push your settings too far your frame rate should be quite acceptable.
In my case I use low or no autogen.

Having said that I thoroughly recommend Global and to a lesser extent Vector. My recent experiences in Western Expansion have shown me very acceptable scenery. To the extent that I wonder if I will buy full regions in the future.

Re: WUS Expansion scenery

Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2017 11:10 am
by stevekirks
Dean33 wrote:SOCAL is stand alone.

If you don't push your settings too far your frame rate should be quite acceptable.
In my case I use low or no autogen.

Having said that I thoroughly recommend Global and to a lesser extent Vector. My recent experiences in Western Expansion have shown me very acceptable scenery. To the extent that I wonder if I will buy full regions in the future.
Orbx SoCal has a huge framerate hit near KLGB with the cranes and port objects. I had to back down a bunch of settings to make it work. Load up the A2A C182 at KLGB with SoCal scenery and tune the machine from there. That's your worst-case scenario...

Re: WUS Expansion scenery

Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2017 12:33 pm
by bbuckley
stevekirks wrote:Orbx SoCal has a huge framerate hit near KLGB with the cranes and port objects. I had to back down a bunch of settings to make it work. Load up the A2A C182 at KLGB with SoCal scenery and tune the machine from there. That's your worst-case scenario...
Thanks Steve, is that with the ORBX SOCAL Region or the FTX Global? After much more research I think I'll go with FTX Global Base first and see how that works out.

Re: WUS Expansion scenery

Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2017 1:13 pm
by Dean33
As I have both I can say I think you are making the right decision - enjoy.

Re: WUS Expansion scenery

Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2017 9:00 pm
by bbuckley
Dean33 wrote:As I have both I can say I think you are making the right decision - enjoy.
Thanks, I hope so... I bought & installed FTX Global Base and some of the freeware today and loaded up on PE for a short test flight from KONT to KSNA. I know that route & scenery well and I have Latin VFR KSNA so I wanted to see how it all would play.

On takeoff, I couldn't get enough elevator authority to maintain a climb and the nose began dropping uncontrollably, so I declared an emergency on TWR and successfully executed a forced landing just off airport to the southwest. I hope it was a freak coincidence, but my Saitek Pro Flight yoke had a significant downward bias. After deleting registry entries and rebooting it seemed fixed so I did the flight again but offline (I didn't want the potential of two back to back emergencies online...).

The scenery seems fine, quite a bit different from the MegaScenery Earth I had been used to. I disabled both the south California MSE and the LA / SAN TAC MSE before trying the ORBX FTX Global Base.

I was getting a lot of flashing polys in all the water bodies and a few approaching KSNA. I had Autogen at max (5) and Water Effects at 4. So I'll dial back the autogen and water effects and see if it's better. Does that sound like the right things to do? I only had time for those two short flights so I'll try more tomorrow.
Thanks!

Edited to clarify I only installed FTX Global Base. I may now get Vector and LC North America but I'm a bit confused about the differences in what the 3 products do...