It is a a rare pleasure for a reviewer to be in complete agreement with a product's advertising. Full Terrain Experience is advertised as revolutionary, and I could not find a better word myself. It offers an unparalleled flying experience in many ways. The patches of land are photorealistic and offer incredible detail down to 500 AGL, as well as amazing variety and a feeling that you're really flying above Australia. I only wish I lived down under so that I could do this product full justice.
First Impressions-
Unlike a lot of high-detail packages like this, FTX comes in the form of a relatively small 700MB download exclusively from flightsimstore.com. I purchased a product the other day that only covers only the size of about one city, but still took over a gig on my harddrive. It installed easily with the usual required information, but I must say that the installer did run a little slowly. It didn't cause problems, but hey, I'm nit-picking here. After the installer ran, it created an Orbx group in the start menu as well as a manual and two programs on your desktop. The programs were FTX mode and FTX lights tweaker. Each of these are very handy tools that can save you a lot of trouble. FTX mode basically enables or disables FTX in the sim, and it's recommended that you shut FTX off when installing scenery. Also, shutting it off can help when flying around other addons that are covered by FTX, namely Aerosoft's Lord Howe Island X. FTX lights tweaker is just that; it lets you configure the different halo styles and sizes to your own preference. Mr. Tim Fuchs of Real Environment Extreme lent a hand here, with the result being some very fine light styles for different weather. When you start FSX, go straight to the included mission. It shows off a good variety of what's to be seen in FTX as well as some fun little easter eggs.
As I said, I think an Australian native could do a much better job at this. I can't say if the houses and autogen included are true to life, nor can I say if it's a good representation of what Australia really looks like (outside of me using Google Earth, of course, but you know what I mean). I did ask Mr. John Venema if Orbx would pay to send me on a short trip to Melbourne to get a feel of Australia, but apparently a good review isn't worth quite that much
. Anyway, I'll try to discuss the trees and buildings included. If you're a native, you can decide if you think they are a decent representation. If you've never been to Oz like me, pipe down as you don't know any better! Just kidding
