Simviation Forums

I recently bought a 250GB SSD for Prepar3d.

It does make a significant improvement in load times. Unfortunately it became almost full last night.


As some may have noticed I'm tending towards high resolution photoreal scenery.

For me, it has to be in the range of 1m (LOD 15) to 5M (LOD 13) range.

Lately, most of what has been filling up my SSD is in the 1m range from Blue Sky Scenery.


Much photoreal scenery has no autogen added, and looks very unappetizing.

With some of the Blue Sky Scenery the ground and mountains look very good right down to 500 feet, and GREAT above that.

The cities, unfortunately, are another matter. Some of them don't look very good until you're 2,000 to 3,000 AGL.

One way to mitigate that is to find airport and city scenery to make your landings look good.

Fortunately, Blue Sky Scenery is starting to add carefully placed airport scenery into their photoreal scenery, along with some autogen.

Any scenery that says it's for "FSX & Prepar3d" should be very good. And as time goes by, they're replacing some of the older scenery.



ANYWAY..... back to my "full" drive.

I've mentioned it several times before, but I'll say it again - Junction Link Magic is a very simple way to use a Windows 7 & 8 feature to transparently move files, folders, and programs to a different location.

So I used Junction Link Magic to move about 60GB of less frequently visited scenery to a fast hard drive.

The Palm Springs scenery & the Scout aircraft were download to test the function & speed of the move. At any rate, alles ist gut.

Because Windows can use multiple SATA drives at the same time there was only a little delay, 10 - 15 seconds, in loading the scenery from the hard drive.




Now back to the early morning flight into Palm Springs, CA.





Palm Springs ahead

And a few daytime shots in an American Champion Scout (originally designed and initially produced by Bellanca Aircraft Corporation). Found here.

Thanks for looking.

No more comments from me on the P3D, i'm following your progresses very close
Great shots

Thanks, Kurt.

P3d V2.2 is working so well for me, that it's hard to believe.

And on top of that most of the FSX software works with it too.

Not all of it, true. But that's to be expected.

When they get around to P3d V3, that may change. If so I'll probably stay with the v2.x version.

The more that I think of it, the more that I realize - just about everything that I like comes from FSX. It's just being used in P3d.

That's not to say that Prepar3d V2.x doesn't have it's very good points, but that FSX scenery & aircraft is what I'm using on top of it.



BTW - That American Champion Scout is an very nice STOL, well worth downloading if you like low and slow. I'm liking it more than the iconic Cub.

Do you know what OAM....looking at those shots.... .....

After purchasing, trying, and being very disappointed, with 'Photographic Scenery', over many years, you still will not convince me to try it again after enjoying the delights of 'Autogen Scenery', together with some excellent Mesh and free-ware Scenery add-ons....
..especially at low-level flights, and ground movements!

Sorry..... .... ....!

(Palm Springs with the San Bernardino and San Gabriel mountains in the background. An excellent desert location).

Paul.....15 denim Mesh.... ...!

P.S...and you really MUST enable 'ground shadows' prior to taking the ground shots!... ....!

Fozzer wrote:Do you know what OAM....looking at those shots.... .....

....

P.S...and you really MUST enable 'ground shadows' prior to taking the ground shots!... ....!

Yeah, I've tried that. That's one of the few things that slows my system down.

Unfortunately I don't have such a high end gamming machine like you do.

My I5-2500 & Radeon HD 6800 just aren't up to it.

A lot of my plans for this summer disappeared when they laid me off last December.

Still... I suppose that I could switch it on when I land.

If I remember.

OK, I've put the shadows back into the pictures.

It cuts the FPS by about 35 to 30%. Not as bad as I recall from P3d V2.1.

Flying is still smooth, but I'm flying low & slow. Good enough, anyway.


So here are the pics for the shadow lovers out there.

If you look closely you'll see other, unidentified, shadows. They are all real, not artifacts.

I'll not argue that the ground looks good from close up, it doesn't.

But it's not like there aren't some 3D buildings on the airfield.

I will say, however, that from the height that I normally fly, about 2,000 to 8,000 AGL, the ground looks very good.

Not everywhere. But most of the places - yes.



More from Blue Sky Scenery. This time from Palm Springs up to Big Bear City (L35) (North North West of Palm Springs).

Please note the cloud shadows on the ground )




Big Bear City up ahead. Approximately 1,500 AGL.

Shadows...shadows..... SHADOWS!...... ...!

That's ma' Bhoy!.... ....!

So much more realistic, OAM!... ...!

(Of course, for solo flights you can leave shadows switched-off for smoother frame rates, its just nice to have them switched-on for impressive screen-shots!)

Paul...a very shadowy figure... ...!

The scenery in the last shot has been created using the fantastic 'Instant Scenery 3' program from Flight1 Software...>>> http://www.flight1.com/products.asp?product=iscen3

Thanks, Paul. THAT is very interesting. There are a number of places that REALLY need a improvement.

Hopefully, Instant Scenery 3 will be on sale at Christmas time.

OldAirmail wrote:Thanks, Paul. THAT is very interesting. There are a number of places that REALLY need a improvement.

Hopefully, Instant Scenery 3 will be on sale at Christmas time.

I use LAGO's; "FSE" Flight Sim Scenery Enhancer for my FS 2002 and FS 2004 Sims, and Flight 1; "Instant Scenery 3" for my FSX.

Both programs add various library objects to the scenery in real time; select, drag, rotate, resize, and drop, whilst the programs are running!
They are automatically saved during the process.

Worth their weight in gold for Simmers wishing to bring their scenery to life, in any location!

Paul...with a cement mixer... ...!