Newbie Help Scenery??

[Singleton]

Hi FS 2004 was a Xmas present and I have started the Flight tutorials and investigating enhancements for the program.Could somebody help with these intial queries???

1 Most of my practice flying is low level over Europe, primarily England I was looking at purchasing Flight 1 Ground Environment and the Ultimate terrain  Europe. to enhance the look of the ground. Do I need a Mesh before Installing these?? Are they any good??

2. I also have a Free Cd with Ruud Faber's FScene  Europe Spring Season does this need loading after the Flight 1 Ground Environment and the Ultimate terrain  Europe. Will it give me better visuals of the ground??

3 I have AMD dual core 3800+ with a 1 gig of ram and a Radeon X1600 Graphics card which is coping with FS 2004 on max settings without any problems will the above slow the system down.

Thanks for any help

and Have a Happy New Year

[Reap]

Hi Singleton
If you are flying VFR you really do need add-on scenery to be able to navigate with any kind of reality in light aircraft.
There are two camps you can choose (IMO) one is to use Ultimate Terrain with Ground Environment. This looks great, puts the roads and rivers and stuff in the right places and places the autogen buildings in a more realistic placement.
The other way to go is to use Just Flights FS Terrain with their Photographic scenery.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both.

UT and GE are smaller packages, load quicker and possibly less frame rate hungry and you get the autogen buildings. However you will miss out on other landmarks like VRP's (Visual reference points) realworld buildings etc. which are also essential for VFR navigation.

Photographic scenery however gives you a full picture of exactly what is really down there. So you can see follow a chart or road atlas for your navigation. With FS2004 it is rather fuzzy until  you get to 2000' plus unfortunately  but it does give you the opportunity to do real world VFR procedures like the East Midlands M1 corridor Sierra Whiskey etc.
If you couple this with other 'free' add-ons at places like http://vfraddons.co.uk/ where you can get 3d models of buildings, power stations with real smoke all in exactly the right place, it makes VFR flying great fun.

Personally if money is no object I would use GE and UT for IFR flying and the Photo scenery for VFR flying.

Hwever it may be worth waiting and getting FSX with te new Photographic scenery which should be much better.

Also you could come and fly at Vatsim with up to 1000 pilots online at any one time and live atc online. Take a look at  http://www.vatsim-uk.org/

[Singleton]

HI Reap

Thanks for the reply

I presume then that I could use GE ans UT seperatly from Just Flight's FS Terrain and load them as required.??

I hava had a quick skim at Vatsim and it looks quite interesting do they take raw pilots with verty limited flying hours??  I can take off,  get from A to B and sort off land without destroying too much.

Do i add the scenery at http://vfraddons.co.uk/ on top of FS terrain or UT and GE or with both??


Thanks for the help

[Reap]

The add-ons scenery works with both and (I believe) needs to be on top. You can install all the scenery and just uncheck the ones you dont want to use, the problem with the Phot scenery is that the UK s in 4 volumes so is expensive compared to UT and GE.

Vatsim will welcome new pilots as long as you are sensible, and particularly if you help yourself. Read the manuals, post any queeries on the forum and they have a new pilot night. I think its the first Tuesday in the month. So get in quick and you may make this one.
They use Teamspeak to talk 'off frequency' so it is a very good way to learn.

The main point to flying and enjoying Vatsim is to grasp what it is about. And that is being as realistic as possible  for everybodys enjoyment. Just like in real life you wouldnt expect to jump in an aircraft and zoom off and expect ATC to welcome you in the skies.
Take the time to learn the correct procedures for the airport you are flying from / to and some RT phraseology and you will find Vatsim Controllers more than helpful.
There is a lot of work to do and Vatsim does a great job of being the most realistic out there, if that is what you want then I wouldn't hesitate.