UK Scenery Extravaganza...!

[Stickman]

Lo all - whatever you do, don't miss this fine article from flightsim.com regarding 3rd party UK scenery. Well written, well illustrated and with plenty of good links, it could be just what some of you are looking for...

http://www.flightsim.com/cgi/kds?$=main/review/ukscen/ukscen.htm

See what you think..if you want to d/l any files from flightsim.com you will need to register, but its a painless process and well worth doing.

tata

Stick


[Edited by Stickman on 28-09-2000 at 08:07 AM]

[alz]

A very good article with some good places to download UK scenery. Thanks for the effort.

Alan

[CP5]

Is it just me or does scenery such as airbridges, more detailed terminals, static and dynamic scenery just pull your fps down even further. I recently downloaded scenery for Stansted and in the Stansted region I get around 4fps!!
It certainly looks the part but you can't do much at 4 frames per second.

[Stickman]

You have a point mate - some of the really complex scenery - such as enhanced airports (ie Airport 2000) look very nice, but really cane the frame rate. A lot of scenery designers are very aware of this, and quite often will suggest various tweaks, and files you can leave out, such as dynamic scenery, that will help the problem. Check out the readme file for details. That said, I love the Airport 2000 Heathrow - you can't beat getting pushbacked from the gate, complete with parking indicators, then following the yellow taxi lines to a holding point clearly marked with the red and yellow boards, before lining up and taking off. A suggestion thats worth trying is to take off from a very detailed airport, but land a less detailed one. This means that the frame rate grabbing scenery is behind you when you need fps, ie on take off, and your approach isn't marred by jerky updates.
In addition to this there are many good scenery add-ons that make a huge difference visually, but won't kill the fps. These include Bradwell powerstation on the Essex coast (a well known VRP - Visual Reference Point) and the Dome and London Eye.
If you're using the same Stansted as I tried, I recall having real problems with that particular 'enhancement' and frame rates - to the extent that I gave up on it. But don't give up hope completely - there are a lot of great add-ons that will make a big difference with minimal side-effects.

tata

Stick

PS - Sorry to go on, but one last thing - check out the DC4 download available from amongst others http://www.fsplanet.com - its a biggie - 2x12Mb to download - but well worth it. Its a cracking aircraft with photo-panels throughout. You can find it in the Best of the Best section.

[CP5]

I was thinking about purchasing some addons for FS2000. There is a new Lauda Air addon which adds gates etc or would you recommend the airport 2000, think there is new version version 3 out either now or soon?

[Stickman]

I really like the Airport 2000 stuff. I've only got volume 2, but that has Heathrow, Schiphol and a few others in the US on it. You also get some planes and some ATC adventures. All in all a good package. I'd also suggest FS Traffic, to populate that empty airspace, and FS Clouds 2000, which may seem a bit odd - ie to spend 25GBP on some clouds - but belive me, its well worth it. The visual effects are superb. There are some ATC add-ons for FS2k on the verge of general release so keep an eye out for them too.

tata

Stick