fabs79

I could imagine that the NZ Mesh data will be the base for the new default DEM?

Ppebably Probably because it's a South America Mesh, not Central America. Would have been great though if they had included Central America, too, it's a tiny area compared to the South American landmass.

I always turn off PG because I hate the blurred, distorted look of the textures and geometry, and I think that the MSFS autogen is far superior to any other simulator, in that it correctly recreates building shapes, roof and sometimes even facade colors, something that can be achieved in P3D only by great but expensive products like the True Earth regions and you get that globally and out of the box in MSFS. Of course the variety could be improved but even as it is IMHO the autogen is the best of its kind.

Does this Landmark Addon have the same problem as the Sidney Landmarks, meaning it only works correctly with Photogrammetry switched to ON?

Thank you for the explanation John. It's sad that those compromises had to be made, for the Sydney Cityscape looked perfect before the Australia world update, so for those that own the Orbx Cityscapes things have actually gotten worse in those areas. But I believe that Frank did his best to adapt the product to the new circumstances.

For me Photogrammetry looks like a city has been hit by a nuclear blast. The geometry is distorted, the colors desaturated, trees look like gelatinous blobs or, like the palm trees in Santa Barbara, like lava columns. And check out the bridges in Portland to see what PG just cannot do. And comparing the autogen to the one in P3D or fsx is laughable, those were just square blocks of roughly the size of the real building but nothing more. The AI generated autogen in MSFS has the correct shape, size, roof color, often facade color, height and sometimes even correct roof type (gabled, flat). Only the Orbx true earth regions in P3D had comparable accuracy when it came to autogen, and together with some handmade significant Landmark buildings the MSFS autogen provides a very good impression of a city, but compared to PG with vibrant colors, straight geometry and great performance. Just try flying from somewhere further away into a PG city that you've never been to before so it's not in your cache. On my system the PG slowly loads in higher detailed LODs while I fly over the city, which leads to continuous morphing of the shapes below. Maybe it's better with a faster computer, but even when the city is fully loaded the textures and geometry still hurt my eyes. I was born and raised in Freiburg, so I decided to give the PG a try there and immediately turned it off again even before I took off from EDTF because even from my parking position I could see those horrible surrealistic shapes the sim throws at me. With PG off I can still recognize the suburbs, small lakes and parks, train stations and instantly spot the Freiburg Cathedral as it is a custom model, and I prefer that over PG every day. But I realize that I'm the minority here and that most people are excited to see their own house or local pub even if they look like they've been built by Salvador Dali. The good thing is that Asobo let's you choose what you prefer so everyone can be happy with what best fits their personal taste.

The best thing about MSFS photogrammetry is that it can be turned off. It looks ugly, takes ages to load and hampers performance much more than the autogen buildings. I was disappointed to see that the Sydney cityscape update was created to work best with the default photogrammetry turned on and there's no option to adapt it to the situation when photogrammetry is turned off, but obviously most people don't seem to mind the awful quality of the PG and those who turn it off are the minority.

If it's only the time or weather dependency your aiming for, this can be done pretty easily by using Simobjects instead of scenery objects for your people - then you can add a visibility condition to your object, for example only visible between 8 am and 5 pm or only if it's not raining or snowing and only if the wind speed is below 15 knots or whatever. You can also tie several of these conditions together. Many freeware developers already do this, I did it for my own NFTP scenery found on flightsim.to, making ramp agents and passengers disappear at night on an airfield that doesn't have night operations and a static aircraft that's only visible during daytime to simulate it flying back home before night. The only downside is that every person needs to be its own Simobject which makes the xml file pretty large and convoluted when you have multiple objects.

Will be great combined with the still in development Hamilton Island scenery by AUScene

Anthony Lynch is the guy behind the excellent freeware Ants Aussie Airports for FSX and P3D and also some very nice aircraft like the Tiger Noth, Tecnam P92 and others.

I don't think they work together. Anthony regularly posts on fsdeveloper.com and I it seems he focuses on bringing his aircraft into the new sim. Auscene is also a regular contributor to the discussions there and they never mentioned a cooperation. I still don't know if the Auscene developer is the same who developed Adelaide for FSX years ago under the same brand name , if yes then he has significantly improved his skills since then.

I agree with you, the reason I opted for NSTU to be ported over as a Throwback Thursday release is that I think it is the only way we'll ever see this kind of scenery at all in MSFS. I absolutely loved the package in P3D, but let's face it, there is not much demand for sceneries far out in the South Pacific, most people prefer US or Western European sceneries, maybe Australia and NZ too but that's about it. So Orbx will most likely not update the scenery to modern standards or invest a lot of money if they're not expecting high sales numbers. Heck, even freeware in this region is obviously not really successful, on flightsim.to there are only a handful of sceneries for Kiribati, Fiji and Tuvalu and my own two Tonga sceneries. None of them has accumulated more than a few hundred downloads, while US freeware airports regularly get a few thousands even if they were created with minimum effort. Long story short, I'd rather have a direct port of the NSTU pack even if it's not up to date but at least the buildings and overall feel are largely correct than stick with the awful default in this area.

NSTU Pago Pago - the full package with all the light rendition airports included, too

Same here, and opposed to what was said above I think the auto-generated cities without PG still look miles better than in any other simulator because the Blackshark AI accounts for the building footprint on the satellite imagery, roof color and other parameters. Of course there are still buildings that will look way out of place, that's why we need more regional POI products like GB Central to place those special buildings and structures that no AI could autogenerate, and for the largest and most important cities the Cityscape sceneries. This IMHO is far superior to PG. Good example for this is Seattle PG compared to Drzerwiecki Designs Seattle.

Concerning No. 1 you should report this in the support forum section, maybe they'll make a small update. Concerning No. 2, one more reason to turn the PG off. It just kills the immersion to see these obvious boundaries as it destroys the homogenous, consistent look of the scenery. The Blackshark AI even assigns correct building shapes and roof colors to the autogen buildings based on the satellite imagery, so the overall geometry of the city is still preserved even with PG off, and the textures are much more crisp, and there are no border lines or seams in the scenery. Maybe just give it a try. IMHO the combination of the high quality landmarks and the autogen is enough to make a city recognizable.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to spoil PG for everyone, if you're happy with it by all means leave it on? I'm glad that the landmarks packs still look good with PG off so I bought the London pack yesterday. Thanks again for the comparison shots.

Thank you, my thoughts exactly, Carlos' shots are great but the low altitude shots along the Thames clearly show the distorted building geometry and textures I mentioned. Also when you fly into a PG area that is not in your cache it loads in awfully slow and the buildings morph from triangular shapes to their final firm while you are flying over them

Has anyone tried the London and Paris landmarks packs with photogrammetry OFF? do they still fit seamlessly? Contrary to most other simmers I always have photogrammetry turned OFF because the scenery takes ages to load and from lower altitudes looks like a post-apocalyptic wasteland with greybrown distorted building facade textures, bridges where the area behind the bridge is displayed as a solid mass below the bridge (check out Portland, Oregon if you don't know what I mean) and trees that look either like basalt columns or dungeon trap spikes (hello Santa Barbara). Up until now I only read how great the city landmarks packs fit seamlessly into the photogrammetry but never if they also display correctly without it. Until then I'm holding off buying them.

Same here

Great news, Hendrik, let's hope that asobo fixes the coastline glitch in the next update so we can enjoy flying over the sea again.

Are you referring to the Global AI ship traffic Addon by Henrik Nielsen that he released for P3D and has been trying for a while now to get into MSFS? I know he is making good progress but last time I checked on fsdeveloper.com he said it wasn't ready for release yet, but I could be wrong. I'm also eagerly waiting for it because I love island hopping short flights all over the world and the AI ship traffic adds so much to see to otherwise sometimes boring flights over water.

Fantastic news! May I ask if you're also planning to bring the NSTU package to the new sim?

Best news ever, so many memories of the area! I proposed to my wife at the rim of Bryce Canyon. Thank you so much for this scenery!

With 55-60 hours/week in emergency and intensive care at a large hospital and two little children it ain't about attention span, it's about managing precious free time for my hobby. Watching hours of video reviews is something I simply don't have the time to do.

The reason I rarely watch videos is just that most of of them are quite long. I can check out ten Screenshot within seconds but most videos are several minutes long or even longer. Worst of all are video reviews of products or sceneries, some authors need an hour for a video while a good article can often be read in under five minutes.