Confessions of a scenery junkie

[azc60 5]

I hardly ever post here, but I came here via a link re Mathijs' "glass of wine" post. And having read through that and a couple of other threads here I feel the urge to say something.

 

However, I was raised as a polite boy, so I won't.

 

What I will say instead, to use a phrase I see used often in the various forums, is that I'm a serious simmer. But actually, I couldn't give a rat's **se for flight models, accurately modelled systems, SIDS and STARS and all that malarkey. What I've always wanted out of a flight sim is really a good looking and reasonably accurate world sim. I haven't been doing this forever, probably only about 5 or 6 years, but I'm retired now, and this is my thing. I started with MS Flight, and moved to FSX thinking that would be "better", but actually I thought it looked dire by comparison. I got into P3D with v2, and that's when I started buying scenery seriously. I got into X-Plane with v10 but never took to it until v11, once I'd discovered Ortho4XP and Forkboy's stuff (amongst other things). I moved up with P3D through v4 and I have just put a clean install of 5.1 on my system. By the end of my P3Dv4 days, I had between 600 and 700 layers of scenery in there. Pretty much everything Orbx does, most of the supported Aerosoft stuff (so not the really early stuff), FSDT, Flightbeam, Flytampa, DD, FSDG and just about anybody else you can name. And it still never quite did the job for me. The whole system of tiles and their occasional wild boundaries, plus the truly appalling roads in P3D never allowed it to feel anything like real. I do of course, given everything else I've just said, prefer to fly low and slow. 2000 feet is high altitude as far as I'm concerned. Photoscenery generally is pretty useless for my needs, and about the only thing that felt good as an underlying environment was Orbx's True Earth stuff, as that really does replace the landclass stuff but also gives good modelling.

 

When MSFS /  MFS was announced and the previews started to appear I was well chuffed. It looked like this was going to be the sim for me. I reluctantly moved off Win7 to Win 10 in preparation, and then bought a new machine in anticipation. I pre-ordered MSFS, and since it arrived on my machine I've flown almost exclusively in it. I tried P3D via my fresh install of 5.1 and it just feels stale. If they ever get the same level of world realism I'll be happy to go back to using it, especially if my hundreds of aircraft (yep, OCD there as well) are still good in P3Dv7 or whenever that happens. I still enjoy XP for the Florida area, as I don't think MSFS has cracked that yet, but apart from that it's MSFS all the way for me. I feel like the whole world has been opened up for exploration now.

 

So I'm quite possibly the sort of user Mathijs is talking about. There is no way I'm spending any money now on P3D, and I used to be a BIG spender there (don't ask how much, I don't log it - too embarassing to contemplate). But I will take any and everything that is well produced for MSFS. The key thing there is "well produced". There is already a spread of some total rubbish being punted out by people obviously just either porting across a few basic 3d models from previous sim versions or grabbing a few bits off Google Earth and pretending they've done something amazing. I've already got a few Aerosoft airports, along with products from all the other vendors previously mentioned.

 

I would hope, that as the market stabilises, the general cost of such products will level down to reflect what I hope for all the vendors will be a huge market. That does already seem to be happening to a degree.

 

I know MSFS is not perfect (what is, apart from me of course?), and I fully support all those tubeliner guys who say it's no good for them. If you're more concerned with procedures and systems then it probably doesn't matter what the outside world looks like apart from at and around the airports, in which case both P3D and XP will continue to serve you well and long may they do so. But I am so unbelievably happy to be able to get the totally wonderful drone camera going in MSFS and explore the back woods of Bulgaria, or the little rivers scattered around China, or Siberian outposts, or Kenyan landscapes - or any of the other places that suck big time in the other main sims.

 

And another of the benefits, as far as I'm concerned, is that the underlying world is so nicely done that 3PVendors can concentrate on the specifics of the area they are modelling, rather than worrying so much (or not, as the case may be) about blending with the underlying scenery at their product's boundaries.

 

So to sum up, I don't know what particular bitching has been going on in these forums to make Mathijs hit the bottle, but I get the general drift. And as usual, I just don't get it. Aerosoft is in business. It may be a great place to work, and I'm sure the individuals are motivated by more than just a paycheck, but the bottom line is the bottom line. As an outsider it seems more than likely to me that MSFS is the commercial future, but I assume Mathijs has better information than me and I think we can assume Aerosoft is not going to head off down a blind alley any time soon.

 

You produce 'em guys, and I for one will buy 'em.

 

happy flying, whatever and wherever that is for you,

 

Andy

 

(The last phase of my working life was when we ran an antiquarian and secondhand bookshop. It really used to p*** me off when people would come in, wander around for an hour or so, finger all the books, blather on about how wonderful it was to still find a proper old fashioned bookshop, and then walk out without spending a single penny, or even better, pick up a £2.00 paperback and say "what's your best price on this?" Sometimes, reading the various forums feels a lot like being back in the bookshop)