Mesh Scenery Comparison

Grand Canyon Scenery Comparison
FSGenesis	Chris Fisher
Eddie Denney	Default

I have already reviewed Eddie Denney's public domain scenery and in many ways his scenery sets the standard. Eddie's mesh is generally very good, covering the entire continental United States, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, but not (so far) Hawaii. The scenery is organised state by state and in addition, Eddie has made a few areas available in very high resolution, most recently the Grand Tetons. The high res areas are fantastic, but don't even think of downloading them unless you have at least a 600 MHz Pentium, or you are a confirmed setup techie, as they can destroy frame rates. On my machine, rates in the Tetons are only marginally acceptable. Eddie, on the other hand, manages to run this area on a 300 MHz Pentium. If he wasn't in Korea right now, I would go over and find out how he does it!

Montana Scenery Comparison
FSGenesis	Chris Fisher
Eddie Denney	Default

Chris Fisher's scenery is also public domain and covers the U.S. by U.S. Geological Survey area. Chris' scenery also includes Hawaii, which is very much "work in progress" as far as I can see. One of the problems with Hawaiian locations is that Microsoft has gone to some trouble with the island and the shoreline textures around Honolulu are as good as the ones at Meigs, although the hills are some of the most unattractive ever created for FS2K. Chris' scenery unfortunately loses the shoreline textures, but on the plus side he has recompiled the airports and some of the scenery so that there are none of the usual "funnies" I have come to know and love in these mesh terrains, like flying roads and floating lakes.

Honolulu Scenery Comparison
FSGenesis	Chris Fisher	Default

As the screenshots show, in some cases, Chris and Eddie's sceneries are as alike as two peas and in other cases, you wonder if you are looking at the same planet. The difference is, I suspect, in the Level of Detail that they have set the terrain compiler to. In general the differences aren't very great, although there are a few hills present in Chris' scenery that aren't there in Eddie's and vice versa. The biggest differences can be seen in the Grand Canyon, where Eddie's scenery definitely has the edge in terms of visuals, but Chris' mesh gives far better frame rates, almost doubled here. Compare the two Montana sceneries and no differences are apparent in either detail or frame rates.

The third contender is Justin Tyme, whose scenery is available from FSGenesis (www.fsgenesis.com). Justin's scenery costs $15.95, for which you get a CD which includes two resolutions of U.S. scenery, including Hawaii and Catalina. The CD installation routine copies the data files onto your hard disk but stops short of modifying the scenery.cfg file in FS2000, although this is easily enough done if you know how. Justin includes a text file describing how to modify the scenery.cfg file which is reasonably self-explanatory. The attraction of the FSGenesis terrain, besides the install routine, and the saving on download time, is that it comes in two different resolutions, 153 meter and 306 meter. Users with marginal PCs will appreciate the 306 meter mesh, as although it is nowhere near as detailed as the 153 meter terrain, it will run on lower spec machines.

Despite Chris Fisher's extra work on his Hawaii scenery, the FSGenesis shorelines are the better of the two, and Honolulu airport is on a peninsula as it should be, although the classy Microsoft surf is lost here as well. In use, Justin's scenery is qualitatively more similar to Chris Fisher's than Eddie Denney's, but when the going gets tough, the frame rates in the FSGenesis package are probably the best of the three, although I would stress that for obvious reasons I haven't flown to every location in the US to test this, nor do I intend to do so, having a relationship to think of!

Unless you own a gigahertz Pentium, and maybe even then, you are going to experience slow-downs with all these sceneries. Problems tend to arise when you can see to a far horizon and there are hills or a mountain range in the way, particularly when you are 2000 to 5000 feet above ground level. I guess the trouble is that FS2K simply can't cope with drawing all the detail at once. If you have weather turned on, frame rates will drop even further, and approaching a complex third party airport using FSTraffic in mountainous terrain with a broken cloud layer is asking for trouble.

Fortunately, there are several things you can do which will help. The first is to set up your display properties as I have done (Options / Settings / Display / Image quality if you can't find it). The key here is the terrain detail distance, as this gives the single biggest saving in frame rates of any tweak I know. You can also try turning off dynamic scenery, as this does no favors to frame rates. Another trick is to go to World/Weather and pull the visibility slider down to 20 miles, although this saves few frames at altitude, and you can increase the vis to 70 miles or more at 10000 feet above ground level. Users of Peter Dowson's excellent FSUIPC can, of course, use the "graduated visibility" option of this neat little module, and FS2K will adjust the visibility automatically as you climb.

Andrew Herd
andrew.herd@btinternet.com