Advice on Payware airports??

[annber]

I am about to buy my first 2 payware airports this weekend, (my wife's Xmas present). I am truly a newbie, barely 2 months into FS9, and until now all my downloads for aircraft or scenery have been freeware. I was thinking of getting San Francisco and anothe one in Europe, preferably Germany, I was also very tempted to get Hong Kong.
I would appreciate any advice for which are the best according to your experience using them.
Thanks and happy new year to all mankind, but specially to flightsim.com members!!!:)

[opaplano]

I am about to buy my first 2 payware airports this weekend, (my wife's Xmas present). I am truly a newbie, barely 2 months into FS9, and until now all my downloads for aircraft or scenery have been freeware. I was thinking of getting San Francisco and anothe one in Europe, preferably Germany, I was also very tempted to get Hong Kong.
I would appreciate any advice for which are the best according to your experience using them.
Thanks and happy new year to all mankind, but specially to flightsim.com members!!!:)

Very hard to beat Fly Tampa's version of the old Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong - complete with the "infamous" checkerboard approach.

[ussmidway]

I second the Kai Tak suggestion. Its not just the airport, but the city scenery....beautiful. I love flying around there in an ultralight, or a helicopter. Having visited there years ago as a Navy man, its nostalgic.

[Ragtopjohnny]

If you want a good rendition of the RI airports, then you want to get Flight Scenery's Flight Zone 01, RI in the Pilot Shop here at Flightsim.com. One of the best sceneries of RI, it includes Providence, North Central, Mystery Farm, Quonset, Block Island. Really nicely done. Too bad they stopped making scenery after Portland.

I got to work in FSX after several tricks were needed....:rolleyes:

John Thuot II

[annber]

thanks for the advice David, and I agree with you ussmidway that it is the best out there, however I am concerned about whether my system can handle it. Right now I have a gateway one, intel core duo, 2gb with vista, I am not even sure what my graphics card is.

[Ragtopjohnny]

What's your processor speed? If you look in your Systems Device Manager on the Control Panel, it should tell you the Graphic Card info as well - the last thing you want to do is spend money on a resource hog.

John Thuot II

[787seattle]

Very hard to beat Fly Tampa's version of the old Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong - complete with the "infamous" checkerboard approach.

Or anything from FlyTampa, for that matter.

[annber]

its intel core duo T5250 @1.5GHz 1.49GHz, with 2gb memory and a 32bit operating system. I still can't tell what the video card is but I am sure it is nothing out of the ordinary.

[Ragtopjohnny]

Just out of curiosity, how are your FS9 frame rates? You might want to read the system specs on the airports pages where they are sold - depending on the detail they can really drop the performance on the sim, and arrival and departure FPS to me are the most important....:(


John Thuot II

[ussmidway]

Kai Tak does hit my frames a bit.
As was stated above though, anything from FlyTampa is top notch. I personally also enjoy stuff from Imagine Simulations and Blueprint Simulations. Blueprints stuff is cheap, I have KMCO, KMEM, KSDF, and KCLE from them, and enjoy them all. They are fairly basic airports compared to the other guys, but work for me(and $15US each).
St Martin from FlyTampa is fantastic also, easier on the FPS than Hong Kong.

[annber]

Good morning,
My frame rates are not great, in fact I did have problems with a st. marteen freeware download, but on the other hand, I downloaded Flytampa old Boston version which they have for free on their website and it runs perfectly well.
I agree, Flytampa seems to have the best airport sceneries, and having landed at hong kong a few times back in the late 80's it is very tempting to get that one.
On a different note, all my planes are freeware so far, mostly posky, with a few of them looking pretty good. Is it worth it to get payware aircraft? and why?
thanks,

[annber]

forgot, somehow i remember reading that there is a way to test what your frame rates are, does anybody know what the step by step is?

[opaplano]

forgot, somehow i remember reading that there is a way to test what your frame rates are, does anybody know what the step by step is?

SHIFT Z - will display a good deal of info at the top left of your screen - hitting it again will change the amount of data displaed. Hit once or twice again and the data will go away.

Hope that is what you were wanting to know.

[annber]

thanks David, that is exactly what I wanted, and I tried it right away. I tested it by taxying around Boston Logan (free FlyTampa version), and the results where not good. On average, my frame rates where in the 6-7 range, and when pointing at more complex scenery it went to 5, it also depended on what view I had, whenever I had a cockpit view the frame rates improved slightly, to around 9, sometimes 11, same as tower view.
These are my current display settings if anybody has a suggestion:

Terrain mesh complexity:40 Special effects detail:medium
terrain texture size:medium Scenery complexity:very dense
terrain detail:land only Autogen density:normal
water effects:none Add-on dynamic:very dense

target frame rate:40
Display resolution:1440x900x32

[mav316]

I have been eyeing Aerosofts "Charles De Gaulle", UK2000's "Heathrow and Stansted Extreme", Fly Tampa's "Dubai" and there is another payware for Kennedy Intl Airport that requires that you have the FS9v.1 Upgrade in order to use the demo and payware scenery. Just a few to take a look at!