John Dow

Don't close your mind to it. I'm a committed one time one payment simmer but if I can get photoreal TE quality VFR around the world for $10-20 a month I'm in.

I did. I reversed the soundtrack for that portion which kept the engine noise but made the music unrecognisable.

I think it's because the developer has a personal connection to the place. Some of us like to fly around the scenery not just head into an airport and out again. In fact, for me, the airport is often the least interesting part of the flight.

Youtube informs me the video can't be viewed in the USA due to a copyright claim on one of the songs. When will these content holders grow up and realise a bit of music in the background of a video has no effect on their sales or other monetising aspects of their copyright? Anyway bad luck USA audience. I've uploaded a modified version that should be OK in the USA now.

Took a leisurely trip around the bay area in the freeware C47 Dakota from Fly Away Simulations, hit the record button and this is a few snippets from a glorious scenic flight: Here's a version that should play in the USA, see if you can identify the strange sounding music from about 1 min 14 secs :-)

Aaaah well it was working perfectly until I encountered a wind shift over the top of Half Dome...

Yosemite in the new True Earth Northern California for X Plane 11 was a golden opportunity to record an unconventional arrival in the king of aerobatic aircraft, the default C172.

Just a heavily edited capture of yesterday's flight along the mountain valleys from Lugano to Samedan in real weather. Aircraft is Aerosoft's Wilga, a great little VFR platform. https://youtu.be/o-Hag81oJqg Here are a couple of flight plans if you want to explore this part of the world, it's not necessary to have Samedan Airport but it makes the arrival a bit more special! VFR Bad Ragaz to Samedan.pln VFR Lugano to Samedan.pln

The contrails are actually 100% caused by pollution, though the actual pollution levels compared to the visual aspect is very small. During combustion in the jet engine the kerosene fuel is converted into minute sooty particles, so small as to be essentially invisible but present nevertheless. Each minute particle acts as a tiny catalyst to attract the water vapour from the air and combine it into minute droplets, which in their trillions form the contrails that you see. If the ambient humidity and temperature aren't close to cloud forming levels, the water vapour will evaporate off again and the contrail will disappear. if the conditions are cloud forming but the only thing lacking for condensation was sutable catlyst particles, the contrails will remian in the sky for extended periods. Either that... or the scientists and meteorologists are wrong and in fact they are chemtrails and we are all being mind-controlled ha ha ha

You can install Orbx Central and keep your current FTX Central going and only put new sceneries into the new structure. Your old ones will stay the same

If you ever tried to make even a simple farm airfield you might start to get a small inkling of how much work goes in to making any airport for the sim, and if you look around EGPH at the incredible level of detail, each component of which is hand modelled at some stage, you might just start to get an appreciation of the work that goes in to these products. And that's without the cost of obtaining the licensed imagery for the ground details... To answer your headline question... the answer is undoubtedly.

I buckled under the strain and purchased X-Vision. It's totally worth it, if only to fix the radioactive trees, but also the best of the presets transforms the X Plane world into something believable, not that muddy brown dishwater look that Laminar somehow managed to concoct!

Lol I think most people nowadays understand the concept of speeded up footage

Unfortunately the biggest single factor is the ground imagery, that is purchased initially and the airport is built around that, and cannot be just modified or replaced.

Purchase FSUIPC and use that to assign your axes and buttons and keystrokes if it takes your fancy. Much more customisable than the P3D controls menu