VFR Photographic Scenery Generation X General Information:

Available as a series of 10 volumes, you can enjoy unsurpassed detail from the White Cliffs of Dover to the Scottish border and from the Norfolk Broads to the West coast of Ireland in this astonishing photographic scenery series for Microsoft Flight Simulator X.

Depending on the area you can expect ultra-high definition resolution for the entire UK.

England & Wales are available in 3 volumes and set to 1/2m/pixels with 0.60cm selected towns and cities and additional 3D bridges and buildings.
The Scottish islands have been rendered to an astonishing 0.60cm/pixels and the stunning whole of Ireland is developed at 1m/pixel.
The end result is smooth frame rates with exacting detail for your VFR flights.

The resolution and accuracy of the aerial photography and terrain data alone make VFR Generation X Version 3 the most detailed and accurate flight simulation scenery ever released. VFR Sceneries are currently being used by thousands of private pilots across the globe, and by commercial and military pilots from some of the world's most revered flying institutions.

What is Photographic Scenery?

As its name suggests, photographic scenery is scenery that has been generated from photographs of the actual terrain. As a result, photographic scenery accurately reflects everything that was on the ground at the time the photographs were taken, forming a highly realistic virtual world for you to explore.

Once installed, photographic scenery gives you the option to fly over the real world instead of the generic default scenery. If you choose to fly with the photographic scenery, the simulator will simply display the real photographs of the area you're flying over as textures for the terrain.

Creating Photographic Scenery

Photographic scenery is generally created using survey quality aerial photography, or high resolution satellite imagery (the source data), which is reformatted and configured such that a simulator can display it as scenery. The quality of the source data is therefore very important to good photographic scenery and consequently Horizon strives to source the very best imagery for its products. For large coverage photographic sceneries such as VFR Photographic Scenery, where tens of thousands of km2 of coverage are provided in a single product, it is essential that the photography is geographically and geometrically accurate, and that the edge-matching and colour balancing between individual photographs results in a seamless mosaic of imagery.

Once the ideal source of data has been located, Horizon uses proprietary software to process the data to the resolution and the format that is required by the flight simulator. Each stage of the processing is optimised to maintain the best possible level of quality in the resulting scenery.

Compatibility with Airports, Autogen, and Aircraft

Photographic scenery is compatible with all airports, 3D objects, and aircraft supplied with FSX, however there are some important points to note:

Airports:
Horizon's photographic sceneries are designed to be compatible with both default airports, and add-on airports (those developed by third parties).
Certain developers such as UK2000, Scotflight and Eiresim supply replacement airport files that are both highly detailed and accurate and have been developed to integrate seamlessly into photographic scenery generation X providing a greater sense of realism.

Earth Simulations ‘Treescapes’ series has also been designed to overlay 3D trees onto this photographic scenery.

Replacing the 3D autogen scenery

Microsoft Flight Simulator FSX comes with default scenery that include generic 3D objects (e.g. buildings, trees, vehicles). However, since photographic scenery shows real buildings, the generic objects do not represent those on the ground accurately and look somewhat out of place.

As a result, whilst it is possible to display generic 3D objects (autogen) on top of photographic scenery, it is not something that we would recommend and by default these do not appear.

That said, in some instances the developers may have modeled a small number of specific landmark buildings individually to an exact accurate placement. (e.g. The Houses of parliament, Millennium Done, Tower Bridge). Where such buildings exist, Horizon has re-positioned and scaled them to fit with the photographic scenery.

Compatibility with Other Sceneries

There are many types of scenery available for Microsoft Flight Simulator, including photographic scenery, replicating texture based scenery, buildings, vegetation, and more.
Since this VFR photographic scenery generation X provides seamless coverage of the ground over the area included, it is not compatible with generic replicating texture based sceneries which cover the same area.

What is Terrain Mesh?

We all know from experience that the world is not flat. It consists of lumps and bumps, hills and dips, and mountains and valleys that make it all the more interesting, especially when viewed from the air. Put simply, a terrain mesh is a digital model that describes the lumps and bumps in a format that the simulator can understand.

What does Terrain Mesh do?

The terrain mesh is used by the flight simulator to place hills, valleys, mountains, and all manner of other lumps and bumps (depending on its level of detail) in the simulator's virtual world. Without a terrain mesh, the Earth's surface would appear smooth and featureless. Of course we know this not to be the case - as do Microsoft (the developer of Flight Simulator) - which is why there is a default terrain mesh for the world provided with both products.
However the world is a very large place and to provide worldwide coverage, the developers have had to sacrifice the level of detail (resolution) of the terrain mesh, meaning that the default terrain (at c. 1km post spacing) broadly includes hills, mountains, and valleys, though not a great deal else. For small areas (e.g. individual countries) it is possible to generate terrain mesh of much higher resolution which can then include much smaller terrain features that might otherwise be lost.

What does Night Lighting do?

Put simply, night lighting gives you scenery to enjoy when the sun goes down. In keeping with the real world, Microsoft Flight Simulator dims the photographic scenery as the daylight wanes and the photographic scenery becomes less easy to recognise. To account for this, Horizon generates synthetic night lighting effects so that you can still make out navigable features that accurately reflect the views you would expect from the cockpit at night. If you choose to fly with night lighting, the simulator will simply display the appropriate night scenery textures in place of the regular photographic scenery.

Vector Night Lighting

Vector night lighting is composed of thousands of individual light points which are placed throughout the scenery (see below). Vector night lighting is generally created using land class data and road maps.

Texture Night Lighting

Texture night lighting is that which is 'burnt' directly into the photographic scenery textures themselves. Like Vector night lighting, Texture lighting is created using road maps and land class information, but also includes interpretation of the source aerial photography (see below).

Like photographic scenery, both texture and vector night lighting are compatible with all airports, 3D objects, and aircraft supplied with the simulation.

Minimum Specifications

Software: Microsoft FSX
Operating System: Windows XP(SP3)/Vista/7
Processor: 1.8 GHz
RAM: 1 GB
Graphics Card: 256 MB
Hard Disk Space: 18 GB
Graphics Drivers: DirectX 9.0c
Multimedia Drive: DVD

Recommended Specifications

Software: Microsoft FSX
Operating System: Windows XP(SP3)/Vista/7
Processor: 2.0 GHz
RAM: 2 GB
Graphics Card: 384+ MB
Hard Disk Space: 28 GB
Graphics Drivers: DirectX 9.0c
Multimedia Drive: DVD