Landclass overkill?

[arrowmaker]

This is a question for those with UTX and GEX. I have just installed the UTX USA and Canada packages as well as Ground Environment X USA & Canada. My understanding is that one of the things that UTX does is alter landclass. My question is this: If I already have UTX installed is any additional landclass/mesh product a bit of overkill?

I already have FSGlobal 2008 installed. However, I only use that for mesh coverage outside of the USA and currently have the USA mesh unchecked in my scenery library.

[lucas81]

FS Global is a separate thing because it is the mesh, not landclass/vector data correction which the UTX does. Same with GEX. GEX gives you only new ground textures and nothing more.

Landclass tells the game where to put forests, crops, etc. Both mesh and GEX keep the default fsx landclass, as they are responsible for different things, as I wrote above. UTX will also bring you improved vector data - roads, shorelines, streams, railroads.

If you would like to use some additional landclass, like Cloud9's Xclass, place it between UTX landclass Urban and UTX landclass - vegetation in the FSX Scenery Library. So, nothing will be messed - FS Global will improve your mesh resolution, GEX will improve ground textures and the UTX will improve landclass, roads, rivers, shores, etc.

Hope I was clear :)
Lucas

[arrowmaker]

That was an excellent and concise description. I guess I was just a bit confused about the difference between mesh and landclass. I guess I'll be ticking that North American FSGlobal entry in my scenery library after all. Many thanks, Lucas. :ernae:

[Meshman]

Mesh is the source of the sim's elevation data. Default FSX in the US is 38m, with a very low compression ratio. As I understand FS Global, it too is 38m and I am not aware of it's compression ratio.

Mesh in FSX works well up to about 10m level, as anyhting lower than 10m is mostly hype.

UTX adds in vector based scenery (lines and polygons) that gives more accurate roads, shorlines, lakes etc. In the US and Canada versions of UTX it adds in some urban land class, which is synthetic based upon certain bits of data used. It does not add or change any non-urban land class features.

Land classification in FSX tells the sime to display a certain texture set at a specific spot. These spots are 1.2km squares. As befitting a large scale development project, the data used by Microsoft may not be the most current or accurate. Thus there are other land class products for the U.S. and North America. FS Genesis, Scenery Tech and Cloud9 carry products to "enhance" or "refine" the land class calls that FSX makes.

Land class calls a texture set, which GEX replaces the default textures with their versions.

All of the above boils down to this; At some point you might grow weary of all the drab and bland texture calls made by the default land class file in FSX. So yes, an addon land class product, or two, may make things more realistic.