Ultimate Terrain Europe review

Amsterdam

No you’ve not made a mistake, this is Boomtown and not AVSim of FlightSim.com. I really am about to review and add-on for Microsoft Flight Simulator. This is something of a relief for me because I’m getting to come out of the flight simulator closet. Regular readers will know my predilection for racing games but what you’re not likely to know is I like nothing better than touring the far flung corners of the globe in Flight Simulator 2004. There I’ve admitted it, so let’s move on.

Before I tackle this important release from Scenery Solutions I think it’s probably me worth explaining the way that scenery is constructed in Microsoft Flight Simulator. FS2004 features the whole globe rendered in 3D, however some areas are more detailed than others. The 3D nature of the globe, the component that displays mountains, canyons etc is based on terrain mesh scenery. You can buy more detailed scenery than provided by default which means you’ll see more complexity in the landscape. In my case I have a mesh of 19 metre resolution for England and Wales installed, plus a mesh of 76 metre resolution for the rest of Europe.

Landclass

Audenshaw Reservoir, Manchester, at dusk. Note the new UT Europe night lighting.

Next we have something called landclass. Landclass data tells FS2004 what each 1.2 km grid square is used for. If an area is part of a city the sim is told by the landclass to display urban textures. If the tile next to it is flagged as farmland by the landclass, then the simulator will ensure there’s a transition between the urban textures of one grid and the fields in the next area.

The scenery textures are placed over the 3D terrain mesh according to the types flagged by the landclass. FS2004 uses something called Autogen to add more detail to textures. An urban texture area will automatically add 3D houses to the area for example, a rural area will add farmhouses and trees. You can buy replacement texture sets of varying quality and in the screenshots you’ll see in this review I have textures provided by Ground Environment installed, which do look a lot better than the default.

Another level of the scenery is 3D objects. You can download many free and commercial software packages that add 3D cities and airports to the sim, vastly improving the quality and realism of the scenery. So you can see how the 3D terrain, landclass, textures and added objects all combine to create the world in which you fly in Flight Simulator 2004.

Why Ultimate Terrain?

So why bother with something like Ultimate Terrain Europe? Well we’ve been pretty badly served on this side of the pond from Microsoft’s default scenery. Take a look at the following image for example.

Marsden, West Yorkshire. Without Ultimate Terrain Europe.

This shows the area around the village of Marsden in West Yorkshire. There’s hardly any village there at all, the default landclass not making it clear there’s an urban area there. Another problem is the railway line, it’s on the surface, when in reality it passes through the Stanedge Tunnel. There are also several large resevoirs above the village that should be on the middle right of this image but aren’t featured in the simulator at all.

Now take a look at the same area with Ultimate Terrain Europe installed.

Marsden, West Yorkshire. With Ultimate Terrain Europe.

UT Europe options

Notice in the second shot how more detail the road system is leading to the village. The railway line is now gone, with it emerging from the tunnel just before Marsden itself towards the top of the image. The biggest change you’re likely to notice is the numerous bodies of water now included in the scenery.

This gives a good impression of the kind of changes that Ultimate Terrain Europe makes to Flight Simulator 2004. Firstly it alters all the coastlines of Western Europe providing more more detail, intricate harbours and even sandy beaches. Secondly it features detailed road networks based on real date. Thirdly new urban and commercial landclass data fills the region with more accurate infomration on towns and adds many towns and villages not even present in Microsoft’s default scenery. UT Europe also adds a new night lighting system which displays points of light rather than textures with lights drawn on them. New features such as detailed city parks and golf courses are also added.

Configuration

UT Europe texture settings

The amount of data is staggering, totally transforming most of western Europe and showing countries such as the UK, France, Germany, Denmark, Spain and Italy in much more detail than previously. This is not just a matter of pure eye-candy or wanting to find your own street. The real benefit of having scenery this detailed in the sim is that you can enjoy realistic Visual Flight Rules, following roads and railways from a road atlas.

Ultimate Terrain Europe does make a huge difference to the sim, in many places in the default FS2004 rivers are merely a texture line. Now they have their full dimensions displayed. One thing you may notice from the screenshots I’ve taken for this feature is how prominent and bright the roads are. If this isn’t to your taste don’t worry, UTE’s configurator allows you to choose darker and thinner roads. But the options don’t stop there, you can configure Ultimate Terrain in many ways and choose which elements are displayed.

Let’s take another look at a before and after comparison. This time the small town of Canet Plage near Perpignon in the South of France. Firstly here’s the shot without UTE.

Canet Plage without UTE.

The image isn't very detailed at all in the default scenery. The coastline is very basic and rough, with Canet istelf missing from the world. Take a look at the following image of the same region with Ultimate Terrain Europe installed.

Canet Plage with UTE.

Copenhagen by day

Now you can see much more detail in the coastline, road network and the landclass itself. Canet now exists behind the left wing of my plane. The coastline isn’t as straight now and shows more detail, as does the lake behind the beach.

Ultimate Terrain Europe is currently a download only product, but for less than £25 you get 1.5 GB of data. Flight1’s servers are fast too and it only took me a couple of hours via my 2MB connection to get the installation file. Installing was easy as is configuring the software to your own preferences.

The add-on looks particularly good when combined with more detailed terrain meshes. I have a couple of commercial meshes installed for UK and the rest of Europe but there are plenty of freeware mesh sceneries that will enhance your UTE experience.

A Few Minor Problems

Copenhagen at dusk

Are there any problems with UTE?

Well the use of night lighting isn’t perfect, despite it being a quantum leap over the default. The problem rests with the technology behind FS2004 and is not of Scenery Solutions’ making. As you can see in some of the screenshots there are points of light added to the scenery at dusk and at night. These are placed as 3D scenery objects and although you can’t see them during the day, they are still there. This means that there will be fewer autogen buildings displayed due to the invisible lights in the same area. Thankfully there’s a simple tick-box in the UTE settings to remove the night-lighting system if you’re going to be flying in daylight. I have noticed some flickering of the night lighting when seen through clouds, again this seems to be a limitation of FS2004 itself.

Innsbruck, Austria.

Autogen is also affected by the density of the road network. You can choose to display all roads in the dataset, which will show even the most minor of roads, but this will limit the area available for 3D autogen buildings. All the screenshots in the review were made with the preferable setting of major urban roads on, but minor urban roads off. This provides plenty of detail but also some 3D autogen buildings.

There is some missing data, or at least a bug in UTE that means that the Scilly Isles aren’t displayed properly. But Scenery Solutions support being what it is, this will be fixed in a patch soon. The developer has already released many patches for UTE for those using other add-on scenery products that may conflict with Ultimate Terrain Europe. Not only is UTE a great package, but the support is of the highest quality.

A Must Have

The Llanberis Pass, Snowdonia, Wales.

Ultimate Terrain Europe is the finest add-on I’ve used for Flight Simulator 2004. What it adds to the experience of flight over Western Europe is atmosphere. The world now looks detailed and populated and at night it looks alive thanks to the gorgeous night lighting system. UTE is great for vanity flights should you want to fly over areas you know very well.

The simple yet powerful configuration utility makes using Ultimate Terrain Europe a breeze and the expansion has very little noticable effect on the simulators peformance. As far as value for money goes, this is perhaps the most bang for my bucks in gaming for quite a while. Scenery Solutions has put an awful lot of love into Ultimate Terrain Europe and it shows. It should be an essential purchase for anyone who enjoys FS2004 in European skies.

You can find details on UTE’s coverage area, downloads and purchasing at the Scenery Solutions Website. The series also features Ultimate Terrain USA and Ultimate Terrain Canada/Alaska.