Enhancing Flight Simulator X

Regular readers will know I'm something of a nut for flight simulations, in fact they are my favourite kind of game. So yes, as you're about to say, it must really suck living in 2009. Sure there aren't many sims kicking around these days but that doesn't mean flight thrills aren't available.

Microsoft's Flight Simulator X is a game that's really coming into its own now that affordable PC hardware has caught up with the FSX software. Recent months have also seen the release of a variety of add-ons that really bring an extra level of graphical polish to the game.

You really can make the already rather pretty (especially in DX10 mode) Flight Simulator X even more gorgeous. With hundreds if not thousands of add-ons available no single feature can do the market justice, but here I take a look at some of the best environmental expansions available for the simulator.

Ultimate Terrain X

With UTX notice the grass encasements at the side of highways and junctions.

Scenery Solutions' Ultimate Terrain X expansions are some of the best available for FSX. If you purchase the United States, Canada and Europe packages you'll have treated your FSX installation to a massive upgrade for a considerable part of the globe.

First it's worth mentioning what UTX doesn't do. It won't make the underlying 3D topography any more details nor will it completely revamp the landclass of your sim.

However what it does do is spectacular. If you want a more realistic representation of coastlines, lakes, rivers, cities, roads, railroads, parks, golf courses, road traffic and night lighting this is the expansion for you. In fact I'd say that if you can afford only one expansion to FSX then one of the UTX packages is the one should go for.

For comparison shots of vanilla FSX and with Ultimate Terrain X Europe installed check our my full review.

Horizon VFR Generation X

Many photoscenery packages are now available for FSX. One of the best is Horizon Simulations' VFR Generation X (Version 2.0).

This payware scenery provides detailed photoscenery of the whole of England and Wales. Not only that, Gen X Version 2 also comes complete with detailed coastal watermasks and night lighting.

The performance in FSX is excellent, most users will enjoy framerates higher than using the default auto-generated 3D scenery.

Many freeware and payware packaged are available to enhance Gen X - for example adding trees and detailed airports.

Be warned though, if you pick up all four volumes of this photoscenery you are going to need nearly 80GB of hard disk space.

Real Environment Xtreme

The recently released Real Environment Xtreme is a remarkable package. It performs two functions. The first is to replace water, cloud, sky, sun, lightning and airport textures with superb high resolution versions.

The new water and clouds are the real highlight. You can see videos of these here at Vimeo. The tropical water with coral visible underneath is particularly impressive.

Secondly Real Environment Xtreme provides realtime downloaded weather that is much more detailed than FSX's own inbuilt weather engine. Combined with REX's cloud textures FSX looks like a whole new next-generation simulator.

Traffic X

Flight Simulator X ships with plenty of commercial airliners but only a handful of airlines, even worse these are fictional concerns. The sim's airports appear rather lonely affairs as a consequence of this.

Thankfully though you are spoilt for choice when it comes to AI aicraft expansions. Just Flight's Traffic X package is the most recently released payware offering. Following some initial teething troubles a service package seems to have solved major problems and Traffic X is now an impressive package.

Traffic X adds hundreds of real world airlines to FSX, you'll now experience busy airports full of convincing traffic. The package also features AI helicopter flights and military aircraft. The AI aicraft models are very framerate friendly and unlike some rivals are fully compatible with FSX's DX10 mode.

Active Sky Advanced

HiFi Simulations released Active Sky Advanced just before Christmas and it is the latest in its line of weather configuration programs for the Flight Simulator series.

Active Sky Advanced ensures that the weather where you fly matches the real world weather conditions there as much as possible.

It does much more than that though, it enables you to fly in weather conditions from past dates, simulates hurricanes, allows you to drag and drop weather conditions onto the map and check flight plans against weather conditions.

On its own or combined with the cloud enhancements in Real Environment Xtreme, ASA creates an extremely believable world to fly in. Active Sky Advanced is likely to be remembered as one of FSX's finest expansions.

Ground Environment X

While Real Environment Xtreme replaces the water, airport, sky and cloud textures in Flight Simulator it doesn't touch the regular ground textures. Truth be told Microsoft did a pretty poor job of ground textures in the sim, especially the autumn set.

Flight 1's Ground Environment X fixes those problems with totally new high detail ground textures with new carefully placed 3D autogen objects. At the moment the only texture set available are for North America, but a visit to the official forum will allow you to see preview shots of the forthcoming European set.

Really amazing artistic skill has gone into creating these textures. What's more, GEX is designed to work beautifully with Ultimate Terrain X, providing textures for some of UTX's custom objects such as car parks, graveyards and golf courses.

FTX Australia

Orbx Simulation Systems' FTX Australia is perhaps the crowning achievement of FSX scenery design. A team of veteran flight sim add-on creators have mapped Australia in four inexpensive volumes and shown other scenery designers how things really should be done.

Using aerial photographs as a guide, the FTX team has created 3D scenery of Australia within the design parameters of regular FSX scenery. Similar to Ultimate Terrain, but going a stage further, FTX features custom textures, coastlines, landclass and other features which knock the socks off anything else available. You can see videos of the scenery at Vimeo.

So good is the FTX Australia scenery that many FSX users now refuse to fly anywhere else because all other scenery looks a generation behind. Enhanced with numerous payware airports and hundreds of freeware additions, FTX Australia is a landmark release. These are the talents Microsoft should be employing for the creation of its next sim.

Orbx goal is to create more than just Australian scenery and its first US scenery is already in beta testing. This scenery will depict the Pacific North West and looks rather spectacular thanks to its combination of photoscenery mountains seguing into regular 3D scenery at lower altitudes.

Flight Simulator Water Configurator

Unlike the other FSX expansions we've looked at today the Flight Simulator Water Configurator is completely free.

One of the problems with FSX is that the water is too reflective. FSWC solves that problem by changing the water shaders that the sim uses. Users are able to change a number of water wave and reflection parameters and see the results right away without having to reload the sim.

At the moment FSWC only works with Flight Sim X in DX9 mode. However a new version is currently in testing which will also offer control of the simulator's DX10 water.

FSWC is a must download for any FSX user and it works particularly well with the water textures featured in Real Environment Xtreme. In fact you may notice if you visit some of the links on this page that developers such as those of REX, FTX and FSWC have worked together to ensure their products work very well together and actually enhance each others expansion.