Thanks for the effort and the screenshots, guys. They clearly did some work (Zeltweg now has taxiways and hangars instead of a single runway) but overall it's of course no match for a dedicated airport scenery pack.

I'm not sure the photo scenery will do much good for flying down low, they are usually best at alt. IMHO his development efforts might have been better spent on adding airports to the Austrian Pro X scenery since THAT is a real hole to be filled.

Overall the FSX screens here to not knock my socks off, the visible difference to FS9 seems minor. I guess it's really a matter of where you fly.

Overlooked it or something.



Well, and as I said...for missing airports, there's always DIY. There's easy to handle programs out there with which you can at least place some standard objects to breathe a bit more life into the default airports.
For real-looking terminals there's GMax and Gimp, both freely avaiable. Granted, you need to get into them, but at least you'll be busy enough not to complain every second about the lack of add-ons for your desired area (not specifically aimed at you, more at the whole community).

And no, there's no excuse for not at least trying. For questions, there's FS development communities out there and for starters, some tutorials.
The only issue might be time, but as many successful (freeware) developers have a job and a family and still manage to pump out their add-ons, it's not a really valid argument.

So go out there and become a FSX developer. Even if you're just doing it for yourself instead of others.

If there was a visual editor for placing default objects directly on the map in 3d view (or 2d view) I'd give it a try. Is there such a thing?

Heretic, I did not mean to be harsh, its just my opinion that currently, if one wants to fly mainly in Austria, he or she is better off with FS9 than FSX;
of course, given time, one could do something about the lack of airport scenery for FSX, but then again, I for example do have a girlfriend, a rather demanding job, 2 dogs and some other hobbies that prevent me from becoming a fully fledged FSX developer;
and I do not critize FSX for being lame, its just that my FS9 install beats my FSX install in certain respects;
in others though, FSX is a clear winner but luckily, my HD space permits both sims to stay installed for quite some time longer

Yep. Whisplacer.
http://lc0277.nerim.net/wiki/index.php?whisplacer

Also, Flight1 has a payware program for editing airports also having a live preview feature.




Fair enough, except for the "girlfriend and hobbies" part.

You see, time is not an issue ever as long as you're not expecting monetary compensation for your add-on work. If curiosity gets the best of you one day, you decide to enhance your favourite airport, you take a look into the tools avaiable, you fiddle around here and there, you become proud of your first successes, then you do some more work and when you're satisfied with what you've done you decide whether it's worth to be uploaded somewhere or not. And then you get ambitious and well, kind of addicted.
I know people who started out like that and are now pumping out one add-on after another.

The best thing about is that you can do this at your own pace. The only expectations you have to fulfill are your own.

FSX has billions of possibilities left open and it would be completely unfair to see the sim neglected in terms of add-ons. There's nothing coming up in terms of a successor for a long while, so why not make the complete switch now and make FSX 100% better than FS9 (instead of just 99%)?