Hi Dave and others - I have and use FSX Gold (Deluxe plus Acceleration) and currently have only one addon - The Superbug. I primarily fly in the sim from San Diego and San Francisco but also enjoy Europe. Can you guys recommend to me your top five payware/freeware addons ? The order they should be installed in ? and any tweaks I might need to get them all working with each other in harmony ? To narrow the selection a bit, I am looking for some very high resolution maps of California, and anything including realistic carrier aviation and carrier aircraft. I am not interested in civilian aviation, passenger planes or helicopters.

Thanks

1. FSGenesis for terrain mesh. IIRC it corrects height of mountains etc so they're not flat as default. http://www.fsgenesis.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFNT

2. Orbx scenery. Currently covers all of Australia and most of west coast USA. http://fullterrain.com/index.html

3. REX2 environment. Clouds etc, very well worth it although Orbx comes with some nice clouds. http://www.realenvironmentxtreme.com/

4. (I don't have this, but if you want photoscenery California here ya go) http://www.megasceneryearth.com/store/cart.php?target=category&category_id=64

5. As far as aircraft go the VRS Superbug is a great choice (Look into the TacPack too). Also look at Aerosoft (F-16) Virtavia and IRIS simulations for military aircraft. Although not as advanced as the superbug the model is very well done. I'm looking forward to A2A's F-4 Phantom for FSX.

They should all work with no tweaks.

Best military airfields here. Small selection, but payware worthy (freeware) http://www.airfieldconstructiongroup.org/drupal/

Carrier here-- http://www.taskforcefsx.com/ships.html

Need any links look in the resource thread stickied above

Honorable mention terrains
Aerosoft's Germany terrain
VFR UK

Dave,


How does FSGenesis work alonside ORBX, GEX USA, etc?

FSGenesis - Mesh (elevation data)
GEX - generic ground textures (textures)
UTX - landclass (what texture is displayed where)

ORBX - custom scenery incorporating textures and landclass

Great, thanks Dave. I have seen OrbX and REX in youtube videos but not used it myself. Will look into it.

BTW, Orbx has a pretty good demo of the NA stuff with a large region and highly detailed airport (KHQM):
http://fullterrain.com/product_demos.html

The Lotus L-39 also looks amazing. I keep intending to pick that up. The Razbam A-7 is really nice. You just missed out on his $5 sale though.

Currently, there is no ORBX of San Diego, San Francisco or Europe. However, there is Ground Environment X (aka GEX) for U.S.A.-Canada and a similar product for all of Europe.

Also consider an A.I. traffic program so you can have real liveries in all your favorite airports, with the correct liveries in the correct airports. I recommend MyTraffix X 2010 or Traffic X. The first is bigger, the second has a couple of extra features, both are install and forget. No additional input required if you don't desire it.