Does anyone have Ultimate Alaska X? What are your thoughts on it?

I am becoming less and less enthusiastic for Flight and more and more interested in just putting the effort into beatifying FSX. There is a nice trailer for Ulitmate Alaska X (UAX from here on), but it's got lots of bloom and possibly lots of carefully selected shots.

Does it just move around cities and coastlines, or does it actually do much to improve the overall appearance? (I know it's a landclass product, but you can do a lot or a little with landclass...) I'm mostly interested in rural/bush flying. ORBX has really nailed it. I know UAX won't be ORBX quatliy, though... But ORBX doesn't offer the big part of Alaska.

Stock FSX Alaska is pretty crappy IMHO. Most of it appears very generic. And the use of very dark trees on lots of white textures makes me feel like there is a dense patch of trees that is following my plane around a frozen barren landscape.

Do you have any of the other Ultimate Terrain X products? Do you have a terrain textures replacement package like Ground Environment X or similar?

I don't have Ultimate Alaska X, but my experience with the North America and Europe packages is that the UTX products do a lot to improve VFR features like rivers, lakes, coastlines, roadways and railroads and do rearrange the landclass to something that is usually more diverse if not more accurate. However, it generally doesn't add or replace textures or autogen objects. The product screenshots show how the landclass changed the urban areas by clearing trees and adding the cities. However, I would expect it to do little to change the look of the interior other than adding the water bodies, roads and small population centers that might be simply represented as dense forest right now.

ORBX did say that they are going to do Alaska. The said mid last year, no idea when they'll get around to it though. Just saying incase you want to hold on.

I have used both GEX and UTX USA in the past. In some places, the combination of the two did a lot to improve the quality of the scenery. In some places, one seemed to have more of an impact than the other. Finally, in some places (Bay Area Penninsula, California Central Coast), the result was no better or even sometimes worse than stock FSX.

I understand UAX won't replace textures or change autogen and that it will only change landclass. For the purposes of this post, let's assume I have GEX installed. The question is just what did they do with the landclass. I wish I could try it out. $40 is too much for me to spend based on a few screenshots and a highly edited trailer on youtube.

+1. I found an old discussion about it on the FTX forums. Sure makes it hard to think that $40 for UAX is worth it...

Have you given this one a look: http://secure.simmarket.com/fsaddon-tongass-fjords-x.phtml

Yeah, I did. I was hoping to get the "big" part of Alaska north of that scenery package. Potentially one that covered the larger area for a reasonable price, even if not done in the same amount of detail that ORBX or the Tongass Fjords package do.

That being said, I looked thoroughly into all the different combos of textures and landclass that I could use for Alaska (FSG, SceneryTech, GEX, Ultimate Alaska X) and none of the addressed my major issue. To test this I'd take off from Unalakeet in winter and look around. There was always a big, dark patch of trees under my aircraft and within a close radius. Then everything beyond that would look like the planet Hoth. So I'd head toward the barren snow out in front of me somewhere (maybe I can set my Maule w/ ski's down in the snow there...), but then as I'd approach, trees would start popping up, and what appeared to be barren, snowy, tundra and hills from a few miles away is actually now a dense forest. The only way to fix this would be a new combination of autogen and texture that only puts trees on tiles that look like they have trees on them. None of the products I tried did this.

So, looks like ORBX and Tongass Fjords are my best/only options for now. I haven't tried the Tongass Fjords package, but I know in ORBX PNW they've done a good job at eliminating or minimizing the issue I described above. Tongass Fjords looks like it's done by someone who's also worked or working on ORBX stuff, so maybe it's just as good...

Correct, Tongass Fjords was done by Holger Sandmann and Bill Womack - originally for FS9, then updated and expanded for FSX. Both gentlemen now work for OrbX.

So, I guess I screwed something up in my initial evaluation (scenery library order or something)...

Ultimate Alaska X solved the exact issue I was dealing with. I didn't have time to grab any screen shots, but Unalakeet is now surrounded by tiles that look like they have trees on them. The same goes for other areas - if it has trees on it, an appropriate tile is used so that even from far away you can tell what kind of terrain you're flying into. The autogen "ring" is still pretty noticeable during winter, but not nearly as bad as it was before.

All in all, I like it. The use of objects in towns instead of autogen buildings is nice. And then there's the normal UT improvements to lakes/rivers and town placement. Not ORBX quality, but it covers a lot more ground for a similar price.