I am an owner of Bijan Seasons Enhanced and just purchased EGV. This is not meant as a criticism but just what I have observed based on my neighborhood.
Although I find the EGV trees very well designed, they are not representative of what I see outside. The maples are far too prevalent. Instead of scattered trees among the houses they are more like houses within a forest of tress. Far too many and too large.
Bijan’s trees are not as large and there are fewer of them. Much more representative of what I see outside.
Also EGV replaced my large blue spruce in my front yard with a large maple. Bijan’s version retained the spruce, although the PG does not do it justice up close.
One final comparison I looked at was the impact on the sim. After purchasing Bijan’s version I immediately noticed a 5% gain in FPS over the default. With EGV I am back to the lower frame rates. Looking at my neighborhood, 101 FPS with Bijan compared to 95 with EGV.
Of course these were very limited tests only comparing to what I know. Other areas of the world may have completely opposite results.
In both cases the sim looks better compared to the default.
Thanks for the feedback. For me, personally tree type and quantity accuracy is far more important in areas I know than whether the trees are different heights or are less uniformally planted. Take Bellever forest on Dartmoor, beautiful pine plantation in real life, but all decidous oaks in the default sim. Bijan hand changed it to connifer pines a long with a bunch of others at my request. If BBD mod makes the decidous trees look more varied but it remains the wrong trees then its useless to me.
I’m not actually an aviation enthusiast at all, I have a VR headset and love exploring the world, especially where I live finding new places to visit in real life.
I feel the sim limitations mean no third party mod will be perfect and all will have weaknesses so sometimes it might be a case of using a particular mod for particular areas, Bijan’s where he has done hand crafted work and BBD where the trees look more varied for areas I’m not familiar with so incorrect tree type won’t bother me.
This is the problem with all these mods, it’s like whack a mole. Fix one area by adjusting sliders it takes away from another. You need someone with the fanatical dedication of a Bijan to hand correct the mistakes!
So while I was pleased with the trees in the Southeast US where I live, after a several more flights I did notice a decrease in tree coverage. And it’s quite obvious where trees are missing. I did a comparison with this mod and season’s enhanced, I observed much denser coverage with season’s enhanced. With this mod, the trees are more accurate and visually appealing, but sparse coverage is an issue for me. I was surprised to see some people complain that they are seeing too many trees, my experience has been the opposite.
I was speaking privately with another forum member last night, who brought up the very valid point that BBD’s product is brand new, therefore giving Bijan’s a considerable (and valuable) head-start. We’ve had one update already for EGV, and it’s reasonable to assume further updates are forthcoming, based on user feedback.
As you can see, both the Bijan and EGV are very close and quite acceptable to real life, however the EGV trees do cover more area in some sections and are somewhat larger.
The one difference that jumped out at me is the saturation in Bijan’s. While the coverage is definitely closer to reality, I prefer the more natural colours of EGV.
If you’re willing to waste a little of your time… it would be really interesting to see what happens when you run both of them simultaneously. Would you get Bijan’s terrain corrections with BBD’s trees? An ungodly mess? Inquiring minds want to know…
Ok, when both are loaded it looks like Bijan takes precedent. The image is the same as my Bijan screenshot from earlier so it seems Bijan overwrites EGV.
I still need to test EGV further, but so far I wouldn’t say that the colours look more natural overall. Quite the opposite, in fact – for example, I took this screenshot with EGV activated near Western Sydney. You don’t see trees with such garish colours in Bijan’s Seasons. As I’ve mentioned, EGV is a very promising add-on, but at the moment I’d say it still has its weaknesses and that Bijan offers more overall. I’d be happy to take some comparative screenshots over the weekend in a range of very different regions. In fact, I’m personally interested to see which add-on comes out on top.
I can’t confirm that’s the case on my PC. I can see the grass in LOWI. And yet Innsbruck is a good example of the add-on’s shortcomings. The mountains around the airport no longer have any trees at all. That’s definitely not right. I know Innsbruck very well in real life. The longer I test EGV, the more I favour Bijan.
I think some are mistaking this product for a direct competition to Bijan and his amazing attention to detail.
I don’t see that to be the case here.
This product reminds me of another that was done by Rex for 2020, except this is for 2024, this has done a much easier a job of installing, a more detailed approach and, I think it looks like a massive improvement over stock sim.
Bijan as I said has a great sence of detail and is almost fanatical in his approach. They are two very differing products. So I think it unfair to make judgement of BBD EGV on that basis only.
That said, each to their own perception of what the sim should be, either a truly accurate, fully detailed clone of the earth or a broader, more believable, less uniform sim, that does look great from the air as that is where we spend most of our time. Personally I can see the need for both approaches combined into one product. We all want the areas that we know well to be accurate and that is a massive job to take on for all to be pleased. There is a lot of room for this product to really grow as it has great potential.
Interesting. I’d cleared the rolling cache too. But perhaps the add-on is conflicting with another one on my system. I’ll have another look at it tomorrow.
Just got it and tested. Not good. Flying in my area (Pacific Northwest) I was shocked to see all the conifers replaced by deciduous. Not a pine tree in sight, which should be just the opposite. Also the trees looked liked they were in rows. No other tree mods installed.
