I’ve spent years walking and climbing in Scotland and these are my comments. The overall scenery is excellent especially the Ben Nevis / Glen Coe area, but the Cullins of Sky particularly Sgurr Nan Gillian which is one of the most prominent summits in all of Scotland is a little disappointing and flat. I do understand we all can’t have our favourite mountain perfectly rendered.
The biggest immersion breaker in my opinion is TREES. What is it with all the trees when in the real world there are non for miles around. The tree setting needs to be turned down a bit. lol
Since having the sim on XBX I’ve flew for hours in the last month flying VFR using GA aircraft.
The blackshark.ai or whatever they used to plop down vegetation coverage was extremely overzealous in applying the trees. It seems to me that basically anything that vaguely whiffs of shrubbery on aerial imagery gets slapped down as a 40 foot tall tree; small shrubberies, bushes, or even just shadows at times.
I agree with the tree issue which happens nearly everywhere. With regard to Scotland though there are a few payware airports and tons of great stuff on flightsim.to. In fact I have so much Scottish scenery now in my community folder, I am going to have to move it into its own folder except when I am actually using it.
Nice photogrammetry of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee available and good payware airports for each of these cities and Scotflight has done some of the smaller airfields very nicely. Not forgetting the work that Superspud has done on some of the islands too
Well, I live in Scotland and have been climbing the mountains here for over 30 years. Recently I’ve been flying the H145 from Inverness on HEMS missions a lot, which really lets you see the scenery and yes the quality of the mainland/south central Highlands, Glen Coe, Lochaber etc is amazing. I mean really excellent. But, yes it falls down on the islands and coastlines somewhat. The Cullin are especially disappointing.
Re: trees. It’s annoying that the AI picks up every dark smudge of gorse or dwarf trees and renders them as full-size conifers. Lewis is a verdant forest! Fortunately they are pretty easy to get rid of with a simple mod - I cleared the Applecross peninsular in about 10 minutes last night.
It would be nice if you could specify an altitude threshold for the timberline and treelines too - that would clear the random single trees off the summits
The issue with the Cuillins, or more specifically the Black Cuillin, is that the Digital Elevation Model used lacks enough definition to create sharp peaks in the scenery. No matter how close you get Sgurr Nan Gillean remains rounded, as do other prickly parts of the ridge. The Red Cuillin being more rounded look much more true to life I think.
The trees are very distracting though, especially when they appear along a ridge line against the sky. Still I find it endlessly amazing flying over Scotland in the sim, and consider the experience mostly extremely positive.
Same with the massive amount of trees in the Pennines. There are maybe 5 in the whole of the Pennines outside of plantations yet in game they’re everywhere.
I’ve noticed also that if the satellite imagery in mountainous areas is taken in clear conditions with a relatively low sun, then the resulting deep shadow is often stuffed with trees.
As a Scots xboxer, I’d love to see some of the big cities in photogrammetry - my one hope is that if we do eventually get a ‘City update UK’ to fix London, then hopefully at least Edinburgh gets some love too.
Thanks for the reply’s. Just a bit disappointed with Sgurr Nan Gilean as this is my favourite summit and there are some pointy peaks in other parts of the globe.
As it happens I flew over Lewis this morning and the area above Stornaway is like Sherwood Forest, well maybe not that bad.
Spent a month in Elgin in 1990. I still have a good friend who lives there. I fly over Elgin every so often and believe it is fairly correct but there are some areas that seem not so “real”. Is it a possibility that smaller towns and villages are not as accurate as larger cities??? FWIW
Some places are better than others which is understandable.
Just flew over the Lakes today and Paver Ark and Pike o Stickle are good but the whole of Scarfell Crag is covered in trees, big !!. Overall I’m having a great time with my new Sim.
!!. Overall I’m having a great time with my new Sim.