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Disclaimer. This FAQ is not intended to replace the official technical support information available from Just Flight, and as such it will not provide a complete range of support information. Please see SUPPORT for details of how to obtain technical support.

FS2002 features

Is the photographic scenery true FS2002 scenery?

Yes. The photographic scenery is standard FS2002 scenery developed specifically for FS2002 in accordance with Microsoft Flight Simulator SDK documentation.

Are all the features of FS2002 available to the photographic scenery?

Yes, except where FS2002 itself doesn't support a particular feature for this type of scenery. Hence specific autogen is available whereas generic autogen isn't. (See Autogen for more detail on this).

MIP Mapping

Does the scenery support MIP Mapping? 

Yes. MIP Mapping is fully supported by the photographic scenery, with multiple levels of detail encoded within the supplied photographic textures.

Should MIP Mapping be used?

This is entirely up to the user. You can choose whether to use MIP Mapping. The following are reasons why you may choose not to use MIP Mapping:

• Some early testers have preferred to turn MIP Mapping off in order to preserve the real-world details available in the mid-to-far distance. This improves the the VFR experience, allowing you to scan ahead for the next visual reference, as you would in real life VFR.
• Depending on the graphics card/settings, the side effects of MIP Mapping can be a little unrealistic when used with the photographic scenery.

Other early testers have preferred to keep MIP Mapping switched on.

Can I turn MIP Mapping off?

Yes, if you want to. If you do this, iideally you need a graphics card with good anti-aliasing, and you may need adequate system memory and/or graphics memory to allow the extra detail of the non-MIP Mapped textures to be loaded. You may also need to consider what other settings may need to be changed (see next question).

The best way to find out is to simply try it with and without MIP Mapping. You may find you prefer to turn MIP Mapping off even if you don't have effective anti-aliasing available.

What other settings should I use if I do turn MIP Mapping off?

If you choose to turn MIP Mapping off, you need to find siome other way to compensate for pixel shimmering.

• Anti-aliasing. It is recommended that you have anti-aliasing enabled if you have MIP Mapping turned off.  This will compensate for pixel shimmering to some degree, depending on the quality of the graphics card and the type of anti-aliasing used.  See your graphics card documentation for details.
• Screen resolution. You may find it better to use a higher screen resolution if your system allows this.
• Visibility. As pixel shimmering only affects the mid-to-far distance, the effect can be reduced or eliminated by reducing visibility until the mid-to-far distant scenery is partially or full obscured by haze.  The degree of visibilty reduction required will depend on your graphics card and on your own preferences.  In some cases it may not be necessary to reduce visibility at all.

Remember, you do not need to use any of the above settings to successfully view the photographic scenery - it is entirely a matter of choice, and you can choose to use MIP Mapping instead if you wish.

A note about 'pixel shimmering'

Pixel shimmering happens in the mid-to-far distance on a graphics image as individual pixels in the image move between adjacent pixels. MIP Mapping compensates for this by progressively defocussing the image as distance increases. (It does this by reducing the resolution of the displayed image with distance).

Pixel shimmering happens to some degree on all graphics systems whether photographic scenery is being used or not.  It is not specifically related to the photographic scenery.

If I do turn MIP Mapping off, will it affect my frame rates?

With modern graphics cards, you shouldn't see a great deal of difference in frame rates whether you choose to use MIP Mapping or not.

If your system is short on system memory and/or graphics card memory, the extra memory required to store the additional detail if you turn MIP Mapping off may affect the frame rate and/or smoothness of the display.  If this is the case, you can always choose to use MIP Mapping instead of turning it off.

Visibility

Is the visibility limited in the photographic scenery?

NO. It is entirely a matter of personal choice if you choose to reduce the visibility when using the photographic scenery.

The reasons you may prefer to reduce the visibility are as follows:

• You may want to experiment with turning MIP Mapping off. If you do this, you may choose to reduce visibility for the reasons discussed under MIP Mapping.
• You may prefer the scenery colours displayed by FS2002 when the visibility is reduced. Some early testers have chosen to do this, others have not. This is mostly a matter of personal preference and expectations, but may also be influenced by graphics card and/or monitor settings.
• You may wish to use a visibility setting which is typical of VFR conditions in England & Wales, particularly in the summer, when haze can obscure detail in the mid-to-far distance.

Do I HAVE to reduce the visibility?

NO. You do not need to reduce the visibility to use the photographic scenery. The visibility of the photographic scenery is not limited in any way compared to other types of scenery in FS2002.

As discussed in the previous FAQ topic, you may choose to reduce the visibility if you wish.

Autogen

Can Autogen scenery be created for the scenery?

YES. Autogen scenery can be created for the photographic scenery, but it has to be created for individual photographic textures rather than generic textures.

Scenery developers can use Autogen Annotator provided in the Autogen SDK (part of the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 SDK) to develop autogen scenery to fit with the photographic scenery.

Developers will need to be familiar with techniques documented elsewhere in the SDK for developing custom terrain textures.

Why is the default autogen scenery disabled?

If you want a simple answer to this question please see the first page of the FAQ. The answers below are more detailed in order to more fully explain the issues involved.  We need to start with a bit of background information:

How the default generic scenery works

The placement of the default autogen trees and buildings depends on a number of factors, including the slope of the terrain, landclass, and geographic region.  Having evaluated those factors (and possibly more), FS2002 decides which generic texture to display at any particular point.  For any combination of factors, there may be a choice of generic textures available, and FS2002 will choose just one of these.

Many of these generic textures have an annotated autogen scenery file associated with them.  These describe in general terms or in detail where to place buildings and trees on the generic texture, and what type and size of object to use.  The density with which these objects is placed is dependent on the settings in the annotated autogen scenery file and on the display settings in FS2002.

FS2002 displays autogen scenery objects in relatively arbitary locations.  It divides each area into large blocks (approx 1km x 1km) and assigns a a very limited number of generic land types such as urban, meadow, desert, etc. to each of those blocks usually based on land use data derived by remote sensing satellite data.

Within each of these 1km x 1km blocks, the placement of the trees and buildings depends on which of the available generic textures FS2002 chooses to use, and on the autogen annotation that has been associated with it.

The generic textures and their associated autogen scenery cover a very wide geographic area,  e.g. the whole of Europe uses the same generic textures.  There is no difference between Milton Keynes and Milan.

With the generic autogen scenery one size fits all. The same trees and buildings are used over a wide geographic area. You can forget about Cotswold cottages or Cheltenham town houses - you get the same buildings from Rome to Rochdale.

How the photographic scenery works

Rather than using the imprecise and inaccurate guesswork that's involved in displaying the default autogen scenery, the photographic scenery places actual photographic textures in their correct geographic location.

So why is the default autogen scenery disabled?

There are two answers, both relevant:

• The default autogen scenery is disabled by FS2002 whenever there's a specific photographic texture displayed in any location.  This is not something which is chosen by the developer of photographic scenery, it is inherent in the design of FS2002 and for very good reasons. Specifically, because FS2002 is not displaying a generic texture, it cannot display the associated generic autogen scenery.
• The default autogen scenery is disabled because it makes no sense in the context of the photographic scenery.  What is the point in having accurately located towns, villages, factories, woods, trees, hedges etc. provided by the photographic scenery only to have them overlaid by seemingly randomly placed trees (of an arbitary type and size) and buildings (also of an arbitary type and size)?  Do you want automatically generated buildings to be placed in the field behind your house? Do you want a thick wood obliterating your village?

Autogen scenery is possible with the photographic scenery, but it has to be specifically designed for it.

Why isn't autogen scenery provided with the photographic scenery?

For the reasons discussed above, generic autogen scenery doesn't work with the photographic scenery, and it wouldn't make sense if it did.

Autogen scenery has to be specifically designed to work with the photographic scenery. However, to cover the whole of England & Wales would require specific autogen scenery to be produced for up to 180,000 individual texture files. At this point in time, with the tools and techniques available, this is clearly not practical or feasible.

Is there any autogen scenery currently available for the photographic scenery?

YES. FS2002 includes specific autogen scenery in the vicinity of Heathrow which works well with the photographic scenery.

Although this scenery is effectively disabled when the photographic scenery is installed, optional instructions for re-enabling are given in Additional scenery.

If any other autogen scenery compatible with the photographic scenery becomes available, we'll post details in Additional scenery.

What if I can't live without Autogen scenery?

Once you're tried the photographic scenery, you'll probably find you're not missing the autogen scenery  as much as you thought, if at all.  However, if you really can't live without autogen scenery, then the photographic scenery may not be for you. The best advice is to find a friend with the photographic scenery and try it - you may be surprised.

Hopefully in time, autogen specifically designed for the photographic scenery, will become available, so you'll get the best of both worlds.

For the moment you'll have to make a choice.

How do I decide between photographic and autogen scenery?

If you answer YES to any of the following, you should use photographic scenery:

• Do you want to see every road, river, track, wood, town, village, stream, lake, factory, field, shopping centre, car park and more? YES/NO
• Do you want all these features to be accurately placed? YES/NO
• Do you want to see the landscape as it typically appears in real life? YES/NO
• Do you want to be able to explore real-world places in FS2002? YES/NO
• Do you want to get a feel for the difficulties and challenges real VFR flying? YES/NO

If you answer YES to any of the following, you should use autogen scenery:

• Do you want buildings and trees randomly placed within each 1km x 1km block of land? YES/NO
• Do you want just a few different types of trees and buildings to cover the whole of Europe? YES/NO
• Do you want inaccurately placed roads, rivers and lakes? YES/NO
• Do you not want railway lines and other features? YES/NO

Of course, there are other considerations, and the above questionnaire is a little bit tongue-in-cheek. Photographic scenery and autogen scenery both have their own capabilities, problems and limitations. Hopefully future versions of Flight Simulator will expand the capabilities of both types of scenery, but for now, each remains a valuable and viable alternative, and you should choose whatever is right for you. 

Date/Time

Can the scenery be used at any time of year?

YES.  The scenery supplied is based on photographic images taken from Spring through to Autumn, carefully joined together and colour balanced to give a consistent presentation.

With the photographic scenery, FS2002 uses this same set of textures regardless of what season is set, so you can fly at any time of year.

Why aren't seasonal variations provided?

There's a couple of very good reasons why seasonal variations aren't provided:

• Seasonal photography isn't available, so any variations provided would only be artificially modified versions of the standard textures, which doesn't enhance realism, and may introduce unintentional anomalies.
• The storage requirement for the photographic scenery texture is five times as great if seasonal variations are used.  This would increase the hard disk space required for the whole of England & Wales to around 35GB. Each volume would take up to 9 GB, which is a lot of CDs for users without a DVD drive.  These figures are not currently considered practical for the majority of PC users.

Can the scenery be used at any time of day?

YES. The scenery supplied is based on photographic images taken during daylight hours, carefully joined together and colour balanced to give a consistent presentation.

With the photographic scenery, FS2002 uses this same set of textures regardless of the time of day, so you can fly at any time of day.

What about night time?

After dusk, when the detail in the photographic textures is no longer visible, you will be better switching to the default scenery, unless of course you are attempting to recreate typically WWII black-out conditions! :-)

Why aren't night time textures provided?

The reasons are similar to the considerations for seasonal textures, namely:

• There is no night time photography available.
• Storage and distribution requirements would double.

Cost

Is the photographic scenery good value for money?

In the end, it's a personal choice, and will depend on what people want and expect from the scenery, and how much they end up getting out of it. We've tried very hard to get the price down to the current level, and we'd like to think we've got it about right.

Early testers of the photographic scenery have been fascinated to find just how much there is to discover in the scenery, and how much flying time can be derived from it without the feeling that you've been there/done that. This is because of the extraordinary amount of unique information presented by the scenery, and the fact that it can be related to real-life, so the interest tends not to wane.

Even apart from these subjective judgements, in terms of the sheer scale of the project and the costs involved in acquiring the data, processing it and developing the photographic scenery, it represents extraordinary value for money:

• Each volume contains three CDs of detailed textures representing up to 1.8GB of compressed photographic data (equivalent to around 8GB uncompressed).
• The price in pence per MB (or pence per per sq km of detailed scenery) is far lower in real terms than any other serious commercial scenery ever produced - as far as we're aware.