• Much as I like the new Colorado, I do love New York. so having nothing better to do this morning I thought I would go for a quick flight. I am lucky enough to have 3 sims. I have FSX as my main go anywhere sim (huge Orbx investment), FSW, and AFS2. FSW has Drzewiecki NYC X scenery, FSX has Aerosoft Manhattan X, and FS2 the DLC.

    I was amazed to see the differences. FSW and the Drzewiecki scenery is best seen from 5000 feet and is quite good but the bridges and approaches are nowhere as good as what is in AFS2. Try low and slow in this scenery and it is plain awful. That said I have one of those 5000 ft screenies as my background on the PC.

    FSX's Aerosoft Manhattan X V1.30 is designed for low and slow so not surprisingly the building detail is probably the best out of the 3. Animated billboards exist on some buildings and reflections are well done too. Not too sure about all the pastel shades though it is very colorful. The closer you get to groups of buildings the more detail you see. Anything not close can be ugly until redraw occurs. Not bad for an old sim at all.

    AFS2 I like because of the sheer detail of it that comes from photo real. The bridge approaches are so very well done and everything is where it should be. No distant uglies until the scenery is drawn like with FSX and it is so smooth to use. Downside is no moving traffic to create the busy city look and I am not so keen on the flat cruise ships and wharves either.

    Anyone else tried different versions and want to comment? :)

  • Drzewiecki's NYC in X-Plane 11 is actually my favorite, but with that being said, Aerofly's rendition of Central Park and the surrounding airports is pretty impressive. I cannot fly NYC in FSX... that's a death sentence for the sim. (Sad part is my computer is no slouch.)

  • I have them all, and in the end, decided I preferred the Aerofly version for several reasons. A big one is that having tried the other versions, I'm very aware of their inability to maintain any sort of High FPS, and this is compounded when you add a high detail airport like FSDT KJFK into the mix, which drags everything to a stuttering crawl.

    Aerofly is able to run at a staggering framerate comparatively, while also having not one, but several major airports in the area.

    Right now, much of the New York area is barren of buildings, and I must admit, I was worried that this might be because Aerofly simply couldn't handle that many buildings, but Denver colorado and Orbx chicago have significantly but those worries to rest.

    Where Aerofly New York falls down a bit for me is that, like most Aerofly sceneries, it tends to lack color, instead using a limited palette of textures that tends towards overwhelmingly white, like a Star Trek city. The Drzewiecki design and Aerofly New York color palette is much more accurate to the actual city, and I have to assume that extends to other cities of which I am less familiar.

    Like you, I would tend to give Aerosoft New York the highest marks for visual fidelity, except for the fact that the uptown area is absolutely full of floating buildings, and has been for years. I contacted Aerosoft years ago regarding it and though they promised to look into it, nothing ever happened.

    This and the slow framerates of the other sims pushes Aerofly New York ahead of the pack for me, and if they complete the surrounding cityscape, it will be the best rendition of New York hands down, despite some flaws.

    (My opinion, of course)

    Devons rig

    Intel Core i5-13600K - Core i5 13th Gen 14-Core (6P+8E) @ 5.5Ghz / G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB RAM DDR5 6000 / GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4070Ti GAMING OC 12G / Sound Blaster Z / Oculus Quest 2 VR Headset / Klipsch® Promedia 2.1 Computer Speakers / ASUS ROG SWIFT PG279Q ‑ 27" IPS LED Monitor ‑ QHD / 6x Samsung SSD/NVME's various sizes / Windows 11 Pro 64-bit / GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS ELITE AX LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard DDR5

    Edited 2 times, last by HiFlyer (November 14, 2017 at 3:53 AM).

  • I compared all three to Google Earth 3D. Aerosoft Manhatten is the least real among the 3. It’s more like autogen with some landmark buildings, but it looks very neat as the 3d buildings are hand modeled. Drzewiecki and AFS2 NYC are closer to Google Earth 3D in accuracy, and the buildings of Drzewiecki look like they are modeled with photogrammetry. AFS2 NYC looks more neat than Drzewiecki. Most importantly, AFS2 is the most and the only fluid one to play.

    I am very interested to know how the 3d models of the AFS2 NYC are made. It’s impossible to hand make and place them one by one as the numbers are huge. But they are surely not made with the photogremmetry of Google Earth either, as that would make buildings look crude and distorted.

  • I fly a large amount of various sims. Sometimes several on the same day, and it's hard not to compare.

    Mostly, I really enjoy seeing how the various developers find such different solutions to the very same challenges. Sometimes better, sometimes worse: often showing different focuses and priorities, and sometimes simply mandated by the limitations of the various sim engines.

    I think developers should always look carefully at what other developers are doing, so the best ideas get spread around.

    Devons rig

    Intel Core i5-13600K - Core i5 13th Gen 14-Core (6P+8E) @ 5.5Ghz / G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB RAM DDR5 6000 / GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4070Ti GAMING OC 12G / Sound Blaster Z / Oculus Quest 2 VR Headset / Klipsch® Promedia 2.1 Computer Speakers / ASUS ROG SWIFT PG279Q ‑ 27" IPS LED Monitor ‑ QHD / 6x Samsung SSD/NVME's various sizes / Windows 11 Pro 64-bit / GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS ELITE AX LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard DDR5