Following the release of the FS2004 upgrade by Microsoft, Visual Flight has now announced that users of VFR Terrain are able to benefit from the full 19m terrain mesh resolution of the update. For full details, click on Read More.
Following the recent release by Microsoft of the FS2004 Update, Visual Flight is pleased to announce that with a simple one-line modification to the Flight Simulator configuration file, existing and new users of VFR Terrain are able to benefit not just from the full 19m terrain mesh resolution of the update, but also from the equivalent increase in coast and lake shoreline resolution.
Instructions for increasing the terrain resolution to 19m are given in the following Visual Flight Forum article:
http://www.visualflight.co.uk/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2337
Visual Flight will also be releasing an easy-to-use program to perform the adjustment for anyone not confident in carrying out the above procedure if there is sufficient demand for this.
VFR Terrain is unique in providing both high resolution terrain mesh and accurate and detailed coastline/lake shoreliness, certainly on a national scale, and the use of Visual Flight's pioneering multi-render mesh technology means that the full benefits of the 19m mesh are available without any of the potential drawbacks, as can be seen in the following animated sequence of screenshots of VFR Terrain with VFR Photographic Scenery:
The animation shows two frames, the first at 38m resolution and the second at 19m resolution. (If you're only seeing the first frame, make sure your browser settings allow you to view animated images).
In the first frame, the concrete dam is obviously out of shape, whereas in the second there's a clearly defined straight edge along the top and bottom of the dam wall, giving a much better semblence of reality. If you then look around the shoreline of the reservoir, you'll see the lake edge with the updated FS2004 is much better defined, with no water textures climbing up the terrain, and a far more convincing overall visual appearance.
Anyone interested in the technical background to the 19m terrain resolution in the FS2004 Upgrade can find out more in the following Visual Flight technical article (written before the FS2004 Update was announced):
http://www.visualflight.co.uk/vfrterrain/terrain_resolution/
