Please post a review if you get a chance to try it out before you leave. Thanks.
Alright since I was the guinea pig here's my opinion so far.
If you buy South Florida X you get two downloads, one being Ft. Lauderdale X and the other Miami X. The downloads take a some time because the are huge files, almost 10GB.
I installed both packages and found that Ft. Lauderdale photo scenery isn't showing in the sim. The Miami area is visible however.
As much as I hate to say it since Andrew seems to be a nice guy, I am pretty disappointed so far and here are the reasons why.
1. The color corrected Miami area tiles are still very dreary and colorless. Coundn't give an opinion on Ft. Lauderdale because for some reason the photo tiles wont show in FSX.
2. The water in Miami has grid lines showing in it. Which brings me to the next point.
3. The site says that there is an update being released tonight, however when I go to the site I do not see where it is or how to download it.
4. I feel mislead in my purhase becasue the special going from now until Dec 26 says:
Holiday Sale! 'Till December 26th
Fort Lauderdale X V3 - $10.00 USD
Miami X - $16.99 USD
South Florida X - $34.99 USD
As it turns out I could have just bought Fort Lauderdale X V3 and Miami X for $17.99 and gotten the same coverage area that I paid twice the amount for. I mentioned this to Andrew and he said that South Florida X also comes with Orlando which will be out in a week. The site says nothing about Orlando being included or being worked on. Had I known this in advance I woundn't have bought South Florida X and just got the other two packages for 1/2 the price. I wouldn't consider Orlando to be part of South Florida. Andrew said that he was going to change the message on the site to avoid anyone feeling misled but to this point the site is still advertising the same thing.
5. This is the first time I have ever taken an FPS hit in photo scenery. Could be because there is a conflict which is why Ft. Lauderdale is not being displayed or the fact that the photo .bgl tiles are hugh. I dont know, but I get about 20 FPS when running this scenery with no autogen and I get about 35 FPS running GEX with Normal autogen settings.
6. The photoscenery textures end 1/2 way thru South Beach area running from north to south, leaving 1/2 of South beach with photo texture and the other 1/2 with GEX textures.
To this point, as much as I hate to say it, I wouldn't recommend the product, sorry Andrew. Usually I have gut feelings about stuff like this which is why I hadn't bought it up to this point and since I could have bought the same thing for 1/2 the price I feel I was misled a bit. I am interested in Orlando, but I wouldn't have bought it yet until I had a chance to test this first.
Hopefully Andrew will be able to make some improvements to the product to make the day textures look a little more lively, and in my case tell me how to get Ft. Lauderdale to show up in the sim.
I have removed the .bgls and will wait to see what comes next. Thankfully I only spent $34 so it wasn't too much of a waste, but if I didn't have a lot of extra money to spare I would be pretty disappointed.
Regards
