You’re flying around, low and slow, just chilling out in your little helicopter and you get into a forest area. That usually triggers another kind of chilling. Or should I say, the chills. Forest look really crazy and odd in X-Plane, don’t they?
I have to say I’m not one of those guys that go crazy to get X-Plane all pretty and shiny. As much as I appreciate good looking graphics, I’m more concerned about the flight model, recognizable landmarks and fun stuff to do. But the X-Plane trees have always bugged me.
They look odd and, very often, get positioned in weird places. I don’t find them all that pleasant to look like and that’s a lot of why I absolutely love to fly around in Propstrike Studios’ sceneries. Those guys have sweet-looking trees.
Seems like GeoReality (which is, in fact, the FlyTampa team) agrees with me and so they decided to do something about it.
Features
The team got itself busy and decided to do something more than a single global collection of trees. In fact, they are splitting the world into sections and developing trees and forests specific for each area.
The first one is covering most of Europe (the team is working on North America -- Alaska-Canada-U.S.A.) with trees that are adapted from the ones you can find in the region. GeoReality really went all in:
- Accurate representation of the Global forest footprint in XPlane11, according to global data
- More than 7,000 .for files, with unique combination of tree type, variation, density, and height, based on real-world data
- Tree type and classifications according to global data
- Tree height information has been analysed from global maps and infused into Global Forests
- Complete set of textures to match all classes of global trees
- Seamless integration with Ortho4XP, or any other package that includes satellite images
- Seamless integration with default X-Plane11 terrain
Visual impact
The difference is huge. Trees are no longer odd and a lot of them were actually removed from odd places where they shouldn’t have been in the first place.
Forests became denser, the trees look way better and it’s now a pleasure to fly around these areas. The rest of Europe is no longer jealous of the amazing areas covered by our friends at Propstrike (although there’s still something in these guys’ trees that really shines).
I have taken a few screenshots in a mountain area near Lisbon, Portugal, where I usually fly around. As you can see from the images below, there’s a big difference between the default and the Global Forests addon.
Framerate
I tested Global Forests on several areas, with several degrees of density and forest sizes and I’ve never noticed any framerate changes at all. It’s all good on this end.
Conclusion
Global Forests is a very good product that provides very good results. I have been using it for some time and I don’t plan on going back anytime. For the price (currently $11) it’s quite a low great investment with big results.
Highly recommended.
