Links to each scenery and links to associated videos and reviews.
Links and complete installation instructions for all 35 scenery libraries mentioned in the book.
A detailed discussion on the different kinds of scenery, how scenery works and how 3rd party sceneries are installed.
Clear instructions how to install each scenery library (some of them have very confusing installation methods. Hopefully, this book brings some order to the chaos.
Instructions on how to set up symlinks to sceneries stored on other drives.
And all sorts of little goodies.
So what is the book good for? If you are interested in improving the stock vanilla sceneries that ship with X-Plane 12, you need this book. It is packed with useful stuff!
This is the first major update for book 2 in the X-Plane 12 Handbook series. This update adds 100 pages (50 slideshows) to make a total of 281 pages (140 double-spreads).
In this book , I specifically cover the subject of scenery in X-Plane 12. If you want to improve the appearance of the scenery outside of the cockpit, in my humble opinion, this book becomes essential. There are many freeware and payware scenery packages already certified to work with X-Plane 12, but how do you choose what to download or purchase and whether the difference compared to the default scenery is worth it to you? That's where this book comes in.
I have built the book to contain a small interactive slideshow for each scenery mentioned here - each slide-show compares the 3rd party scenery to the exact same view of the default scenery.
Nearly every payware scenery currently available (as at mid-March 2023) that passes my requirements has their own included slideshow!
Although there are many freeware slideshows included, there are now so many freeware sceneries available that is quite impossible to include a slideshow for each one.
The book only contains a scenery slide-show if the scenery has been explicitly certified by the author to be X-Plane 12 compatible. While thousands of sceneries are available for earlier versions of X-Plane (and may or may not work correctly), I have ignored any scenery that has yet to be specifically updated/explicitly made for X-Plane 12. Once a scenery has been updated and declared X-Plane 12 compatible, it becomes a candidate for inclusion in this book.
By the very nature of this book, it is never finished - more and more 3rd party scenery (freeware, donationware, coffeeware and payware) is being published daily. As a result, the book will be updated every few months with new scenery packages being compared to the default. You need only purchase this book once - all future updates are free - simply re-download it.
This book's intention is to grow to become a master 3rd party scenery reference for all "usable" and "affordable" scenery packages certified for X-Plane 12.