Okay….I see how this game works, I mean in a monetary sense. Some reason I thought only planes are DLC but it seems even some countries are too, some are not even mapped as well, like Seoul, it’s missing the tallest building in Seoul (Lotte Tower) and a landmark call Seoul Tower which are on all the post cards.
Some countries you can buy a Mesh? Whatever that is? Like NZ and Switzerland. Is that a term for more detailed texture?
Airports too can be bought, wish Singapore would be free. Guess if you are into this massively you would get it.
Can you still take off from airports that you haven’t bought?
Also, where is the invert Y axis option? I can’t seem to find it anywhere.
There are three tiers of location in FS2020.
The entire world has been recreated from Bing Maps data. This is a largely autonomous process, and provides the base tier of the game world. The end result is variable. The basic layout of terrain, cities, and roads tends to be decent (with some exceptions, e.g. I know Igacu Falls is/was missing), but details are often completely wrong (e.g. Edinburgh Castle was a block of flats for a long time). Every airport in the world has been recreated this way, with every single one being usable. But they aren't necessarily accurate. The game basically just goes "there's a runway
here, and there are buildings
here,
here and
here". There's some effort to match shape, colour, and materials. But nothing particularly detailed (e.g. a glass fronted terminal may wind up being represented by a concrete office block).
The second tier of locations are the ones which have received a little hands-on attention from the developers. Manually tidying up layouts, replacing key landmarks with more accurate representations, etc. Edinburgh is a good example here; the Castle is now a castle. Many airports have received this treatment too, with a few key buildings being replaced with more accurate models so that they more accurately resemble the real thing.
And then there's the top tier locations. These have been reworked completely by the development team to resemble the real world locations. London is a good example, as is New York. On the airports front, the Heathrow DLC gives you a 1:1 copy of the real airport, down to small details (runway names, shop logos, etc.). If you don't pay, you only get the "Tier 2" version, which is going to be adequate for most TBF.
Microsoft's paid DLC is just planes and airports right now IIRC. Which is fair enough; the airports are already in the game anyway, with the DLC just making them look better. And as for the planes, how many casual players really care whether they're flying a Boeing 747-8 vs a 787-10? The extra content is mainly there for the enthusiasts.
Then there are third-party content updates, which I think may be what you've stumbled across. Community content has been a big thing in FS in the past, and adding an integrated store was one of the features that the community requested. There are a bunch of well-established businesses and independent developers building content for FS games, and they didn't want to be cut out. Further, the people who take FS seriously didn't want to lose out on content (which they would happily pay extra for). The upside is you can get new planes, airports, cities, more accurate terrain, new game modes etc. long before Asobo get around to making it (and also loads of content that Asobo will never get round to making). The downside is some of it costs £££. Naturally, Microsoft take a cut of sales, which is how they're able to talk about FS2020 as a platform "for the next decade"; they know they will get a steady stream of income from content sales.
