How come my x plane 10 doesn't look as good as others.

Question

I have watched x plane videos on youtube and a lot of people have scenery that I don't(KJFK) .Some have scenery they didn't even have to pay for. I have tried updating it, but all it did was change some airports especially KLAX and KBWI they both look terrible now.

Answer 1

YouTube videos for x-plane involve heavy editing thus it looks amazing. Exactly the same with FSX. Buying tons of payware scenery such as aircraft and shaders make XP shine. Out of the box XP has no airport buildings so you must resort to payware or freeware scenery (some of which are very well done-X-Plane forum has all the answers and downloads for you)

Freeware plugins

Real Terra Haze

Fly with Lua

Just look on the X-Plane forum for more

Answer 2

Due to the immense number of global airports in X-Plane, not all of them have detailed scenery. As Rishi notes, there are a lot of things you can download that can improve the "out of the box" sim. X-Plane.org is a good site for freeware aircraft and scenery. Check out the Airport Scenery Gateway to see if specific default airports have improved scenery or not (artist WEDbot is default scenery with little to no buildings).