Hello,
The Ground image is the only reason I haven't purchased this already
Well, for me it's one of the reasons I keep flying more often with AFS2.
The future of Flyinside depends for me of the possibilities and the tools we will be able to use to make sceneries :
X-Plane never would have been so successfull without tools like Marginal's FS2Xplane and OverlayEditor tools, WED and other tools like g2xpl.
Speaking about AFS2, some users made nice photorealistic sceneries and airports too. ORBX's guys "came in the game" and made a lot of great sceneries, the last being the amazing Netherlands TrueEarth (I own all the European payware sceneries).
FSW died because they made the choice of a "closed" simulator restricting the ability to make sceneries : to have a real future a new sim needs to offer the possibilities for the users to make, tor use or to buy third party sceneries.
A good (even if excellent like FFS) behaviour in VR is not enough taking in count VR users are still not very numerous and looking the other sims existing on the market, knowing most of users have inverted not only money but also a lot of time in them.
Don't think I am not happy with FFS : I did buy it and still enjoy it, but I would like FFS to "take flight" :
So for me the effort should be, even before offering updates with high resolution sceneries, giving us simple tools to make them by ourselves : no doubt they will quickly be numerous and will be shared mostly as freeware (look again at X-Plane, you can find as freeware : high resolution Mesh coverage, high resolution photorealistic sceneries covering countries and high detailed airports. Quite nobody is using X-Plane with default scenery. Even alternative generic textures; The same with FSX, P3D or AFS2).
The other high performance modern sim with good VR performances is AFS2. It's for me the most important competitor for FFS. The mistake AFS2 guys have made is for me not to give one acceptable world coverage even if in low resolution like FFS's one. Despite this he gets some success with third parties payware sceneries, but many users don't ues this sim because of the lake of world coverage.
I think to be competitive (that is to say to have a future) FFS should quickly offer a basic world scenery coverage at least USA (done) and Europe (I hope quickly), but not stopping there : giving us a world coverage before a year, and meanwhile giving us the tools to make sceneries.
The world coverage is important because many users like to fly other the world and I know many scenery designers living in other countries. Flight simmers is a community : more people interested, more freeware creations, more data sharing and quicker the development. it would have more success and attract freeware and payware scenery designers.
So : only my opinion - do not pretend to "own the truth" (and sorry for my poor english)
Kind regards