First time X-Plane user. All of this is just bare X-Plane 10 and free scenery I fiddled around with today. The mesh, roads and autogen (if you know Vancouver) are pretty accurate.
I’m pleasantly surprised about how well it performs and especially how good it looks at night. Definitely my favorite time to fly so far, with the lights and traffic below making it look great…
A day-time shot to compare (I usually fly with 3 screens, so these come out a bit too wide):
If you pay close attention every so often you will see a cop car speeding down the freeways!!1
Heading for Chilliwack…
this looks really good, but this is quite ‘popular’ location. how about some gods forgotten corners of the world? 
@fearlessfrog could you pls start flight at Trencin (LZTN) and create some pics of the XP default scenery here?
In FSX(SE) it is quite bad with the default scenery for eastern europe like objects, vectors, etc, Expect the mesh, which is OK.
@NEVO Hmm…well, I don’t have default scenery installed - so this is probably the freeware mesh from Alpilot-X (maybe…it could be default…I’m just not sure what scenery meshes I have installed)… And I downloaded an updated airport layout from the X-Plane Gateway:
https://gateway.x-plane.com/scenery/page/LZTN
All that does is - a user has gone in and (ostensibly) placed some generic objects from the X-Plane included libraries and made sure that taxiway and runways are aligned correctly. It really isn’t “custom” scenery so much as just making sure the general layout is correct. So I have no idea how close this looks to reality…but here ya’ go…
Where is your house?? LOL…
BeachAV8R
First impressions - MAN, LOOKS AWESOME!
Later I will ‘pin’ more details…
If you have some talent and time - you can always “customize” your own home airport with a whole bunch of objects from widely available libraries. There are some really popular ones like OpenSceneryX and Russian scenery and a few others… So you can build your airport to suit you. I don’t know much about it… I think @weaponz248 has a bit of experience with it though…
my point was more the surrounding scenery, not the airport itself, I really dont need the exact IRL building obejct on that particular place 
…yes, many of the airports are already recreated in great detail and available as freeware.
what amazed me was the quite good placing of the towns and forests/trees in XP. no wild autogen like FSX. also the river is big step forward. in FSX even the river! is missing in default scenery.
More (with pics) later…
btw the time is not on my side (and without the time even the talent can suffer)
so lets compare these scenery pics
FSX
Where is the river for example!?
Definitely the XP scenery is much more VFR friendly then the FSX.
And my house? Follow the red arrow
I will say though, that I’m probably using that freeware mesh I mentioned, which increases the likelihood that the river and terrain will be more accurate.
These are the mesh packs I have installed (LAT/LON)…so if your area falls into one of these, it’s add-on mesh…
Yeah…looks like that +40 +10 folder encompasses that area. 48 53’ / 18 02’…so that’s definitely Alpilot X HD mesh (free)…
Yep - thanks @BeachAV8R, as I currently have no XPlane install to show 
The AiPilot free scenery is awesome, and the torrent download (use the ‘qb’ icon on FlightSim.com each time) of it made it pretty quick and painless to get.
http://www.alpilotx.net/downloads/x-plane-10-hd-mesh-scenery-v3/
Don’t forget - all this scenery is auto generated from the public Open Street Map data, which is why it looks so accurate. The terrain height mesh is combined with the object placing that someone has already done for OSM. It’s really a clever way to do it.
So if you go update here (it’s open source data, in public domain):
…then in a future X-Plane AiPilot free scenery update you might get your house too! It uses all that building type, tree, river, road info and converts it.
I need to download that mesh stuff. I think I started but took a frame rate hit. But in hind sight I dont think it was the mesh.
I didn’t notice any hit, but I was so new at X-Plane 10 that I don’t think I’ve every brought up a frame rate counter - it all seemed ok.
For my local area, I also use the ‘Ultraaaaaaa’ UHD version, which is a very detailed mesh if you have the RAM for it. Makes the mountains particularly peaky.
http://www.alpilotx.net/downloads/x-plane-10-uhd-mesh-scenery-v1/
UHD is out for me. I’m only running 8 gb RAM. but the HD stuff is probably a go. Probably down load the GA area and see what happens.
Honestly though default X plane looks good to me.
I’ve found XP to be really odd with framerate consistency from one session to another. What is really odd is that sometimes I load it up and I’m getting really crappy frames…like 12 or 14 or something, then I go into the settings, select either run full screen, or if it is already checked, uncheck it, and instantly the FPS goes up to 40 or more. And it doesn’t matter whether it is full screen or not, it just has to be checked OR unchecked (basically, you just have to change it once) and the fluidity is there for the session.
Never have quite figured that one out. But it’s livable because it doesn’t always do it…and it takes 2 seconds to quickly check and uncheck it.
Ive loaded XP up and got 10 FPS, I closed XP and then re opened it and got normal FPS again.
Here is the tutorial I used to get started customizing airports.
You might just try doing what I did…just tick that full screen box, exit the menu, then go back in and retick it. It doesn’t have to reload anything…but for some reason it makes a difference. XP Oddities.
I dont think mesh itself can make so huge difference. yes, mesh + scenery based on the OSM can be something else. that can explain the rivers, towns etc.
because there is some FreeMeshX for FSX but I dont know if the mesh alone will improve the default so much, pls correct me if I am wrong. Maybe I just need to download it and try…
