by wkitty42 » Sat Feb 24, 2018 6:48 pm
i think we're talking about two different things here... you said "a default airport" and i said "the default airport"...
THE default airport changes with each new release right now... (most) all airports are available... they will be "in the ocean" unless you have downloaded the terrain for them... the default airport comes with one or possibly two tiles around it... everything else has to be downloaded... this allows folks new to FG to install it, hop into the c172p and take a scenic flight around the default airport... if they fly close to the edges of the tile(s), they will (should) see water... if terrasync is enabled in the launcher, FG will automatically download the scenery for additional tiles as you approach them in your flight...
there are other ways to download scenery, too... terramaster, terrasync.py and one or two others... they're all external to FG... the entire world is currently about 85Gig (he says without looking to confirm)...
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."