It has come to my attention that some people are misinterpreting what the Shawbury Fields scenery package from Earth Simulations has to offer. There is a misconception that it is nothing more than a detailed version of RAF Shawbury airbase in Shropshire (UK), and that it has been designed mainly for helicopter users.Well, I am here to put the record straight.Shawbury Fields is a scenery package intended for use with Horizon VFR Generation X Version 2 photographic scenery. It is true that you get a detailed version of RAF Shawbury, but that is only one very small part of the complete package. You also get detailed versions of four other important airfields (RAF Ternhill, RAF Cosford, Sleap, and Welshpool), and three smaller grass strips (including Long Mynd glider centre to the south of the region). Then there are the custom autogen buildings and trees (thousands of them, and all of accurate types), electricity pylons, churches, radio masts, windmills, trig points, bridges, chimneys and other tall structures, and even entire towns and villages! Everything that you can see scattered across the scenery area has been carefully placed to represent reality as closely as it is currently possible. There are also some specific local landmarks that have been custom built for accuracy (including the Chirk railway viaduct, Rodney's Pillar monument, and impressive mansions).In fact, Shawbury Fields covers an area of 3500 square kilometres! That's the equivalent of a circle with a diameter of roughly 40 miles (65 kms)!Just think about that. An entire scenery region of 3500 sq.kms to explore, and thousands of interesting sights to see. I guess that a helicopter would be a great way to explore this scenery, but you could just as easily do it in a Cessna 172, or any other small plane. There are plenty of runways at those airfields that I mentioned above. In fact, I have even cruised around the area in an Airbus A318 at 150 knots (with flaps fully extended)! The main runway at RAF Shawbury is easily capable of handling a plane of this type.Now consider those towns and villages that I mentioned. I am not talking about default autogen buildings here that are scattered randomly (and unrealistically) across the landscape. This is ES custom autogen, which means that the houses, warehouses, and other buildings are placed realistically on the photographic textures. I have never been more impressed by autogen buildings than I have when I flew over the town of Shrewsbury (part of the Shawbury Fields package).Whilst it is true that scenery this detailed requires a decent PC to run it at acceptable framerates, it's worth pointing out that I can fly around the region quite happily at maximum detail levels (Scenery and Autogen density set to Extremely Dense) using the PC specification listed below....Asus P5K-SE motherboardIntel Core 2 Quad Q9550 CPU @ 2.83Ghz4GB PC2-8500 RAM512MB GeForce 9800GT17" Hyundai Imagequest L72D monitor1280x1024x32bit resolution16xAF, 8xS AA, 4xAA transparencyShawbury Fields is without a doubt one of the most technically impressive (and beautiful) scenery packages that I have ever had the pleasure of using in a flight simulator, and I highly recommend it to any users of Horizon's VFR Generation X Version 2. You will not be disappointed.www.earthsimulations.com/shawbury_fields.htmlI would like to point out here that I am not connected with Earth Simulations in any way.

Thanks for setting the record straight. It looks like a nice scenery package.

It's worth pointing out here that there are areas of Shawbury Fields that are more framerate intensive than others. The two large towns of Shrewsbury and Telford include a lot of custom autogen buildings and trees, and you need a powerful PC to get smooth framerates with Scenery and Autogen set to Extremely Dense. RAF Shawbury and RAF Cosford also seem to have a lot of detail in the surrounding area, although tweaking detail levels and reducing autogen density would improve matters. There is so much stuff to see that reducing detail levels can be heartbreaking! That's why I try to stick with Extremely Dense settings, even when the framerate drops to as low as 10fps. Staying inside the cockpit certainly helps, and even quite low framerates can seem acceptable from this viewpoint.I have posted a few screenshots of Shawbury Fields in the following thread.....http://forum.avsim.net/topic/329856-earth-simulations-shawbury-fields/