If so, how is it?

If it fixes the screwed up coastline between Montauk, Amagansett, and Shelter Island, I'm sold. It would be nice if it fixes the sloping Hudson River under the GWB, too.Dan

Are you talking about blocks of texture, Dan, like big squares jutting into the ocean? If so, I thought it was only me and some rogue texture files, but if you have it too then that's interesting. Bill Gates obviously has no house in East Hampton.I too have been watching the development of the Megastuff with interest. It still looks a bit fuzzy to me but that may just be how the screenshots are coming up on my rig. Interested in any and all feedback .... I would certainly like to see a better rendition of LI so will probably go for it anyway. I can always jump up and down on the box if I don't like it which will keep me fit.Mark

I received NY yesterday and installed it last night. It was a brand new FS9 install on the system described below and with the add-ons mentioned. After a couple hours of experimenting and playing around with settings and lots of Cessna 172 flying, it came off my system.Their installation routine and documentation is first-rate. They ask for your permission to play with your fs9 setting and boy do they play! I ended up with MIP setting of 8 and my system could barely keep up. With the basic settings described below, we were looking at maxing out at about 6 fps flying at 2000' over Manhattan and the scenery was fairly blurry; nothing to write home about; nothing jaw-dropping like I was hoping (although there was one smokestack spewing smoke!). Water textures were especially stinky. Neither Laguardia or EWR looked like anything great. It was barely better than default FS. I tried playing with the settings a lot but never got a point where I loved what I was looking at enough more than default FS (or fsgenesis) to compromise on performance. And I got flight-sim for the eye candy; that's my first priority. At least I got 2 beautiful fold-out maps and a nice booklet with area approach charts and airport diagrams:). I did not mean to say above that I couldn't pull more than 6 fps; I could. 12-15 in some cases, but with major stutters that I didn't have previously. I was neither very happy with how this thing looked or with what it did to my system's performance.Basic Settings:----------------Terrain Mesh Size (I think that's the name): 80 (out of 100)-Land effects: land-only; water effects: high-Aircraft textures on max; all shadows off-MIP Mapping: 4; AA in FS off; Trilinear filtering; H/w lights at 6 or 7; AA 16/AF 6 from ATI control panel-Global max texture size: the setting right below massive-Sight distance: 90 miles-Cloud draw distance: 60 miles-3d Cloud percentage: 100%-AI traffic: 0%-1600x1200x32; also tried 1280x960x32 (1-2 more FPS)-no weather addons loaded; weather at clear; day; summerAdd-ons besides Megascenery---------------------------- FSGenesis 38m mesh for all US; 9m for Hawaii, Grand Canyon and Monument Valley- Captain Sim Legendary 727- PMDG 737NGHardware/OS----------P4-3.2Ghz-Intel P875PBZ mobo, 800FSB, dual-channel RAM-1Gb Corsair Low Latency memory (512Mb x 2)-Antec TrueBlue 480P Power Supply-ATI 9800XT 256Mb RAM (ATI 3.10 drivers)-120Gb Maxtor internal 7200 SATA HD-74Gb Western Digital Raptor 10,000RPM (with flightsim9 and all add-ons; nothing loaded on this drive-Audigy2 sound card-Saitek X45 stick/throttle-Mitsubishi DiamondPro 2020u 21" CRT monitor-WinXP Pro, SP1 current except won't load Bill's .NET framework-DirectX 9.0bsj MantelKEWR

Heck. I may as well forget it on that basis. I'll wait to see what others say too but, man .... if it doesn't work for you it sure ain't gonna work for me. I already have to wind a handle on the side of my computer to move to the next frame.Mark "Dark Moment" Beaumonthttp://www.swiremariners.com/newlogo.jpg

Dark: I would wait to forget it until we hear from some others. I may have missed one of the words in the magic spell I was supposed to say (pre-printed in the manual)! No, really, maybe I did something wrong! The winter textures made NY look like another planet! Almost like Beirut might look if it was snowing there, i.e. bombed out.I can't wait to seem some more reactions.sjKEWR

Mark:LOL!! And don't forget to hand crank the "Victrola" at the same time.Chris

I was going to purchase it, but seeing that the airport I fly out of, KBLM, is right on the south border of where the scenery coverage stops- I said "nope" - that $40 can go to a half hour extra of flying lessons tommorow :)Take care,Jason :-wave

I will share my experience with the CA package:1. My system: P4 2.6 non HT; 764 megs of RAMBUS ram; Radeon 9700 Pro; Windows XP home. 2. My overall experience has been mixed. When the textures load fresh, the visuals are really outstanding. Crisp, clear urban streetscapes that actually look like city blocks and suburban housing divisions. Also, very realistic highways, which, in LA, are important visual cues. 3. However, the textures degrade on my system over time. They can be refreshed using the MSFS refresh keystroke command, but the package takes four to six minutes to reload the textures. Great if you want to go brew a pot of tee, make an extended visit to the lav or take the dog out for a quick pee and a poop, but a real drag if you have gotten all prepped for a complex approach and now have to sit through the loading process. 4. They recommend that you fly with the distance terrain textures turned off in the visual settings. Unfortunately, it looks very unrealistic that way. You get a crisp square around your plane then blurred oatmeal further out. The other scenery config mods touted in the forums really did nothing for my system. 5. The refreshing issue is far worse the higher and faster you go - as the computer fights to keep up with such a large area of scenery it has to disply. 6. I cannot fly into the mega scenery area from outside the coverage area and have crisp textures. They degrade immediatly and I have to re-fresh. This is a real disapointment if you are flying a long-haul into LA and want to duplicate the really spectacular arrival from the east over Barstow, Lake Arrowhead, San Bernadino, Ontario and then Los Angeles. 7. The refreshing issue can be mitigated to a great extent by limiting visibility to around 20 oe 30 miles. This is a far better solution than turning off extended terrain textures and is actually quite realistic for a summer day in LA where the inversion layer makes for a lot of soup even on clear days. Not realistic in the winter, though, when rainstorms and lower temperatures tend to keep the basin much cleaner. 8. The night textures are out of this world. It really does look like LA at night. Spectacular - drop dead gorgeous.I just did a re-install of FS-9 (getting the ctds that everyone is getting - didn't help much). I have yet to reinstall the mega scenery. That is more laziness than anything else. Like a lot of brand new add ons, Mega scenery is a work in progress.Frankly, what we really need is something like the old Terrascene for Fly2K with its significantly expanded texture set that matched the various land-class specifications. That was probably the very best comprimise given what most people's computers can handle. Hope this is helpful.

I can only comment on the Southern CA. area. My system is only a 1.4 GHZ AMD with about 800MB memory and a Gforce 3 (64MB video)card. The first time I start up, selecting a airport in this area does take a long time to load (measured in minutes-maybe 5). However once I get going I seem to have HIGH frame rates, this is good. The scenery is very, very good. After flying for awhile I may notice the textures are not as sharp as when I first started. What I have to do, is to press the pause key (P). It then only takes about 1/2 minute to update the textures. I realize my machine is now old, but I think this scenery, even on my machine was well worth it. I am suuprised when I see people with 3 GHZs machines having what appears to me, less performance that I am getting? I also run with the option for extended textures turned off. The distance scenery still appears OK to me.Also, flying with slower airplanes (twins, singles, not jets) seems to help with the scenery load problems.Jim

Hello All,Well, guess that settels it for me then. . A shame that good scenery has to grind down even a 3.2 P4. I have a 3.2 and it's OC'd but still anything below 15-18 to me is just not acceptable, and I run the majority of my sliders close to full.Guess I'll stick to the regular Big Apple.Best,Clay

I would not make a buying decision (either good or bad), based on just one user's opinion. Especially if you are going to spend $40. I find it hard to swallow that poor gent is only getting 12-15FPS. I got Megascenery SoCal and I am always in the 20's. In fact, I get better FPS with Mega than I do with Default... I mean improvement you can notice.Yes, it's not perfect but I have yet to find a single add-on that is. But I did get the "wow" factor the first time I loaded it. That sold me.I should be getting NY in the mail tomorrow or the day after so I can see for myself. I would also check MegaScenery's website forum to see what intial reactions are coming in.

Pony: I could not agree with you more. Just one person's opinion is not enough even if it's your's truly:). I can't help thinking that maybe I did something wrong. It was the 'wow' factor you referred to that I was looking for too. I never tried SoCal on my system but it's my understanding that NY is somewhat re-architected. Good idea on checking their forum. I need to look. BTW, what are your system specs and I'm curious, if you have a Pentium, what temperatures you're seeing. Thanks.sjKEWR

I also have no problems with the SOcal scenery-except the long initial load. On my athlon 2100 fps is better that the default MS scenery-I get 20's-30's in the fps dept.-I get no blurries or texture probs (I do only fly GA aircraft below 10,000 ft.) and the scenery is spectacular. I run with the extended textures on-it takes longer to initially load but I like the look. I do change the mipmapping to 8 when I run this scenery-then back to 4 when I run default fs. I grew up out there (San Diego), visit frequently, and have flown my plane there and the resemblance to reality is incredible.I don't plan to get NY -I am however interested in version 3 (N. calif).http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

Well...since a pic is worth a thousand words...here's my take...I'll post my hardware set up first and then a few pics of today's inaugral flights...overall I like the MS package and feel it's worth it...but as with everything else...there are trade offs. I like smooth FPS to go along with my eye-candy...so my AI traffic is set to only 20% and I'm flying these shots in clear weather.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/58368.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/58369.jpgAbove two shots show my basic set-up for how I fly. First shot below is taking off out of KLGA with Shehryar Ansari's excellant scenery add-on.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/58370.jpgShooting the Hudson...FPS holding in there!http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/58372.jpgWhat I really enjoy about the MS product is how much nice the coastlines look compared to the default scenery...and the night flying is really spectacular! See below:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/58373.jpgMy specs:Dell Dimension 4550 P4 2.4ghz (I think my FSB is 400mhz)1GB 333mhz ramNVidia FX 5600 256mb vid card30GB hard drive.Although my system isn't old by any measure...it's certainly not a tricked out XPS system, and as you can see in the above sceen shots...I'm still able to enjoy the MS product with pretty decent FPS. Hope this helps.Allen