I'm pretty new to FS9 so if this is a stupid question, please bare with me. I have FSGenesis 38m mesh and landclass and I see there are some sectionals available for download. This looks great, but it raises a question: To what extent can you use one of these charts and find they match the terrain? Do towns, rivers, mountains and hills that the map shows match what you would see in FS9? How useful are they for navigation?Any help appreciated.

As long as you're somewhat familiar with the area, it's possible to do realistic VFR with generic scenery. You'll have to look at roads, rivers, raliroad tracks and lakes, since those are usually fairly accurate. Try to ignore cities, water towers etc. The shape of cities is always incorrect with generic scenery, since they're just a square of urban landclass. Also, many smaller cities found on the chart may be missing entirely in the FS scenery, though this is improved significantly with 3rd party landclass files. Topography, especially with addon mesh is nearly perfect. Just beware that hills and elevation in general isn't of much use when you're flying along at 7500 ft. It's easy to think a big moutain is only a small hill.For true VFR, nothing beats photo scenery like Megascenery NY/Socal, UK VFR or Switzerland Pro. Or, you could try to find an old copy of Flight Unlimited II & III :)

The default scenery in the Orlando, FL area is quite accurate for flying a VFR flight.W. Sieffert

I think the default scenery is good enough for VFR flight using a sectional. I've done several VFR flights without the help of the GPS, using just a sectional. The roads, railroads, highways, rivers and power lines seem to be in the right place, and cities are close enough to the depicted shape on the sectional. One flight I did, along my route on the sectional there was a black box with the word "stacks" on it, and when I got to that spot in FS, there was a big industrial looking building with large stacks sticking out of it. I'd flown that route in real life before, and there is a large industrial complex in that spot.