I have been trying to register on the megascenery forums for a couple of weeks, but I have yet to get a confirmation email ... so, hopefully there are some megascenery users here who can answer a couple of questions for me....I just purchased Megascenery socal today. I tried the demo last night and it sold me. I took one look at the coastline and realized there was no way I could ever be happy with the default textures. Can't wait to get the full program!I have some question while I'm waiting for the UPS guy:* Will the upcoming Northern california scenery "link up" with the southern california scenery? I can't find any statement of this on the web site, so I suspect not, but it sure would be nice.* In playing with the demo, I've found that the autogen detracts from the scenery rather than adding to it. However, especially when the Pacific Northwest megascenery arrives, I know I am going to miss having trees around the airports to add a bit of immersion at ground level. Is there an autogen config file or some-such that would allow me to disable all of the autogen except for trees?* I am a little concerned about texture loads. It's hard to tell, of course, from the demo if this will be a problem for me. I'm getting FPS of 40-50 in the demo area, so it seems like I should have enough bandwidth, but my default plane (Marchetti SF.260) cruises at around 175, so I'm hoping this isn't fast enough to typically outrun the texture loads. What are megascenery users experience with this?* They recommend a mesh complexity of only 20. In my experience, especially with third party mesh, this results in undulating mountains. Has anyone been running MegaScenery with 38m mesh and higher mesh complexity settings?* They offer a warning about performance issues flying at dawn or dusk. I often fly late in the afternoon and close to dusk, because the deep shadows and sky colors really can be beautiful. How much of a problem is dawn/dusk flying.Thanks in advance for any responses.

Hi,you worry too much ;)I'd just check the area covered by the socal and nocal sceneries, there should be some images on the megascenery site. With socal, I believe there is not much you can do about autogen ... I leave it on sparse, because I like a 3d object here and there. The nocal package seems to have really good autogen, judging by the video. I think cruising with 175kn isn't too bad, your system should handle. The warning about dusk flying should only apply if you have blend textures checked in the options, because then the sim will load both the day textures and the nighttime ones. -Daniel

Where do you get the playable demo from? The only demo I can find is a video.Victor

Greetings. As far as the two sceneries linking up - no. The Socal area does not go nearly far enough north and the Norcal area does not go nearly far enough south.Your Marchetti should do fine at not outrunning the textures too quickly, but even with the slowest planes, I've found that when I stay in one viewpoint for a while, the surrounding textures that I'm not looking at eventually blur and take a while to come back into focus when I do look their way.As far as the mesh goes, the detailed Megascenery textures give all the sense of relief you'll need. I haven't noticed any difference in the look of things when flying around L.A. with mesh complexity high or low. I have 38m mesh installed across the U.S., but it makes no difference in the Megascenery area.On my 3.0ghz system with FX5900 ultra v.c., I haven't noticed any big deal about flying at dusk or dawn.Hope this helps. - Matt D.

"* Will the upcoming Northern california scenery "link up" with the southern california scenery?"No. Coverage maps are available on their website and there's quite a gap between the two. They have vaguely hinted that they will release a central CA scenery at some point but they'll probably do WA, Hawaii and maybe some other places before going back to CA.About Autogen:Simply go into your Megascenery Socal folder and delete all files ending with .agn. When I tried this, trees were still drawn (they seem to be placed by some other file, not the .agn files).Remember that Socal was their first product of this kind. Autogen is much improved in their NY scenery and for Norcal it looks like they improved it further. The upcoming Pacific NW scenery might be even better than the Norcal scenery.About texture loads:Check the MS Flight Simulator Tips and Tricks forum (http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=177&topic_id=356&mesg_id=356&page=). Since I fly almost exclusively over photo sceneries, I put together a long post with all the tweaks and observations I have made re: texture loading and performance of this type of scenery.With Extended Terrain Textures disabled (read my tips on how to hide the ugly green textures) I have no problem flying planes like the default Mooney (200+ kts GS) - I even flew the Learjet at 300 kts. GS without that many blurries. Of course, when I tried the F-16 at close to supersonic speed the result wasn't pretty :-lolAbout the mesh:I have been using the Megascenery with 100% Mesh complexity with no problems. I recently got a 38m mesh for the area but I have not yet had the time to see how compatible it is. Remember that FS2004 uses the mesh with the LOWEST priority, so you need to set up the priority correctly to prevent FS from using the included Megascenery mesh.

Jimmi,Thanks for that guide ou pointed out. I will have to do some of those tweaks myself :)

Thank you kindly for the tips, Jimmi G. - Matt D.