I don't recall seeing many posts about this so I thought I would seek some opinions of others.After buying this about a month ago I finally installed it and took a quick test flight around the area at 5,000 ft. I have to say I am a little disappointed compared to some freeware satellite scenery I have used. I was expecting it to be at least as good or better than Matt Fox's So. Cal. for Fly II but I don't think it is. I allowed Mega Scenery to make all the automatic adjustments during installation but it still lacks the kind of detail I would expect. My hardware is definitely up to the task. Maybe I'm expecting too much?Does anyone have both the California and NY versions of Mega Scenery and if so, how do they compare?

I'm not sure what the resolution of the FlyII scenery is. There's a limit in FS2004 of 4.8m/pixel (lower is better, obviously). Flight Unlimited II did 4.0m/pixel back in 1997 BTW.Another problem is the source data Megascenery uses. The detail and colours aren't very good and the textures contain artifacts.The Socal and NY scenery are pretty similar, but the NY scenery has more accurate autogen and winter textures.I have the Megascenery Socal, and I have pre-ordered the Norcal scenery because it's still better than default scenery. Megascenery does not compare to the VFR Photographic Scenery+VFR Terrain or Switzerland Professional however.

>I'm not sure what the resolution of the FlyII scenery is.>There's a limit in FS2004 of 4.8m/pixel (lower is better,>obviously). Flight Unlimited II did 4.0m/pixel back in 1997>BTW.If I'm not mistaken I believe Fly II was 7.5M/pixel. You had to get above 5,000 for the textures to look good. >Another problem is the source data Megascenery uses. The>detail and colours aren't very good and the textures contain>artifacts.You hit the nail on the head. The detail and colors are the areas I think are lacking. >I have the Megascenery Socal, and I have pre-ordered the>Norcal scenery because it's still better than default scenery.When USA Roads is released, this might be all that is needed to make the default textures look real enough. I once took a screenshot in Fly II of the transition between Mat Fox's So Cal and TS2 generated scenery using the default textures and it was very difficult to see where one ended and the other began.

"When USA Roads is released, this might be all that is needed to make the default textures look real enough"Maybe. I don't like how the FS2004 road textures look - they stick out too much from the rest of the terrain, where as in real life roads are sometimes hard to spot.So photographic sceneries still look more "real" to me. Also there are those small details that you simply can not capture with the coarse and relatively inaccurate "landclass" system. Glaciers, quarries, small villages and mountain roads etc. There is just more variety in a photo scenery since you don't see the same texture tile repeated over and over.However, it will certainly be a vast improvement for the areas not covered by Megascenery...which is basically the entire US since the Megascenery areas are quite small. I wish they would release the scenery in several "parts" though. Maybe four parts or something. I do maybe 90% of my US flying in the Pacific Northwest so I don't really need scenery for the entire US. Would make the addon a bit cheaper for those who only need one area.

Dean - I have both the NY and SoCal megascenery. I think the SoCal scenery is worse than NY. I have preordered the NoCal version only because that's where I first flew a Cessna (KMRY) almost 50 years ago. All I know is that it will be better than the default :-) and I love to fly around the Bay Area.Doug

>Dean ->> I have both the NY and SoCal megascenery. I think the>SoCal scenery is worse than NY. I have preordered the NoCal>version only because that's where I first flew a Cessna (KMRY)>almost 50 years ago. All I know is that it will be better than>the default :-) and I love to fly around the Bay Area.Doug,No question the coastlines are much better in Mega Scenery than the default.

Interesting... I have both SoCal and NY and I find SoCal a bit better. I think it has to do with the variad Geography of SoCal compored to the relatively "flatness" or the NY package. This improves the 3-D feel I think.I held off on pre-ording the NoCal only because I really wasn't impressed with the detail and sharpness of the shots or marketing video. It may be the data or just the video compression but I will wait until I hear what others say before I decide to purchase any future packages.