I mean no offense here, but I am really hoping for some enlightening and informative answers. Why does it always seem that U.S. scenery add-ons always lag way behind the photorealistic scenery produced by European scenery add-ons and other non-US developers? Sure, we have the cream of the crop in Megascenery but IMHO the states/areas are too limited (I live in Michigan, which MS scenery generally has made a mess of and if anyone ever does photorealistic scenery for here - please take my money immediately). Obviously, I don't understand the complexities involved in making photorealistic sceneries for the U.S., but I have been wondering this for a long time, and any insight would be appreciated...

SwambastThe VFR Photographic scenery and VFR Terrain mesh for the UK were produced from aerial photographic surverys of England and Wales. This was a very expensive exercise which is reflected in the price of the addons.The default FS2002 and FS2004 airports and airfields don't line up with their true locations in the addons so additional purchases of the UK2000 airports by Gary Summons were needed.As I said, all of this is expensive. It has cost me in the region of 300 dollars (I am from England, BTW) to buy it all.Now, I don't know the size of Michigan but I guess that my country would fit into your state quite easily and you would have a lot of change left over:-lol So I wonder just how much it would cost to produce realistic scenery for you?And just look at the cost of the Switzerland Professional photographic scenery as well.A great many people don't like spending just 10 dollars on an addon for a 50 dollar simulator. How many, I wonder, would be willing to pay several times the cost of the simulator for their addons and would it be a commercially viable operation?David

This is only my guess...European countries are small and for example the whole Switzerland can be made to fit in a reasonable amount of memory. UK is a bit more challenging but because it is an island one can see big benefit of making photo-real scenery for the UK. USA is obviously enormous and therefore any photo-real scenery can only cover its small chunk making boundary areas very unappealing to fly over. This in turn might discourage development.Michael J.http://www.reality-xp.com/community/nr/rsc/rxp-higher.jpg

The biggest problem is the lack of aerial images for the US. I suppose Megascenery is as good as it's going to get. For Switzerland, the UK, Spain, Germany, France, Poland etc. there are very good aerial images available and this is why it was possible to make such good sceneries.The US is..well...kind of big...compared to your average European country. Also, there are more people living in the Euro-Zone than in the US, so population density is much higher. So I suppose there's a bigger market here for these smaller sceneries. Still, the Megascenery regions are kind of small. It's getting better now - Norcal is 38,000 sq. miles and the WA scenery will be 30,000 sq. miles (Socal was only 14,000 sq. miles and lots of it was just ocean). By comparison, it took 4 volumes of 3 CDs each to cover the whole of England and Wales.They probably had two choices when making the Megascenery series:1. Concentrate on one state and attempt to cover it entirely in several volumes.2. Choose a new location for each scenery.Both have advantages and disadvantages. Now you can fly over photoreal scenery in New York, Socal or Norcal (and soon Washington State). Had they went with optoin #1, a bigger chunk of CA would have been covered now but obviously there'd be no NY or WA scenery. I suppose option #2 means more people buy the sceneries. The way it is now, you can't fly very long flights over continous photographic scenery. This is currently only possible with the England and Wales scenery.It's not just photographic sceneries, either. Other than the Georender series, there are very few GA airports fot the US, payware or freeware. There are a few landclass sceneries and of course USA Roads, but nothing that takes care of coastlines and lakes like VFR Terrain does. Something needs to be done about those ugly lakes, too.Re. prices: The price of the VFR scenery has dropped considerably this year. Also, you don't need the UK2000 airports. They do enhance the photographic scenery but it is a separate product. Same with VFR Terrain. The airport alignment problem exists with Megascenery as well, and there isn't even a CA2000 scenery to fix it.Switzerland Pro is extremely expensive. It's smaller than Megascenery Norcal and Real Germany Vol.2 but costs 5-6 times as much. I suppose the source images for this scenery were much more expensive than those for the other sceneries (*everything* is expensive in Switzerland :) ).

Where should they start with VFR scenery in the US? You mentioned Michigan, I would like upstate New York done where I live. I'm sure lots of other people would like their areas done in detail as well. Where would you start? My point is, the US is just too big to cover in it's entirety. Imagine if someone did make a "VFR USA". Think of how much it would cost, and how much space it would take up. Not to mention how much time it would take. That's why the Megascenery packages focus on popular areas like California and the New York City area. Here in the US, we still have some products not available for other parts of the world:USA RoadsFS Genesis Landclass (I think this may be in progress for other parts of the world)38.2m meshThat being said, I would like to see more airports done in detail in the US. The major airports are all done, but nobody seems to bother with the mid-sized airports.

bump.

that you are the one who is aching for it, and you have written off your skills at learning to design scenery. In England the person who ached for it, went ahead and did it.Don't expect others to do it for you, start learning. You can get a ton of free tools, and free help here at the scenery design forum.Bob

The other point to made here is that there's simply a greater need because the quality of the stock scenery outside of the US is generally lower then that for the US. For instance, the Seattle area where I live is very good right out of the box. Frankly, I don't see this as an issue to get to worked up about. IMO I don't think photo based scenery is the answer for the future simply because of it's limitations. It's a quick and dirty way to get a realistic looking world but the data requirements are huge, it only reflects how the landscape looks at one time of day, it's much harder to do seasonal changes because of the data required and lastly, it really only looks good from altitude.I think the ultimate answer is the one Microsoft has already taken. The combination texturing/land use, accurate 3D objects, detailed mesh, and intelligent auto-gen. It's very flexible and as the data behind each of these elements improves, so does the scenery. For that reason (and others) I don't think you'll ever see full photo based scenery for the US even when the hardware, storage devices and available data reaches a point where it's possible.TonyDigital-Flight

Everyone,Thank you for taking your time to answer this, I find your responses very interesting and insightful, to say the least. I'm just trying to understand the possibilities, and limitations.No matter what, I do see this as a possibility for the future, some day. Who EVER would have thought that some genius could have brought us all of the roads in the U.S.A.? Now that gets me excited about the future possibilites of this sim.A note for Bob: WHOA - I have used scenery design tools before, I'm just not proficient at photorealistic imports, yet. Regards, Steve

"Here in the US, we still have some products not available for other parts of the world:USA Roads"FS Genesis Landclass (I think this may be in progress for other parts of the world)38.2m mesh"Europe Roads would certainly be a welcome addon. There are some landclass sceneries for Europe, but not from FS Genesis. There's certainly 38.2m mesh available for many ountries. The VFR Terrain is based off 5m source data. Switzerland Pro also comes with a highly detailed mesh. They are both displayed at the highest mesh resolution supported in FS2004 - 38m/LOD10."Where would you start?"Obviously, you'd start with the most scenic areas of the country - Pacific NW comes to mind. Hawaii. Utah. I'm sure there are others. This is exactly what Megascenery is doing, and because the US is so big, and sparesly populated in many areas, this is probably the best way."I think the ultimate answer is the one Microsoft has already taken"At best, landclass is still only accurate to within about 1km. Photographic sceneries are accurate to within 4.8m.Another problem is that you can't see the true "character" of the landscape. One example is Megascenery Norcal vs default. If you fly along the border you can see just how far off landclass scenery is, even with the FS Genesis landclass. With Megascenery there are sandy brown hills and very characeristic fields. With landclass it's green, green, green! Another example is the English countryside which doesn't look anything like the generic crop textures in FS.Autogen is only good if you don't know the area. My home town is full of very nice looking autogen trees in FS. The problem is that in real life there's supposed to be a town there :-lolI think both scenery types will coexist for a long time and both will get more and more accurate - higher resolution and better autogen for photosceneries, more accurate landclass, roads, rivers, lakes etc. for generic scenery.However, I think that in the future, it will be possible for flightsim to connect to a server and download photographic scenery "on the fly". This would obviously require more bandwidth and won't happen until everyone has 10Mb or better connections. There was a program posted quite some time ago that allowed you to "fly" over photographic scenery that was downloaded in real-time from the Internet. Having something like that for FS would be pretty cool.

If you can get a Photorealistic Manhatten thats unbelievably good... I don't see any reason why we cannot have photorealistics for other major cities.I hate Autogen buildings and trees. They are simply out of place and out of proportion. IMO.Megascenary is awesome for landscapes like mountains. But for cities... Nothing comes close to Photos.. and even if its for a single season a single time of the day.. I ish.. I had photo realistic scenary for all the major metropolitan cities.1. San Francisco, 2. Los Angeles, 3. Manhatten (Available).4. Chicago.5. Dallas Ft.Worth6. Denver, CO7. Las Vegas and surrounding areas.. Lake Mead.I don't mind carefully planned out trees that are proportional when you get close and real low.

<>Let me know if you'd like to learn....its not hard...B