First off, welcome aboard JMarquez.

 

I think sometimes experienced simmers forget that those new to FSX don't know all the ins and outs of photoscenery vs landclass, scenery objects vs autogen and so on.

 

Photo scenery is always going to be accurate - at least as of the time the imagery used was shot - but being a 2D image draped over a 3D mesh, at some point (that point depending on things like lighting and resolution) the illusion of 3 dimensionality will disappear and things will be flat and not terribly recognizable.  The lower you are, the worse the effect.

 

From base photo, depending on the product, things can be improved but still not perfect.  Autogen (automatically generated structures from a generic library) can fill in 3D gaps for more visual appeal at low altitude, but it will always be generic and inaccurate.  Products like Aerosoft's, which add scenery objects (specific 3D models manually placed) are going to be better, especially for larger, more landmark type buildings, but you still can't expect every corner grocery store to be there, or to be there and look exactly like it looks.  Companies like Orbx produce hybrid products with hand optimized landclass mixed with photo, mixed with scenery objects.  (But not for LA).

 

Bottom line is, there's no product you can add to FSX today that completely mimics a large scale area perfectly.  For your purposes, I expect a larger scale photo product like Megascenery V2, Blue Sky or the older MegasceneryX SoCal (Photo with autogen) with Aerosoft's LA on top is the best choice (no night textures, though).  But as you read the comments here you can see pretty clearly that most of us have our preferences and there's no complete consensus.

 

Hope that helps clarify a bit,

 

Scott

 

Scott,

 

Very well described and accurate. Commendation is in order for this reply.

I enjoy MSE 2.0 also although it is 2d, it comes off as 3d on my PC once airborne. Wish he OP would have posted a PIC to see what is going on.

I think the chief complaints are by simmers who want to fly nap-of-the earth (below 1000' AGL) and have razor sharp imagery, which you just won't get with MSE or any photo scenery offering that I know of (UltraRes and the MSX-series come closest as they are not as heavily down-sampled and/or are tailored by hand). With a few exceptions, MSE looks pretty convincing at your typical VFR altitudes.

 

 

Very well described and accurate. Commendation is in order for this reply.

 

Thank you sir!  That's very kind of you to say.

 

Scott