Folks, 

 

I'm about to start my PPL training (IRL) in the San Francisco Bay Area (flying out of KSQL) and would love to replicate the environment in FSX for some at-home pre- and post-lesson left-seat time. What would you FSX sages recommend in terms of the best airport and VFR scenery to use with my A2A C172? I tried the Blue Sky Bay Area scenery but didn't like the orthophoto/photo-real approach (too flat and sterile when low and slow).

 

Is there a good KSQL rendition available? What about a good Bay Area mesh as well as scenery? Paid or free, doesn't matter. Any thoughts?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

 

I use FSGenesis mesh for the whole US, and I really like it.  I find UTX models real world roads, train tracks, etc, very well in my area, which makes it really useful for realistic VFR navigation practice.  I've never personally flown over the Bay Area, so I can't speak to it's accuracy, but I would imagine it's similar.  There are tons of threads around here that talk about how to improve the eye candy.

Thanks ramrunner. I'll give FSGenesis and UTX a look.

 

However, since both are large-area offerings, I was wondering if there are any known good area-specific sceneries (and airports) available. My pereference would be some good Bay Area specific scenery and airports package(s) which presumably will get the local landmarks and reporting points right. Of course, I will indeed try the 'large-coverage-area' offerings if more focused sceneries aren't available.

 

Any Bay Area low-and-slow guys/gals out here?

Flightbeam KSFO and Imaginesim KSJC are the only payware airport offerings I can remember. For VFR there is no beating photo scenery, I've heard version 2 of Megascenery is good. Add that to FSGenesis mesh and you have a good combo. A weather program like ASNext and texture program like REX. After you spend all that money there is a freeware KOAK in the avsim library and Half Moon Bay but that is all I can recall off the top of my head for the Bay Area. A really fun place to fly.

I am a pilot who flies mostly 182's out of both Palo Alto and San Carlos airports. I use BlueSkyScenery scenery and FSGenesis mesh for all of California except what the original Megascenery X Southern California covers.

 

While it is somewhat flat surrounding the immediate airport, you get used to it and I am not around the immediate airport for very long in FSX and the rest of the bay area is pretty hilly which looks good in photo scenery. This is what I used when practicing for my pilots license 6 years ago and I used the great Real Air Citabria as that is the plane I learned in, in the real world.

 

The other advantage to the photoreal scenery becomes very apparent when you start doing your cross country flights. You can fly to the places you are going to in the real world and get a feel for the layout. The central valley from 6,000 feet looks pretty darn flat in the real world as well.

Just another example of how I practiced with Photoscenery. It is common on your training flights in the bay area to head out to the coast on a nice day and do your practice maneuvers there. From Palo Alto we would do what is called a left Dumbarten departure which involved flying 10 degrees right from runway heading to the Dumbarten bridge. Once reaching the 92 freeway we turn left to point toward the hills and because of the airspace restrictions, you need to stay under 2,000 feet until your wings are level with Stanford Stadium. Then you start a climb to 3,500 to pass over the hills. Once to the coast we would often fly down to Pigeon Point Light house and use that as our ground reference for performing turns around a point. Yes it is a flat representation in photo scenery but that matters not as it is a focal point for your reference maneuver.

 

Also, there are a couple nice fields around that area that we used for engine out practice. Those are all depicted in photo scenery so you can use them as well in the flight simulator.

I just remembered that there's a really nice freeware KMRY in the file library as well.   Makes for a good little cross country sortie.

Bluesky photoscenery is pretty damn good imo. Thats what I use when I fly VFR in that general area

I agree on Bluesky Scenery, it's really great. And you could also take a look at Aerosoft's US Cities San Francisco, which also covers parts of the town, mainly downtown San Francisco. However, from my experience these products (I don't have Sna Francisco, but a few others of that product line) do only look from a certain distance, but are very blurry when you're close to the buildings. And they are daytime only, but if you do only daytime VFR flights, that might be interesting for you.

Bay area is pretty sadly represented in FSX. 

 

Not sure when Orbx is coming out with their Northern CA. IF and when they do that and start putting out airports like they have done for the PNW, it would be good.

 

You may want to check out Mega scenery as well. IT doesn't have  autogen and night textures...

Great responses ... thanks folks!

 

So, it appears we are looking at FSGenesis, Bluesky, Flightbeam and a couple of avsim files to kick things off. I'll give bluesky another shot and try to acclimate.

 

ryebread - from KSQL we would likely fly the Bay Meadows or Woodside departure, then turn West to head to the coast just as you've described. Key here would be reporting points such as Crystal Springs, Bay Meadows, KNBR, cement plant, etc. I'll look for them on bluesky.

 

Manny - you are absolutely right, its staggering how poorly the Bay Area is represented in 3rd party add-on space. Lets hope ORBX comes to our rescue soon.

This doesn't help you with KSQL, but I've been pretty impressed with Glenn Johnson's photo real KLAX, KOAK, and KSAN sceneries.  I'm not a tubeliner guy so I don't spend much time at 'big" airports.

 

Slim