looking at these pictures they seem very very good, as anyone got these? I havent seen any shots like these posted on the screen shot forum.http://www.pcaviator.com/megascenery/forum...p?showtopic=527

here is a samplehttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/104857.jpg

Being that I live in Denver, Im quite looking forward to this!!!:http://www.megascenery.com/megacityden.htm

I am as well from Denver, I never thought we would get this!!!! I am very excited. Can't wait. I hope they do really well with it....But I am sure they will!!!!!!!

Amazing!!This quality of pictures sets a new standard as from now on:If future scenery software does not at least has this quality of beautiness, then don't buy it any more....Thanks for showing us these pictures.Paddy.

Hi Paddybegs the question when is FS going to look like this as standard out of the box, the technolgy is there so why not apply it?

Hi Clayton,I fully agree with you!The technology is available at this very moment as Fly Tampa has proven.Assuming that MS is developing FS 2006 at this very moment, we bluntly may expect (I hope) that this technology will be applied by the mighty software company Microsoft is! But let me tell you this: Knowing the standards which are possible nowadays and comparing the future FS 2006 out-of-the-box product with these standards, I expect a disappointment....Paddy.

I'm very much looking forward to the Megascenery PNW release as WA is one of my favorite places to fly. As long as there's a way to make it work with the Georender airports it will be awesome.The new "Megacity" tech is a step in the right direction and brings the quality of Megascenery cities to a similar level of other photographic sceneries. Unfortunately they are still using 5m IRS images upsampled to 4.8m for most of the scenery which makes it less detailed than other photographic sceneries at low altitudes. Still with features like autogen, night scenery, repositioned FS2004 airports and winter scenery to almost make up for it, it will be an awesome release.

>Hi Paddy>>begs the question when is FS going to look like this as>standard out of the box, the technolgy is there so why not>apply it?>A couple of factors, at least: (a) cost and (:( distribution. (a) cost: the data required to produce such scenery costs money. The amount of work involved in producing such scenery costs time and resources, both of which also boil down to money. Economies of scale mean that for the same scenery area coverage Microsoft would not need to charge as much per unit as the Megascenery packages ... but ... Microsoft would need to provide such coverage for pretty much the entire world (or the entire US at the very least). Take the cost of a Megascenery package, multiply it by however many factors are needed to provide global or national coverage, then divide that figure by an economy of scale factor. That's how much extra FS2006 would cost per unit just for scenery. (:( distribution: the volume of data required for such coverage would be enormous. This has implications for the publisher - how to distribute such massive amounts of data in a cost-effective manner - and for the user - do I have enough free space on my system to install this game?

Let's put it this way:Megascenery Norcal is 3 CD's for 30,000 sq miles of summer-only scenery (though viewable in any season). That wuold make it 12 CD's for all seasons.Land Area of the US: 3,536,278 sq miles.Which means FS10 would have to ship on 1415 CD's if it were to include the entire US. That's still over 200 DVD's.Do you want to install 1400 CD's to your harddrive? Do you want to be the UPS guy who delivers them? Didn't think so :) Not to mention the scenery would cost $3500 or so.The solution is to stream the data off the net like the Keyhole viewer does but the tech isn't really mature enough for implementation into a sim like FS and not enough people have a fast enough connection.This doesn't stop MS from using more accurate road, stream and water data as well as a better landclass and mesh out of the box, though.

Bautiful. The main problem with FS series is the ugly ground textures. They just ruin it for me. They need to overhaul the ground textures if the megascenery method can't be feasibly implemented at this time.

CYYJ1968,You hit the right points and maybe there are more to consider.However, we don't ask to renew the whole world-scenery up to those standards, but to apply them to those sceneries, which at present are designated as to be "photorealistic" and to give us back the nostalgic Kai Tak Airport with the Hong Kong Area, just as Fly Tampa did so already for Dubai, San Francisco and San Diego, using those new standards.Thanks for your explanation, showing the matter seen from quite another aspect!Paddy.

I have a lot of trouble with the mega scenery - I have both so cal and nor cal, and both tend to show very signficant decay of image quality over time. You can't fly anything fast with the scenery, even with detail textures off.

I have a lot of trouble with the mega scenery - I have both so cal and nor cal, and both tend to show very signficant decay of image quality over time. You can't fly anything fast with the scenery, even with detail textures off.

I have a lot of trouble with the mega scenery - I have both so cal and nor cal, and both tend to show very signficant decay of image quality over time. You can't fly anything fast with the scenery, even with detail textures off.