I own the BEV textures, various FSGenesis mesh, FSGenesis US landclass, and USA Roads. I fly low and slow and value realism. I have been interested in the MegaScenery NorCal and MegaCity San Franscisco products. But I don't really understand what the difference between a photoreal scenery and normal scenery is and whether these products would play well together. I believe I heard once that photoreals are not pretty close up, which would definately tun me off. Also, how are framerates affected? Any advice? thanks

unless you have a fast system, photo real scenery causes blurry ground textures. Also the transition from the photo real textures boundry to the fs genesis mesh and bev textures will look pretty bad.Personally I have never been happier with UT: USA Canada and Alaska, BEV, FS Genesis mesh and landclass, Active Sky, and Flight Environment. You may see a little more realistic textures from photo-real, but the lack of autogen is a turn off, who wants to look at a 2d painting of a building top? Low and slow means you can see that problem even easier.

The Megascenery or any other "photo-real" scenery is usually used for VFR flying to provide visual orientation.Pat

>normal scenery is and whether these products would play well>together. It is really up to you to decide how well they play together. For some they do for others they don't. It depends what kind of flying you do.Michael J.http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/pmdg_744F.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/images/asv_beta_member.jpg

I have Megascenery NY since I live in CT and it is covered. I can literally use it to become acquinted with how CT/NY looks from the air. It has been valuable in my real life flight training. No matter what mesh/texture set etc you have, it will never look as good as photoscenery. If you don't fly for real and just like to pretend so to speak, photoscenery is not that great. The resolution (at best) is 5 meters/pixel in flight sim- so each pixel represents about 16x16 feet. Not very immersive up close- but at 4 or 5 thousand feet, it looks much better than any other type of scenery.

I have the FS Genesis Mesh scenery, it's great.I have the USA Roads, it's great.I have the MegaCity Denver, and it sucks.Anytime I fly there after November 1st (by the FS Season and Time setting) I get the Denver area with snow cover. Even when there is, or has been no snow. While the scenery is pretty good, even low, it is a jolt to the playability to know that there is no snow in real life, so why should there be any in flight simming?I contacted MegaCity about this and they essentially replied, "Tough luck. It's a Microsoft problem." I removed MegaCity Denver from my harddrive and made a promise to myself to never by their stuff again.Thanks,DonaldS

I'll throw my 2 cents into the ring. I have Ultimate Terrain, FSGenesis Mesh, and the MegaScenery NorCal plus MegaCity San Fran packages. I also have Flight Scenery packages and MegaScenery Mid-Atlantic. I like them all to be honest. My framerates are typically good (30's fps) using an ATI X300 card of all things in any of the areas. I have nearly everything maxed out (except those darn clouds -- an X800 this Christmas I hope will help that issue). When I'm doing Jet flying, Ultimate Terrain is great and phototextures aren't as useful. They blur too easily and it only takes a few minutes before you are out of the photo coverage area.When I'm doing low and slow, I love flying the photoreal texture around 4000 ft. Typically, I use the Piper Cub to enjoy it. Although there is some pixelation at lower altitudes (1500 ft and lower I believe), what I like about the photo terrain is the fact I have all of my landmarks available and tend to keep my eyes off the gauges and out the window (like I do when I fly in reality). At these speeds, I never have a blur issue (even with aforementioned weak graphics card). So, as stated earlier, it depends on what type of flying you like to do. Hope this helps even just a little.Take care,Joshua

Thanks all. Still undecided. I would not be happy if the buildings look like painted 2Ds or things become pixilated lower than 4K. I do like landmarks tho.