Megascenery earth or fcscenery

[Rein2]

MSE and fcscenery are both photo sceneries afaik; fcscenery covers almost the whole world and comes with autogen. What are the differences between the two. Which brings higher quality photo scenery

[Patco Lch]

IMHO FCScenry is better quality, higher resolution and comes with its own autogen without having to make an additional purchase. I have both for my home state of South Carolina so it’s a pretty direct comparison 

[ywg256]

I too like FCScenery for the most part although there are some things that bug me. For instance, whenb using the British Columbia package, there are a couple of things I don't like. 1. clouds on the photoscenery all over in places. 2. on approach to CYVR 8L there are a tonne of trees along the Iona North Arm Jetty. in fact all over the place in the water....I ultimately deactivated the British Columbia package. There are a couple of others I bought that also have clouds all over the place....

There are also issues with missing autogen all over the place for Ontario and Alberta package for instance in GTA area and Calgary.

Unfortunately, with no one else having touched Canada before, there really isn't an alternative out there.

 

[Patco Lch]

Photo scenery definitely has its drawbacks. I often find myself reverting back to the ORBX tile scenery which in some places has a sharper texture and generally more realistic look even though it’s not the real scenery.

Edited March 9 by Patco Lch

[drobinho]

1 hour ago, ywg256 said:

2. on approach to CYVR 8L there are a tonne of trees along the Iona North Arm Jetty. in fact all over the place in the water....I ultimately deactivated the British Columbia package.

FWIW that's probably a funky result of converting the OSM (openstreetmap) data into autogen (most likely with ScenProc).

Compare the Gmaps YVR... https://www.google.com/maps/@49.1992981,-123.1923576,7259m

...with the OSM data... https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/49.19786/-123.19107

...and you can see how the wetlands/swampy area immediately to the west of 08L are classified. I'd wager that element got converted by ScenProc into a polygon for autogen flora, and the result is a bunch of trees hanging out in the water.

The P3D SDK includes the Autogen Annotator, which can be really useful for removing things like that from your sceneries. If you take day to wrap your head around how it works, you could tweak that problematic autogen within minutes.

That obviously doesn't solve things like clouds pasted onto the photo tiles, but it can help manage the autogen side of things. Missing OSM data is probably also the reason why certain areas of the photoscenery are missing autogen, too. Check openstreetmap for a particular location, and if it is missing plotted buildings and tree classes then you're probably not going to see autogen for the corresponding photoreal tile.
 

Edit: P3D SDK documentation on Autogen is available here: https://www.prepar3d.com/SDKv4/sdk/world/autogeneration/autogeneration_overview.html

An older How-To guide is also available on Avsim here: https://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID=fsxsd&DLID=140537

Edited March 9 by drobinho

[Clutch Cargo]

Very little information on their website.  What is the resolution of the imagery?  Do they have night textures? Lighting.  Full building autogen for and vegetation?  Curious.

[XMAN]

On 3/8/2025 at 7:16 AM, Patco Lch said:

IMHO FCScenry is better quality, higher resolution and comes with its own autogen without having to make an additional purchase. I have both for my home state of South Carolina so it’s a pretty direct comparison 

Certainly not better Resolution than MSE  which FC scenery countries do you mean ?   i may be interested , theres no info on the site 

[Patco Lch]

9 hours ago, XMAN said:

Certainly not better Resolution than MSE  which FC scenery countries do you mean ?   i may be interested , theres no info on the site 

The only two FCscenery I have are Nicaragua and South Carolina. Comparing SC which I have in MSE I think FCscenery is better but maybe that’s objective. As I stated I’m not that big a fan of photo scenery as I primarily fly tube liners. 
As far as the FCscenery web site I understand he is a one man show. It would help if he would post more pictures of each location and come up with an easier delivery method after payment.  Order an area and judge for yourself.

[Luis Hernandez]

I got Colombia, Argentina and Texas. Unfortunately, the scenery for Colombia is too variable: good definition in Bogotá, a blurry mess just 50 NM away, unsuitable for VFR. But I can't find any good photo sources with better resolution for this area (Google/Bing/Apple). At least FCScenery has their own autogen.

[XMAN]

Too variable , you mean like abruptly changing colors /shades as you fly along ,  i have Alaska and its not bad ,  worth very much the 10 $ for a huge area, Australia , i may get that , i have many Orbx airports and hopefully they blend well with FC scenery

[Zatoichi]

Mega is going out of business and selling cheap.

[tktheo93]

I have over 10 000 gb of Photoscenery on my drive and I'm pretty sure I can provide you with a reasonable fair answer. I have paid for them myself with my own money. 

To begin with, Mega Scenery Earth is outdated and the lack of autogen makes it pointless to use. I created over 6 million objects with a simmer for Ohio, which took a week and the end result is not even close to the other "player" FC Scenery. Here is a pros and cons list of both:

 

Mega Scenery Earth:

+Reasonable price.

+Limited space, but that comes with a drawback regarding the sharpness of the image.

 

-No autogen, only flat terrain.

-Outdated photoreal

-No support

 

FC Scenery: 

+Reasonable priced, especially the limited 500 usd for the world is a joke. That is honestly 0,02 cents per gigabyte. Cheap.

+Around 1m resolution in urban areas, around 2m elsewhere. 

+No performance issues.

+Colour matching is one of the best, if not the best, that I have seen on P3D.

+Updated maps and quick support available.

+Autogen (trees, buildings) 

 

-You need a lot of SSD space for the world. I would say that 6 000-8 000gb would be a close estimation.

-Some minor issues here and there. With that said, you get a response from the dev and those will eventually be sorted.

 

Which one would I recommend?

FC Scenery 100 %. 

Do I regret paying over 1 500 euros?

No, would do it again.

 

Here are some shots from my flights using FC Scenery, all in 4k:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KD8NCt4u72wU-7KZOLntwpBuf8FLbMH7?usp=sharing

 

best,

Théo

 

 

 

 

 

 

[dsalman]

I have all of FC Scenery.  I also had all of Megascenery with the free autogen for it.  FCS is much better, and the textures are very good.  They update the scenery with newer technology which is nice to have.  For example, I have version 1, then version 1.2 came out with a new autogen.  Now version 2 is coming out with 2024 data and seasons.  I do donate for any of the upgrades because they are well done.   I used Scenery editor version 1.9 to manage the scenery and load what is needed for the flight.  I used m.2 SSD 4th generation with a USB 3.2 adaptor.   4TB is not expensive these days, I think total space is around 12TB.  I enjoy P3D 6 very well and it is very stable, with FC Scenery I have everything I need.  I just fly to airport to airport with many aircrafts.  I am looking foward with version 2 for all his scenery as it comes out.  

[philmurfin]

How would you say either compares to the Orbx TE series please?

[XMAN]

The Florida demo looks great, fully autogen and placed correctly ,