1 minute ago, Paul K said:

Just had a quick look at the Grand Canyon in a Cub. Ten minutes in there, and I was blown away. Some serious exploring coming up.

How could they actually improve on the Grand Canyon? It was already great-looking. Now you got me curious

11 hours ago, cobalt said:

The piglets found that brick homes survive strong winds. Millions of homes in the USA are brick. Your point is?

No they are not made of bricks. They are made out of plywood and plasterboard. A brickwall I could not punch through with my fist. ;)

12 hours ago, Mace said:

How could they actually improve on the Grand Canyon? It was already great-looking. Now you got me curious

Well, bear in mind I never explored the Grand Canyon before the update, so it might not seem much different to you. For me, if there was ever a reason to learn helicopters in MSFS2024, and buy //42's 'Campout', this is it! 😉

6 hours ago, Paul K said:

Well, bear in mind I never explored the Grand Canyon before the update, so it might not seem much different to you. For me, if there was ever a reason to learn helicopters in MSFS2024, and buy //42's 'Campout', this is it! 😉

Lol...just last night I was flying over and around the Grand Canyon in the new World Update in the Taog Alouette (huge bubble window, great for sightseeing), saw a very inviting ridge down in the canyon to land on, which I did, and then promptly set up my campsite using //42's Campout 😁 Once set up, I just stood there in avatar mode for a few and admired the view, and then shut down for the night....a very pleasant end to my evening of simming 😊

Here is a good before after compare:

Just did my first flight in one of the new areas. The Canyonlands region of SW Utah is one of my favorite places on the planet. I've hiked it, camped it, rafted it, jeeped it and flown over it regularly over a period spanning decades. I love the place and have always been disappointed in how it has looked in various sims with various software attempts over the years. So how does the new update do?

Wonderful! And yet, not in some aspects.

First off, while it should probably be obvious to most, it might not be for everyone - these "National Park" updates are vast areas of PG. If you have PG turned off, you're not going to see the improvements and you can skip what follows.

On the positive side, at least for this region, the PG extends far beyond the boundaries of the two NPs in the area - Canyonlands and Arches NPs. I flew out of Grand Junction, CO and followed the Colorado River into the region, picking up the PG well east of any of the park boundaries, and that's good, as the canyons begin well outside of any park boundaries. Which leads me to the first not-so-great... the transition between PG and normal scenery on this one is obvious, abrupt and a bit of an immersion killer until you're past seeing it. Colors and textures are just so dramatically different that it's more than a bit off-putting.

That said, the canyon country itself is simply spectacular. All the features in this area I know and love so well are there in sharp, glorious detail. None of the melted ice-cream canyon edges that have plagued previous looks at the area are present. The canyon regions are sharp, detailed, complex and beautifully rendered.

But... One of the more interesting aspects to the Moab area is the proximity of the redrock canyons to a significant mountain range, the La Sals, which features peaks rising to almost 13,000'. I was running a TLOD of 400, and when viewed from a distance the PG is not rendered and the mountains appeared fine. However, as I flew closer to the mountains and the PG kicked in, the mountains become too pinkish and looked very washed out. The dominate colors and shadings that were right for the canyons were very wrong for the mountains, and that's pretty disappointing. The stunning RL transition from redrock canyon to alpine terrain was, well, less than meh in the sim.

Will be interested to see if others are getting this, or if something wasn't right on my system. I did get one VRAM warning on the flight, but it wasn't when I was near the mountains, and at the point I was seeing this effect, my VRAM was well below limits (as monitored with AutoFPS in conjunction with GPU-Z), so I don't think my system was rendering the scene improperly. Nevertheless, I could be wrong.

So, a mixed bag. It will be interesting to see how other areas do, or don't blend to their surrounding terrain.

Scott

1 hour ago, tttocs said:

The Canyonlands region of SW Utah is one of my favorite places on the planet.

I did a x-country motorcycle trip in 2016, and we took off from coastal California, headed thru the Sierras to Las Vegas then St George UT, and just loved Canyonlands after Zion. I live in the Front Range area near Denver and really love a good part of the Colorado Plateau, which is on fire right now 😬