1 hour ago, CFIJose said:

This is why I prefer payware city scenes, especially DDs, Samscene, and Dfflyerdirect Cities. The default PG Cities are hideous.

I thought these city updates included night lighting no?

1 hour ago, Drumcode said:

Can DD's Chicago Landmarks be removed with this City update? I get pretty bad performance with it and feel like everything is over saturated with colors. I appreciate DD and the amount of work went into it and all, but if it's better to remove it, I will.

I have parked DD's Chicago landmarks (for now). The CU15 buildings are pretty good, albeit a bit dark, depending on the time of day.. For me, having Meigs airfield back without bumps in the terrain, makes this combination great, for my (GA) style of flying..

4 hours ago, Drumcode said:

Can DD's Chicago Landmarks be removed with this City update? I get pretty bad performance with it and feel like everything is over saturated with colors. I appreciate DD and the amount of work went into it and all, but if it's better to remove it, I will.

Texture-wise, I think the new satellite imagery and PG come close to the resolution of DD's Chicago Landmarks, minus the crazy performance hit. You can see signs, murals and graffiti on buildings and read billboards along the expressways. The elevation data also seems to have been updated, at least on the PG, which makes things look more sharp and less "melted".

I'll take the darker buildings downtown over the light-colored buildings speckled throughout DD's scenery that stood out like a sore thumb. The dark buildings are unfortunately a result of the satellite data... glass buildings tend to be too dark and while there is some reflection on some of the buildings, it's not as intense as the reflections you see off a glass building in real life. Once you add shadows as well it all becomes too dark at a distance.

It would be nice if there were a "lite" Chicago Landmarks addon created some day that only included the most popular landmarks with less of a performance hit than the DD scenery. Giving proper textures/materials to 20 or so buildings downtown could go a long way to brightening up the area, but it may be tricky to make it fit in with the PG.

13 hours ago, fakeflyer737 said:

I thought these city updates included night lighting no?

I checked out Chicago after this city update and I did not like what the way it looked compared to DD city, especially at dusk or night.

So I disabled city update 15. Performance has not been an issue for me.

3 minutes ago, CFIJose said:

I checked out Chicago after this city update and I did not like what the way it looked compared to DD city, especially at dusk or night.

So I disabled city update 15. Performance has not been an issue for me.

I have the DD Chicago as well my issue with it is that the buildings don’t have textures on them until you are very close and this is really annoying to me.

On 6/14/2026 at 4:29 PM, Christopher Low said:

EDIT: There is also a UK2000 version of KCMI University of Illinois Willard, which is the one that Jon B mentioned as being a fond memory from his childhood (since it was one of the original airports in early versions of MSFS). In fact, it was Jon's comments about that airport that persuaded me to suggest it to Gary....and the rest is history 😉

For which I will remain eternally grateful Chris, I’m often flying out of KCMI , in fact I’ve been doing circuits on 32R all afternoon in the new Cessna Sovereign.

I’ve literally just spotted in the last few minutes there was a new payware KIKK Greater Kankakee just released for sale at .to

I’m really pleased to have spotted that and I’ll be buying a copy first thing tomorrow.

KCMI - KIKK - KCMI , I spent hours flying that route on my Commodore 64 Piper PA28, loved every minute of it, it was 2 FPS wire framed adventure.

Kankakee was as for north as you could go in my cassette version, but IKK had it all, a flashing beacon, a DME, and most importantly a refuelling pad. Such amazing facilities made the journey worthwhile.

And the mesh model was just right for Central Illinois. 😉

4 hours ago, jon b said:

KCMI - KIKK - KCMI , I spent hours flying that route on my Commodore 64 Piper PA28, loved every minute of it, it was 2 FPS wire framed adventure.

I don't know if it's available for MSFS 2024 - But there was a super nice C16 Frasca Field payware in the marketplace in 2020. Just NE of CMI.

2 hours ago, ryanbatc said:

super nice C16 Frasca Field payware

Thank’s Ryan, yes I bought that for 2020 and have it installed in 2024, I can’t remember if it’s updated for 24, but it certainly works ok, I often drop in for a couple of circuits on the way past.

14 hours ago, jon b said:

For which I will remain eternally grateful Chris, I’m often flying out of KCMI , in fact I’ve been doing circuits on 32R all afternoon in the new Cessna Sovereign.

I’ve literally just spotted in the last few minutes there was a new payware KIKK Greater Kankakee just released for sale at .to

I’m really pleased to have spotted that and I’ll be buying a copy first thing tomorrow.

KCMI - KIKK - KCMI , I spent hours flying that route on my Commodore 64 Piper PA28, loved every minute of it, it was 2 FPS wire framed adventure.

Kankakee was as for north as you could go in my cassette version, but IKK had it all, a flashing beacon, a DME, and most importantly a refuelling pad. Such amazing facilities made the journey worthwhile.

OMG that's how I started. Good ol' C64 playing subLOGIC FSII on cassette. So many hours flying up to KIKK and over to KBMI.

14 hours ago, jon b said:

KCMI - KIKK - KCMI , I spent hours flying that route on my Commodore 64 Piper PA28, loved every minute of it, it was 2 FPS wire framed adventure.

Oh wow..used to do the same thing but I had the Floppy version! Didn't one of the airports actually have "asphalt" runways. Most were just green with white outlines but I recall one of them actually had grey runways....😄

21 minutes ago, Little Jenny said:

OMG that's how I started. Good ol' C64 playing subLOGIC FSII on cassette. So many hours flying up to KIKK and over to KBMI.

I seem to remember owning a payware KBMI at some point, maybe it was in P3D because I can’t find it for MSFS. Bloomington was always a good destination for me as its VOR made it easier to find. Remember the excitement of having been flying over a featureless sea of green and maintaining a heading or radial for what seemed like ages , a small cluster of white pixels would pop into existence right on the nose.

They were happy days, even though I live in the U.K. I somehow will forever feel connected to that area of Illinois, it’s my happy place.

It’s on my bucket list to visit the Campaign Urbana area and find the building which was once home to SubLogic. I spent some time looking on the “visit Campaign” (or similar name )website , it actually looks a really nice city with bars and restaurants with outdoor areas.

I know I’ve bored people on Avsim before with this story, but in the world of so called “real world “ aviation I once found myself in the left seat of a 747 heading straight towards KMCI on a particularly southerly routing back from Vegas to Europe. I tuned in the VOR and listened to the ATIS.

It was a truly surreal, head spinning moment. I’d spent so many hours flying around and around KMCI using that VOR & ATIS as a teenager on my commodore dreaming of being being a pilot, and all of a sudden here I was going over the top in command of a real 747 with absolutely no idea how the heck I’d progressed from one to the other.

11 minutes ago, Flic1 said:

Oh wow..used to do the same thing but I had the Floppy version! Didn't one of the airports actually have "asphalt" runways. Most were just green with white outlines but I recall one of them actually had grey runways....😄

Ah well if you had the posh floppy version you could get all the way up to KORD and Meigs Field so it may have been one of the Chicago area airports which had a solid runway.

In the cassette version at least there was only KCMI & KIKK which had basic taxiways made of white lines and refuelling pads. Everything else was just runways and no infrastructure.

Edit: was it Dwight the airfield that had an NDB that had a solid runway ? I seem to remember something being different about that one.

Edited 10 hours ago10 hr by jon b

I am another one that discovered flight simming on my C64 with first a cassette drive (man, those things took FOREVER to load...lol) and then I remember how excited I was when I got a new floppy drive as a present. I used to just love love love the paper sectional maps that came with the SubLOGIC II Flight sim package. I would plan and plan flights using those.

I now have a C64 replica keyboard from 8BitDo with modern amenities. I saw it on Amazon a year ago, and the nostalgia bells started ringing. It even has the red power light in the upper right corner like the C64 did 😁

Last year I actually bought a nice condition C64 SubLogic flight simulator 2 box (floppy edition) complete with both manuals and paper charts off eBay.

It’s just a nice thing to own.

Those manuals are actually really well written, I still have my original SubLogic ATP manual on my bookshelf.

8 minutes ago, jon b said:

Those manuals are actually really well written, I still have my original SubLogic ATP manual on my bookshelf.

I agree, those manuals were well written. That is a cool find you got on Ebay indeed!