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. 😉