FlightSim.Com Reviews: Scenery! USA's Boston Scenery

Peter McLean's Boston For FLY!

I just found out, it's not just Boston, but all of New England!

By FlightSim.Com Staff (10 October 2000)

Departing rwy 22 at Boston, headed over to Norwood Airport. Aaaahhh! This looks so familar to me!

NOTE: I took screenshots in a variety of quality levels. Please note actual product may look far better than in these screenshots. Some pictures are lower quality to save loading time. If your monitor is not running in 32-bit resolution, you will not see the actual great quality that FLY! runs at.

INTRODUCTION

Living in the Boston area, I have long searched for great regional scenery in FS. While there have been many small local areas done well, never an entire New England area done in one piece. Now, we finally have great scenery for the Boston area and as I recently found out, almost all of New England.

I took a bunch of flights around the all-too-familiar Boston area. I fly a Piper Cheyenne in this region quite often, and wanted to see immediately how Logan Airport would look. The original FLY! scenery for KBOS was horrible. The ocean was 5 miles out to the east, making the airport look like it was in a green swamp. The real Logan is an island on three sides, making it surrounded by the Boston harbor and the many small islands located there.

On left base, rwy 35, Norwood. I-95 on the left, running up to Boston, with the Blue Hills parkland ahead with a slight rise in terrain. In real life, Blue Hill is 400 AGL, but heck, it's in there!
I am very pleased to say that Logan airport is perfect looking, with all the accuracy of the real thing! All the harbor islands and the north and south shores are easily visible and properly located. Even though it's satellite based terrain, I was still surprised by its accuracy. Images were sharp enough to pick out shipyards, docks, and the city waterfront area. Frame rates were as good as in the default scenery, as far as I could tell. It was fluid with no delays or interruptions in flight, when changing views or flying along.

I have not ever come across a scenery that is this well done for this area. I took the Piper Malibu out of Logan, on a short hop down to Norwood about 10 miles southwest. All the familiar landmarks us pilots look for in the area were visible. I-95, Route 128, Route 3, etc. The only thing missing from the slightly blurry highway images was the constant gridlock that clogs our roadways almost 12 hours a day, now making Boston far worse than Los Angeles for traffic congestion. I could see the Needham TV towers up to the north (1200 AGL), as well as parts of the Charles River. Landing at Norwood looked quite familiar, with blurry shadings at low altitudes, still giving you the proper feel of where urban areas and rural areas coexist. Landing at Norwood was almost like I see all the time, minus some of the obvious smaller hills, woods, and solid buildings.

On another pattern at Norwood. This time left downwind for 35. Looks darn close to the real thing.
I then flew off Norwood and headed west, towards where I live in real life. I landed at the small Hopedale Airport off of Route 495. From there I went up to the Worcester airport to board a 737. Even Worcester's 1000 foot elevation was gradually modeled with the runways 29 and 33 being up on a high bluff. Overall, very impressive in an area that was never really done well before. After some flying to New York, and then a flight up to Burlington, Vermont, I was shocked to have come out of the clouds at 10,000 feet, over stunning mountainous terrain! Wait a minute. I thought this was Boston scenery! It's not just Boston. Burlington, Vermont had great topography and it's 200 miles northwest. Now, I knew I had a lot more area to explore.

CONCLUSION

Over a few days I explored southern New England, Nantucket and the Boston area, around Bedford and Norwood up to Beverly and the north shore of Massachusetts. Everything I saw was fantastic and real. I still have to explore some low altitudes throughout New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. A good reason to get out of jets again, and do some good ol' basic flying, on a nice day.

Heading west over Norwood, with I-95 to the south and Route 128 to the left rear with the intersection. That view would be southeast.
The scenery only lacks 3D objects (no surprise there), some smaller highways, roads and such. For the most part, you'll see almost everything needed for VFR flight using the sectional chart [M] built into FLY!. I did notice that since FLY!'s Boston area was screwed up by default, this map does not correspond very closely to the more realistic scenery out the window. All rising terrain, coastlines and night lighting were great. By far, this is the best New England based scenery I have ever used in a flightsim, with only the textured FS2000 default scenery being a runner up. As designer of Flight Unlimited III, I now feel right at home, and finally was able to fly over the neighborhood I live in! If FU3 had been based in this area, this is what it would have almost looked like.

The photorealistic Boston (I mean New England) scenery from Peter McLean gets a 95 out of a possible 100 points. Another "must have" for FLY!ers!

MORE PHOTOS

Looking north towards Route 128 and the Needham towers. This is by the rivers and the Dedham area.

Over Hopedale Airport, MA, looking towards Milford, Worcester area and Route 495. Gradual hilly country can be seen on the increase.

Over the coast in a PMDG 757, looking down at the Marblehead area. Heading towards the coast on a vector towards Logan, with Beverly airport below and a very accurate coastline.

Merrimack River at Lowell. New Hampsire border to the north. Again, very accurate! The southwestern corner of New Hampshire's hill country, as seen on a way down from 14,000.

Up the coast of MA, towards Rockport and NH seacoast. Another view of the greater Lowell area, with the rivers, urban center, highways and farmlands.

Visit Peter McLean's Scenery! USA for FLY! Web site for more details: Click Here

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