MegaScenery Volume 3: Northern California

By Andrew Herd (2 July 2005)

Watch video clips of this scenery in the FlightSim.Com Cineplex

egaScenery products have been around since way back when, but for some reason I hadn't connected with any of them until recently, when the mailman brought a huge box full of - well let's see...

Just picture the delivery sitting out there in the hall. When I say huge, I mean impressively big. Looking at the size of the package, I decided that minimum, there must be a real airplane in there, so I made myself an espresso and then cleared a big open space around it.

It turned out it wasn't a plane, but it was nearly as exciting: inside the box were four other boxes. The biggest two measured 10 x 8 x 2 inches, then there were a couple of DVD style cases. My MegaScenery had arrived.

Top of the pile was the 'Full kit' version of the Northern California MegaScenery, which came in one of the bigger boxes, with some great artwork and the promise of 30,000 square miles of photorealistic scenery on the back, which is 175 nautical miles on a square, if you are trying to reckon it in flying time (there is a 20 mile disagreement between the PC Aviator website and the package on the dimensions, but who cares about ten minutes flying time). San Francisco lies about half way down the left hand side of the scenery and due to the way the US of A is orientated, the bottom left quarter of the area covered is mostly ocean. In addition to photographic textures to replace Microsoft's endlessly repetitive default set, you get night scenery tiles and a new 30 m mesh. The 'full kit' box also contains a sectional for the area and a terminal VFR chart - and there is a color manual and a bound set of approach plates and airport diagrams - I have seen some well presented flight simulation products in my time, but this one is a peach.

The version I have installs from three CDs and my advice to anyone installing the product is to make a cup of coffee first, because half an hour had passed before I was done with changing disks. I guess this is understandable given that the hard disk space required is 7.5 Gb, but installation would be considerably easier if the package was put on a DVD (interestingly, Volume 4 of the MegaScenery is available on DVD). While the installation is churning files, it flags up all kind of interesting hints and tips about using the package, which are well worth reading if you haven't used a photographic scenery before. Then, just when you think it is all over, a dialog pops up asking if you want to adjust Flight Simulator's performance settings - PC Aviator recommend this for beginners, but I did it anyway and was more than happy with the result, even if it did add more minutes to the installation. Whoever wrote the manual really had a mission, because its sixty pages are nothing less than a tutorial on VFR navigation in Flight Simulator and anyone who reads it and absorbed the lessons it contains will be well set to enjoy the many opportunities the package offers.

So let's go.

Having recently reviewed another photographic scenery of the same area, it seemed to be the right thing to make the same flight, so that prospective purchasers can compare the two. I am going to have to apologize in advance that the screenshots aren't taken from exactly the same points of view, but they are near enough. Do note that I made the flight illustrated here on a day when the virtual sun was shining, while I used the Horizon Simulations scenery with an overcast.

First thing you will notice is that FS loading times are considerably extended. With extended terrain textures unchecked, the progress bar slows to a crawl for several minutes somewhere between 50 and 60 per cent, but be patient, because the wait is worthwhile.

The shots above show us just after takeoff, having turned right so we can climb to 3500 feet and head out towards the Golden Gate. Alert readers will immediately spot that the MegaScenery packages allow FS Autogen to appear on top of the photographic texture tiles - the developers have clearly done some work aligning the more major buildings, and the trees are fine, but there are inevitable minor conflicts where the smaller houses overlap photographic features. On the whole it works okay and I got used to it, but I am not certain whether having the Autogen active is such an advantage as it would seem to be - but I guess if you don't like it, there is always the option of pulling the slider to the left and turning it all off.

As you can see, the addon transforms the entire area and the screenshots speak better than words ever will. As with any photographic texture based scenery, blurring can be a problem, though it is no worse with this package than any of the others I have tried. Blurring occurs because Flight Simulator allocates focussing of scenery tiles a very low priority; so that it frequently happens just before the plane is about to pass over a tile and sometimes doesn't happen at all. The phenomenon isn't too noticeable with the default scenery because of the repetitive nature of the tiles involved, but if you hit W to switch out the 2D panel, or engage the autopilot and fly in spot view, you will be able to see it going on.

With photographic textures, an unfocussed tile stands out like a sore thumb, especially if the tiles adjacent to it are in focus - the culprit looks as if all its colors have run together. The solution is to fly no faster than 150 knots or so and not to do too many turns; which is fine if VFR flight in Cessnas is your thing, but not so good if you like low level jet action.

In an FS2004 MegaScenery installation, objects like the bridges are usually well aligned with the scenery, although PC Aviator point out that misalignment of FS2002 default objects can be a problem. The textures display in all four seasons and if there are any seasonal changes to them these are either very subtle or happen somewhere I didn't look. Compared to the Horizon package, the textures in MegaScenery Volume 3 are lighter and softer, although that is a subjective criticism and I would happily use either set. I can't figure out what causes this, other than image post-processing, but one I don't think it can be put down to is the 'light' in FS, as the effect being consistent regardless of what kind of weather I used and I was interested to see that it was banished by installing the San Francisco MegaCity addon (which is going to get its own review before long).

For what it is worth, the textures in the MegaScenery have a declared 5 meter per pixel resolution, which is a limitation imposed by Flight Simulator - if the raw images used to produce the textures have a lower resolution than this, the final result can appear blurry, if they have a higher resolution than 5 meters (4.75 to be exact), detail in the original image will be lost, according to Microsoft's terrain SDK.

In the shots above, we are flying down towards San Rafael - the plane I am using, in case you don't recognize it, is Flight1's very fine Cessna 172. I get to see hundreds of addons every year, some of which we think are good enough to review, many of which are not, but this little Cessna is one of the best. I gave the plane an Armchair Aviator Award when it was released, but it deserves much more than that, because it is one of the most real-feeling simulations of any plane ever released.

Okay, it's the home run now as we make the turn past San Quentin towards Oakland. Someone has clearly spent late nights tidying up the pixels along the breakwaters there. Time to lose a little height as we start doing the landing checks.

With Oakland International in our sights, it is time to think of the approach, but just take a look at the city down there, compared to what you get in the default scenery. Can you actually do without this package?

And that's it, beyond the fact I was getting bored with making this particular flight having done it around half a dozen times to get all the screenshots.

Great package. The big question is whether you ought to get this one or the Horizon package, and for once, I find it hard to answer as both have their strengths. Horizon's VFR Photographic

Watch video clips of this scenery in the FlightSim.Com Cineplex

scenery has generally darker, crisper textures and better alignment of the 3D objects and cost around five bucks less at the time of writing. On the other hand, MegaScenery Volume 3 comes with charts, a great VFR navigation tutorial and a full set of approach plates. Which one you choose will depend very much on your level of experience and what kind of flying you like to do, but if you are a MegaScenery fan, Volume 3 should be an automatic purchase - and I notice that there is a deal which lets you purchase the San Francisco MegaCity package at a discount if you buy it at the same time, so what's stopping you?