FlightSim.Com Reviews: MunkWorks Canyon Scenery

MunkWorks Canyon Scenery

by Bill Irvine (4 August 1998)

A helicopter lifting off from a landing pad near a waterfall. Scenery set to Dense.

he current scenery from MunkWorks comes in four flavors: Munk1 "Jungle"; Munk2 "Metry"; Munk3 "Sand" and Munk4 "Canyon". The latter is the one I chose to review for a couple of good reasons: While my wife and I spent a winter living in Palm Springs, we rented a PA28-181 and flew up to Grand Canyon. After doing the lunch-thing and the oooos & ahhhhs from Bright Angel Lodge, we jumped back in the plane and told G.C. tower we were going back into the Canyon to have a good look before heading back to the desert. We did and it was great. In other words, I've been there, done that and got the T-shirt to prove it as far as "canyons" go; I've flown through the mother-of-them-all; thus, consider myself somewhat of an expert when it comes to canyons.

The second reason for trying out MunkWorks' Canyon Scenery was to see how good MS Flight Simmulator could be in the future. Yes, viewing MunkWorks is viewing the future. FS98 is a good product. So were all the previous versions; in my case, starting with FS4 about eight years ago. Each one has become better than its predecessor and FS2000 will not disappoint us; especailly, if it incorporates scenery as defined by MunkWorks. Then, when one flies to Niagara Falls or Grand Canyon, they'll really get an eye-full! FS98 has great mountains but it lacks great canyons: MunkWorks -- to the rescue!

What's Included

One of many waterfalls, shown with scenery set to Dense. Note the Arizona sandstone effect and green foliage.

I'm not a programmer, so can't say how MunkWorks is going to use the finished product in FS98 scenery; I'll leave that part up to them to explain. The demo I got (and tried) and the finished product seem to be "islands in the sea." Let MunkWorks explain more about their Canyon product:

"This rock formation twists its way through 28 miles of panoramic scenery. Follow the canyon river as it spills down from a plateau waterfall toward five cascaded falls, to end up in a 1650 foot drop to sea level.

Or take off from the sea level airstrip, facing the grand falls, and squeeze your way between the twin peaks, canyon faces, river bed trough and into the canyon passageway.

Chopper pilots have their own two helipads, mounted on cup-shaped rock formations, each of which is located at the foot of a fall.

A Beechcraft 1900 flying through the canyon with scenery set to Very Dense. Note the red rock effect.
Enjoy the view! But not too much, this is a skill demanding flight path. When you've grown familiar with the scenery, change the density setting. This will transform your canyon into an entirely different looking formation. Try another density. You have four choices, and as well the standard shaded texturing of the very sparse density setting."

To summarize, from my own perspective, this scenery is fantastic -- like nothing you've ever seen before (in simulation or real, unless like me, you've flown the mother-of-all-canyons). You, too, can do it right here and now with this package. I flew it for over an hour (couldn't quit) in a Cessna, B1900, BellRanger and Tiger Moth. Each has its own flight characteristic and gives a different feel for the scenery. A tip here: turn crash OFF in Aircraft Settings -- you won't last long with it on!

MunkWorks' Canyon's most incredible feature is its ability to completely change appearance with a change in MSFS's Scenery Density settings. Sparse doesn't do much for it but Normal, Dense and Very Dense completely change the colors and textures of the rock and plants (the latter appear along the river banks). If one wants to fly with Grand Canyon Red Rock, select Very Dense; if Arizona Sandstone is your pleasure, try Dense; if you want snow-patched Granite, try Normal; etc.

Conclusion

The installation is simple and complete instrucions are in the Readme file. This file contains far more information than can be provided here, so have a look at it before use. It's well-written and informative.

A Cessna ready for takeoff on a helo pad. Density is set to Normal. Note the snow-covered granite effect.
All navaids are here and all runways show up in the Airport's Menu from FS98's menu bar. Dial in some poor weather, and "go for it." In addition, when the airport is selected, the radios are set with the accompanying frequencies (this didn't always happen on my system). "Land Me" works at select runways and some have ILS. The Readme file has all pertinent runway and navaid data.

Frame rates are good. I never count the frame-rate when flying FS98 but this scenery didn't slow me down. None of it appears until one is very close to it, and this may be why it works so well. My system is an AMD K6/233 MHz with an ATI Xpert@Play 8meg graphics card. Running my 17 inch Panasync monitor at 800x600, the views out my window were perfect. With the multiple density settings available, it seems Munk4 will run on any system capable of using FS98.

I give this MunkWorks Canyon Munk4 scenery a resounding thumbs-up. Try it, you'll like it.

You can order from:
P. G. Le Blanc
5864 - 7th avenue
Montreal, Quebec H1Y 2N8
Canada
Email: robert2@videotron.ca

Download a working preview of MunkWorks Canyon scenery.

Visit the MunkWorks Web site at http://pages.infinit.net/munk

Reviewed by Bill Irvine
wji@islandnet.com

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