Safari Fliteware Rocky Mountain Denver
Pre-Release Sampler
by Phil Martin (16 November 1998)
by Phil Martin (16 November 1998)
Safari Fliteware, the folk who gave us
Scenery San Diego,
with its very detailed photo real and excellent textured scenery, have
now decided to take to the paint brush and head out to Denver. This time
we are in for an artistic treat.
They are making available a pre-release version of their
up and coming scenery Rocky Mountain Denver. It will contain about 8,000
sq. miles of there new technology ray-traced artistic scenery. In non-technical
terms, this means it kicks ass. This stuff is pretty, let me tell ya. More
on that later.
It is intended to be a small sample of what the commercial
version will be like, but not nearly as nice. The sampler will total about
40,000 sq. miles. What is not custom textured will be textured with the
Microsoft pine, however the entire thing is mesh scenery and is done in
actual elevation from USGS DEM data.
Lovely Lovely Lovely
Well I have only had a relatively small, far from finished area to fly around in, but if this is any indication, well...we're going to love this one people. This is real quality. When I first started to have a look around I thought NO!! I have not seen scenery like this before in MSFS. Or anywhere else for that matter. However, there was something very familiar about it. WOW...look at that valley with all those little ridges and all those little shadows...and look at that snow. SNOW!! what do I want look at snow for. What's going on here, what is all this, why does this look so familiar. Arr!!!! that's right, ray-traced. By God!! this is ray traced scenery, no wonder it looks so bloody good. I'm sure we have all seen examples of ray-traced art. Well folks, this scenery seems to have that same type of quality in it bones. Ray-traced Denver...man, can you imagine that?
Rob Talks Mega Big
Rob Loney from Safari tells me the commercial version
will contain about 100,000 sq. miles and will be fully custom textured
along with photo-real scenery of Denver and Colorado Springs.
It will contain all custom airports and will have all
airfields and strips.
Denver and Colorado Springs will be completely re-done
on photo-real texture.
They are offering a $10 rebate toward the purchase of
the commercial version for customers who purchase this.
Adventure In Rocky Mountain Denver Land
Passing though the layers of scattered cloud which just hung above
the first layer of mountains, I glanced over toward that huge
impressive P38 engine which was humming away loudly at maximum rpm,
working its sweet butt off, trying to gain altitude to get some form
of reasonable height above the up and coming snow peaks which were
jutting out above the cloud layer.
My thoughts...THIS IS REAL, I AM HERE. This is the best thing I have
ever experienced in any flight sim.
But for sheer presence and quality I personally put this one ahead of
FUII. Early Days yet though.
So now I am going to see if the old DC-3 can make the same trip to
the top. Will that be enjoyable. You can bet your old grannies sweet
pumpkins on that one.
Pretty daunting countryside this for the old Cessna, so I decided to
hop into an old P38 with great P38 sounds (all downloaded from the
best flightsim site on the net of course, no need to mention any
names) and take off from Denver and head off to tackle those snow
peaks in the distance.
Listening to the P38 roaring away and slowly gaining height against
these glorious looking snow peaks. It was even a cool morning and
could feel a slight chill in my bones. This scenery is "IMPRESSIVE"
and "GLORIOUS". All flight simmers please take note: This is "NEW
REVOLUTIONARY" scenery. The only negative thing I can say at this
early stage is that it still has a bit of a pixelated look. I think
Flight Unlimited II is better in this regard.
Wraping Up
Well it's early days yet, but with Rob talking Mega Big and telling me that I ain't seen nothing yet...well, I for one am certainly hoping for something really special to happen. So folks, this is one to keep your eye out for.
