Safari Fliteware Scenery San Diego

by Phil Martin (5 November 1998)

Beautiful San Diego California, a very detailed photoreal journey far surpasses what the California Expansion Pack did with this particular area. However the photoreal journey is a short one. What you get is about a 50x25 mile rectangle of photo scenery covering the main coastal San Diego City area. The rest is about an 8000 square mile area, covering the area east of San Diego. This is made with textures, well done though, with a few scattered photoreal towns.

Disappointing due to the limited photo area coverage, as the writing on the box had me convinced it was all photographic. I seem to read that some people still like texture scenery. After flying Flight Unlimited II, I have trouble going back to repetitious textures. I am yet to get Pacific Northwest.

However, for what photo content there is, it's eye opening. It is about the same quality as the Las Vegas photoreal area in the stock FS98 scenery. The mountain non-photo terrain textures are also excellent.

INSTALLATION

No problems there for me. Just ran setup, then straight to Go To Airport...and there were all the scenery airports ready for selection. It weighs in at 75MB or can also be run from the CD. The California Expansion pack needs to be de-activated first, as it doesn't get on very well with its new neighbor.

FEATURES

5 controlled airports - Civilian
5 controlled airport - Military
4 uncontrolled airports
12 airports without instrument approach charts

A 10 page booklet gives installation details, airport frequencies and an area map. The CD contains the IFR approach charts and detailed diagrams of the airports. There is no dynamic scenery or adventures. The airports are a pleasure to visit and look quite pleasant, even though the buildings are stock FS. All the taxiways are there and everything is done quite well.

There are only a handful of objects, one great bridge and a few special buildings. Not being a Californian or even an American I don't know what these buildings are. San Diego central itself has a number of unique buildings and the rest are stock.

Problems...well for me there was. Lockups every few minutes. I managed to get around this by fiddling with DX6 options, but I could only run in software mode. I contacted Fliteware and was told that this has happened with only a few other people. D3D mode was a dream, while it lasted, on my PII 266 with Diamond Stealth II G460 video card. I was averaging about 35 fps at 800x600. However, back down to about a 10 fpm average in software mode. It looks quite OK in software mode though, once I got use to not being in D3D.

It fits in OK with the surrounding base FS98 scenery, but sometimes I would see a big green rectangle sticking out in the distance.

BOTTOM LINE

If you don't mind a mixture of excellent detailed photo real scenery, with some of probably the best textured terrain scenery around, then here is certainly about 10,000 square miles of sweet scenery you will fall in love with.

However, if you are a pure photo realistic junkie as myself, you will enjoy about 1,200 square miles of the best ass kick'n photo scenery I have ever seen on MSFS. There was for me however, a sinking feeling inside as I approached the outskirts of the photo area. Let us all hope that this scenery is well supported, so that the folk at Fliteware can make much much much more of this photo stuff.

Phil Martin
pmartin@nor.com.au

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