Sunrise over Monument Valley, Navajo Nation, USA

Introduction

It is my honor to review for you Orbx's scenery of Monument Valley, USA for X-Plane 11. I must apologize for not having this review to you sooner as I have, like Gollum in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, become fixated on this wonderfully entertaining new addition to the X-Plane payware scenery world.

Before we get to the scenery proper, first a little bit of 'gen' about Orbx; the team has been around for some time - since its founding in 2006 - building sceneries for FSX and P3D. You can learn more about Orbx and the team, as well as this great piece of kit they created they like to call FTX Central at their web site...now let's get on with it.

Monument Valley

As written on the Wikipedia page, Monument Valley is a region of the Colorado plateau characterized by a cluster of vast sandstone buttes, the largest reaching 1000 feet (300 meters) above the valley floor. It is located on the Arizona-Utah border, near the Four Corners area. The valley lies within the territory of the Navajo Nation Reservation and is accessible from U.S. Highway 163.

Monument Valley has been featured in many forms of media since the 1930s. Director John Ford used the location for a number of his best-known films and thus, in the words of critic Keith Phipps, "its five square miles (13 square kilometers) have defined what decades of moviegoers think of when they imagine the American West".

Some readers may have also heard of a little place called Radiator Springs located in Ornament Valley, home to the world's friendliest tow-truck? That's right, the location depicted in the 2006 movie Cars was inspired by this wonderful real-world location.