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MegaSceneryEarth Georgia V2
For FSX and P3D, Published by PCAviator
Reviewed by Kasper Hanselman
July 2013

Introduction

MegaScenery products have been on the forefront of photo real scenery development since 1998. Since then the quality of the scenery and the resolution of the aerial photography has increased. For Georgia Complete State the resolution of the source material is an astounding 50cm per pixel. Resolution in FSX is 1 metre per pixel.

With this resolution it should now be possible to fly lower and still have a good experience whilst in the past the quality of the experience dropped considerably at lower altitudes.


Good at 1000ft

Perfect at 3000ft

Background

Georgia Complete State delivers exactly what it says in the name: the complete state of Georgia, border to border in high definition photo real scenery. This means that a whopping 59,425 square miles is captured within this scenery.

Georgia has a sub-tropical climate and the temperatures in the major cities seldom drop to freezing levels. This means that changing the seasons in FSX has less impact on the scenery textures and the fact that only one season is included is not really an issue

A large part of Georgia consists of the essentially flat coastal plain that covers the south of the state and ends at the Fall Line that runs from Augusta in the east to Columbus in the west.


Coastal Plains


Piedmont


Atlanta

Blue Ridge Mountains

The central part of the state, which includes the cities Atlanta and Athens, consists of the Piedmont region which has more hills.

In the north of the state you will find the Blue Ridge Mountains to the east and the Valley and Ridge in the west. Both of these regions are the most  mountainous in the state and the Blue Ridge Mountains are home to the highest point Brasstown Bald at 4,784 feet.

pic
Valley and Ridge

Georgia is a predominately green state. In the southern part you will find subtropical flora including palmettos and in the rest of the state there is a variety of trees including red cedar, pines, oaks and maples.

Download & installation

MegaSceneryEarth products can be purchased as direct download or as a boxed product of 7 DVD’s. For this review the direct download product was used and the download of the approximately 24GB went without any problems. Installing was a drag however. After downloading the scenery you have 22 zipped packages and one zipped package with maps. To install each package you have to unzip and use six mouse clicks to confirm installation to the default location.

This is a minimum of 7 * 23 = 161 mouse clicks! One installation script would be much more preferable.

What you get

The complete package contains photoreal textures for the complete state of Georgia.

It also comes with a complete package of maps for the state including an Airport Facility Directory, En route charts, Sectional charts for Atlanta, Charlotte and Jacksonville, Terminal Area chart for Atlanta, Terminal Procedures for Georgia and a flyways planning chart for Atlanta.

According to the site MegaSceneryEarth 2.0 eliminated custom autogen and night scenery will be added at a later date as a free upgrade.

This brings me to what is not included, a manual. All the information is provided on the http://www.megasceneryearth.com website in the help section. Although I understand the advantages of providing the information online, a small PDF file with a description of what is included and tips on installing and preferred FSX settings would be nice to have.

Day textures

The day textures are crisp and clear, provided that you do not fly too low. All landmarks are easy to see and flying VFR is an absolute joy. The scenery also works fairly well with add-on airfields like Atlanta’s Hartfield-Jackson.

I did check with Google Earth to check for great discrepancies but I could not find anything out of the ordinary. I started to do these comparisons to check on the colour of some lakes that were much too emerald green in my opinion, only to conclude that they were the same colour on Google Earth. I do have my doubts about the colour of the coastal waters and rivers in the south east corner of Georgia, but this only a very minor issue.
There are also some small areas that look more like the default FSX colours and where the colour difference with neighboring areas is rather obvious.

One other minor issue is with the colour gradients in some lakes or rivers. The gradients do look too much like they are generated by a computer algorithm and this does take away from the immersion a little. One last interesting observation is that you can sometimes have clouds integrated into the scenery. Obviously the clouds and their shadows were present when the aerial photos were taken and now they are part of the scenery. Again these are all very small issues in a very good looking, photo real scenery.

The performance with the scenery is very good, on my system I had no drop in FPS at all.


VFR Paradise!


Emerald Lakes


Very Blue Water


Shades of Blue

pic
Clouds with shadows integrated in the scenery

Dusk

Although there is no mention of blending day and night textures in the product description flying at dusk is a real joy. The colours of the scenery change to more yellow overtones while the roads come alive with lights from vehicles. Even the water looks different. The overall effect is very pleasing to the eye and looks realistic.

pic
Dusk

Night

According to the PCAviator website MegaSceneryEarth v2.0 products do not contain night textures at this time. Night textures will be made available at a later time as a free update.

Flying at night is a convincing experience however. So much so that I doubt if this scenery really doesn't have any night textures! A city like Atlanta is well lit by night while more rural areas are dark with only some dispersed lights.


Atlanta at night

Georgia at night

Documentation

The download includes a complete package of maps as described earlier.

This package is very comprehensive and includes 582 pages of terminal procedures, a 61 page Airport Facility Directory, en route and sectional charts. This should be enough information to plan a flight to and from anywhere in the state.

A manual is not included in the downloaded product. Recommended settings in FSX, usage tips and installation information is available online at the MegaSceneryEarth website http://www.megasceneryearth.com

Value for money

The price of this product is USD 39.95, 31.20 Euro’s or 26.38 GBP. With free alternatives available linking Google Earth with FSX the question is, is it worth it?

Considering the high quality source material needed to produce this scenery and the huge area covered I feel you do get your money’s worth. This scenery is a VFR flyers dream!


Rural Georgia


Stone Mountain


I Follow Roads

Border between default North Carolina and MSE Georgia

Pros:
    ● High quality photoreal scenery of the entire state
    ● Good night flying
    ● Lots of maps included
    ● Good performance

Cons:
    ● Some small issues with water colour and small areas standing out
    ● No manual included

 Verdict:   silver
• Level of Detail: 8.0/10
• Performance: 10/10
• Scenery Coverage: 10/10
• Quality of buildings: n/a
• Documentation: 7.0/10
• Value for money: 8.0/10
  Mutley's Hangar score of 8.6/10 - Highly Recommended


Kasper Hanselman
Review machine Spec:
Intel i5 2.67Ghz | 6Gb DDR3 Ram |Radeon HD5670|Windows 7 64bit