FS2004 scenery is comprised of the following:

- terrain mesh - i.e., elevation data. FS2004's included mesh's
resolution varies depending on where you're flying, but in almost all or
all cases there are freeware or payware meshes that have superior
resolution - and therefore, more accurate hills and mountains.
(Downside: higher resolution mesh can affect framerate, since more
elevation points are being represented.) A good explanation of this and
also some links to freeware mesh for some areas (e.g. California) can be
found he http://mesh64.home.att.net/
- landclass data: "this is a city, this is a rural area, this is a body
of water"... etc. etc. Landclass tells FS which texture to use to render
a given Patch of Land; it has a large library of textures (which change
from season to season - i.e. what you have the date set to) from which
to draw these from.
- custom building scenery - Las Vegas has a lot of this; LAX is another
example. Any well-known structure landmark that exists in FS falls under
this category. The more detailed airports also have a lot of custom
buildings. (Note to helicopter pilots - custom buildings cannot be
landed on.)
- semi-generic building scenery - to convey a downtown area, but not
particularly realistically. I believe that downtown San Jose is like
this; I live in SJ, but I don't think the downtown buildings correspond
to actual ones. (I could be wrong about this though.)
- AutoGen buildings - no relation to real structures, but they convey
"built-up" areas; I believe that the landclass data drives the AutoGen
engine. BTW AutoGen can have a very adverse affect on framerate if you
turn it up much.
- Photorealistic (i.e., aerial-photo-based) - I think there is a little
bit of this in FS2004, but this exists primarily in add-on "payware"
products; for instance http://www.megascenery.com provides some
photo-based regions of the US. However, this type of product consists of
only the photo-based image textures and higher-than-default terrain
mesh; no building data is included to my knowledge.

So the end result is that FS itself only models a (relatively) small
number of real structures in the virtual world, and add-on packages
typically focus on airport environs and their buildings. It's unlikely
that the ol' 1906 International Order Of Odd Fellows temple that sits at
the end of your local Runway 31 will be represented.

That is probably way more data than you expected, and I'm a little
embarrassed that I know about these things... But flight simming is
almost as much of a passion as real flying is for me.

In closing, I will note that if you're flying an airplane in FS and you
have to worry about flying into a building, you're too low to begin with
8^) .

Dave Blevins

On 26 Feb 2004 08:34:06 -0800, (ivo welch)
wrote:

"John Bishop" wrote in message ...
Go to FSGenesis and Lago (there are probably others too) and for a small sum
you can download much better terrain for MSFS. Helps flying a lot. Some of
it is free also.

John


remarkably, for such products, one would expect some sample scenery
images on their websites. alas, I could not find such.

can any of these addon products image buildings (that I want to avoid
flying into!)? there are satellite images one could use to guestimate
structures.

sincerely,

/iaw

this is getting off the IFR thread. indulge us, please.