Can someone please explain the purpose of payware “landmark” scenery? This is especially perplexing for cities, like Seattle, with landmarks featured prominently in official gameplay trailers. The announcement trailer 18 months ago featured the Space Needle prominently.
What am I missing? Why buy scenery for cities that were used to market the sim from the very first day? What is the value added? Help me understand…
Could be a difference in quality (if the landmark author did their job well), it’s up to you to decide if it’s worth it.
I think it comes down to AI-generated/Photogrammy-generated cityscapes vs Handcrafted cityscapes.
If you’re looking from a distance, there may not be much value in a Landmarks Scenery, but if it’s a city you’re intimately familiar with or you spend a lot of time in in MSFS, then the handcrafted sceneries may be worthwhile in making it feel “tangible”
I bought the London Landmarks package in the Marketplace (Orbx) because of how badly the Thames and nearby landmarks were represented in the default scenery. London didn’t even get proper photogrammetry with the stock release. It’s so much nicer now when I’m flying into London City Airport.
I bought chicago and vegas payware and its 100 times better than what comes with the game. Well worth it IMO.
I have a hard time with that since some of these landmarks were featured in gameplay videos used to market the game.
Are you sure about that? I don’t think I’ve seen any third party content in any official trailers etc.
I could be mistaken of course.
That doesn’t seem to hold water when these screenshots are taken directly from the gameplay video released when MSFS 2020 was announced well over a year ago.
These are from the trailer announcing MSFS 2020 over a year ago. I’m struggling with how payware scenery for Seattle adds value when they featured the Space Needle up close and personal from day one.
That’s exactly what I’m saying; it up to you to decide if the payware scenery adds value to you personally.
This is mostly old scenery just converted over to MSFS as a quick cash grab. There’s also solid payware available. If you fly through an area often, it might be worth it to you. To me, in most cases it’s not, since I’ll visit a place maybe once or twice.
Very fishy imo. No 3D party scenery for me. It really has to be much better than default and even then I believe default can be tweaked by asobo to look amazing
It just feels disingenuous given how they have promoted this from day one. “You’ll be able to see your house” and “here’s payware scenery ” seem incompatible, especially for cities they featured in their “real time” promo videos literally from day 1.
The scenery from Seattle used in the promo material is NOT payware. I just took a quick flight there just now, and the Space Needle is there, in all its glory. I have no pay-ware installed.
So it’s not disingenuous at all. They showed what you get with the base sim.
Maybe you don’t have Photogrammetry turned on?
If your point is ‘why allow third parties to sell payware add-ons for areas that are already covered quite well in the base sim’…
Then you can make the comparison to third parties selling floor mats for your car, just with red stitching instead of black.
The original car was advertised with black floor mats with black stitching, pretty nice quality.
Would it then be disingenuous to sell the third party floor mats with the red stitching?
It’s up to you as a consumer to decide what you spend your money on.
Asobo is releasing updates that bring more detail and better accuracy in blocks. We had the Japan update, the USA update, and upcoming next is UK. I’m anxious for the Caribbean update. On launch for example Washington DC had a black rectangle for the Washington monument and some cheesy buildings in place of the famous landmarks. Being the platform is open to developers some get the jump and improve certain areas or airports. If you want to pay then go for it. Otherwise wait till Asobo gets around to releasing an improved update for an area. We are talking about a whole planet here.
I only bought a single 3rd party add-on, the Saint Martin Princess Juliana airport and surrounding area. There and Waikiki are my top two home away from homes so it was well worth the small price. Wish one was available for Waikiki as the buildings aren’t accurate at all.
The Space Needle was handcrafted in the original Asobo scenery. However, the rest of the city was photogrammetry. The Drzewiecki Designs’ Seattle features a massive number of hand crafted buildings and scenery that look much better than photogrammetry. For example, the derricks along the waterfront as well as the ferris wheel look pretty awful with photogrammetry rendering. The hand-crafted models look much better, plus the ferries are modelled. Even the Space Needle gets better modelling-- Drzewiecki Designs’ version has interior modelling and the elevators move. Also, the night lighting is much, much better.
That said, whether these city upgrades are worth it, depends on what you are looking for. Default photogrammetry for Seattle and Chicago was already good. For Washington DC, the default scenery pretty much sucked. For Las Vegas the photogrammetry was also good. IMO, these city add ons just make the experience more immersive because they add additional realism. But whether the increase in realism is significant enough to be worth the extra money is in the eye of the beholder.
I never claimed the Space Needle was payware. Reread the thread.
DC is challenging because there are government restrictions on non-government satellite imagery. This is the White House on Google Earth. 
I bought Seattle just to fix those i-90 and 520 bridges which are underwater in the Asobo implementation. That’s the only benefit I see. There is a framerate hit of about 1-2 fps…
What are you struggling with precisely? Think of payware as another company doing a bit more detail in a specific city/landmark (i.e. Orbx’s London and whoever did Seattle) - I purchased the payware Seattle version and can say the night lighting is horrible – hope it gets fixed.
Totally agree with night lighting of Seattle on the Drzewiecki Design. It fricking looks like Las Vegas with those rainbow neon lights all over the city. I opened a Zendesk ticket and asked them to tone it down. It’s ridiculous. I live in Seattle and it’s not bright and colorful like in Drzewiecki Seattle.
