I’m not really talking about specific landmarks like the Statue of Liberty, The Pyramids, or anything that’s been hand-crafted. But looking for places that are exceptionally represented in MSFS.
A couple that I came across that really impressed me are Canyonlands/Arches Natl. Park and the area around Walla Walla Washington
Trying to get outside of my normal “hometown USA go-to airport” but don’t really know where to go.
If Europe interests you, take a look at places in Switzerland and Austria. There’s lovely mountains and lakes departing from airport LSZS St. Moritx Samedan. And also with interesting STAR SID to try.
Flying around northern Michigan is beautiful. Specifically Mackinac Island and the Mackinac Bridge is a really neat place to see from the air. The bridge is what connects the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to the Southern and where lakes Michigan and Huron meet. Extremely pretty water there in the summer!
The south island of New Zealand is beautiful to fly over. New Guinea is also fun, as there are lots of incredibly remote tiny landing strips on mountain ridges, and the clouds make for challenging flights without smacking into something.
Arica to Antofagasta, Chile. The sea cliffs are tall and dramatic, and the imagery there is gorgeous. If you set a west wind in the weather menu, you can ridge soar off of it too, which turns the jaunt into a fun and interesting challenge. You should be able to make it a few hundred km without any gas even.
Northern Wyoming. If you dig the the huge open landscape and big sky, I’ve found Wyoming to be exceptionally accurate in the sim. From the Black Hills in the northeast corner, west across the high plains, over the Bighorn Mountains, into the Great Divide Basin, and then Yellowstone. That trek looks extremely close to reality. The sim’s naturally sparse and simple autogen matches very well with the region’s evergreens, prairie grasses, and isolated ranches. The imagery is high quality too and the terrain is quite diverse as you cross the state from the Great Plains into the Rockies.
The Sahara. If you want unique colors and landforms, and just pretty, interesting landscapes, it’s amazing. You’d swear you were on Mars at times. Lots of spots throughout, but southern Libya west into Algeria and Morocco are gorgeous and have surprisingly high resolution and high quality imagery for how utterly remote and lifeless it is out there. Set the aerosol density higher in the weather menu to simulate blowing dust or a sandstorm and make the sky more interesting. These screen shots are from Bing, but it looks the same in the sim as it uses the exact same imagery.
Download from flightsim.to the file Meteora. It’s a Greek scenery. I would say it’s amazing!
The North Island is pretty impressive too, also, Northen Spain west of San Sebastian has very nice mountainous regions, not too high either, then there’s the Pyrenees region to the east. 
Select an A5 Icon or other GA aircraft with good views and set Cark in the UK as the departure airfield and fly from there North into the Lake District area of England.
Keep low and zig zap over the peaks and down the valleys.
My flight plans - and notes about various locations and Switzerland’s history - are available on my github account. If you want to also get to know some “background info”:
GitHub - till213/Tell-Tours: Guided flight simulator tours - fly, show and tell.
In MSFS flight planning language, that would be SCAR → SCFA. I think I’m gonna go give that a try.
You know any airport codes for places near those desert scenery spots you posted pictures of? They look like interesting places to try to go see.
One of the great features of FS PLAYGROUND is the library system with plenty of destinations comes with.
It is a system you can upload download and share destinations etc…
A position “librarian” where you can compile sets of interesting positions and save them or share them.
Thank you very much for sharing.
Hawaii, island of Kauai.
Start off on the far West of the island.
After takeoff head NW along the ocean just offshore past the Na Pali coast, stay at or below 1000’.
Start to climb and head for the highest summit.
Orbit at the summit and take the Southern canyon.
Drop down low (as low as you dare) and fly the canyon to the ocean.
Then look at the large smile on your face.
I pulled those at random, but interesting spots like that abound across the Sahara. Recommend DAAJ to DAAT if in a low GA aircraft. Lots of multicolored Martian landscapes and iconic sand dunes. I might try that in a Carbon Cub without GPS or radio nav later just to see if I survive lol.
Edit: Just finished DAAT → DAAJ and would recommend:
This looks awesome, I’ll check it out!
Very much into this!
Me too. I’ve been unable to leave this whole time, and have been wandering the desert in circles like Moses.
DAAT -> DAAP goes through some national parks with some great canyons, badlands, and all kinds of cool colors. There’s also a bunch of great aerial landscapes up by HLKF.
I’d like to suggest doing a flight around the world. It can be a bit of an undertaking but I’ve started one (My route if you’re interested) and it’s been a really interesting process. I’ve done the east coast of USA, Bahamas and I’m now in Cuba.
I don’t plan more than two flights ahead. I draw a flight in Little Navmap, then I open google maps and check out the route, to make sure it’s as interesting as possible. Every region has something unique or interesting to see from the air. At every point of my route I try to find a real place, and in doing so I tend to find out a bit about where I’m flying. It makes the whole experience a bit deeper and more engaging and it’s easy to stumble across unexpected things.
I also take a lot of screenshots, which means I’m hungry to find visually interesting terrain, architecture, rivers, lakes, etc. So, for example as I flew.through Cuba, I decided I wanted to make sure I got a shot of the tobacco fields. Had to look it up and find a good route. I also stumbled across some absolutely stunning reefs, resorts, beaches and islands along the North coast of Cuba. I had no idea!
After the world tour, I aim to do some long river routes which I haven’t done already during my tour. I think these kind of tours work well for just discovering stuff. Another option would be to do a point-to-point tour like Northernmost to Southernmost points of Europe and do it by the most interesting route as possible.
Sorry… Epic long post… I’m just feeling a bit enthusiastic about it 
New Zealands mountains and valleys and lakes are the most beautiful area of the game for me. A close second is the mountainous areas of Japan, like the area around Nagasaki.
