Updated:
See my updated appraisal in the message linked to below, it significantly changes the entirety of this review.
I purchased the Moscow scenery update and to say I am disappointed is a masterpiece of understatement.
I live near the Ostafiavo (UUMO) airport and the scenery is absolute fantasy. Nothing, and I mean absolutely NOTHING is correct.
Sherbinka, the entire town, is missing.
The entirety of Butovo is missing. (North Butovo, South Butovo, Butovo near the Warsaw Highway, major housing complexes, nothing.
The РЖД training circle is missing.
At least a half dozen МСД commuter train stations are missing.
The entirety of Southern Moscow inside the MCAD isn’t there. I didn’t try anywhere else, but I could see that major features, like power stations and tall buildings were missing.
Even the Ostafiavo airport itself has zero resemblance to the real thing, (except the headings of the runways, and those are based on decades old data), and I’m not even talking about the trees growing in the runways the absence of known taxiways, buildings, etc.
I have no idea where they got their scenery maps from, but it wasn’t Moscow Russia. Actually, it looks like somewhere out in Siberia - awful!
In X-Plane 11, even without any updated scenery overlays, it’s much better.
Now I understand that I am not going to get 100% photo-realistic scenery, but it should be reasonably close.
For the $60 I spent to buy X-Plane, I can fly around and know where I am. For the $120+ FS 2020 cost me, I might as well be on Mars or out in Siberia somewhere.
I don’t know if I can get a refund for the scenery, but I’d seriously recommend that you skip it.
If anyone has any idea why my scenery for Moscow is messed up, I would be grateful to know why.
Are you talking about the Drzewiecki Design scenery? I just reread the description for it and it says 1.000 custom made objects, which for a mega city like Москва город isn’t much. It looks great, better than the default scenery at least. But I guess until a WU comes, it’s better than nothing.
Yes, Bing maps are so old and incomplete, look close at mt. Elbrus for example - the highest pick in geographical Europe. As for Moscow… The situation is improving slowly - did you check those free Landmarks?
Like I said, I don’t expect photo-real scenery, but I don’t think it’s too much to ask that it be at least somewhat like the original, especially areas that are specifically within the coverage map.
I forgot to mention in the original posting that I tried this for X-Plane and it’s just as awful.
I really don’t like to fuss about scenery and airports and stuff - I know it’s hard to do and I appreciate the efforts that everyone puts in - but really, when major highways, railroad tracks (that have been there since the early Soviet era), large apartment complexes that have been there for at least a decade, parts of Moscow that date back to the time of the Czars - when all this is missing, not distorted but outright missing, I think I have a right to say something and warn people off.
I guess they didn’t expect someone who actually knows what’s there to buy it.
The Drzewiecki Design scenery is only a landmark pack, modelling maybe 1000 building or so in the Moscow area, it’s fairly basic and the airports are only rudimentary representations of the real thing. I’m confused why you’re saying it was over $120 though, it’s about $15 to buy for me?
Sorry for the misunderstanding. I was referring to the relative cost of the two sims, not the cost of the scenery package.
Based on the description, I had the expectation that it would be more extensive than it was.
I will have to fly that same area to see how extensive the changes are, and if I attributed error where it doesn’t belong, I bow my head in abject apology.
(Past versions of MSFS have been much more accurate than this one, right out of the box so I guess I expected a similar level of excellence. My bad.)
Ah ok, now I understand, but are you really saying the default scenery in X-Plane is better than MSFS? Are you receiving streamed Live services from MS, like photogrammetry and ortho tiles - are those things affected living in Russia?
I have absolutely no idea and I really don’t where to check it.
My copy of MSFS is configured the way it happens “right out of the box” and if that gets me live streaming, I have it.
One thing that might affect it is that I don’t use live weather. I set my situation to mid June, warm (70 degree) weather, clear and unlimited visibility, no winds, and additional fantasy weather to eliminate extraneous factors from affecting my judgement about the planes and software.
If that ditches live terrain mapping, then I don’t have it.
If it’s looking worse than X-Plane then it does sound like you’re not getting the live streamed imagery. If you go to the options and look for the Data menu you should be able to see if it’s all turned on - whether those services are available in Russia at the moment is another matter.
If you take a flight in London, New York or Paris you’d quickly be able to tell if photogrammetry is enabled.
There’s a lot of stuff that I can’t reach from Russia right now, but a VPN usually solves these problems.
As far as FS being less good than X-Plane “out of the box”, I don’t get live streaming from them either and some of the scenery around here is absolutely hilarious, but it’s recognizable. In MSFS, the scenery is from God Himself only knows where as it bears no resemblance to the real thing.
If I need a gigabit connection to get scenery that’s even remotely accurate, that’s a problem. . . .
Since that little thing going on in the South, its quite possible that he’s not getting streaming data at all. Most major everything has boycotted and ceased to do business in Russia. Im pretty sure MS was one of them.
If that is the case you’ll have to wait for hostilities to end until you see what you might not be seeing. In Xplane your not affected by net Blackouts since the only thing it does is to confirm that you actually own the program.
Then, chances are, it isn’t, because a trial flight out of JFK over Long Island was unrecognizable too. (and yes, I used to live there) Rocky Point and Port Jefferson were conspicuous by the lack of known landmarks - like the Shoreham Nuclear Power Station, the power station at Port Jefferson and further up, the Stony Brook University Medical Center, etc. etc. etc.
That has nothing to do with this - I was able to purchase and install using my native fiber-optic Internet connection. When I do run into trouble like that, I fire up my VPN and bind to somewhere like NYC, and I’m golden.
I have owned every single version of MSFS since I bought an Atari 130XE that came with the MSFS cartridge as a bonus. Since then I have bought it for every PC platform I’ve owned. (Unfortunately, they didn’t have a version for the DEC Alpha.) From MS-DOS all the way to Windows 10. I still have copies of FS 2000, 2004, (Century Of Flight), and FS-X. Each and every time I have purchased the “Premium, Super-Deluxe” version so that there would be no limitations on what I could do or where I could go.
So it is with FS 2020 - I planked down the serious coin for the God-Level edition, with all the updates, scenery packs, aircraft, bells and whistles.
In each previous version I was able to get recognizable scenery. OK, I couldn’t see the moss on the trees, or the car parked out in front of my house, but I saw recognizable landmarks even in a backwater like Worcester, Ma. Holden was there, the water-towers were there, even the small grass-strip airfield in Leicester was there, right off of interstate 190, just like real life. Shopping centers, buildings, (though not always accurate), and other landmarks were present and accounted for.
I haven’t flown over Worcester in FS 2020, but if it’s anything like Long Island, it will be atrocious.
