Here’s my top 10.
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Las Vegas, USA - IMO the best photogrammetry in the Sim at the moment!
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Barcelona, Spain - Such a beautiful city to fly in and with latest city update, Incredible.
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Los Angeles, USA - A really big area to fly in. always loved the west coast.
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San Diego, USA - Close to L.A and alot of really good Freeware Airports available from vbazillio off flightsim.to!
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Townsville, Australia - Another beautiful city and part of Australia to fly in.
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Calgary, Canada - excellent photogrammetry but wish it was extended a bit further.
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Darwin, Australia - Another gorgeous place to fly.
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Auckland, New Zealand - Beautiful photogrammetry and plenty of places to explore.
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Perth, Australia - Another beautiful example of how good photogrammetry can be.
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Melbourne, Australia - A Gorgeous city with lots to explore.
All of these cities are amazing and a brilliant example of just how good MSFS2020 photogrammetry can be. Don’t have any trouble with LOD loading issues, framerates or melted buildings and are incredible in VR when flying low and slow.
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I can’t think of 10 off hand, as I’m a creature of habit, but Saint Louis, MO is a really well scanned city in my opinion. Great for heli flying.
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I did a similar topic but wasn’t limited to Photogrammetry so this is different. I won’t link it as don’t want to distract from your post! It was called “Your Top 10 Favourite Places to Fly” — if you are interested, you can search for it.
My Top 10 PG areas:
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Malaga, Spain
That whole coast heading west all the way down to Marbella and quite far inland is good.
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Auckland, NZ
Yep it’s great, and with the Orbx Landmarks pack it really adds to the effect. Huge area to the north and south too!
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Pamplona, Spain
Small but probably the cleanest and most detailed PG I’ve seen.
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Tokyo, Japan
So much to see (and great performance on my rig). Awesome for helicopters with a few add-ons I’ve got. And the Payware improvement.
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Rome, Italy
Full of Italian charm and great variety of architecture. To be fair I love a lot of the Italian cities. Milan, Florence, Naples, Venice.
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Los Angeles, USA
Loads of places for helicopters with the addition of the 2 Orbx theme packs.
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Gold Coast, Australia
Not a big area but very nice variety of districts and has a nice atmosphere.
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Brno, Czechia
Some very fine details. One of the better ones and quite nice verticality to the area. Lots to explore right out into the villages in the outskirts.
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Oslo, Norway
Interesting city. I’ll sneak Stockholm (Sweden) in here too
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Washington D.C.
I guess I have to add this as the new update is pretty phenomenal in the scope of the size of the coverage. Quality is not the best but I explored 45nm north, 36nm south, 30nm west and 34nm east of the centre and it’s ALL PG! That was just straight lines to see the size so I still have weeks and weeks of exploring this content.
I have a list (of course I do!) of all PG so I can rate and tick off when I visit them. All the above are rated 6 (…out of 5 lol — I had to add 6th star for myself as I had too many that were better than 5!) but I have more than the 10 x 6 stars that you’ve allowed me to mention here
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Sorry can’t remember if I’ve seen your topic Top 10 Favourite Places to Fly I’ll have a look in a min. No 1, 3 and 8 I’ve never flown in so will try them out in a bit.
Thanks for the ideas Always looking for somewhere new to fly.
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Saint Louis is good from what I can remember, I’ll have to check it out again.
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No worries yeah I’m always looking for nice new places to explore around so will be an interesting topic here, thanks! I already wrote down Stardrifter’s suggestion to check out
Have you got the Auckland landmarks pack? If not I’d highly recommend the purchase. Well worth it!
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The Topic you created is brilliant but since upgrading my PC I’m only flying in photogrammetry areas mostly in VR. Looks like I’m gonna be sat here a while reading through the replies in your Thread as its got loads of good suggestions.
Thinking about it though yours by far is the better Topic so probably best to keep that one going
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Barcelona is clearly one of the best, especially after the City Update from a couple of months ago… (though it was already good from the start of MSFS).
And I can see well my house in MSFS now…
(pity I fly all the time to / from LEBL, but using airliner, so I miss all the details in the city).
Other very good cities (also right from the birth of MSFS), for me, are Rome, Firenze (Florence), Milano and Naples (all in Italy); Naples used to give me stutters though some times…
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Yea same here! PG + Heli + VR = GOAT.
I’m glad you made a topic JUST for PG mate. Definitely they are different so both can live in harmony
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No but I’ll look into that. Been spending my money on FlyTampa’s Las Vegas and other surrounding Airports. As I can’t stand the default ones.
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Agree with you there about Barcelona. Will have to try some of the cities in Italy again… with my old PC I did get stuttering in Milano and Naples but with my new rig it will no doubt be alot better.
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Thanks. Going to be flying all these new suggestions. Never flown number 1, 8 and 9 not sure why I’ve always kept away from that part of Europe. I’m surprised at Number 7 and 10. I’ve never had UK Photogrammetry run properly. It was always melted buildings etc. Might have to try again on my new PC. Tried London the other night and ran slightly better but was still a melted mess.
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I think most of the Spain and Portugal pg turned out really well. Ignoring the docks and flying up the valley, Bilbao has some really nice buildings.
Cairns in QLD has some buildings I thought were modelled but turned out to be PG, it looks good. The coast and river’s not so good but the Impulse city pack makes it all look amazing. It includes Barron Falls which is a nice little country trip in a heli.
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Going to check Bilbao out in a bit. Just noticed on flightim.to that Bilbao No Trees has just been uploaded and from the two screenshots it looks really good. It’s another place I’ve never flown so thank you
Flown in Cairns before and as you say the coast and river isnt that good but going to look into the Impulse City Pack. Problem is I’ll soon be spending too much money on addons and the wife won’t be impressed Thanks for your recomendations.
Edit Just looked at the price of it… I’ll be buying it for sure!
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Great topic! There is so much great scenery I’m not sure where to begin, but here goes:
- Southern California, including San Diego, the deserts to the east, Palm Springs, Banning, etc. and on over to Los Angeles. It’s huge and beautiful, and just seems to go on forever!
- Seattle metropolitan area is another huge and very high-quality scenery (and also my place of residence). It’s fun to fly into airports I’ve flown to IRL, and see what my town looks like from above. I particularly enjoy flying the entire corridor on the Eastside, then cross over to Olympia.
- Nashville, TN. Landed there last night and had an epic in-depth aerial tour. The buildings are really sharp and beautiful, and the area of coverage is enormous.
- Las Vegas, the new scenery is simply amazing and looks great at night!
- Farmington, New Mexico is amazing, it wasn’t on my list of sites so I was NOT expecting to see photogrammetry when I arrived. All the things are sharp and beautiful, the surrounding bluffs got treatment as well and the effect is marvelous. I truly enjoyed flying through New Mexico.
- Monte Carlo and Nice France. A beautiful area and so much fun to explore. Spectacular terraforming along the coast really add to the immersion.
- San Francisco Bay Area. Okay, I might as well just say “California” because I think I spend more time flying in CA than anyplace else. But Ukiah, CA was a pleasant discovery. Sacramento, Santa Barbara, really it’s all great.
- Spain and Portugal, every part of it is just amazing. I think it was this update where Asobo started adding even more secret sauce into their imagery, but that may just be my own perception.
- Heidelberg, Germany. Very sharp detail on the buildings and really nice surrounding mountains and rivers.
- Rotterdam/The Hague, superlative quality over a large area, and lots of really well-rendered bridges (lots of rivers and canals).
I probably left some off since my appetite for photogrammetry is nearly inexhaustible. It’s always thrilling to me to find new areas, and satisfying to observe the boundaries and different types of imagery. Thanks to the teams at Asobo for continually upping their game and making scenery of ever higher quality!
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Gonna have to check out Palm Springs and Banning as I love Southern California and not flown that far east. No. 5 and No. 9 are another two places I’ll checkout tonight thanks . Some of these places I’d have never thought of if it wasn’t for the suggestions. Asobo have shown just what an outstanding job they can do with this sim.
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I got Impulse’s Townsville in their recent IniBuilds 50% off sale. I had emailed Impulse months ago, while still on Xbox, to ask whether it would ever come to console and they said it was one of their early products and they weren’t happy enough with it to market it further. While I won’t deny that the buildings close up aren’t as good as some city packs in 2024, it blends very well with the area’s PG and adds a few masts and towers across the city’s hilltops. For just over £3, it was a bargain! Just need a decent Townsville airport now — same with Cairns as both cities’ downtowns are really close to their respective airports.
Back on topic, I’ve always thought Oz and NZ have some of the best PG in the sim. Spain, too. Plus many areas of the US (though that country can be very hit and miss).
Poorest PG award has to go to the UK so I’m hoping the second UK WU will not only add new cities/towns, but improve upon those that currently look like they’ve partially survived a nuclear holocaust. Thank goodness Orbx stepped up with their three GB packs…
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I am greatly inspired by all of the suggestions from my fellow pilots! It’s such a big world to explore, so it’s nice when you get a hot tip for some especially good scenery. I find it addictive.
Be sure to check out all the freeware airports from Vincent Bazillio on flightsim.to, they really make that region come to life
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