for some reason I always thought Gibraltar was like connected to the mainland. Like it is, but I didn't realize it's flat, I thought Gibraltar was just the tip of a long rocky outbreak. No wonder the spanish never got it back, that shits just a big fucking rock out there

a lot of the old dense Andalusian cities I flew over on the way to Gibraltar render as incredibly dense and intricate complexes of warehouses. It doesn't quite have the right buildings for that type of city I guess

now that I'm done just finding my house and my family's houses I can post more shit on twitter of stuff that's actually interesting

I would be extremely blown the fuck uo if I attempted this in real life but I'm surprised at how some of the ships in Norfolk have a recognizable profile. Smaller ones kinda just sink into the water or are just 2d images on the surface. Did not find any super carriers though.

so many places to see~

delaware water gap looks cool. for some reason the high point monument just isn't there. this game is definitely more reliable when it comes to sweeping landscapes versus getting specific landmarks right

check one off the list! i now have 3 different lists between places ive been, places i wanna go, and places i need to research for my lp. like 60 in all.

Chelan, WA to Stehekin, WA part 1.

i am not good at flying the biplane. but it is very manueverable. i did manage to pull out of that predicament at the end there

the game asking me if im REALLY sure as I unbind flap controls for the pretty screenshot buttons

going to have to attempt this again later with a different aircraft because this one is TEMPERAMENTAL.

ps: do not tell me what flaps are or if they would have prevented this from happening

by request: went looking for the Field of Corn in Dublin, OH

-the corn statues do not register as structures in game though you can see them in the satellite imagery laid out over ground
-til OSU owns an airport
-the icon a5 has some real ssr normandy shit going on with fonts

ATTEMPT 2

yes i made maps because I got nothing else to do on break

- i discovered how to change my tail number
- as well as my call sign and flight number (timothy six niner heavy coming in hot)
-chelan to stehekin is a 4 hour ferry that i highly recommend if you're ever on that side of the cascades
-the game cannot handle waterfront homes

-about 2/3 the way up there is some sort of christian retreat where like two dozen christian types got off and in my head its somehow both way more salacious and way more dull than i imagine it to be
-i wish the game was better about docks and marinas and shit like that

Ireland time babyyyyyy

dingle peninsula, county Kerry

a lovely place with good seafood

this runway (field) was too short so i kept having my throttle cut by the ai for overshooting the runway and then i'd crash into the quarry

but i did get up there and instantly im like hell yeah this is ireland baby. its green, theres stone walls and the roads are too narrow

a bizarre number of like 4 story office buildings in this very rural and remote corner of ireland. also apparently they were burning some shit on the day the satellites took pictures here

conor pass is unironically where i found my love for mountain passes. i remember clearly how cool it felt to get all the way up and see an entirely new area laid out before you. like it sounds goofy to type out but i love that shit

like 80% sure that this is the lil hamlet where we stayed. there was a pub and a seafood place and everybody was nice to my nephew who was still cute at the time and not a boy and a terror like he is now (luv u thomas)

great blasket island. they pulled everybody off the island in the 50s because it was too remote and primitive and people kept dying because nobody could get out to bring them to the mainland for medical care. now its like an eco preserve or some shit

so after several msfs 2020 trips:
-great at landscapes
-super hit or miss with notable buildings
-the biplane is fucking hard but you can do tricks with it
-the ai wants you to do takeoff and landing pRoPErlY which is for cowards
-drone mode and active pause kick ass

(the second half of that dingle flight plan got aborted because i got bored. the northern coast is the more interesting part of the peninsula anyway. i landed on a road just to see what would happen. bizarrely, traffic came at me on both sides of the road then clipped through me)

Whidbey Island NAS to Port Angeles CAGS (Victoria Inner Harbour Airport is a seaplane Airport and thus isn't in the game unfortunately. The icon I think can land on water but it's too slow for my tastes)

deception pass. see also the same point in real life and in american truck simulator. can you tell i like it?

i have a photo i took of a sunset from fidalgo island that ive always loved so i matched the msfs time/date to the photos time/date. im sure if i got finicky with the drone i could have tried to find the exact angle but still p fucking good recreation here

i went back and got finicky with the drone. there's even settings to move the cloud layers and shit!! its pretty wild how much you can do with this

once again i have spent way too much time with the drone and now dont have enough time to finish the flight before i have to go to work. i'll wait until tomorrow, take a big ol bite of the nick gage cookie and do an entire flight from like grand coulee dam to ocean shores

-making actual flight plans makes me feel like a real sim gamer
-changing my settings so ATC calls me "bigdick six niner heavy" does not
-im gonna need to use a fast plane or else this will take ages

the dam is there!

and so is banks lake. pretty good stuff here

for the distance between banks lake and the columbia river valley theres this big expansive plateau with farms and shit. then you descend into a more lush agricultural landscape. washington state has an incredible amount of terrain diversity in its cross section

flying north from Chelan, i come across the fork where the methow goes into the columbia. this valley, which contains WA-20, is my route into the northern cascades

almost got lost because an intersection where wa-20 breaks off to the west was hidden in what may actually be a barren hill top with ghostly shapes?? or the game was missing some shit. who can tell

either way, I did figure out I was headed north to Canada and realized I had to find my way back and take the other valley. flying up this road, the imagery got blurry but the tree density is such that the vista still works

the valley narrows as you get up to Ross Lake, which is the center of northern cascades national park. well work a drive. it was foggy the day I was there so some of this I never actually saw

and then the wackiness started. whole cells with no trees. lots of landscapes needed a second to fully stitch together but this one never did. but the northern side of this valley rendered just fine so I just kept looking over there

the descent into wider valleys is always fun

looks like asphalt to me but go off??

on the horizon here barely perceivable is deception pass and the mountain from which i took my sunset pics. visual navigation scratches a lot of my brains itches

then its over the san juan islands to victoria, british columbia

victoria, appropriately for a very picturesque city imo, seems to have a level of detail that I haven't seen in other cities other than barcelona and new york so far. the parliament house and that hotel is there. note the olympic mountains in the background

zipped back across the border to washington and olympic NP. followed the road that goes up to hurricane ridge

shit looks like it got hit by an anti-rendering bomb

hurricane ridge is a great place because you look one way and theres the juan de fuca strait which is basically the ocean and look the other way and its this alpine landscape. within an incredibly short distance. really special place

the building in the mountainside extending down in a weird way makes sense but i have NO clue whats going on in pic two

i think mount olympus is in this one but not sure (not the greek one obv)

hit lake crescent on my way back north to the coast

"huh thats weird, whyd the game put in this weird zones of no tr- oh right"

going out west to the northwestern tip of the mainland us. cape flattery within the makah nation's territory. also a cool place if youre out that way

and then down the Pacific coast of washington, through some clouds, past Kalaloch lodge (also go there) and then finally a harrowing landing at ocean shores municipal airport. took me like 3-4 hours maybe? i paused a lot. it was fun :)

Bozeman Airport to Dillon Airport, via:
-Yellowstone National Park
-Grand Teton National Park
-Snake River Valley
-Craters of the Moon
-Lost River Range
-Bitterroot Mountains

I started out flying south from Bozeman, and for some reason believed that Yellowstone Airport is actually in the park, which of course it isn't. So instead of flying south down US-89 which goes into the park, I was actually flying down US-191, which goes to West Yellowstone.

So eventually I realized where I actually was, which was good because then I knew how to get towards the park from that direction. West Yellowstone is an extremely hokey tourist town on the outskirts of the park.

This mistake had the benefit of being a direction I actually had driven and recognized. I hiked up to the lake in the third pic and as you can sorta see its covered in lilypads.

You can see how the algorithm to populate forests sorta fails on edge cases. It appears barren but its actually short new growth after the fires.

features like the vastness of the caldera come across really well in flight sim. Canyons? not so much

Specific features are really tough, because you expect them to look a certain way but the algorithm can't get specific profiles exactly right. But the Grand Prismatic Spring works, because the colors are visible from satellite and that's really all you need for it.

There's that Old Faithful Inn we all know and love.

big lake

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone mostly works imo?? Definitely would love a mod or DLC that adds in hand made waterfalls because the waterfalls the game generates are bad.

This is the Rockefeller Highway which I've never actually driven? Looks cool though.

grand tetons! grand tetons! I think one of these is the one my cousins ex husband fell off of and almost died

different angle here but I didn't even remember until I flew over it that I had once used a cities skylines map modeled after this part of GTNP

For it being a *flight* sim, i spend a lot of time following roads but i got into some mountains. the tetons are incredibly hard to get lost in, it takes like 30 seconds in either direction to get out of the peaks and you know damn well whether its wyoming or idaho

dipped back into the hole to make sure I found the right road to follow across Idaho. I am no longer attempting to get exact recreations of photos I remember taking but the vibe is definitely there

FLAT

pretty sure this is the right spot. its where i found the absolute worst porta potty ive ever seen

bad imagery!!

at some point in idaho the agriculture just stops and its barren as fuck. i love it

heres where i found the scary signs. but with the power of video games i can VIOLATE THE LAW

idaho national laboratory isnt that exciting from the air. just some buildings and some odd looking circles

when i lived in virginia i was always hoping for some

unfortunately the hill numbers don't appear in arco the way they do in real life and truck simulator. which makes sense since its imagery from above

its easy to find craters of the moon from the air. look for the huge dark splotches

*pounds table* valleys with agriculture! valleys with agriculture! VALLEYS WITH AGRICULTURE!

cannot find any information on who linda is

I'm curious if this is a glitch or if this territory was burned by a brush fire when the photos were taken

valleys! valleys! valleys!

this valley was one of my favorite places ive ever been to. i remember pulling over to take some pictures and just sitting for like 20 minutes marveling at how profoundly silent this vast space was and how there were less people currently in it than probably in my office

us 93 north from challis to salmon is well worth your time if you're ever in idaho

My original destination was the airport near Salmon but I decided to keep going through Lemhi Pass, so I had to turn southeast, and then try to find the specific pass

i overshot the pass and had to loop back around. I knew I had gone too far when I saw a neat looking tunnel I knew I hadn't actually driven to

I think this is the house where the dog chased my car for like a full mile and the duck dynasty looking ass owners visibly didn't give a shit because they knew the dog would be back. different way of life

i woulda been so fucked if i got a flat up here

the montana side of this pass is easier to deal with than the idaho one, except for the signs saying trespassers will be shot and stopping is considered trespassing

and finally i come across this big reservoir, the far side of which contains interstate 15 which leads north to dillon and my destination. another awful landing where I came in too high and at the wrong angle, but nobody died. Success!

short lil trip: Dunkirk Municipal Airport to Toronto City Centre Airport via:
-Buffalo
-Niagara Falls
-Toronto

gotta attempt this next time theres a nightmare lake effect storm

i literally forgot i was going by buffalo and was like "huh whats that big city"

so I decided to take a detour south to find the bills stadium and.... its shit :(

it's a flat image

so going north to niagara falls. was kind of surprised to see niagara falls got the treatment of having its actual buildings but i guess its an obvious destination

the falls look okay compared to some other famous falls. definitely need a waterfall dlc or mod for this game.

the cities built off real photography have this weird drab look

dams and bridges and things of that nature

toronto spookily appearing on the horizon. almost like an island

again its plenty recognizable but its just so drab. like its sunny weather but it looks like its a overcast dreary day if you look at the buildings. maybe theres more powerful lighting that i dont have access to bc im running on medium idk

i bounced off the runway :)

cool airport. definitely would have ended up crashed in lake ontario so cant say thats a successful flight

It's a great podcast game but I have to turn the engine noise down to 30% on the turboprop because it's fucking LOUD

I've found a bunch of scenery mods after just a month out so im definitely thinking this shit will kick ass with 150gb of scenery mods and a beefier pc in like 4 years

for reference here is Atlantic City in the vanilla game

now I've installed the AC Skyline mod off of MSFS2020 Nexus. you can already see the casinos in the distance, which to me is like the most important part of making a jersey shore drive (or flight) realistic because you can see them shits for ages because its flat and empty around

They don't look like Super or anything. the mod says they're just ripped off Google Maps. which really if this was using google's dataset I'm sure it'd be way better but like Einstein said, capitalism disunites our work and causes effort to go to waste as poor duplicates are made

the hotels are recognizable even though the labelling on some of them is old (the taj mahal is the hard rock now) but compared to the beachfront warehouse district its WAY better. so basically it seems like theres gonna be a lot of ripping googles shit into MSFS

anyway here's me landing at Atlantic City Municipal. its sunset here on the jersey shore so its quite lovely in the game with the live weather as well

at @bane1138's suggestion, i went to st louis next. this is vanilla and st louis is in pretty good shape. you can see the gateway arch clearly from the STL Downtown airport.

waterfronts are a weakness of the game. which is understandable considering its modelling off of terrain. but i wonder if theres a way to improve this rendering so that there isn't water coming through like that

anheuser busch brewery. pretty cool complex if you like factory tours. beer sucks but whatever

the St Louis sports arenas are looking good. the Bills got fucking robbed, the dome doesn't even have an NFL team anymore and it got into the game while Bills Stadium is missing

bridges are another weird one. there's generic bridges that replace most bridges and get weirdly warped. but the bridges that are built off photography render as solid objects and look weird as hell

and finally its time for the main event. you can indeed fly under the gateway arch, which looks great

I didn't feel like flying out to STL international so I tried and failed to land in a park.

i wanna check out Seattle next but since I've seen Seattle in the menu video and its literally the fucking HQ of Microsoft I'm sure its one of the better done cities in the whole game. but Buffalo is generic and vanilla AC is just all wrong

theres not a ton of free mods so far (check out the MSFS nexus and http://flightsim.to ) but so far ive got:
-jersey lighthouses
-stonehenge
-AC
-Meigs Field
-Buffalo
-dc
-matterhorn
-chicago
-istanbul
-3 sisters (australia)
-toulon pack
-LA
-north island NAS
-STL wheel

the real Plane Heads must be irritated with all these buffoons like me entering the community and just wanting our houses and local landmarks to look good

since i downloaded Meigs Field (rip) i went to chicago and also hit it right at sunset. i will leave it to a chicagoan to say if destroying the airport was a good or bad move bc idk but its cool to have these airfields near city centers, like the toronto one i landed at

soldier field! museums and shit! (art institute is cool you should go if youre in chicago)

DROOPY BEAN

why is this marina all nice and good. i wish they all looked like this instead of fading into water. i guess because its in a zone marked for Realism?

now we're turning into the canyon, or whatever chicagoans refer to it as, idfk

theres a lot of details that look like ass but this part of chicago along the river i think is one of the coolest cityscapes in the united states. go get on a boat and cruise the chicago river it is super worth your while. just try to ignore that dickheads name in giant letters

for a city that is so historically tied to the exploitation of the west and tying together its wealth to the established cities of the east, it really has such a poetic location. like yep... there it is over there. the whole ass fuckin expanse of the western united states

most of this is vanilla but the Hitchcock building is in the mod pack i had. i'm sure its in the game in some form but somebody made a better model I guess

da zoo

do you think i can fit between the spires

theres the big boy

the game handles night lighting by spawning these light sources that just sorta float above roads. I'm sure the effect is good at distance but when you're doing low altitude sunset flights and the lights turn on, they kinda look like shit

while landing at midway i actually saw my first other plane in the game. im sure the live flight shit was a lot more busy before the flight industry took a shit

Yakima Air Terminal to Jim and Julie's (Everett, WA)
via:
-Mt Tahoma (rainier)
-Seattle
-Boeing Plant

can you discern a pattern from this thread of what kind of terrain is my favorite