Enter Boston`s buzzing airspace with a wide choice of aviation options. New England`s largest city has plenty of helipads within its boundaries, some nice rural general aviation airports surrounding it and last but not least: Boston Logan.
No other US airport of this size it that close to a major city center - thrilling and scenic approaches guaranteed! From there head out to Boston Harbor`s islands or fly along the magnificent coastline dotted with some of the most attractive homes in New England.
US Cities X is a series of city scenery for FSX that covers US cities created by LimeSim. Based on an extensive aerial image it will have all the major buildings and landmarks plus all the airports and heliports that are inside the covered areas. It is clearly intended to fill the gap between the default scenery and very high dense city scenery such as Manhattan X. Because the file size is rather large due to the ground image it only includes one season (in most cases this is not a real issue) and no night textures. The VFR flights over these cities are mostly a day time affair anyway.
Features:
Detailed 3D renderings of the city center covered by more than 4,000 major buildings
Aerial image coverage with up to 20cm/pix resolution (see attached Google Earth file)
351,369 (!) autogen objects placed realistically
An incredible 1m /3ft resolution elevation model / mesh terrain
9 Helipads:
o Massachusetts General Hospital Heliport
o New England Medical Center
o Boston City Hospital Heliport
o Brigham and Women`s Hospital
o Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
o Herb Chambers
o Rent-A-Tool Heliport
o Lynn Aviation Plant
o Thacher Island Helipad
Major airports in and around the city are covered with new high res ground images with customized mesh terrain:
o KBOS Boston Logan Intl
o KBED Bedford Hanscom
o KBVY Beverly
o KOWD Norwood
o NZW South Weymouth NAS (closed)
Sound effects like downtown- and highway traffic and animated gulls
Animated ships and boats in Boston Harbor
Traffic on most major roads (optional)
Low price, very good value for money!
Includes a separate Scenery Density Tool, which makes this highly detailed scenery enjoyable on slower systems as well!
Bonus: Full rendering of Thacher Island and its helipad!
Overall it does add a lot to the Boston area. You get much more realistic city buildings in the downtown area (for the most part) as well as the surrounding residential areas, plus you get a lite upgrade to 5 airports plus this package adds 9 heliports too. Nice ship and road traffic as well.
While the majority of the buildings this package adds, really increases the realism, there are some patches of buildings that have very blurry, very low resolution textures which is a big disappointment. The bad textures make these buildings look like they were burnt out in a fire or something. It's not as noticable when flying by in a plane, but if you take out a helicopter and go cruising around, they all stick out like a sore thumb.
Aerosoft claims they did this to save resources in the sim but I don't like it and it's not necessary imo. I have cities that are all high-res textures like DD Chicago that work fine. It is still a worthy add-on regardless, especially if you can get it on sale.
This scenery will greatly improve the Boston surrounding area. There accurately placed buildings, bridges and vegetation. The only improvement would be to have night lighting however, I don't fly much at night so no issues there. This is compatible with FlyTampa's KBOS. Follow instructions on FlyTampa's site and ensure the AF2_KBOS is labeled off.
Probably the best US City by LimeSim so far.
I placed it on top of the Ultra-Res city Boston from MegaSceneryEarth which already provides a 50 cm resolution for its photoscenery. Still the LimeSim product not only adds the custom city buildings and the autogen houses and trees, but also increases the resolution for airport areas noticeably. Aerial images for the airports were expected but LimeSim also added depictions for some coastal stretches. In short, a lot of eye-candy, no matter which approach into KBOS you are flying.
Unfortunately the ground colours of the US City differ from those of the Ultra-Res MSE City (no seasonal variations for either title), but the gain in immersion outweighs this issue by far, IMO.