Screenshots (FS2024)

Here are some screenshots flying around one of my favorite geological areas of North America, the Channeled Scablands of central Washington state, encompassing a large region just south and east of Wenatchee. This region was forever transformed by an incredible flood (or floods), unfathomable in scale, which took place near the end of the Ice Age, about 12,000 years ago. Signs of the giant flood(s) can be found in many areas, including most notably a number of pothole formations (where the force of the water, combined with swirling vortexes, carved numerous, massive, pothole impressions), as well as a number of prehistoric water falls created by the flood(s), including Crater Coulee, Frenchman Coulee, Potholes Coulee, and the massive Dry Falls (ten times larger than Niagara Falls). Flying around this region, I continue to be more and more impressed by the detail and quality of the elevation mesh/use of lidar data, the AI-generated detail added to cliff faces, as well as the AI-generated rocks/rock piles. The only real area of the scenery I'd like to see improved is the amount of trees - I would guess about 90% of the trees in this region could be removed for greater accuracy.

Flying south from Wenatchee toward Potholes Coulee, you fly over these massive ripple patterns left from the flood waters roughly 12,000 years ago.


Potholes Coulee, a massive prehistoric water fall and pothole formation formed from the flood waters. Just a little ways south of here is Frenchman Coulee.









 
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Continuing on from Potholes Coulee, here are some shots flying around Potholes State Park (just south of Mose Lake), displaying more pothole formations and ravines carved by the prehistoric flood waters.





And continuing north along Lenore Lake, Blue Lake and Park Lake, up to the massive prehistoric water fall known as Dry Falls.






 
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The quality of your images never ceases to amaze, John. I guess that is default scenery? How far we have come, thinking of how things used to look in the previous sims.
A few days ago I saw an old photo of my dad using Flight Simulator (yes, the first one), gave me quite a smile to see the difference.

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Yes, all default. It amazes me how much the cliff faces and rock piles/formations look to be "hand-crafted", but is all done with AI. I also noticed one area of Potholes Coulee, where there is a massive boulder, that in MSFS 2020 the AI placed a house on that spot, where as in MSFS 2024 it is properly depicted as a 3D boulder.

Here are some more images from Dry Falls and north to Grande Coulee (all default):






 
collensr said:
Great shots John ! Sorry if peeps have already asked this but is the foliage there default or is it "autumn-by-add-on" ?
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The foliage is all default. In those shots, taken in Minnesota, I set the particular day to sometime in late September or early October for those colors. It's quite fantastic in MSFS 2024, that you can actually watch the trees change, not just on a monthly scale, but actually see changes on a daily scale - especially in the fall, if you just adjust the days, live in the sim, you can see certain trees changing each day, in color and amount of leaves remaining.
 
I thought I would take the paramotor out for a flight around the Chaco Canyon heritage sites in northwestern New Mexico and see how they appeared in the sim, and I was surprised to see that they're hand-crafted by Asobo/Microsoft. This enigmatic and grand architectural site, built by early Native Americans (referred to as the Chacoan people), dates back as early as 1,000-1,200 years ago and was a significant cultural center. It remains a spiritual place for Native Americans of the southwest today. With human footprints in White Sands National Park, located in southern New Mexico, having now been dated to 23,000 years old, it's almost assumed that people were living in and revered the area of Chaco Canyon for many thousands of years, and that the roughly 1,000 year-old site we see today is probably just the most recent/last construction that had been undertaken.









And some shots from above the dunes of White Sands National Park.


 
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