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Unfortunately, if the problem is widespread, it will spoil my fun to a certain extent.  I had hoped to fly up the Congo and Nile on an exploratory flight through Africa.  If half of the Nile is missing, it will be more than an annoyance.  The problem with creating the scenery for the missing areas is that the joy of discovery isn't there.  When you find missing scenery and have to create it, finally flying over it has its positive side, but it's not the same joy as finding a new and unexpected scene for the first time.

Anyway, I guess I'm going to have to get involved in scenery creation.  Does anyone know what the best program is for creating new buildings, etc.?

I'm never one to defend M$, but if all the plolitical and geographic landmarks for the entire planet were included,, FS2002 would be something like a 30 CD program prob costing $1,000 or more. And you'd still have people upset 

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I'm not suggesting for one second that MS should include ALL the political and geographic landmarks.  No one has even suggested anything like that.  I do think it important that major geographic features be modelled correctly.  We're talking about one of the 7 wonders of the natural world in this case.  When the largest waterfall in the world, and one of the world's great rivers, are not only incorrectly modelled, but don't even exist in the game, it makes me wonder what other things they've left out.  I mean, is Mount Everest modelled?  Did they leave out the Black Sea?  Is Antarctica missing?  What level of realism should we reasonably expect from a flight sim that supposedly models the entire world?  In my opinion, major world features, such as the largest waterfall on Earth and the longest river on Earth, should receive as much attention as lesser such features.  In my view there is no excuse for missing out the Victoria Falls if the Niagara Falls are given extra attention.  I mean this seems to me to be just basic common sense.  An artist painting a landscape doesn't spend 6 hours drawing a small bush, and then spend 15 seconds sketching in in the tree that overshadows it.  It's common sense to spend more time on larger, more important (and more obviously visible) features than on smaller ones.

I look at it like this - if MS couldn't be bothered to get these major world features somewhere near right, why did they bother to model the whole world in the first place?  If they only had time to model the US, why didn't they simply confine the sim to the US and call it US Flight Simulator?

When MS advertises the game's scenery as "true to the native terrain" I expect the product to live up to that claim.  I do not expect one of the 7 wonders of the natural world to be missing.  When I found out that a small 5 mile lake by my home was not modelled, I wasn't upset - heck, I don't expect MS to get everything right, but when it comes to the 7 most spectacular natural features in the entire world, well, I expect a bit more attention to detail.  I really don't see how that is being unreasonably picky.

There are many great things about this sim, and I don't want anyone to get the impression that I'm down on the game overall (and personally, I've never been one of the types of people who are down on MS or Bill Gates), but we are talking about a major annoyance here.  You aren't going to find me praising the game when I find something that's unacceptable.  I realise that many people don't like to hear criticism when it comes to a favourite game, but in this case I think it's justified.  If we just turn a blind eye to such things, how can we draw attention to the problems and get them fixed?

It's especially ironic that the world's largest waterfall is not included in the game.  In the words of Brett Pretorius, Director of African Travel Gateway in South Africa:

"There are few appropriate superlatives that have not already been applied to this magnificent natural wonder of the world; in many ways it defies description. So vast are the Falls and their setting that it is difficult to grasp their true grandeur and for this reason, they are perhaps best seen from the air. "

Hmmm.