Once Microsoft gets to the U.S. border, it either loses interest or knowledge.

The only way to fix the missing items is with add-on scenery at present.

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Ayers rock should be there there (at least according to one of the stock adventures).  I just flew around Athens last night, and was glad to see they included the Acropolis.  However, it's not very well done, and seems to have been a quick and dirty addition - it doesn't really meld into the surrounding scenery, and it kinda looks like some giant lobbed its foundation rock into the middle of Athens.  I then went to Istanbul and was immediately struck by the fact that the city (as modelled by MSFS) doesn't contain a single mosque - not one!  Anyone who has visited Istanbul knows that large mosques - almost palaces in terms of their size - dominate the city.  The fact that Microsoft didn't include a single one of them is, to put it bluntly, unforgivable, especially since Istanbul is a major international city and basically the gateway between the Western and the Eastern hemispheres.  This brings up another point.  The game doesn't seem to include any churches at all.  Are the members of Microsoft's Flight Sim development team all fanatical atheists?  Churches, mosques, and other religious buildings define a community.  When not one such religious structure is in evidence in any town, the clinical nature of the rest of the structures (skyscrapers, city blocks etc) makes it seem like one is flying over a communist city, a futuristic Martian colony, or perhaps a future world that has renounced religion.  Now I'm far from a religious fanatic, but this lack of religious structures leaves a hole in the sim that effectively prevents any attempt on the part of the user at achieving a sense of willing suspension of disbelief.

Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate all the hard work that has gone into the game.  I'm just a little disappointed that the designers of the game didn't pay much attention to elements that humanize a game, and that US football stadiums seem to have been given more attention than huge and city-defining structures in other parts of the world.  It seems reasonable to me that a monument such as the Alhambra palace in Granada, or Carcassonne mediaeval city, should outweigh a 2nd rate football stadium in Iowa.

I've just finished a photo-real model of Neuschwanstein castle, you may see it available for download soon. 

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That's great news!  I can't wait to get my hands on that one.  Hopefully, as time goes by, more buildings, castles, etc. will be made by the community.  I hope to do some work on this myself (if I can figure out what tools to use - and if I can afford them).

For me, Burg Eltz is the most beautiful castle in the world.  Like Neuschwanstein it's tucked away, not really near any major cities.  Neuschwanstein is more baroque, whereas Burg Eltz is more mediaeval/gothic.

There are literally hundreds of castles in Germany.  I've seen Burg Eltz, although at the time (as I recall it was February) it was closed to visitors.  I hope to return there someday when it's open.  Hohensalzburg (in Austria) is nice too, although it's more of a real fortress than a residence.  I lived in Salzburg for two years, so it has a special place in my heart.  Many of the German castles are now youth hostels, so I managed to stay in a few when I did my bicycle tour of Europe during the 1980s.  I stayed in castles in Koblenz and Passau.  It was a great experience.

The other major sights that I saw on my trip through Europe were the walled mediaeval towns of Rothenburg and Carcassonne.  These are amazing, and shouldn't be missed by anyone contemplating a trip to Germany or Southern France.

Have to agree guys, Europe has been v.poorly covered. Budapest is a joke! There is nothing there, but I happen to know the city quite well and it has many beautiful landmarks etc. I think we should all raise a glass in praise of the scenery add-on designers, who get v.little praise for the magnificent work that they do.
How well covered is Africa?

Ozzy

Okay, you guys are never going to believe this.  Not only are Victoria falls, the largest waterfall on Earth, completely missing, but the entire Zambezi river west of Lake Kariba is missing too!?!!  There is a valley there, and a cut-out where the river is presumably supposed to go, but it ain't there.

Okay, this game is now beginning to piss me off.  I mean how can the game's designers completely forget to include over 1000 miles of one of the great rivers of the world, including the largest waterfall on Earth??!!!  I mean this is ridiculous.  I guarantee you that they included Niagara falls, which is half the size of Victoria Falls.  I mean Niagara is on the US border, and Americans go there on Honeymoon, for crying out loud, so they had to include that.  They probably have a nice waterfall effect set up for it too (I just checked - they do!).

I bet there'd be hell to pay if they forgot to include the Grand Canyon.

What the heck is going on??  

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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.