One thing that I don't think has been discusses is the fact that FSX's roads and rail roads can only be displayed in low resolution. This makes them look primative and cartoonish at lower altitudes

Also enviormental objects being in scale with each other and the rest of the FS world goes a long way in creating a realistice enviorment.
As I understand it, this is not always possible in FSX.

Hopefully, both issues will be addressed in Flight     

Now wouldn't THAT be nice... My graphics suck, and I've never seen, even with full settings, the railroads in FSX. I think MS should just build a sim like this: Start by putting a car or bus sim in, to get the ground detail and textures right. Then, go to train sim to get around faster on the ground---just for when ou get bored of flying. Then, they go to FS, for the air and flying detail. Then, they should base it off of the FS2004 platform, to ease up on frame rates because FSX KILLS my computer. Most sims are not great by themselves, so you have to combine them to make them better. I also think they should build the scenery in sections to help FPS, like train simulator. Every time you get within, lets say 10 miles of the edge, the high detailed next section comes out. One more thing, it would be so nice to have a scenery editor in the game, like train simulator, so we don't have to go through the process of installing the crappy, non-working (for me) SDK. Just thoughts.

Keep It Simple wrote on Nov 1^st, 2010 at 5:53pm:

There's a fix for that. Open FSX.cfg and find
[GRAPHICS]
SHADER_CACHE_PRIMED=1693500672


Change the 1024 to 4096 and voila! You can use Hi-res textures now.

Although there is one annoying bit: If you change any of your FSX display settings it will be reset back to 1024 and you'll have to change it to 4096 again.

The real issue with sim graphics is that they are inherently detrimental to the system, no matter what you're running.  The reason being thus:

If you look at 3D environments such as FPS games sport, they are small.  Less than a square kilometer in a section.  Yet that is the detail we are asking for . . .

So we have to make a compromise.  Quality for quantity, with quantity being the absolute.

Of course, this could be conquered by online simming being the only option.  You could have beautiful landscapes that were extremely detailed that would be downloaded by the sim as you are flying over.  They could be graduated down by LODs, but you would always be able to get intense graphical quality when you get down to low levels because of the downloads.  Of course, this hinders the breadth of consumerism tremendously.  You would lose a large portion of your fanbase just by doing this one thing.  I myself would never buy this sim for that reason.

However, an alternate way is possible.  Similar to the autogen of the past few years.  Any area that is unknown would automatically be filled in by autogen scenery.  And not just buildings, but natural land features as well.  You would encounter random land features based on local environment.  For instance: in the central US you would have waving waves of growing things (grain, corn, etc) when you get low enough to see them, and in places like Siberia you would see snow flurries kicking up when you get close to the ground, as well as drifts in random areas.

The only other option is to have a sim that sits on your HD like a cow and takes up 50+ gigs.  Full of total realism and slow framerates because of the massive amount of time it takes for the comp to figure out what is supposed to be there and to render it according to onboard plans.

Either deal with low realism or concede to full online flying.  Those are your only real options.

Something I thought of last night that I would like to see, is cacti in the desert southwest and scaled giant redwoods and sequoias.

^
Yes it will be crisp but still in low res.
I have yet to see a high res detailed close up road pic in FSX.
It is always cartoon quality no matter what the res of the BMP is.

Look at at any high res (enabled) FSX pics and it will look beautuful except for the roads.