I got it today and the cool thing about NOT buying a digital download is, well there are several good things. I have a real disk in a case so I can reformat my system or reinstall and not have activation problems with some guhay activation point system. When I do reformat or upgrade systems I won't loose it in a missed backup. I opened the case and the first thing I said was coooool because it has a big two sided sectional of so-cal. There is also a manual (not a paper weight one) with a few pages on the scenery but the rest of the manual pages are all the approach plates, airport diagrams and missed approaches for every so-cal airport or the ones covered in the scenery area. I didn't see STARRs or SIDs in the manual but all the ILS approaches are there. I will not have to print out these approaches anymore.

I hope it runs well because I may have bought something way over my cpu but I'm going to try out some of the settings to see what helps. Then again FSX is one of those apps that can choke almost any computer out there considering its sucky donkey balls use of multiple processors.     

They did NOT model my loft in this shot. I should write to them.
(http://www.megascenery.com/images/socalx/socalx4.jpg)
(http://www.megascenery.com/images/socalx/socalx3.jpg)
(http://www.megascenery.com/images/socalx/2007-8-19_11-31-28-593.jpg)
(http://www.megascenery.com/images/socalx/2007-8-19_12-16-34-586.jpg)
(http://www.megascenery.com/images/socalx/2007-8-19_12-16-54-572.jpg)

Very cool :)

Benchmarks are averaging 17fps. Most of the settings I tried only take me up or down 1 or 2 fps. While I dial it in it does look pretty.

Beautiful King.  Pictures of what you were describing last night are really cool.

S!

Gunny

Yes FSX is fantastic for this and you can actually have a great feeling while flying and follow real path..

The first thing I noticed, aside from the looks, was that I could see and almost feel when I was skidding. The default scenery is so blurry I never noticed a skid unless I looked at the turn coordinator. Now I look over the edge of the window at the ground and I can see the plane skidding because the scenery moves under me. The ground elevation contours are much better and I can use dead reconing to get around which takes some of the hassle out of looking at the instruments.

The SIDs and STArs are an extra on one of the disks so I have all the departures and arrivals I need. But thats all on skyvector anyway.

The instruments??? what's that for ? nha man  Zoom boom crassshh !!! woosh!!!  is all we need ....;)

Instruments; in case you don't need that.

Funny thing is. My very first toy airplane I looked inside the pit and asked what all that stuff was. I was told it was where the instruments were. At the time I thought it was an odd place to keep your flute.

LOL...  :D