Principal towns covered include:

• Southampton
• Portsmouth
• Reading
• Salisbury
• Swindon
• Oxford
• Cheltenham
• Milton Keynes
• Northampton
• Birmingham
• Leicester
• Nottingham
• Derby
• Stoke
• Chichester
• Bournemouth

FAQs

Q. I've seen stuff about 25cm data, 1m data, 2m data and 1.2m data. What does it all mean - I'm confused.

A. These values refer to the amount of ground represented by each pixel.  To put it simply, if something is being displayed at 1m this means that each individual ‘dot’ in the image represents a 1m square of the ground. In FS2004 the only level available was 4.8m and this meant that something the size of a normal house (say 12m x 20m) could only be shown using 8 dots. Although quite impressive, you couldn’t see all the detail that was in the original images.

Flight Simulator has gone from 4.8m to 1m and now the same house will be shown using 240 dots allowing much more detail to be seen. Similarly a normal road displayed at 4.8m will only be 2 dots wide and little more than a vague line in the scenery. At 1m the same road will have enough detail to show separate carriageways and even individual cars.
Although the FSX detail settings refer to the various levels as 1m, 2m, 5m and so on, this is in fact just a rounding off of the true internal levels used by the simulator. The actual values are 1.19m (‘1m’), 2.38m (‘2m’), 4.75m (‘5m’) and so on.

Q. So where does the 25cm come in?

A. When we say ‘25cm data’ we mean that the original digital images are at a resolution of 25cm per pixel. That's pretty accurate! These 25cm images are then optimised to be displayed at 1m per pixel in Flight Simulator X. The higher the original resolution, the better the quality will be when processed to a lower resolution. 1m gives the best compromise between appearance, performance and file size.

Q. What is terrain mesh and elevation data?

A. The visual scenery you see when flying in Flight Simulator is all built upon a basic framework (a 'mesh') that represents the height of the ground at any point in the world. This provides the three-dimensional relief model of hills, mountains, valleys, cliffs, depressions, plateaux and so forth, upon which all other scenery objects and ground textures are placed. The vast majority of the area of the default relief model of England and Wales in Flight Simulator X is set at 76m between each reference point so this means that there are no relief detail changes between points 76m apart. This creates a very "soft" terrain where mountains that should be craggy appear as smooth rounded hills and individual features that fall between the points are lost completely. VFR Real Scenery includes reference points that are just 9.6m apart which provides a far higher resolution than the default. Even small ground features now become visible.

Q. OK, I understand the 'mesh' but I've seen mesh quoted at 9.6m and 10m - what's the difference?
  
A. FSX uses a simplified set of values in the scenery settings options to avoid making things too confusing and making it easier for the user to visualise. When adjusting the Mesh Resolution slider in the Scenery options you will see values like 38m, 19m, 10m, 5m, 2m offered. These in fact are the simplified labels given to the real values. If you select the 10m setting then the actual resolution selected will be 9.6m. Mesh described as "10m mesh" is actually 9.6m mesh when used in FSX

Here are some of the key towns featured in the other volumes:
 
Volume 1) Canterbury, Folkestone, Dover, Brighton, London, Basildon, Colchester, Ipswich, Norwich, Cambridge, Peterborough, Luton, Watford, Sevenoaks, Horsham, Chelmsford, Lincoln
 
Volume 3) Chester, Shrewsbury, Hereford, Bristol, Cardiff, Swansea, Bangor, Aberystwyth, Bridgwater, Exeter, Plymouth, Truro
 
Volume 4) Liverpool, Manchester,  Sheffield, Hull, Leeds, York, Lancaster, Barrow, Carlisle, Middlesbrough, Newcastle, Berwick