1.13 Why do I need to designate add-on scenery as local?

From FlightSim

Q:

THE OREGON SCENERY BY ANDREW PUNKETT INSTRUCTED TO MAKE THE SCENERY "REGIONAL" RATHER THAN LOCAL." WHEN I ASKED HIM WHY, HE SAID HE REALLY DIDN'T KNOW. HE SAID HE THOUGHT IT HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH SIZE. I HAVE A LARGER AREA, ALASKA, AND IT IS FINE USING "LOCAL." CAN YOU EDUCATE ME?

A:

Gary - Sorry for the delay in answering your question on scenery area types, but I had to do some research on it. I'm embarrassed to say all I could come up with was the few lines about this feature in the MSFS Pilot's Handbook. They state there that the 'regional' type includes 'specific regional areas that come with FS, such as USA - Chicago,' while 'local' is 'the layer for scenery add-ons, such as Microsoft Caribbean or Micro- soft Japan.' Thus if you include third party scenery as belonging in the latter group, all third party scenery should be typed 'local.' In terms of intricacy of design, however, I see no difference between USA- Chicago, say, and MS Caribbean, so I don't know if there's a coding difference. I would think that, for large scenery add-ons such as entire states, making it 'regional' would make as much sense as anything, specially if that scenery was excluding one of the regional areas already in FS98. Beyond that, I don't know what the difference would be - perhaps a sharper mind than mine here on the forum can help. Otherwise, sorry for presenting you with 'mud' instead of enlightenment.

Larry K.