MSFS scenery

MSFS Charlotte, North Carolina Complete Scenery

Charlotte, North Carolina gets a full citywide scenery overhaul in Microsoft Flight Simulator, replacing the default Bing AI look with super‑HD photoreal coverage and enhanced 3D buildings and landmarks across downtown plus east, north, south, and west areas. The bundled Charlotte Motor Speedway upgrade adds crisp textures and detailed modeling for a standout local landmark.

1.4k downloads 4.43 GB Scanned clean

United States of America

Flight Simulator 2020 Flight Simulator 2024

Images & Screenshots

14 total

A dense urban downtown features numerous high-rise buildings, a large stadium, and wide highways surrounded by green spaces and parking lots.

A high-altitude view shows a sprawling urban area with dense road networks, scattered buildings, and several low clouds casting shadows below.

A small amphibious aircraft flies above a dense downtown area featuring high-rise buildings, a baseball field, and a large football stadium.

A small black aircraft with red accents flies above a dense city center featuring high-rise buildings, a stadium, and a baseball field.

Aerial view shows a dense downtown cluster of tall buildings surrounded by sprawling suburbs, highways, and scattered clouds overhead.

A large oval racetrack complex with grandstands, parking lots, and an infield is surrounded by green fields and distant trees.

A large football stadium sits near a cluster of downtown skyscrapers, with highways and tree-lined streets extending into the distance.

A cityscape at night features illuminated downtown skyscrapers, two brightly lit stadiums, and a network of glowing roads and intersections.

A large oval racetrack with grandstands and an infield road course is surrounded by parking lots and forested areas.

A large oval racetrack, a smaller dirt track, and an expansive parking area sit adjacent to a terminal building and runway.

A cityscape with a cluster of tall downtown skyscrapers is surrounded by sprawling neighborhoods, green trees, and scattered clouds overhead.

A large sports stadium sits surrounded by city buildings and tree-lined roads, with the sun low over a distant urban skyline.

A small black amphibious aircraft flies above a large racetrack complex at sunset, with city buildings visible on the distant horizon.

A modern light aircraft cockpit shows a side stick control, navigation display, and city skyline visible through the canopy at sunset.

Editor reviewed · Tested in-sim

Expert Overview

This comprehensive scenery bundle transforms the entire Charlotte region with high-resolution photogrammetry and meticulously crafted 3D landmarks, pushing beyond default Microsoft Flight Simulator accuracy. It merges five distinct coverage areas—downtown, east, west, north, and south Charlotte—into a single, cohesive package. The redesigned visuals seamlessly integrate enhanced textures and modeling that breathe life into skyscrapers, suburbs, and everything in between, offering a far more immersive and realistic flight experience.

Included within this mod is the updated Charlotte Motor Speedway, showcasing crisp HD textures and refined 3D modeling that bring its famous racetrack vibrancy to the simulator. From my testing experience, the cityscape details and iconic landmarks clearly stand out, making those scenic approaches and low-level flyovers more captivating. This is a fantastic upgrade for those who want to explore Charlotte’s urban sprawl in style while enjoying the dramatic improvement in visual fidelity.

A complete replacement scenery package, advancing on the default offerings by Microsoft, covering the entire Charlotte, North Carolina area for Microsoft Flight Simulator (MSFS) 2020 release.

Downtown Charlotte (city) depicted in Microsoft Flight Simulator after installing this freeware scenery mod. This freeware scenery pack, developed by Thalixte brings the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, and its surrounding areas up to super HD photorealistic detail in MSFS. The developer was not happy with the default Bing AI version included in the sim so created this pack using different source data and created a replacement drop-in scenery pack.

This pack includes both photoreal (photogrammetry) scenery along with 3D modeling data for the buildings, landmarks, and anything that renders in more than 2D.

All parts of this scenery are included in a single-download, easy-to-use package. There is no need to source additional expansions, they are all here. The developer released this scenery mod over five parts and they have all been included in one archive for ease of download and installation. The five parts (areas) included are;

Downtown Charlotte
East Charlotte
North Charlotte
South Charlotte
West Charlotte

The scenery is perfectly usable (and the developer has noted this) with just the "Downtown Charlotte" pack however the N/E/S/W additional files bring further coverage to the scenery enabling you to fly further in and around the Charlotte area without sacrificing on image quality within the sim.

Extra: Includes Charlotte Motor Speedway Mod

The developer created another freeware release featuring Charlotte Motor Speedway. This has been included in this pack for ease of installation and without the need to go hunting for additional mods and expansions.

As one of the most iconic and famous landmarks in Charlotte, the Motor Speedway has also been brought up to date with this pack. Famous for its NASCAR racing, the prestigious Coca-Cola 600 on Memorial Day weekend, and the Bank of America Roval 400. The default MSFS offering wasn't that great and quite pixelated. This has been replaced with HD textures and high-quality 3D modeling.

Finding the Scenery in the Sim

The easiest way to experience this mod is simply to enter the following GPS coordinates in Microsoft Flight Simulator:

35° 13' 38" N, 80° 50' 35" W

However, taking off from Charlotte Douglas International Airport (KCLT) will be the best option so you can perform take-off and landing before and after flying over the coverage of the scenery area.

If you want to fly from/to airports further afield but close to the scenery area

Piedmont Triad International Airport, Greensboro (KGSO)
Greenville Spartanburg International Airport, Greer (KGSP)

Smaller airfields and airstrips

Hickory Regional Airport, Hickory (KHKY)
Smith Reynolds Airport, Winston-Salem (KINT)
Jim Hamilton L.B. Owens Airport, Columbia (KCUB)
Greenville Downtown Airport, Greenville (KGMU)

Installation

Simply extract the archive you download, then browse into the MSFS Scenery folder and copy all of the folders inside that into your MSFS community folder. Those folders are;

thalixte-charlottedowntown
thalixte-charlotteeast
thalixte-charlottenorth
thalixte-charlottesouth
thalixte-charlottewest
thalixte-charlottespeedway

These folders listed above are the ones to be copied into your Microsoft Flight Simulator "Community" folder.

Ready to download Charlotte, North Carolina Complete Scenery?

Free for all simmers · 4.43 GB · Scanned clean

File information

Filename

charlotte-nc-msfs-complete.zip

File size

4.43 GB

Virus scan

Clean (scanned with ClamAV)

Access

Freeware

Content rating

Everyone

Download speed: Free tier is capped at 2 Mbps (this file takes approximately 5h 17m at the cap). PRO members download at full line speed.

This is a freeware file — use is subject to our freeware copyright terms.

How to install this mod

MSFS scenery

Extract the downloaded archive

Use 7-Zip (free) or WinRAR to extract the ZIP to a temporary folder. Don't install while still zipped — the simulator can't read inside ZIP files.
Locate your MSFS Community folder

All MSFS add-ons live in the Community folder. Microsoft Store / Game Pass version: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Packages\Community\. Steam version: %APPDATA%\Microsoft Flight Simulator\Packages\Community\. Tip: enable Developer Mode in MSFS to see your exact Community folder path.
Copy the scenery package into Community

Drag the extracted scenery folder into your Community folder. Photogrammetry and large mesh packs can be 1GB+ — ensure you have disk space.
Restart MSFS

Close MSFS completely and relaunch. The new content appears in the Content Manager, on the World Map, or in the aircraft/livery selector.
Always read the included readme

Every mod ships with a readme.txt or README file. It tells you exactly where files go, what dependencies are needed, and any quirks specific to this add-on.

About the developer

Thalixte

Thalixte is a developer that has focused on creating photogrammetry and scenery packs for the latest Microsoft Flight Simulator (MSFS) 2020 release. All of this developer's releases have received fantastic feedback from many users on various flight sim websites including Fly Away Simulation.

Based in France, the developer tends to focus on creation of European packs however some "further afield" packs have also been created.

Enjoyed this mod? Thalixte released it as freeware. Consider donating to support future projects.