Seeing all that extra green in the screen shots is very distracting.
Maybe there's a big misunderstanding how XPOI works: all the 3d icons can be disabled when flying, even without stopping the flight. So, the standard use would be, flying with XPOI icons off, then turning it on to have a peek around the area and see what's there, then turn it off again.
Also, the Wikipedia information display the icon only if you ASK informations for it, then it goes away. So, another use might be flying with Geonames POIs always off, and asking *only* for Wikipedia informations when needed.
And, the screenshots that James posted, are in Rome, and the biggest concentration of POIs it's usually found at big cities, especially the ones with a strong touristic interest. The typical average landscape is usually not so crowded. BUT, obviously, XPOI can be finely tuned to adapt to the area, because it's possible to selectively turn on/off both major classes (populated places, mountains, hydrography, vegetation, etc.) and even turn on/off individual sub-classes like, for example, inside the main "populated places" class, you can choose to display only capital cities, or perhaps regular towns as well, but not small villages. Or, you can turn on just airports, for example and leave everything off.
I can almost imagine what it's like flying around them.
Very fun...