Meeting in person is important, IMHO, but being present: not so much. If a face to face meeting is possible once or twice during the project I would probably go

Meeting in person is important, IMHO, but being present: not so much. If a face to face meeting is possible once or twice during the project I would probably go for the superstar. Anyway, this is just a gut feeling, I am not in your situation right now. But: I once was part of a development team that was dispersed in 3 different cities. We only met once and it worked pretty well.