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USA Mesh?

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. . . or more precisely,that final LOD is not as important as the source data it's made from.LOD 10 looks much different, depending on whether 90m source or 30m source is used. Just because a mesh product claims to be LOD 10 means very little. It's just a simple matter of changing one little value in the INF.What is MOST important is knowledge of the source data resolution--whether is was made from 90m or 30m source data. That makes all the difference.Justin


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Guest jase439

Ultimately, you must decide what you want to achieve by improving your terrain mesh. If you fly the heavy metal and are viewing the world below from an altitude of 33000' and 450 knots, then you would probably do just peachy with one of the downloadable 30m mesh sets - provided you have the bandwidth to do so. If you don't have the bandwidth or desire to spend an evening downloading and manually installing terrain BGL's, then save yourself the time and trouble and score yourself one of Justin's (FSGenesis) CD's.If you are a sightseer and like those low and slow flights from the comfort of your Piper Cub, then there's a valid reason to go with the higher mesh provided through FSGenesis. You will need some horsepower in your box though to handle this kind of mesh. The difference between mesh resolutions and LOD at low altitudes though is striking.Lastly, as an alternative, you can download and lay down 30m downloadable mesh for the entire US and then layer higher resolution mesh on top of it. I am using this latter method w/ some "localized" high resolution meshes from FSGenesis and Orlando Sotomayor.Cheers,J

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Guest jase439

BTW, you can find a whole host of Orlando Sotomayor mesh files here at AVSIM. They are created with 30m DEMs and sampled at LOD 10 (~38.2m resolution).

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What I say - and rather give prefference -Better release some mesh covering some areas as freeware or demos of shareware scenery - at different Lod or resolution - and let whoever like to have a go - fly over actually the scenery on the simulator - so you can have a more clear picture of what actually the scenery is about. Also do not forget - that we all have different fs settings - and what could show right for me - will not for you - there many aspects - that a picture will not display.Often screenshots can not really show or display details - or other features - as a real flight test will do.just my ideaRay

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Guest sgreenwood

>Lastly, as an alternative, you can download and lay down 30m >downloadable mesh for the entire USI did not know such mesh was available. Can you provide a link?Thanks, Steve

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Guest ba747heavy

Justin or whomever --Where can I download US Mesh CD's at? I didn't think that FSGenesis did that. I looked at there site and can only find disorganized files. I would like to see a 'coherent' gathering of files by 1 person :-)Clear skies

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HI Fred,Can't download CDs from anywhere that I know of. It's just not practical from my end. Broadband aside, 5-6 Gb of web storage space is a bit beyond my web budget at the moment--not mention the incredible bandwidth requirements of such a venture.Not sure which area your seeing that's disorganized. Under the Mesh Central tab is a variety of of 38.2m terrain mesh, "organized" by US region.Which part is not "coherent"? Are you looking someplace else than under the Mesh Central tab?Justin


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Guest jase439

I'm trying to remember where I got mine. I don't even remember the name of the author to tell you the truth. It's not Eddie Denney's mesh either (although his stuff works just as well as any) - this was a step up from his. It was based on 30m DEM's - although I don't recall the exact LOD that was used. 9 or 10, I think? Anyway, it's not "pure 30 meter mesh" (because of the decreased sampling) but it's "pretty da*n good mesh that's >30 and <90" (it works out to be around ~40 or 70 or something, I forget) There was this really huge debate on here when the US mesh files first came out - the battle of the "my mesh is bigger than your mesh". There were some claiming to have pure 10 meter terrain resolution per DEM for less than 500K per region ;-) I think it was finally decided that in reality the entire US would take something like 4 gigs of disk space at "true" 10m. Anyway, it was quite entertaining. Just do some searches in the libraries and on google.com - you'll find some.All I know is I have a truck full of BGL's under ADDON SCENERY. J

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HI Jason,Yeah, that's that simviation set. It's not what it claims to be. It's NOT 30m. There's no way you can cover the United States with 38m resolution with only 490 Mb.It's probably only 76.4m, which might be possible, although my 76.2m set runs 543 Mb for the continental US, and another 201 Mb for Alaska. So, my 76.4m is 744 Mb, while his is 490 Mb, so I don't know what up with that.But one thing for sure, It's NOT 30m terrain. You're talking over 3 Gb to cover the continental US with true 38.2m terrain mesh.JustinFSG


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Guest ba747heavy

Justin --No insult intended. I meant that a 'coherent' gathering of all USA mesh into 1 place. I didn't mean to imply that your site was 'incoherent', it isn't.I also understand that bandwidth and storage cost money :-)Clear skies

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Guest jase439

Yeah, that sounds about right. I think the original work was created off of 30m DEM's, but is sampled at LOD 9 (whatever that works out to be - 76.2 you say?). In fact, I know it has to be that - because I remember this dataset was roughly twice the resolution of the terrain mesh that you released for FS2000 (the 153m set). Also, most of Orlando's work and your work for FS2002 has been done at LOD 10 or higher and there is a *definite* refinement of the terrain when I layer these HIRES meshes on top of my baseline.Mine is 490MB, so I'm guessing it is the simviation set I'm working with. Not sure why the subtle difference in size - a different BGL compiler maybe...maybe I'm missing some parts of Alaska?I think the confusion early on was that people were assuming that if your source data was resolution X, then the finished product was also at resolution X. Most people don't realize that the data is sampled (that being the LOD). Then there were some mesh authors who actually thought they could get BETTER resolution than the data they started with :-lol. Those usually figured LOD was equivilent to terrain resolution (i.e. LOD 10 = 10m).

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HI Fred,No insult taken. :-)As far as I know, Mesh Central attempts to do what what you ask there. I don't know of any other freely downloadable meshes than what is already there.The only commercial mesh that I'm aware of is mine, Steve Greenwood's, LAGO's European series, Raimondo's, and there was some British stuff out there (although I think LAGO has sort of quashed that for the most part).So, AFAIK, Mesh Central is the only place where all USA true 38.2m downloadable freeware mesh is. I think Steve has a few things here at AVSIM that aren't in Mesh Central, but that's only because I haven't asked him if I could link his stuff in Mesh Central, and I haven't had much time lately with my recent production schedule to do much work on Mesh Central. Maybe when the dust settles on my products currently in production. But my plate is pretty full for the foreseeable future.JustinFSG


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Guest sgreenwood

Hi Fred,Here's a link to the mesh I have uploaded to AVSIM. It is not all 30m US data, however.fs-traveler mesh at AVSIMEnjoy,Stevewww.fs-traveler.com

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