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rhodges

Strange Happenings In Megacity/scenery?

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Recently saw the close out Specials for FS2004 MegaCity and MegaScenery addons which looked very reasonable and promising.Bought Honolulu & Island of Oahu, Atlanta, and Washington DC, Baltimore + Area of the Mid Atlantic Region.I do have Ultimate Terrain, USA Roads, and Genesis Addons. I use the USA Roads provisions for my roads and highways.With the Mega city/scenery areas installed, the only change I notice in the scenery is that my roads are either pretty well wiped out, or have a fuzzy appearance at best. I do have the Mega Scenery on top in my library. Granted, this may be me, and with a bit of tinkering it might be found that the short between the ears could be removed. KIAD also left something to be desired, but I use SimFlyer airport scenery for that airport. I moved it on top of the MegaScenery and it looked ok again, but as suspected the immediate area surrounding the airport was pretty blank.I also use SimFlyer KATL, but it showed no problem.I tried uninstalling, and reinstalling the Mega addons several times with the same results.Now the real problem and what really scares me:I have dual Raid0 Harddrives as my primary. I also have a second dual Raid0 set of drives that I use only for backup purposes. My backup is by the 2BrightSparks/SyncBackSE program (which I highly recommend). I have it set to back up my "C" drive every night. Usually I do get somewhere around 30 errors which are all log files or something else that is not singnificant to me personally, and I have never bothered to pursue the methods recommended by the supplier to remove them. It has given me a 99.9% mirror of my "C" drive for many months every night.Granted, it could have been something else, but I am not aware of any change to my system with the exception of adding the Mega addons. The night after doing this I got some 59,000 errors relative to files that were said to be corrupt on my backup drive, and it advised me to run chkdsk on that drive.I reformatted the backup drives, and the same thing still happened when I tried the backup. With the Mega Addons removed (by their removal provisions), same thing. I still got a multitude of errors when I tried to initiate a backup.I then reformatted again (Backup drives) and began to manually copy all of my files from the "C" Drive to the backup. In the process, I discovered that in my root directory of the "C" Drive that I still had MegaCity.ini and MegaScenery.ini files. I deleted them.I was interrupted yesterday with Church and other things. I had intended to either disable my automatic backup provisions or turn my computer off last night so that it would not mess up my backup drives again, but I forgot to do this. (thankfully)To my amazement, the log for my backup this morning was back to normal with an acceptable backup. The only change I made to my knowledge that was different was to remove the mega.ini files out of the "C" root directory. I also use the automatic diskeeper provisions to continually keep my harddrives defraged. I tried a manual defrag of my backup drives. I got the same message that my backup program gave me that I needed to run chkdsk before a defrag was possible. I did this, and the defrag routine ran normally again.Understandably I would think, I am very reluctant to try installing the Mega provisions again, but I thought I would post this here where there would be maximum exposure and ask if anyone else has ever seen anything like this? Any advice on the Mega installation and configuration would be appreciated as well. I may post it on the MegaScenery User Forum as well, but I am not sure yet that I am brave enough to reinstall the scenery which I surely would have to do to follow any advice from that end. This is not meant to bad mouth those programs in any way and may be unique to my system. I see many praise those contributions, but I am now fearful personally. Any positive input or similar tales from anyone would be appreciated.Respectfully:RTHEdit: System specs added:ASUS P5N-E-SLI MotherboardIntel E6600 Core2 Duo CPUZalman CNPS7700-CU RT CPU Fam4 GB KST DII800 MemoryWinXP ProNVIDIA VCG8800GTX 768MB Primary Video Graphics Card21” Pro Series P815 Primary Monitor off of Primary 8800GTX (Monitor #121” Pro Series P815 Secondary Monitor off of Primary 8800GTX (Monitor #4)ATI Radeon / Diamond X1550PRO256PSB PCI Version Secondary Video Card19” Acer LCD Primary Monitor off of Secondary X1550 Video Card (Monitor #2)Navadia version 162.18 drivers for 8800GTX Video CardATI Catalyst Version 7.5 Drivers for X1550PRO Video Card2 each Segate 320GB SATA Harddrives in Raid0 array Configuration2 each Segate 250GB UIDE Harddrives /W/SATA mini converters in Raid0 array Configuration (backup)Std. Floppy DriveCDRW/DVDRCDRW/DVDRWPlusDeck 2C Audio Tape Player/RecorderWINTVKonica Minolta magicolor 2400W Laser PrinterTI Microlaser Plus Laser PrinterHP 4315v Printer/Fax/Scanner/CopierEpson Perfection 2480 Photo ScannerCH Pro USB PedalsCH USB FlightSim YokeMicrosoft FFB2 USB JoystickStd. KeyboardLogitech cordless mouseHigh Speed Cable Internet/email Service with RouterAudigy 2 ZS Platinum Sound to Creative Inspire 5.1 5200 SpeakersFour each Case FansBFGR 1000 Watt Power SupplySuperPower ATX Full Tower Case

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Well, I finally got brave enough to give it another try.Installed MegaCity Honolulu/Oahu, Atlanta, and MegaScenery Mid Atlantic again.Then ran my backup program and everything was normal, and ok. I have no idea what the problem was earlier.The streets and roads are not quite as sharp as they are without the Mega addon's. (I use USARoads as this shows my home area best). I tried moving USA Roads to the top of the Scenery Library but saw no difference.It did move a building or two out of the water as was displayed without the Mega Addons. It also let a few roads cross over water more realistically where otherwise the water just cut through the roads. There seems to be larger buildings in some areas.Again, I had to move SimFlyer KIAD above MegaScenery Mid Atlantic in the Scenery library in order to not have undeveloped land for the airport. KBWI and Richmond were fine. KATL (SimFlyers) did not have this problem with MegaCity Atlanta.Overall, I frankly see little difference otherwise with the Mega Scenery added. I wonder if it is more dramatic in FSX. May be in the eyes of the beholder and these old eyes just cannot give the scenery a just observation. The price is certainly reasonable.Happy flying:RTH

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Overall, I frankly see little difference otherwise with the Mega Scenery added. I wonder if it is more dramatic in FSX. May be in the eyes of the beholder and these old eyes just cannot give the scenery a just observation. The price is certainly reasonable.Happy flying:RTH
What do the ground textures look like when you fly outside of the scenery area in question? I've got the MegaCity titles Denver and San Francisco and you can definately tell the ground texture differences when you fly past the scenery boundries. They are far more photorealistic looking than the default ground textures in FS9. Maybe it's because you have Ultimate Terrain and it hides some of the differences.Kim

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Thanks Kim and Tom for the suggestions and Link.I wish they gave the exact coordinates for the screenshots, but I will get as close as I can to where they display over the next couple of days.Thanks again:RTH

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Just take off in your preferred aircraft within the MegaCity area and fly straight out in any direction at about 2000 feet, set the A/P and watch the ground textures, especially in winter. You should see a definite border change a few miles out if you just have the city package, farther if you have an area package.Kim

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