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Megascenery Earth loading times

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I downloaded the free Washington demo from Megascenery Earth. I find it takes an unbelievably long time to load the flight, is this typical? I've got plenty of other Photoscenery such as Horizon UK VFR, Switzerland Pro for FSX and some of my own made with maps2bgl. I also have Magascenery Hawaii for FSX. With none of these do I have quite the same paint-drying-watching experience as I wait for the Loading terrain data bar to crawl across the screen. John

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Guest simjunkie

I believe it has to do with the # of bgl files the photoscenery region uses. I notice the same thing. In fact, check this out:1) 85 Gb of Utah photoscenery from FS Dreamscapes, 525 total .bgl files, loading times very reasonable2) 15 Gb of Southern California photoscenery from Megascenery, 3786 total .bgl files, loading times outrageous!It's the fact that Megascenery has SO MANY BGL FILES. I talked to Dean who owns FS Dreamscapes and he realized that when he created the Utah scenery. I think Megascenery fast-tracks their products to get them out and short cuts a lot and one of those results is far more bgl files than there should be. They should have developed fewer, bigger files to show the same regions.-jk

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I believe it has to do with the # of bgl files the photoscenery region uses. I notice the same thing. In fact, check this out:1) 85 Gb of Utah photoscenery from FS Dreamscapes, 525 total .bgl files, loading times very reasonable2) 15 Gb of Southern California photoscenery from Megascenery, 3786 total .bgl files, loading times outrageous!It's the fact that Megascenery has SO MANY BGL FILES. I talked to Dean who owns FS Dreamscapes and he realized that when he created the Utah scenery. I think Megascenery fast-tracks their products to get them out and short cuts a lot and one of those results is far more bgl files than there should be. They should have developed fewer, bigger files to show the same regions.-jk
That explains it. I just tried again, timing it, but I gave up after 20 minutes. Life's too short for this, sometimes I might only want fly for 30 minutes say, more than 20 minutes loading is just ridiculous. Shame.John

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Guest megaSceneryEarthDevelopers
I believe it has to do with the # of bgl files the photoscenery region uses. I notice the same thing. In fact, check this out:1) 85 Gb of Utah photoscenery from FS Dreamscapes, 525 total .bgl files, loading times very reasonable2) 15 Gb of Southern California photoscenery from Megascenery, 3786 total .bgl files, loading times outrageous!It's the fact that Megascenery has SO MANY BGL FILES. I talked to Dean who owns FS Dreamscapes and he realized that when he created the Utah scenery. I think Megascenery fast-tracks their products to get them out and short cuts a lot and one of those results is far more bgl files than there should be. They should have developed fewer, bigger files to show the same regions.-jk
Hi,Actually, we have that many files for a reason which we're not prepared to go into here. And no, we didn't use shortcuts in the scenery and no the results are not more BGL files. You forgot to take into account that we have night BGL files and we also have autogen files. Load times have always been long under FS, regardless of which version. No, we shouldn't have developed fewer bigger files. Again, there is a reason and we're not prepared to go into why.Also, Southern California was not fast tracked. It took almost a year to develop. None of our products are fast tracked. I think that people think developing scenery is easy. It looks easy because it's just a photo. Well, it's significantly more difficult than it looks. We use the best data available, the best photo imagery available. We also have PhD engineers working on our products full time. Perhaps the faster release dates for megaScenery Earth belie the time and effort that goes into a product of this nature. In fact, the new megaScenery Earth uses even better technology than the megaSceneryX product.As an aside, our version of Utah is only 30.5GB in size and covers nearly all the state and includes night scenery. When we cover the entire state I doubt we're going to see another 50GB. So our scenery actually has more features and uses less hard drive space.

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Guest ArtieLange
So our scenery actually has more features and uses less hard drive space.
What about the price ? You guys make a great product, but the price is insaneUtah is currently 36 tiles, if I buy less than 3 at a time then 36 X 7.49 = $269.64lets say I buy all 36 tiles at once then it's $179.64, but if you finish the state I doubt it will take more than 11 tiles, and I will not get the price break.I noticed in the few tiles I bought that the default objects haven't been realigned, and none of the airports afcads have been adjusted to line up with the photo. I could forgive this is the price was much lower, but for the price you are charging I think it's something that should have been done.

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That explains it. I just tried again, timing it, but I gave up after 20 minutes. Life's too short for this, sometimes I might only want fly for 30 minutes say, more than 20 minutes loading is just ridiculous. Shame.John
Wow, 20 minutes :( I have the MegaSceneryEarth Florida tiles, plus the MegaScenery Phoenix, Vegas, SoCal titles and none of them take more than 2-3 minutes at the most to load a flight. Are you defraged? Perhaps something is a miss with your drive or the drive is past 50% capacity. From what I understand a drive that is past 50% or more in capacity will take a lot longer to read info off of. I don't blame you for wondering. If it took me longer than 5 minutes to load a flight I would be concerned and would have to find something to occupy my time while I wait.

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That explains it. I just tried again, timing it, but I gave up after 20 minutes. Life's too short for this, sometimes I might only want fly for 30 minutes say, more than 20 minutes loading is just ridiculous. Shame.John
John,I have an older system, a single core 3.4 GHZ CPU, with 2GB memory. I measured my startup time for a PMDG MD-11 at KLAX (Mega Scenery Souther Cal). My wait time was 3 minutes 20 seconds. If you unit is taking 20 minutes, then I suspect problems with your setup. Most of my sliders are set high. Try defraging, Try a registry cleaning program.Good luck,jim

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The first time I tried to load MegaScenery USA 2005 Northern California on my PC, it took 20 minutes. Although it seemed to load quicker subsequently, that amount of time is plainly ridiculous (and that's with a Q9550, 4GB PC2-8500 RAM, 512MB GeForce 9800GT, 500GB SATA-II HDD powered system). Horizon's VFR Generation X Version 2 scenery of Engalnd and Wales takes a fraction of the time to load, and it looks better!


Christopher Low

UK2000 Beta Tester

FSBetaTesters3.png

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I am not going to buy anymore until an entire state is rendered.I bought the 10 slabs of WA state at $5 costing about $50. Now, the entire state is available for $2 per slab. X 67 slabs = $120. So early purchasers are penalized? I hope they take a serious look at this issue. Since I oly bought this stuff about 2 weeks ago, I want the entire state for $120-$50 I already paid for.What do I do? If I buy the entire state, my $50 bucks is down the tube... I cannot buy the other slabs at $5 that would cost $250 more. I wish I had known their entire pricing structure instead of this bits and pieces....I say hold on, till they figure all this out...so you don't end up repaying for the same stuff.Its the same way with Co area, and NY area and Boston area that I have purchased so far. Its better to wait till the whole state is out...so you can pay $2 instead of the $7.90Maybe, they are just reevaluating their pricing and improvising as they move forward...But I want to make sure I am not getting a raw deal.Manny


Manny

Beta tester for SIMStarter 

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I'm with Manny. I purchased all the original Colorado tiles in one purchase. But it soon became apparant that as they add more tiles, you can get "left out" in any price reduction plan depending on how they package newer tiles. For that reason, I haven't purchased any more tiles since then, and don't plan on doing so until they get their overall pricing system organized. If I had purchased any of the Washington tiles before the entire state was finished, I'd be stuck paying more than needed for the entire state now.For the same reasons above, I'm not going to purchase the entire Washington state now either. Who knows...maybe I will be able to purchase multiple states later at a reduced price instead of buying individual states now.I have the money. I can afford it. But I'm not going to just throw money away every time a new set of tiles is added to the store. If anyone from MegaScenery Earth is reading this thread, you really, really need to publicize what the heck your OVERALL pricing plan is going to be for this stuff as more of it is added. And whether a previous purchase of individual state tiles is going to end up costing more than waiting for a full state to be finished. Until then, I'm not buying any more of it, and in my opinion, nobody else should either. It's just bad financial management on the part of the consumer. There is too much risk they will be spending more than they have to now than later.I'm all for suporting financially a developer's product and efforts, but not if I'm going to end up spending more for it now than later if I wait. As a minimum, there should be a "Grandfather Clause" or something for people who purchase areas that aren't complete for now. I can wait until MegaScenery Earth publicizes what the final costs will be. In the meantime, it will just be a lost sales for MegaScenery Earth now.FalconAF


Rick Ryan

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I'm with Manny too. I just bought 4 tiles for Washington last week and wasn't able to get them downloaded till the end of last week.I wouldn't mind having the whole state but there needs to be some mechanism for credit for areas already bought.

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Guest simjunkie
Hi,Actually, we have that many files for a reason which we're not prepared to go into here. And no, we didn't use shortcuts in the scenery and no the results are not more BGL files. You forgot to take into account that we have night BGL files and we also have autogen files. Load times have always been long under FS, regardless of which version. No, we shouldn't have developed fewer bigger files. Again, there is a reason and we're not prepared to go into why.Also, Southern California was not fast tracked. It took almost a year to develop. None of our products are fast tracked. I think that people think developing scenery is easy. It looks easy because it's just a photo. Well, it's significantly more difficult than it looks. We use the best data available, the best photo imagery available. We also have PhD engineers working on our products full time. Perhaps the faster release dates for megaScenery Earth belie the time and effort that goes into a product of this nature. In fact, the new megaScenery Earth uses even better technology than the megaSceneryX product.As an aside, our version of Utah is only 30.5GB in size and covers nearly all the state and includes night scenery. When we cover the entire state I doubt we're going to see another 50GB. So our scenery actually has more features and uses less hard drive space.
Nice job trying to defend your product. But don't waste you time. I didn't forget anything. Even with night bgl files and autogen you're still bloated. You're not convincing anyone here that you have the best photoscenery. On the contrary, you don't. It's OK, but not the best. And now it's also too expensive.The prices you are trying to justify for MSearth are just INSANE! Not worth it! I can get the entire state of Utah from FS Dreamscapes much cheaper with MUCH BETTER QUALITY than MSearth. So what if it takes more space...it looks better! Not only that, but megascenery support is NOTORIOUSLY BAD! Sorry, but IMO the product is a joke.-jkGo lower your prices.

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John,I have an older system, a single core 3.4 GHZ CPU, with 2GB memory. I measured my startup time for a PMDG MD-11 at KLAX (Mega Scenery Souther Cal). My wait time was 3 minutes 20 seconds. If you unit is taking 20 minutes, then I suspect problems with your setup. Most of my sliders are set high. Try defraging, Try a registry cleaning program.Good luck,jim
JimIt would be helpful if you compared like with like. I have just timed loading the Level D at Heathrow with Horizon VFR Photoreal scenery, scenery sliders to the right, 3 minutes 30 seconds, no problems there. Ultimate Defrag used on a regular basis, registry cleaned regularly.John

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I also experience long load times 3-4 mins. I need to defrag more often....


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I have to eat humble pie here, I have figured out why my loading times were so long for the Megascenery Earth demo. I had loaded the FS2004 PNW scenery into my FSX scenery library and forgotten about it as it was so far down the list. In fact I never got to use it in FSX as it took so long to load but it was obviously the cause of the trouble, once I'd deleted it the Megascenery Earth demo loaded very quickly. So apologies to the Megascenery guys for casting aspersions on your product. Having enjoyed PNW in FS9 I'd love to get the entire Washington state but sadly it's just too expensive to justify at current

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