Megascenery Earth California: Way Too Much $$$

[Guest simjunkie]

Megascenery Earth just released the state of california. They want over $200 for the package deal! And they want to charge extra for faster downloads! :( Here's the link:http://www.megasceneryearth.com/store/cart...category_id=113I'm sorry but this is just rediculous! IMHO this is a rip off! And they should know it.Everyone should support FS Dreamscapes to get excellent photoscenery for around $30 per state! Edit: I'm not here to plug FSD, I'm just sooooo ###### at what MSE wants to charge for their stuff.What the hell is up with megascenery these days? They're barfing up sub-standard garbage for these prices???"premium bandwidth download" vs. "regular bandwidth download"? Total bullhockey.Please forgive my rant here. MS Earth is just a money-making venture with no regard to quality or value. F-em! :(-jk

[ninovm 0]

Megascenery Earth just released the state of california. They want over $200 for the package deal! And they want to charge extra for faster downloads! :( Here's the link:http://www.megasceneryearth.com/store/cart...category_id=113I'm sorry but this is just rediculous! IMHO this is a rip off! And they should know it.Everyone should support FS Dreamscapes to get excellent photoscenery for around $30 per state!What the hell is up with megascenery these days? They're barfing up sub-standard garbage for these prices???"premium bandwidth download" vs. "regular bandwidth download"? Total bullhockey.Please forgive my rant here. MS Earth is just a money-making venture with no regard to quality or value. F-em! :(jk

Hey nobody forces you to buy their product. If it is too expensive then don't buy.Trashing them for charging too much is based on your subjective terms. Other people may think the price is alright.In the end market forces will determine if it was priced too high.The whole state of Ca. is too expensive for me but I like their So. Cal. for FSX

[Guest simjunkie]

Hey nobody forces you to buy their product. If it is too expensive then don't buy.Trashing them for charging too much is based on your subjective terms. Other people may think the price is alright.In the end market forces will determine if it was priced too high.The whole state of Ca. is too expensive for me but I like their So. Cal. for FSX

I can make an educated opinion based on all the FSX software I've purchased over the years. Know what a fair price would be? $100 for the whole state. Tops. AND DON"T SCREW US FOR DECENT DOWNLOAD SPEEDS.You're right. Hopefully the market will force them to lower their prices. By the way, they're now using satt. data at half the quality level they used for Socal. I like Socal...I have it and all the other FSX boxed titles, so I'm not just trashing anything. I'm willing to bet that much of that new CA photoscenery is washed out and mis-colored. One More thing: There is freeware Grand Canyon and Grand Teton photoscenery that is just beautiful... so don't tell me it costs so much money to develop. They have a right to make a profit, not gouge.-jk

[flyerkg 62]

I'm willing to bet that much of that new CA photoscenery is washed out and mis-colored. -jk

I'm happy to finally have photoscenery of Central Ca. Today I only bought a few tiles to cover where I lived most of my life and have flown. For about the same price I could have bought one of the blocks of tiles on DVD but, I don't need that much. I certainly don't need the whole state, but if I desire, I can grab one piece at a time for $7-8. As far as the colors are concerned, they are a bit different and are based on a single season, but in my eyes, more accurate than the default FSX scenery. Ag farms, roads, reservoirs, etc. are where they are supposed to be. I do believe there are freeware products available that can be used to create photoscenery tiles as well. I probably could have taken that approach as well, but for now I will use Megascenery Earth to fill the holes in my FSX scenery.Keith

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

I'm happy to finally have photoscenery of Central Ca. Today I only bought a few tiles to cover where I lived most of my life and have flown. For about the same price I could have bought one of the blocks of tiles on DVD but, I don't need that much. I certainly don't need the whole state, but if I desire, I can grab one piece at a time for $7-8. As far as the colors are concerned, they are a bit different and are based on a single season, but in my eyes, more accurate than the default FSX scenery. Ag farms, roads, reservoirs, etc. are where they are supposed to be. I do believe there are freeware products available that can be used to create photoscenery tiles as well. I probably could have taken that approach as well, but for now I will use Megascenery Earth to fill the holes in my FSX scenery.Keith

I am done with MegaSceneryEarth myself after buying a few of the poor quality Florida tiles for the Miami area. I finally took the plunge this weekend, actually last Thursday and installed the SDK, ADE, and SBuilderX. I started remaking the same photoscenery that I bought from MegaSceneryEarth and so far what I have made looks 100% better and it only takes me about 5 minutes to make per cell and that includes doing a quick color match and a night texture. It took me most of the first few night on Thurs and Fri to get the hang of it, but with Luis's tutorial here in Avsim and some help from a few in the scenery design forum, I am on my way. I wish I had learned how to do this sooner. After I finish I am going to post some comparison shots in the screen shot forum showing the difference between what you can do at home with SBuilderX and the MegaSceneryEarth tiles.If they put more effort into a least color correcting the tiles it wouldn't be bad, but it doesn't look like they put much effort into editing them.

[Guest]

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Haaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahahaha! What a very funny guys over there at Megascenery Earth... :(

[Guest SkullxBones]

Hey, I've been using Megascenery SoCal for a while now and I just noticed that their map of California says that Catalina Island is included with the Socal package and you can't download it separately at Megasceneryearth. Catalina Island never installed in my Socal package, did it for anyone else?

[CanadaOne 36]

101GB for California? Holy smackers Batman! I like the mini-HD option. It does smell of the future a bit, but given the (apparent) less-than-excellent, quality of the MegaEarth stuff, is the cost or size of the software really justified? Just to do the west coast will add 200GB to your FSX file. The entire US, what? A couple of grand for a multi-TB program stuffed onto an external HD that gets mailed to you? Sure, it's a neat idea, but who's going to buy it and who's going to spend the money to upgrade their rig just for this? Because if you start buying several states, you're going to need a dedicated TB+ HD just for FSX, and what kind of performance are you going to get running FSX with several hundred, if not a thousand of more, GBs of scenery?This might be a case of too much of not enough for too much. We'll see.

[McCrash 3]

That place is krazy!

[Guest sssummer]

I posted the following on their board yesterday. I am still waiting for a response. At this point, their promotion for the the product covering the whole state is false.The new Megascenery California advertisement says the following:This item gives you the entire state of California.163,707 square miles, this is now the single largest area of unique day and night photo-scenery ever created for Microsoft Flight Simulator X.This title also includes, free of charge, MegaSceneryX: Southern California which will fit in perfectly with the southern border of this scenery and complete the state for you.Your map does not show the coverage for Southern California where the Megascenery X So Cal ends. So what you are saying here is that the rest of San Bernardino County, Riverside County, Imperial County, and San Diego County was finally annexed by Mexico? Which is it?Either your map with the new tiles is incorrect, or your advertising is terribly misleading.How can the rest of the state be included when you do not show that on your map? How can it be the entire state when you don't show the option for the rest of the tiles being available in the counties I mentioned. I don't understand.Can you advise us of the resolution of the source data? Is it all 1 meter or 1 foot resolution source, or is there mixture of 1.5 or 2 meter source data? I am concerned about buying inferior resolution like some of the other statesThanksBrian S.

[Guest byoungblood]

Hey nobody forces you to buy their product. If it is too expensive then don't buy.Trashing them for charging too much is based on your subjective terms. Other people may think the price is alright.In the end market forces will determine if it was priced too high.The whole state of Ca. is too expensive for me but I like their So. Cal. for FSX

This is a mechanism that the market uses for adjusting the price. If someone is shooting for the sky, then I don't see any problem with calling them out on it. $200 for any non-hardware flight sim add-on is excessive. I can go fly a real airplane for a couple of hours or more for that much money.

[Guest bjablonka]

This is a mechanism that the market uses for adjusting the price. If someone is shooting for the sky, then I don't see any problem with calling them out on it. $200 for any non-hardware flight sim add-on is excessive. I can go fly a real airplane for a couple of hours or more for that much money.

I think it is relative. I fly 90% of the time in Southern Cal and if the quality is there, I would buy it. But I am holding off for right now till I know if LA/San Diego is included.Bernd

[Guest sssummer]

To get LA/San Diego, you just buy Megascenery X So Cal. It's free if you buy the whole state. The quality is good on that part of the release.

[Manny 1,293]

How does it compare with the already released So Cal? in terms of color and resolution and autogens?Any ideas?If its as good or better than so cal, I would pay $200 for the whole state.BTW.. I just realized that WA state is blueish green and washed out. I managed to port Vouche'z Portland scenery and when flying in that area and moving to WA state is when I noticed how washed out WA area looked.Manny

[Guest bjablonka]

I heard that Megascenery X has a lot of problems also. See: http://www.pcaviator.com/megascenery/forum...d&pid=11063Bernd