Hey Gabriele, dont be put off by the naysayers, there are plenty of people here who wont hear of anything other than the product they like. Believe me, I have had first hand experience when informing people of a new product I came across. If the product is good, people will buy it, I like your site, I am just downloading the free samples to try. The concept is ideal - its what everyone really wants, just as long as the reality lives up to the description. I for one will buy everything you can make!! all the best with your efforts and look forward to the first commercial release! Cheers, Mark

Thanks Mark! Reality meets the description. That's why we shoot so many screenshots at different altitudes and different weather condition. People will learn how to evaluate photoreal ground textures and maybe they will open their eyes and realize the way things are supposed to be done. Pay attention, no other developer show low altitude and limited visibility screenshots. Guess why! :( I am not trying to convince anybody to like VERO's product, Mark. Screenshots (not color corrected / special effects added) and demos speak for themselves. I just limit myself in prividing the right information about what we do. :)Anyway I see that you are downloading, while I am here going nuts adding autogen to San Francisco. :( Any volunteer here willing to help and share profits? :) WE'RE HIRING damn it! :(

Hey Gabriele, dont be put off by the naysayers, there are plenty of people here who wont hear of anything other than the product they like. Believe me, I have had first hand experience when informing people of a new product I came across. If the product is good, people will buy it, I like your site, I am just downloading the free samples to try. The concept is ideal - its what everyone really wants, just as long as the reality lives up to the description. I for one will buy everything you can make!! all the best with your efforts and look forward to the first commercial release! Cheers, Mark

Exactly, despite the love fest on this forum for orbx, it's not a product everybody likes, I prefer photoscenery. I can live without autogen, but for me watermasking and proper color correction are key to a good photoscenery package.

Take into account that there are two camps here, some prefer photoscenery and the other camp prefers "generic" terrain. All of them have very valid reasons to like or dislike the other offering, and arguing about the merits of each method is usually useless. I

Take into account that there are two camps here, some prefer photoscenery and the other camp prefers "generic" terrain.

I am in the third camp: I'd like to see photoscenery but with Orbx autogen quality (although obviously 'autogen' isn't the right word here, because you'd need hand placed objext all over the area). I don't think anyone really prefers generic textures, but right now it's the only way to create larger area's in 3D (like PNW). As it is now, something like Orbx's PNW looks best to me, better than photoscenery (which is way too flat), but that doesn't mean I prefer generic!

http://vero-fs.com/blog/shop/usa-shop-2/sa...titude-textures

Thanks for the link, but it only proves what I said... :( The textures are nice, but it still looks flat and unrealistic when you fly low... (and on those pictures I almost only see low buildings: things will look even more weird in area's where high building are). Also, most shown pictures are taken from the right angle, which gives a nice impression, but not a good one.Mind you, I am not saying it's a bad product! Compared to other photosceneries some new things are added (seasons, autogen), but it still isn't what I really want. But neither is Orbx's PNW btw (how can anyone say something is PERFECT when you see roads and waters cutting buildings in two...? :( ). As I said above, I would like to see the two combined, but that would make things way to expensive, I am afraid (and very time consuming to make). On the other hand, I rather have a PERFECT realistic area (preferably the size of PNW) than a complete but generic world... (but when I say 'perfect' I am also thinking about things that are impossible in FSX, like real shadows of EVERYTHING and so on... :( ).Anyway, I think I will keep an eye on what you will release the upcoming months. :(EDIT:An example of something that is coming closer to what I want is Earth's Simulations Alderney... but 1. that island is SO small and 2. even though it's nice, down low the buildings still look like cardboard boxes... I won't be satisfied with FSX until I can see hedges around the gardens, opened windows on the first floor, kids playing in the backyard, and the dog eating out of the trash can... B)

@ artielange - that's my thing too, as a simmer. Watermasks and image quality is damn important. I am sure you will not be disappointed. Pay attention... seasons variations are made changing the hue of only grass and trees, leaving roads, whites and roofs perfectly unchanged. THe hard part was not doing it on one single tile but on millions of images that make a final product (state or country). We had to find a way to do that in automatic or it would have took ages to finish a state like California.@ coturnix - I believe people will open their doors to photorealistic when they will realize what can be done and what the final result is. I could also say other stuff about the differences between simulated and photoreal, speaking from a simmer point of view (one of you guys), but since I am the VERO guy here, I can not do it for obvious reasons. :( Anyway, do not hesitate to send your critics on the product. We want to make it perfect! back to autogen now... pfffffffff so boring in such a beautiful sunny day

Thanks for the link, but it only proves what I said... :( The textures are nice, but it still looks flat and unrealistic when you fly low...

That link shows you don't have a clue of what you are talking about man, sorry. Remember this? "and I am sure they (the textures) look crappy at low altitude"Also.. did u understand our sceneries come with autogen, yes? What do you care of how textures look at 300 feet agl? 1mt pixels look great at 400" so, the 30cm/pixel (the screenshots) are needed only if you fly without autogen.

I don't think anyone really prefers generic textures, but right now it's the only way to create larger area's in 3D (like PNW)

20.000sq.km every 2 weeks in all the seasons + night + snow baked with a single QuadCore 32bit PC is litle stuff to you? This is what RIGHT NOW things are and will improve starting the next month as soon as we will activate 3 more 64bit machines that will crunch TB of date in hours!. Isn't this enough for you?

Mind you, I am not saying it's a bad product! Compared to other photosceneries some new things are added (seasons, autogen)

Man... you are light years from understanding what this is all about. We don't you spend some time looking deeper before saying this stuff? Really, take this as a friendly suggestion. You will see people will start taking in consideration what you say. Or, if you don't want to read, try asking questions. ;)

As I said above, I would like to see the two combined, but that would make things way to expensive, I am afraid (and very time consuming to make). /quote]No it will not be too expensive. We are working at some revolutionary stuff that will allow us to build prefectly realistic 3D in a very short period of time so, if this will work out (we still don't know), 3D will be produce as fast as we produce now large areas of ground textures.Cheers

Well, well, well, that's quite a stereotype hot tempered Italian reply for your 8th post, newbie... (which btw was extra funny because in your previous post you said "Anyway, do not hesitate to send your critics on the product..." :( ) Luckily I am a nice guy so I will indeed take your post as a 'friendly suggestion"... :( I did look deeper (afaik) and I do like to read, but I will still try some questions nonetheless... :(

That link shows you don't have a clue of what you are talking about man, sorry. Remember this? "and I am sure they (the textures) look crappy at low altitude"Also.. did u understand our sceneries come with autogen, yes? What do you care of how textures look at 300 feet agl? 1mt pixels look great at 400" so, the 30cm/pixel (the screenshots) are needed only if you fly without autogen.

Yes, the textures are nice (as I already said) but things still don't look right to me. As with any photoreal scenery (or any generic scenery that doesn't have enough autogen and/or 3D buildings on it). I do know about the autogen (although I suppose it's not real autogen but handplaced 3D objects...?) but I still see way too much odd 'autogenless' buildings in the textures. BTW It's not for you to decide if I should or shouldn't care about textures looking right at 300 feet agl. And you may think 1mtpixels look great at 400", but maybe, just maybe, I might disagree.

20.000sq.km every 2 weeks in all the seasons + night + snow baked with a single QuadCore 32bit PC is litle stuff to you? This is what RIGHT NOW things are and will improve starting the next month as soon as we will activate 3 more 64bit machines that will crunch TB of date in hours!. Isn't this enough for you?

I understood (from reading the site) that San Francisco will be released shortly, but Fall will be released in October 2010 and Winter and Hard Winter in November 2010. I suppose that is old news now and SF will be released completely (with all seasons) within the 2 weeks you mention (the SF area is 16.000sq.km, so that shouldn't be a problem)...?

Man... you are light years from understanding what this is all about.

This is all about photorealistic scenery with seasons and autogen... I think that comes pretty close, certainly not light years away. Unless I am missing something. (Sorry, I still don't see what else is so special about this!)

No it will not be too expensive. We are working at some revolutionary stuff that will allow us to build prefectly realistic 3D in a very short period of time so, if this will work out (we still don't know), 3D will be produce as fast as we produce now large areas of ground textures.

Well, okay, interesting, that might make creating 3D objects not too expensive, but what about the product itself? Maybe it won't be too expensive for you to make (if you can make it, which is still unknown), but what about us customers...? What will the SF area cost? Even if it will cost 10 bucks (which I don't think it will, but I'd love to be wrong), an area the size of PNW would cost me 156 dollars. And the whole of USA about 6000 dollars. If SF would cost something like 20 dollars (sounds more reasonable) that would PNW 312 dollars and the USA 12000. I am glad I don't need the whole world in order to be really satisfied. B) Don't get me wrong: I REALLY hope I am totally wrong about this all and that your product will indeed mean a new era for FS!!! It's just that right now I still don't see it... if you don't mind (which would be a good thing if you want to stay a happy developer in FS-land! B) )

Really? Could u please mention one?Thanks a lot!Gabriele

Yeah, payware MegaSceneryEarth has quite a bit of coverage, they do summer and night textures, no other seasons or hard winter though. There are some issues with their scenery to be sure. If your scenery fixes those problems and adds other seasons, it will be an improvement.BlueSkyScenery is free/donate ware and covers much of Colorado and Utah, and they are now moving into California, though only at 2m/pixel. Their Utah scenery is amazing quality. They don't have night or other seasons, however.Personally, I'm using existing free tools and handcrafted scripts to create my own photorealistic scenery (not land class) and while it is time consuming, it is fairly straightforward. Doing summer and some night right now, but other seasons are just a matter of hue/saturation/color balancing the data. You can use scriptable graphics programs like Gimp to churn through gigs of data, processing the data overnight say. I'm still new to it, but it's very doable.That said, I look forward to your scenery and especially what areas you plan to release on what schedule.

How about you do the entire US and tell it as one packageI'm so sick of companies saying they're going to do so (megacenery) but stops half way ... I wouldn't mind spending $500 on a COMPLETE photoreal package of the US terrain

Well well well... it look like the hot italian stereotype temper was what you needed to stop guessing and start asking, Jeron. :)That's right, critics are welcome. Yours were just non-sense guessing. Please don't get hot about this because it's true. Hopefully we will start dealing with eachother in the right way. I all for it.Alright here you go...

Yes, the textures are nice (as I already said) but things still don't look right to me. As with any photoreal scenery (or any generic scenery that doesn't have enough autogen and/or 3D buildings on it).

Ok. I am not expecting everyone to love photoreal textures.

I do know about the autogen (although I suppose it's not real autogen but handplaced 3D objects...?) but I still see way too much odd 'autogenless' buildings in the textures.

1) that's because you are looking at the screenshots without autogen Jeron. Of course they look odd as they are shot from a low altitude. It increases details but adds more "oddness" as if they were shot from satellite. But this goes beyond our work so, the only thing I can say it's "sorry we can not do anything about it". Sorry but I feel funny just thinking I am getting into this kind of subjects (odd looking buildings).2) If real autogen is FSX 3D objects added using SDK annotator, yes that is autogen, no new 3D added. We are trying to add it as accurate as possible (quanity and position) and we will accept suggestions or critics about it. We can make the adjustment you guys want/like, as far as autogen but we can not, at the moment, creat new 3D as if the thing we are working at will suceed, the way 3D will be added will be a completelly different way than using annotator.

BTW It's not for you to decide if I should or shouldn't care about textures looking right at 300 feet agl. And you may think 1mtpixels look great at 400", but maybe, just maybe, I might disagree.

Of course not. Of course you can disagree but I am sure you will be the only one complaining about, due to the fact you are that kind of guy who is expecting to see barking dogs in the houses backyards while flying with an airplane. :) But, yes, you are entitled to complain and maybe in the 2050 I will send you an email to let you know we have 10mm/pixel ground textures with no pigeon sh.. on San Marco square in Venice, as they look dirty and will disturb the flight. :)

I understood (from reading the site) that San Francisco will be released shortly, but Fall will be released in October 2010 and Winter and Hard Winter in November 2010. I suppose that is old news now and SF will be released completely (with all seasons) within the 2 weeks you mention (the SF area is 16.000sq.km, so that shouldn't be a problem)...?

No, that is fresh news. We will release approx 20.000sqkm every 2 weeks starting the end of June, most likely, as for some personal reasons I have to go to the US for a couple of week and nobody is able, for now, to take care of the baking. So, SF will not be release with all the seasons. Only summer and Night. We figured nobody cares of fall and winter since we are in Spring so we gave priority to other stuff. Again, the production speed will increase if we see there is interest in the product. Think about this first release as a markeitng test but the work process is perfectly optimized and functioning, which took few months to make sure it was (tests + throw away...test + throw away...... until 1 month ago when everything came out perfectly as expected.).

This is all about photorealistic scenery with seasons and autogen... I think that comes pretty close, certainly not light years away. Unless I am missing something. (Sorry, I still don't see what else is so special about this!)

Yes Jeron you are missing something. What you are missing is something that maybe we have to find the way to communicate better as we want everybody to understand what it is. Ok let me try here...You miss understanding what the optimization work really is, you don't have clear what seasons variations really are and you are neglecting hard winter (snowy ground (in 2 intensity level). Please take a look here >>> http://vero-fs.com/about/imagery-optimization/ and see the difference between the BEFORE and AFTER. The BEFORE is how images arrive from the US. You can see they are washed out, blend, foggy, etc. So first thing we need to process all those images (tiles) to restore brightness/contrast/color tone, intensity, balance and hue which is the AFTER images in that page. This, while it's a Photoshop thing easy (if you know how to do it), is something that must be done to TB of data (millions of tiles) and the result must be EVEN and SEAMLESS otherwise you will see the ground made of squares (tiles) in different luma/contrast/color balance. Let me know if this is clear. I know it can be hard to understand if you dont' have the tiles in front of you as we have. Maybe I will have to post a screenshot of the whole SF area made of tiles so it will be easier to understand. Oh wait... you know Google Earth right? Did u notice the plante is made of all those multicolored squares? The optimization work makes everything seamless and even (maybe I miss the right term).Now, if you go to visit some of the other photoreal ground textures developers for FSX and you take a close look to the screenshots they have on their website, you will notice that 1) the colors and contrast are very blend (and of course they use the best areas/screenshots to show off their product) 2) they never show low altitude screenshots and 3) they never shoot pics in limited visibility weather. The point 1 and 2 are easy to understand while third one is something very important because A) there is never such "unliimted visibility" in real life and B ) the blend terrain will make everything disappear (or wwshed out) when flow in limited visibility (below 32km). That is why on our site you can see the limited visibility screenshots. As you can see, the ground is very crisp and well contrasted. Please check out what I am saying by flying our Shasta area with a visibility below 16km and you'll understand what I mean. As many as screenshots I can make available, let me tell you...the best way to understand the difference between VERO's textures and other's, is flying it. I tell you a story... google for SIRX. It's the italian project that introduced me to this whole sceneries thing. Some friend, who knows about my experience in photoretouching and image optimization (I've been working for Kodak for few years) introduce me to SIRX to try to find the way to optmize the italian territory. I went there and they show me the whole photoreal Italy in FSX. I got blown away, as an FSX addicted as I am, when I saw Florence and my home from a simulator. I couldn't beleive it. I would have spent hundreds of euros have it at home. I was like WOW... what the f...! This guy (Girardi) told me "You see...that is made off of the original images as we got them from the government. I can assure you that if you see the same area but optmized, this will look like sh..! We go back to his office where he shows the tiles and say "look... this is is what we are not able to do. We have to find the way to process all these images in a faster way because doing everything by hand (every tile one by one) it will take years with 5 guys. I took his place and I did a couple of things in Photoshop. This guy was speechless. We process few tiles in the same way and we compiled them to see the result in FSX. The guys there didn't believe their eyes and they told me "Nobody, of those who came here before you, in the past 2 years has ever got close to that". Now the problem was to find the way to process all that stuff in batch. Photoshop was not enough so I had to use 2 more programs. The result is what you see on the website in the screenshots of the italian places (Pisa, Lucca, Genova). Then those guys asked me if I was able to make the night. I found a way but then I kept improving as I will never want any photorelistic ground textures if I had to give up on the night. Then I said to my self... why now try to make the seasons? And the hard part here was not only to optimize as above but it was about changin only the grass and trees, leaving roofs, buildings, roads etc, perfectly untouched. There are some little program out there (I forgot the name) that claims to be able to make seasonal variations to photoreal ground. So I look for it and what came out was that this program changes the hue of the whole image (not only the vegetation) and this means that everything was turned yellow, not only the grass and the trees. It' slike if you open your nVidia panel and start messing around with the color balance sliders. You see when I read stuff like "The season-thing is a nice idea, but all they did (as far as I can see) is change the colors in Photoshop (or whatever)" I can not avoid saying "you don't know what you are talking about". You took it wrong but it was the truth. Your "all they did" is too naive. I can understand that, I am not offended by that but allow me to say that you are being too naive as you don't know that kind of work behind. [EDIT]Anyway, under an user point of view (yours), which is what counts the most, the important thing is the final result and I can assure that image quality wise, we have reached the best level you can achieve. It's all about imagery optimization (see digital photography stuff) but done for millions of images, to make seamless huge areas in FSX. This means there is not comparision with the competition out there as none of the other developers process the raw imagery before compiling for FSX (BGL files). Now, this above is one of the things we need to communicate better so simmers will understand right away why we say that VERO-FS is the new era of sceneries for FSXl: LARGE AREAS ORTHO-PHOTOS (GIS) OPTIMIZATION FOR SEASONAL, NIGHT and HARD WINTER VARIATIONS FOR Microsoft FSX.[/EDIT]Just so you know 300 guys have downloaded the Shasta and Niagara since March 2010 and some others (full simulators guysa) have also tried the italian version here in my office. Many of them have also bought ground textures from other developers and they immediatelly seen the difefference. I suggest you to try out some others, and then get back to me with your impressions. Look... I am not trying to look like the hero here. I am just explaing to you few things so yours "as far as I can see" will lead you to a more accurate opinion. And hey... I will accept it if you don't like it. No problem about that, but it will be an opinion expressed by someone who really saw and understood, not "guessing" based on "competition".It's not it. We didn't talk about hard winter, but I am sure images and Mount Shasta will speak for themselves. Of course if you never fly in winter wonderland, you will not give a damn about HW variation but I do like it and I won't want to miss it, despite the love I feel for photoreal textures even if only one season.I don't know what you think about our HW but I saw guys jaws dropped like the cop in front of Sharon Stone crossing her legs in Basic Instinct. I know that pics may not give justice to it but Shasta will be enough for you to get the picture.

Well, okay, interesting, that might make creating 3D objects not too expensive,

Man... fasten your seatbelt... this is not about having some 3D objects. It is about having complete REAL cities with REAL buildings, REAL walkways, REAL light poles, REAL parks, REAL everything in FSX. And let me tell you... maybe we will add barking dogs and we will dedicate it to you! Would you like your name on all our booklets, shipping boxes etc, as the guy who invented the barking dogs in FSX! :( Anyway, don't take this as a promise. We still don't know if we will be able to do it. It's an yes 80% at the moment. It's something that doesn't make me sleep at night, believe me.

but what about the product itself? Maybe it won't be too expensive for you to make (if you can make it, which is still unknown), but what about us customers...? What will the SF area cost? Even if it will cost 10 bucks (which I don't think it will, but I'd love to be wrong), an area the size of PNW would cost me 156 dollars. And the whole of USA about 6000 dollars. If SF would cost something like 20 dollars (sounds more reasonable) that would PNW 312 dollars and the USA 12000. I am glad I don't need the whole world in order to be really satisfied.

1) First of all, let's define what "the product is". Our product is the individual state, the whole USA and the whole planet (if we will find the imagery, of course) as we believe the real deal is taking off in Redding and land in San Pedro. Or Los Angeles to Portland or even LA to JFK, without ever leaving the REAL WORLD, not for a mile. Of course, the product could also be 16.000sqkm where you have, as in this first release, 40+ airports. It all depends on you guys. What we know is that we want to keep the price low so that everyone, even kids, could add more and more areas at will.2) Production cost and final cost - In the header of our website I mentioned something said by Henry Ford: "There is real progress when the benefits of a new technology is at everybody's reach" (I am not sure about the wording so if someone out there know the real thing, please let me know). This really applies to this product if we consider only the textures. The problem is the autogen. That is incredibly time consuming for human work, as it can not be added using some kind of automatism (unless this new thing about 3D will go right). So here it is. We are planning to sell this first release and the next 20.000sqkm at

How about you do the entire US and tell it as one package

Source for Hawai'i and Alaska either doesn't exist on a statewide basis or is done privately and is very costly. So let's consider the Continental US (CONUS) as a product. Disclaimer, my comments are meant as generalized references only.Decent quality photo scenery will exceed 1gb for every 1,000 sq. miles, per season. Cover all five seasons, add night textures and autogen and you're easily going over 5gb per 1,000 sq. miles. The CONUS has 3,121 sq. miles. Little math says that's over 15tb of compiled files. Do you have 15tb worth of storage space? My latest system build has the ability to run 6 hard drives. Even buying 2tb HDs, of which I have one, that's 12tb of storage space. Not enough!To generate the 15tb of scenery is going to require about 140tb of source material. That's just the raw data, because every time the source is processed it requires the same amount of space.To compile the source takes about 80 hours on for 22,000 sq miles using an i7 930.I wish the developer well on their efforts. But I've seen the hype before, as there's a video out there where another developer is (was) going to have the CONUS covered by the end of 2009. Two years later and they haven't finished the one state and another project that's always "Coming soon!".I do have the Mt. Shasta files and will get them installed. I refer to Mt. Shasta as "my mountain" and always enjoyed when the drive north opened up and displayed the area and the mountain.

Yeah, payware MegaSceneryEarth has quite a bit of coverage, they do summer and night textures, no other seasons or hard winter though. There are some issues with their scenery to be sure. If your scenery fixes those problems and adds other seasons, it will be an improvement.BlueSkyScenery is free/donate ware and covers much of Colorado and Utah, and they are now moving into California, though only at 2m/pixel. Their Utah scenery is amazing quality. They don't have night or other seasons, however.Personally, I'm using existing free tools and handcrafted scripts to create my own photorealistic scenery (not land class) and while it is time consuming, it is fairly straightforward. Doing summer and some night right now, but other seasons are just a matter of hue/saturation/color balancing the data. You can use scriptable graphics programs like Gimp to churn through gigs of data, processing the data overnight say. I'm still new to it, but it's very doable.That said, I look forward to your scenery and especially what areas you plan to release on what schedule.

Sorry Mojave but to answer to you in specific I would need to talk about those names you mentioned, which is something I don't want to do. But if you read my previous message you will understand few things.It's not about ONLY about quantity but also about QUALITY. The difference is in not only in the "what" (seasons, hard winter, night) but it's also the "how" as we are the only one who optimize the imagery before compiling.As far as the do-it-yourself, of course you can do it but as you said, no night, no hard winter, no water masks AND, most important... try to do it SEAMLESSLY for large areas! ;) If you like to work at this stuff, why not considering working with us and get all for free + revenue shares? :) You will have HW, night, water and seasons... SEAMLESS :)Also, of course is very doable... I am doing it :)

How about you do the entire US and tell it as one packageI'm so sick of companies saying they're going to do so (megacenery) but stops half way ... I wouldn't mind spending $500 on a COMPLETE photoreal package of the US terrain

Do you mean we should stay away from selling piece by piece? If this is what you mean, hey... we don't promise anything to anybody my friend. We just say that we have the technology to make the whole country and the whole globe, but that will depend on many things, one on top of all is "user interest"- As I said before, if people won't buy, why keep making it?Anyway, if for you consider complete only the only country, then wait. :)

Source for Hawai'i and Alaska either doesn't exist on a statewide basis or is done privately and is very costly. So let's consider the Continental US (CONUS) as a product. Disclaimer, my comments are meant as generalized references only.Decent quality photo scenery will exceed 1gb for every 1,000 sq. miles, per season. Cover all five seasons, add night textures and autogen and you're easily going over 5gb per 1,000 sq. miles. The CONUS has 3,121 sq. miles. Little math says that's over 15tb of compiled files. Do you have 15tb worth of storage space? My latest system build has the ability to run 6 hard drives. Even buying 2tb HDs, of which I have one, that's 12tb of storage space. Not enough!To generate the 15tb of scenery is going to require about 140tb of source material. That's just the raw data, because every time the source is processed it requires the same amount of space.To compile the source takes about 80 hours on for 22,000 sq miles using an i7 930.I wish the developer well on their efforts. But I've seen the hype before, as there's a video out there where another developer is (was) going to have the CONUS covered by the end of 2009. Two years later and they haven't finished the one state and another project that's always "Coming soon!".I do have the Mt. Shasta files and will get them installed. I refer to Mt. Shasta as "my mountain" and always enjoyed when the drive north opened up and displayed the area and the mountain.

Hi LCS!Thanks for the wishes but... what's your point? Also, sorry but I can't see the hype, even based on your math, it's all doable. One thing I can say, though, is that back in January we ran into a problem that would have stoped everything right at the beginning. Maybe that was the same problem those guys had.

Source for Hawai'i and Alaska either doesn't exist on a statewide basis or is done privately and is very costly. So let's consider the Continental US (CONUS) as a product. Disclaimer, my comments are meant as generalized references only.Decent quality photo scenery will exceed 1gb for every 1,000 sq. miles, per season. Cover all five seasons, add night textures and autogen and you're easily going over 5gb per 1,000 sq. miles. The CONUS has 3,121 sq. miles. Little math says that's over 15tb of compiled files. Do you have 15tb worth of storage space? My latest system build has the ability to run 6 hard drives. Even buying 2tb HDs, of which I have one, that's 12tb of storage space. Not enough!To generate the 15tb of scenery is going to require about 140tb of source material. That's just the raw data, because every time the source is processed it requires the same amount of space.To compile the source takes about 80 hours on for 22,000 sq miles using an i7 930.I wish the developer well on their efforts. But I've seen the hype before, as there's a video out there where another developer is (was) going to have the CONUS covered by the end of 2009. Two years later and they haven't finished the one state and another project that's always "Coming soon!".I do have the Mt. Shasta files and will get them installed. I refer to Mt. Shasta as "my mountain" and always enjoyed when the drive north opened up and displayed the area and the mountain.

I think that's very conservative.There is 2.87 million sq miles in the Continental US not counting Alaska, and Hawaii! So2.87m divided by 1000 gives you 2870 thousand sq miles . You say file size 5gb per 1000 sq that equals=14,350,420,000,000 multiply that by the 5 seasons plus the night textures so multiply that by 10 (And that's not including autogen.) = 143,350,420,000,000 or 143.4TB