I posted this in the design forum and thought, maybe, this belongs here...

 

So, I decided to try some Megascenery Earth. I already own MegaScenery X SoCal and have been very pleased with it. I like the framerates and the realism of the mountains and the view from 4000+ feet. The Megascenery Earth California Upper South is not to the same quality. (I still like it but I have to admit some disappointment in the quality.) The resolution also *seems* to be about half of Megascenery X.

 

The 'Earth' collection seems to be from some dated satellite imagery and the colors are extremely saturated. The hills look blackish. By comparison, the SoCal images look very natural.

 

I uploaded some pics (see the link below) and they're a little out of order so let me take a moment and walk through them.

 

The first few two pictures are from MegaSceneryX Socal...pretty good. Pic 3 is a Google pic of the Socal area that shows both KMRY (Monterey) and LAX..the two areas I'm comparing....pretty close geographically. Pic 4 is the first pic in the set from Mega Earth...sitting on the ground at KMRY. The hill behind looks like it's covered in coal. Pic 5 and 6 are from a few miles north of the airport: 5 is the area as displayed by Google Earth, 6 is from Mega Earth...same area, the Mega Earth pic is chopped off some. 7 is another from Mega Earth at 3000 feet and the last is a high altitude of the area...probably 20,000 feet. You can see them at

 

http://imgur.com/OQO...P,ainwc,6btal#0

 

Again, sorry about the messed up order but it's enough for you to get an idea of how the area looks. I guess I was thinking that the quality would be roughly the same as MegaX Socal...especially since it's been a few years since they created that one. I *wish* they had chosen a different set of images or done some batch color correction before they packaged it. Like I said, it's still better than FSX scenery but I was certainly hoping for better.

 

Has anyone had any experience with any other photoreal software that has better images? Seems like all the products are raising the bar in terms of quality...PMDG, Orbx, REX...I'd like to get something photoreal that is moving up with those products. I'll certainly replace this when I get the chance.

 

Gregg

I found the MSE California to be pretty good actually. It does not blend well with MSX So Cal but the textures look great to me. Never tried the KMRY area but have done lots of flights between KLAX-KLAS-KSFO and I am stunned by what I have seen to be honest..

 

(some blog posts featuring the area)

 

http://altstiffsim.b...ckson-hole.html

 

http://altstiffsim.b...s-fly-here.html

 

http://altstiffsim.blogspot.ca/2011/12/rapid-rewards.html

 

Yours looks like FS9

MegaScenery Earth unfortunately did take a dive in quality compared to the MegaScenery titles that covered specific scenery regions like SoCal. There is a lot of inconsistent color balancing and even in some areas (like NJ/NY) there are a ton of medium to large water bodies that are masked but don't actually have any water vector shapes for them so you get default textures showing through. I have to layer UTX water class atop the MSE layers to see water there instead of trees and buildings.

 

That said, there are still areas of the scenery that look amazing... just wish it was more consistent

 

Your other options that I know of for California are Sim-Savvy, Blue Sky and VeroFS.

I bought Megascenery Earth California section 024-Oakland-CC County. TERRIBLE PRODUCT DO NOT BUY IMO. It's so blurry and over exposed looks absolutely terrible. At 10,000 feet it looks better but still quite bad...I was shocked at such an awful product! Paid $7.95 but if free I would not download another one of their products.

 

I also have lots of other addon scenery... Aerosoft San Francisco and Manhattan are great...Chicago so so with it's bad scenery rendering outside of the immediate downtown area.

 

 

 

 

Intel i7-2600 3.4 ghz HD Radeon 6850

I have MegasceneryX SoCal and I love it. I've also heard that some of their other, older, products are ok. Megascenery Earth is not good and that's being a little nice.

JUst be glad you did not buy the whole state of california and arizona........as I did . I agree with op.

it took up too much space on my hd and did not look as good as mega scenery so cal and phoenix. so now I have a stack of about 35 cds that cost 400 dollars collecting dust on my shelf. My opinion is buy gex and utx and wait for Orbx to cover the rest of America. !

Blue Sky is somewhat better. I still prefer photoscenery hands down but I do use UTX where I don't have good photoscenery.

i have the whole of ca megascenery earth. i actually like the dark tone of the mountains of so cal...but the inconsistency of the mega scnenery ad ms earth is a little jarring

 

on my new build, i installed the so cal..but i did not install the whole mega earth. i selectively am installing on the coastal areas from no cal to so cal.

 

This way i can just fly on the coastal route and it won't take up so much space on my hd and worst of all saving loading time. my old box my fsx used to take almost half an hr to load. lol i had every single photo scenery and other addons to the hilt!

 

San Francisco is another area that is not very nice..particulalry near the KSFO airport.. its all white and no autogens on em.

 

I wish they had stayed with megascenry. the earth thingi is not all that great..qty over quality.