Blue sky vs. Megascenery KSAC

[Gregg_Seipp]

So, someone suggested Bluesky Scenery to replace Megascenery earth to me so I decided to do a bit of comparison. Below you can see the snapshots....Megascenery and then the identical pic with Blue Sky. I note that Blue Sky does a better job lining up the taxiways and buldings. Also, Megascenery seems to have the ability to show the standard FSX dynamic scenery on top (though everything is skewed somewhat too large.) Blue Sky can't seem to do that yet and has very little dynamic scenery (though cars do move on the roads).

 

 

 

Megascenery Top down 64X zoom

 

Blue Sky Top down 64X zoom

 

 

Megascenery Top down 32X zoom

 

 

 

Blue SkyTop down 32X zoom

 

Megascenery 3000' day

 

Blue Sky 3000' day

 

Megascenery 3000' night

 

Blue Sky 3000' night

 

That's it.

[cmpbellsjc]

Since when did BlueSky have night textures? Looks like the MSE night textures in both night shots.

[Gregg_Seipp]

I was doubting that there was one myself (and I'm *kind of* wondering if it reverted to something in a lower layer.) But, if you put them both side by side here are differences. The Bluesky is dimmer and has less detail. Could it have, somehow, let the underlying MSE texture 'bleed through'? I'll tinker when I get a chance to see what I can figure out. In anycase, photoreal scenery at night is a fairly dubious proposition. LOL.

[Gaiiden]

I also though BlueSky didn't come with night scenery but I'm not too familiar with them so can't say for certain. AFAIK though MSE is the only satellite scenery that has night textures for all its tiles.

 

BlueSky goes to a bit of extra effort at releasing AFCAD files for airports in their scenery to make them line up better. MSE just uses default airports but you can certainly apply the same AFCADs to get them to line up with MSE textures as well. I see in the first comparison shot you're using two different airport files as well. Using the airport in the BlueSky image should line up just fine with the MSE image.

 

MSE does indeed have autogen but in my opinion it only makes things look bad

[Gregg_Seipp]

I poked around comparing the night stuff. Looking more carefully at the images above, you can, in fact see the Blue Sky daytime textures on the night pic. Look at the trees. I also did another comparison...carefully shutting off underlying layers. Same results. The only thing odd was that the FSX and the Megascenery night views looked identical...maybe the Megascenery night doesn't turn off when you disable the layer? Or, MSE doesn't have a night pic for these areas either?

 

I loaded up dusk for Bluesky and it looked ok (funny was that the sunset looked like Teletubbies...LOL). The airport was clearly their version (though, there were no lights on right around the airport.) Not sure what's going on and I can't say I care a lot. I don't fly a lot at night yet and, again, the whole concept of photo scenery at night is rather dubious.

[CrownCityMisfits]

I know this thread is years old, but thanks for the info. I am finally considering MSE CA after using Blue Sky for several years.

 

My main question is:

 

Does MSE do a better job of color-correcting tiles that don't match a neighboring tile? I am sure this is embedded in the raw satellite textures, but do they fix it? There are several places in Blue Sky CA where the color shifts between tiles.

 

Thanks!

[Clutch Cargo]

"Does MSE do a better job of color-correcting tiles that don't match a neighboring tile?"

 

In general, I would say no from my past experience with MSE.  They would use whatever image data was available at the time without any color correction I could see.  They are starting to use newer data but it all depends on the original data if you do not process it further.  So it can vary region by region. They are not consistent.

 

I have been working with photoreal scenery for years and to be honest, there is only so much one can do if the adjoining imagery is taken at different times of the year or even different times of the day.  One can minimize the drastic changes which is what we do with blending, stitching, overlapping, color corrections, saturation, hues, etc, but that can take a lot of time.  Not very cost effective if you are creating payware.

 

 

 

"the whole concept of photo scenery at night is rather dubious".

 

Oh, we are having some very pleasing results with our process.  I tell ya Gregg, flying at the "golden hour" of sunset can be quite exhilarating.