I agree..no Autogen is a BIG No, No ! So looks like both businesses just came together to go down together. Megascenery was going very well. Samsavay looks no one didn't want it.... Now, no one will purchase the merged product... Unless they resolve to what the customers needs.

I usually turn off autogen when flying Megascenery SoCal X. To me the autogen does not look right. Buildings too big, houses too rural looking, and placed wrong. This is my real life flying turf, and to me it looks more like what I see irl with it off. We all have our own unique ways of enjoying the sims though, this is just mine. If I want to buzz trees and buildings, I fire up Orbx. I've never flown there irl, so I don't get distracted by auto gen objects that may not be right in size or placement, but for me it all just feels right where as the MSE don't. Just my half cent :Big Grin:

I guess I'm one of the few that don't mind the minus autogen. I have autogen minimized anyways because I run FSX off a laptop with a generic graphics card. Then I have US Cities Los Angeles X on for the landmark buildings and airport areas. I mean isn't autogen just generic buildings that don't look like the real life buildings anyways? Maybe one day with Prepare 3D's new versions and more graphic card power, they'll have whole local city blocks of buildings modeled at a far expanded level of US Cities.

Personnaly I don't like autogen and always turn it off when using photoscenery. I like scenery objects though because they are useful for VFR navigation. I realize that I am in the minority.

I agree with cloud swimmer and yankeegolf3, but I am sure it depends on what part of te country you live in. When I lived in Michigan where scenery was a little more generic autogen did fine and photoscenery without autogen while great was less desirable. Now that I live in So Cal, the autogen looks down right bizarre and the default textures just can't convey the subtle ness. Now with the higher resolution photoscenery I can navigate to my house by following rocks and neighbors pools, and the look from about 200 agl is just more real.

It looks like Sim Saavy is now sold under Megascenery banner? ...

 

Sheesh! Am I missing something here?

 

Manny

 

To answer your question at the end, yes, you are missing something, as most all the (no can't use that term) complainers seem to be. There is MegaScenery and MegaSceneryEarth. Best I can recall and I tried to find the old review done here, but MSE never included autogen. Or did it? If so, I'd love to see a picture showing the lush and vibrant autogen.

 

And there are postings from people who "need" autogen and those that don't want autogen. What a surprise that the market is divided. Someone posted about taking the easy way out and leaving out the autogen. It makes me shake my head in disbelief, because it shows that people just don't have a clue.

 

Anyone who thinks you just throw photo scenery together over a couple of evenings and then perfectly place autogen on the third evening have no concept of the time and effort involved. Take a few moments and use Google Earth to look at the shoreline of Connecticut. Lots of nooks and crannys there. That's being blended by hand using an image editing program, nook by nook, cranny by cranny.

 

Autogen? There is the Autogen Annotator, which is part of the SDKs. I think I'd rather have a root canal without any numbing done, than use the Autogen Annotator. There's recently been another tool developed, which may be slightly better if people are use to command-line tools, shapefiles and GUIDs.

 

Some one (Ray?) mentioned colors not matching. All aerial imagery flown in the U.S. is not done by the same plane and camera and at the same time of the year. So Nevada may not match California, what to do? Well you could "try" to color match the files. Last I checked I had downloaded almost 12,000 files for California that filled a 2TB hard drive. Do I start to color match at the top of the state or the bottom? Maybe at the middle of the state. And each one has to be done individually? Otherwise, color variance gets criticized?

 

And I don't even want to get started on the oxymoron known as night-time photo scenery. Want to fly around at night over photo scenery? Turn the monitor off until the sun comes up! :lol:

 

 

So excuse my opinions, which are spoken as "just a simmer". I see MegaScenery Earth being continued, after the first developer stopped his work. Yet people want to attack the efforts, which is too bad. I've exchanged a few emails with Larry a ways back. Turns out we grew up about 2 miles apart in SoCali. He went to one HS in town, I went to the better school in town. I see a guy trying to provide an income in a horrible economy and I also see people who have forgotten about those affected by that horrible economy.

 

My California work is for personal purposes, but I will offer it to anyone who wants to apply autogen to it. The northern part of the state awaits anyone who wants to volunteer the time and effort to place autogen. But I guarantee a 99.99% failure rate for whomever might want to try. Because seriously, the person who thinks it's "easy" really doesn't have a clue.

but MSE never included autogen.

 

Not True.. CA Megascenery earth has tons of trees. Northern CA where those Redwood trees are...looks spectacular in Mega scenery earth. So does Colorado.

 

 

 

 

About the economy and what not. I understand and empathize. NP there. I never ever criticized Sim-Saavy. I just didn't buy it cause it didn't suit me and I knew it would appeal to others.

 

What got me was this

 

"We've eliminated custom autogen. We feel that photoscenery should be what it is and not "tainted" with artificial autogen scenery. MegaSceneryEarth simply looks better to fly with as photoreal textures only.

Edited October 31, 201213 yr by firehawk44
Image exceeds 1600W and 400KB limits. Please repost.

how can a photo taken from an aircraft not look like the real thing?

 

When I fly over photo scenery, it does remind me of what I see when I fly in real life. when I fly over an autogen object filled scenery, it does not remind me of anything real.

As long as you are in the air..it looks good.. But when coming into land at an airport.. it simply sucks. That's JMO.

 

The issue here is not that there is no market for just the Phototextures. I don't mind phototextures without autogens for...say Arizona or Utah or Western CA deserts. I would still buy Phototextures only if I don't have other options in some areas.. I would just fly over them and never land there. I used to use FSAltitude for such purpose which is ok for Airliners altitude... But a good HD Phototextures looks good at 3000AGL so HD Phototextures has its utility.

 

http://www.fsaltitude.com/

 

 

HD Phtotextures like NL2000 with some autogens with things like Utilitiies and some trees and some buildings all over... is fantastic and desirable for me.

 

I have used HD Oahu Phototextures without autogens and non HD Oahu with autogens.. and I prefer non HD Oahu with autogens.

 

And if placing autogens is hard and time consuming...then kudos to the person who did it as part of Megascenery. Its all the more reason not to knock what he had done.

 

But please don't tell me, I don't need autogens or that all those megascenery with autogens that we had bought earlier and still continue to use were simply BAD like in tainted.

 

And a good compromise could be is, Just Phototextures without autogens for the entire state, but augment it with Megascenery city for the big cities around. This way you can take off and land at cities and airports in the city and everything else is enroute eye candy at 4000 AGL and above. I would love to have Texas but with the old megacity with autogens for Houston, Austin, San Antonio... (I already have DFW) for e.g.

"HD Phtotextures like NL2000 with some autogens with things like Utilitiies and some trees and some buildings all over... is fantastic and desirable for me."

 

This is how photoscenery should be!

 

So excuse my opinions, which are spoken as "just a simmer". I see MegaScenery Earth being continued, after the first developer stopped his work. Yet people want to attack the efforts, which is too bad. I've exchanged a few emails with Larry a ways back. Turns out we grew up about 2 miles apart in SoCali. He went to one HS in town, I went to the better school in town. I see a guy trying to provide an income in a horrible economy and I also see people who have forgotten about those affected by that horrible economy.

 

Not sure I quite understand the, um... vehemence in your comments. No, many of us don't know the people or the back-story here and while I appreciate folks trying to make their way in a bad economy (that'd be most of us, I'm afraid) as a consumer of sim products who has very limited discretionary dollars (in part due to that same economy), I do try to voice my preferences - and I try to do so without slamming those products that don't appeal to me. Of course there's disagreement on wants and likes, but what I saw in the announcement was a change in direction for the Megascenery brand.

 

I'm not knocking what's being done here, but it does seem that it's no longer aimed at me with the strong stance on autogen. And no, I certainly don't think doing good autogen is in any way easy.

 

Ditto what Manny said about SimSavvy - I've never criticized it (and won't), but I looked at it and determined it wasn't for me.

 

how can a photo taken from an aircraft not look like the real thing?

 

You've never seen a bad photo? Or looked at one too closely or from the wrong angle, or with lighting on it that bears no relation to the light available when the photo was taken, or...

 

I like some photoscenery in some areas very much, but to suggest that it's the ONLY way to try to represent "real" in a simulated environment with no augmentation seems a bit disingenuous. I have no argument with anyone's preferences - right up until they get presented as absolutes. Heck, I go back and forth between what I prefer. I've been back flying in Orbx territory the last few days after weeks in SoCal, Nevada and Utah with photoscenery and I had forgotten how much I enjoy what Orbx brings to the table in terms of the quality of the overall experience. Some days I prefer it. Other days I find I'd rather be flying over the desert SW with photoscenery.

 

I try not to get too wrapped up in which one of me is "right".

 

Scott

Not sure I understood the comment about night textures or lighting in photo scenery and turning the monitor off. As someone who has a PPL, flies over southeast Georgia at night/dawk/dask, I can tell you for sure, 100% the only time you see something "almost" like pitch black is when you look up.

 

You can, if not in a 737 make out objects and lights, while not clear, dark on dark on dark is actually the farthest from the real deal.

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A couple of additional comments:

 

but I am sure it depends on what part of te country you live in. When I lived in Michigan where scenery was a little more generic autogen did fine and photoscenery without autogen while great was less desirable. Now that I live in So Cal, the autogen looks down right bizarre and the default textures just can't convey the subtle ness.

 

I would respectfully disagree - it doesn't depend on where you live, but rather on what you value more, what bothers you more in terms of how reality is represented and on what area you're looking at. I've lived (and flown) in the intermountain west for over 40 years and I still I don't see the kinds of absolutes here that others seem to.

 

I just did a flight this evening from Colorado Springs to Greeley CO using Megascenery Earth scenery (until it runs out north of Denver). This is my home territory - skies I've flow countless hours over - and I have to say that the MS Earth representation here would be far, far poorer without autogen - and yes, MS Earth products have (well, had) autogen. In particular for those who know the area, the flight up over the Black Forest and Palmer Divide areas are especially enhanced by the addition of autogen trees. Looking through the autogen'ed trees at the blue/green splotches of flat photo "real" I was struck by how much poorer the scenery would have represented what's really there had the autogen been missing. With them, the Black Forest area felt almost exactly right. Without them it would've, well, fallen flat.

 

I think part of the bad reaction here comes from the fact that for years, Megascenery has highlighted things like their night textures and autogen. When they now try to sell a "purist" approach to photoreal it seems a bit off.

 

Scott

I don't see any absolutes either. I will post some real shot, photoscenery, FSX autograph shots though to compare..