They have high aspirations :rolleyes:

My first thought was "Ego" then I thought, nooo, I cant say that....

Then I thought, "Because they think America IS the earth, but then I thought, Noooo, I cant say that either lol...

Did I just say that out loud? :Whistle: :LMAO:

Why on earth is it called Megascenery Earth? Its USA only....

 

It's stated somewhere on the site that they have chosen to begin with the USA

 

but the water and other autogen looks flat and unalive

 

Make sure, if you have Ultimate Terrain, that you layer both the Waterclass and Water layers on top of your MSE layers. This will help fill in many small lakes/rivers

 

Yes, I'm aware that Blue Sky provides corrected afcad files when needed, but Jim's comment gave me hope that perhaps the new v2 stuff did as well. Sorry to hear that isn't the case.

 

It should be noted though that Blue Sky releases smaller areas at a time, and also covers many areas with a relatively low density of airports.

I just noticed the graphic resolution settings on the 4th graphic down in that link you furnished shows 16 bit graphics versus 32 bit. I hope everyone is using the 32 bit (which is normal for all modern monitors). The 16 bits might be the best resolution though for the 8400GS card the slide shows.

 

Best regards,

Jim

 

Yeah, usually developers like to show their work off on lower end computers. I guess so more people will feel comfortable buying it.

Airports are not upgraded.... Some default ADE stuff is misaligned yes. But the real joy of pure photoreal is the flying between the airports. unlike sceneries that use repeating texture tiles with autogen annotated, with MSE you never see the same thing twice.

 

If you have the right graphics settings, the scenery can look very 3D indeed. And the trees and buildings in the textures are perfectly "scaled" to the surrounding scenery. Autogen is rarely properly scaled and sometimes just doesnt look right. Sure, it has advantages, and some will prefer one or the other, but since the goal is to produce large areas at low cost, we cannot have everything in the scenery, and autogen cannot be done accurately on a large scale with photoreal scenery. I had a customer and developer-friend add some autogen to a small area of MegaSceneryEarth a short time ago just as a test, and to be honest, it ruined it. It simply looked right out of place and you lost the reality of the varying shades of trees and buildings, replaced with repeating autogen trees and buildings.

 

The idea is to start with USA, and then hopefully once that is fully covered, move on to other parts of the globe.

 

Here is a guide to setting up your video card to get the best out of MSE. You will find that with some tweaking, MSE can look totally different and much more impressive than on an un-tweaked system.

 

Getting the BEST out of MegaSceneryEarth Visuals

------------------------------------------------

To ensure you are seeing the best photoreal texture quality with your new MegaSceneryEarth 2.0 package, it may be necessary to make some adjustments to your FSX display settings, as well as to your video card settings to ensure these elements are not the cause of "degradation" of the MSE 2.0 textures.

use this information below as a GUIDE ONLY. We do not claim it will work for all video cards, or for all users. But if you are not seeing the same level of detail and clarity in MSE 2.0 states that you see with our screenshots, then you will likely need to tinker with your settings to achieve best results.

It might be worth trying out several adjustments primarily to potentially make the scenery render in full resolution. We found this REALLY helped produce the best views...

 

1. In your FSX.cfg file, change LOD_RADIUS from 4.5 to at least 7.0 or 8.0. (make a backup of your fsx.cfg file before adjusting of course in case you want to revert later). This will result in slightly longer initial load times, but the scenery will render much sharper further into the distance... It makes a big difference. The radius number you use will depend on your PC and video card specs somewhat, but try not to exceed 9.0 at the very maximum. 7.5 seems a good option for those with GTX560+ or GTX660+ cards.

 

2. If you have an Nvidia card, go into the nVidia control panel and set your Anisotropic Filtering to 8x. We found at 16x or above that this setting tends to smooth off the textures a little more, whereas 8x retains the full clarity. Might differ for your card but just tinker and see what works best.

 

3. Naturally, the higher your FSX screen resolution is, the better. Ideally you would run at 1920x1080x32 if you card supports it. If not, choose the highest resolution available. Because MegaSceneryEarth doesn't use resource consuming autogen, your video card should have no problems being set to its highest resolution level and running MSE scenery smoothly in any of the MSE states/regions.

 

4. The best zoom factor to use in the cockpit view is 0.40. Any higher tends to cause slight blurring of the textures.. The higher the zoom, the worse the blurring gets. 0.40 is the best compromise.

 

And lastly, here are our nvidia graphics cards settings, for your reference only. We dont guarantee these will give you the best results, but feel listing them might give you an option to see MegaSceneryEarth 2.0 sceneries how they are made to be best seen.

 

Ambient Occlusion: Performance

Anisotropic Filtering: 8x

Antialiasing - FXAA: Off

Antialiasing - Gamma Correction: On

Antialiasing - Mode: Override any application setting

Antialiasing - Setting: 16x CSAA

Antialiasing - Transparency: Off

CUDA - GPUs: All

Maximum pre-rendered frames: 3

Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration: Compatibility performance mode

Power management mode: Adaptive

Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization: Off

Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias: Clamp

Texture filtering - Quality: Quality

Texture filtering - Trilinear optimization: Off

Threaded optimization: Auto

Triple buffering: Off

Vertical sync: Use the 3D application setting

Airports are not upgraded.... Some default ADE stuff is misaligned yes. But the real joy of pure photoreal is the flying between the airports. unlike sceneries that use repeating texture tiles with autogen annotated, with MSE you never see the same thing twice.

 

First of all, thanks for the clarifications, and the configuration suggestions. While I understand what you're saying here, the airport issue is just a killer for me. In the past with some of the "Earth" products, some airports have issues bad enough to make them unusable. We all have different desires and hotbuttons, but for me, the aviation experience includes 3 basic phases and two of them involve airports. I guess I was hoping the new Earth at least improved on this issue.

 

I agree that the autogen issue gets down to preferences - personally, I think autogen adds value in some areas and can detract in others.

 

It should be noted though that Blue Sky releases smaller areas at a time, and also covers many areas with a relatively low density of airports.

 

True, though Blue Sky areas do also include some pretty high-airport density, including LA, San Diego, and the SF Bay Area. In any case, my comments weren't intended to play the "vendor A does it, so why don't you" game, only to point out that airport issues in previous "Earth" releases were something that I really hoped were addressed in the new.

 

Scott

There doesn's 'appear' to be any discount for owners of v1 products :-(

Yeah, usually developers like to show their work off on lower end computers. I guess so more people will feel comfortable buying it.

 

Yes, I can understand that but there may be members who are not computer experts and may try to emulate all of the settings developers display as the best settings for their product. Not a biggy. ^_^ Just wanted to bring it to everyones attention. I think most everyone knows 32 bit is the best for screen resolutions.

 

Best regards,

Jim

 

My first thought was "Ego" then I thought, nooo, I cant say that....

Then I thought, "Because they think America IS the earth, but then I thought, Noooo, I cant say that either lol...

Did I just say that out loud? :Whistle: :LMAO:

I think ego has nothing to do with it. You do understand PCA is an Aussie company right?

I don't think any flight sim product is for everyone. But I know I sure love it.

I think it is amazing to fly over a state and really see the state, and not some auto display of ground texture.

Even at high altitude, when you get a break in the clouds and see the ground, your really looking at the state, and not a pattern.

Flight sim to many is just watching the navigation gauges on a 2D panel. To others, it's a combination of all the senses (except smell, unless my wife is cooking) that brings the enjoyment.

I'm the latter. I love the realistic 3D cockpit with the head tracking of TrackIR. I love the sounds, usually of Turbine Sound Studios, or PMDG's great NGX. I love looking out the window and seeing what I would see if I was really flying in the cockpit. I love the real weather of Opus with the graphics of REX Overdrive Essentials.

I even like to jump into the cabin of Eaglesoft's Citation X or Captain Sim's aircraft, for a spell.

MegaSceneryEarth's new version 2 is so beautiful that lately I've had a hard time getting out of it's areas.

You do understand PCA is an Aussie company right?

Oooop's :fool:

Still learning.. Thats my excuse and I'm sticking to it :p0802:

Why on earth is it called Megascenery Earth? Its USA only....

 

Why is it called the World Series when the rest of the world wasn't invited?

 

Why is the winner of the SuperBowl called the World Champion when the rest of the world wasn't invited?

 

It is called marketing. I don't pay attention to it.....

 

Cheers

As stated, we are starting with the USA. If it progresses, we move to other parts of the world, and of course those people are invited too - It's just a name at the end of the day, and a name for a whole series of planned products. If when we evnture outside of the USA, we don't need to change the name of the series, so there is continuity in the product branding.

 

PC Aviator originally started in Australia, but also has had an office in the USA for over 13 years now.

 

Re not upgrading airports... the decision was made to leave these alone. To fix issues with default airports requires a huge investment in time. This would drag out the releases to a time frame of potentially well over a decade. We felt it more important to try and deliver as much photoreal content as possible within the shortest time frame as possible so we could cover more of the Earth. There is of course nothing stopping any end user or third party developer fixing up airports in the coverage areas and offering them to flight simmers, either free or as their own commercial product, and of course most all existing scenery for airports will work with MSE.

 

Hope that clears things up

There is of course nothing stopping any end user or third party developer fixing up airports in the coverage areas and offering them to flight simmers, either free or as their own commercial product, and of course most all existing scenery for airports will work with MSE.

 

For what it's worth, I do have a site that has been collecting airports that can be used with MSE tiles. Very limited coverage at the moment and most were designed specifically for use with MSE but I have found a few that were done solely as individual airports but fit in well on top of the MSE layers.

 

MegaSceneryEarth Airports

Ijust finished downloading the state of KEntucky. When I first installed it while flying a copter, I, too, thought, "Man, while on the ground, it all seems so lifelesss.... few buildings, no trees." So I switched back. Then I thought, "Oh, Ill give it a shot in a fixed wing from altitude." What a difference. It is pretty amazing to look out onto what seems real earth. Moving traffic is still there, weather is still there - to me, those are the two things that make "flying" more real. So, it's off to get Indiana.

 

BTW: Ive been trying to contact them via email and both sales and support come back undeliverable.

Anybody else try? I'd like to have a section chart that tells me what sections are covered by each download.

I just got the State of Illinois and it is awesome and takes away from the mundane textures from the default or GEX when flying around this State. I use it for my short flights from KORD - KSTL. The Chicago area is great and it fits well with FSDT KORD. Just love taking off in the NGX then doing a Shift-S to shoot to the wing view and look out the "window" as the aircraft rises and the flaps begin to rise.

 

Best regards,

Jim