Megascenery Earth v2 cost

[pow0011 8]

Got my favorite US state in the mail today.

 

Also here's Pennsylvania which I don't have.

[PCAviator 37]

FYI for the person asking about dawn/dusk shots, the Pennsylvania video includes this near the end. These are near dawn, but it doesnt show the default night lighting however.

[gizmosellsbunnys 106]

MISSISSIPPI is out go and grab it, now head across the river to the open frontier

[MistyBlue 8]

Is there anything MSE can do about the coloring of the scenery? For example, I've got FlyTampa's great KTPA scenery. It has photo scenery in it as well, which actually perfectly lines up with the Florida v2.0 MSE scenery. But the colors are much more saturated and, IMHO, more real looking for a summer day than the seemingly washed out MSE tiles it sits on. The attached image shows the difference.

 

I posted this out in the FlyTampa forums and they suggested renaming a couple of their BGL's to reduce the coverage area of their photo scenery, which helped reduce the color mismatch the smaller area you see in the attached image. Much better, but it still stands out quite a lot.

 

I know it would be virtually impossible to perfectly match every airport, but is there a chance we can come closer than this?

[PCAviator 37]

Because we are dealing with a LOT of images to make just one state... and often those images are collections of photos not all taken from the same camera, there is a bit of variation in some states with the imagery. It would take a lot of time to manually correct all these files in regards to color. Its very easy when you are dealing with small scale as its likely only one single image you need to manipulate, but when you times that by tens of thousands, its more difficult. You then have to come to a decision as to what will be your standard tile color/contrast etc, and then often you have images that despite all efforts, you simply cannot get them to look like your control image, no matter what you do...

 

So it's difficult and time consuming to do this. I can appreciate the colors in some areas are not as natural as they should look, but this is what the camera on the plane that took them was actually seeing on the given day. Unfortunately, some images are more washed out than others, yes, but then again, a lot of other scenery addons show colours which are on the other end of the scale... too much contrast, too bright etc. You just dont see those colours in the real world when you fly. There is a natural washing out of color because you are looking through atmosphere and haze in most instances...

 

Some examples of aerial images that show this can be found here:

http://media.treehug..._crop-smart.jpg

http://econews.com.a...solar-plane.jpg

http://farm5.static...._92c7523901.jpg

http://www.you-are-h...ial/cockpit.jpg

http://cache.graphic...154-770tall.jpg

 

These are just a few images I found on Google... Of course, you can also find some images with much clearer, more contrasted views too, but if you look into the distance on those shots, you generally see an increasing blue haze that washed out the scenery into the distance. Since the aerial images MSE uses are taken from an altitude, the camera is also looking through a haze layer which tints and reduces contrast naturally.

 

It's just a limitation of using aerial imagery at the moment. Sure, it could be fixed to some degree, no doubt, but it would require a huge amount of work hours, which would naturally translate into a much higher product cost, which the majority of the consumer base naturally try to avoid.

 

Hope that answers your questions

[MistyBlue 8]

Thanks for your response. I can understand and appreciate that. No doubt a time consuming task, but I hope that we're moving in that direction. When I fly, I'd prefer to let my weather addon add the haze and not have it added by default. I'd even be willing to pay for an "enhanced" version of the scenery at additional cost if one were to be offered.