Megascenery Earth v2 cost

[gizmosellsbunnys 106]

Got SC, GA today two states swing low grabbed AL, MS when it comes up. Gotta find that junk yard in SC and nascar tracks. GEX dont provide that for ya. Probably uninstall GEX and configure UTX to use what is needed after a certian point.

[Helen_P 60]

I shot this very short snippet of MegaScenery Earth today, during a flight I've flown in real life. The video is over Dover, DE.

 

Just thought it would be worth linking here, for anyone wondering what MegaScenery is all about. :smile:

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/399162-a-short-look-at-megascenery-earth-20-flying-over-dover-de/

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

I bought the entire state of California of MegaScenery Earth was not cheap but they had a sale could not resist but now with a 512mb ssd scared to be loading all of those files took forever to download them. Also own Veros but it does not blend well with fsx in the LA area.

[Jim Young 2,356]

I bought the entire state of California of MegaScenery Earth was not cheap but they had a sale

 

It will be interesting to see what they do with V2. The number of 1GB files will be a lot and I expect it will be much higher in price than the current prices for the States already completed. I own MegaSceneryX SoCal and that has lasted for years and probably my oldest still working great photoscenery.

 

Best regards,

Jim

[Guest]

By doubling the price at $520, he and PC-Aviator would still be making a healthy profit, even adding extra to cover the cost of adding a water mask, does not equal 5X+ the original cost!

 

There could be additional new costs you don't know about ... for example, I was looking to get some 50cm scenery from emap-int folks for the UK (Scottland, Ireland, Wales, England) which was about 627,901 km2 at a cost of $10-$38 per km2 ... yeah, best case about $6.3M (million). Now obviously there are other sources for the map data which I'll look into, and rather than do 50cm might do 1m or 3m resolution for less. But the point being map source data isn't cheap and the cost isn't under the control of FSX scenery developers.

 

In case you are reading Helen, Newfoundland is 815,502 km2 (approximate) so $8.2M. But again this is 50cm (as high res as one can go) ... I've only visited Newfoundland once, that was Gander -- but looks like a VERY beautiful place and good candidate for scenery.

 

 

When I did this I got OOMs. Mine is set a little above 4 and my scenery looks great. Distances should be a little less sharp naturally anyway.

 

I run at 9.5 LOD, 4096 textures (aka HD), DX10 mode, never had an OOM yet (2560 x 1600 res) -- the MSE scenery is fantastic with this setting/setup.

 

Cheers, Rob

[PCAviator 37]

Re OOMs, I did get those too when setting a high LOD on my old system. It just couldnt cope. I noticed after I switched from Win 7 32-bit to Win 7 64-bit and went from 4Gb to 16Gb RAM, the problems all but disappeared. Later on after that I upgraded my video card to a GTX 670 (from a 470) and that allowed me to up the screen resolution aspect too for even better visuals, and no impact on performance.

 

Rob, 9.5 LOD! Post some screenies for us... Would be interesting to see. The highest I have pushed my setting is to 8.5. Usually stick at 8.0.

[shaun_ak 2]

There could be additional new costs you don't know about ... for example, I was looking to get some 50cm scenery from emap-int folks for the UK (Scottland, Ireland, Wales, England) which was about 627,901 km2 at a cost of $10-$38 per km2 ... yeah, best case about $6.3M (million). Now obviously there are other sources for the map data which I'll look into, and rather than do 50cm might do 1m or 3m resolution for less. But the point being map source data isn't cheap and the cost isn't under the control of FSX scenery developers.

 

In case you are reading Helen, Newfoundland is 815,502 km2 (approximate) so $8.2M. But again this is 50cm (as high res as one can go) ... I've only visited Newfoundland once, that was Gander -- but looks like a VERY beautiful place and good candidate for scenery.

 

Wikipedia lists the area of the USA as 9.83 million square km ... so by your estimate they are paying between $98 and $373 MILLION for source data alone? There simply cannot be that large of a market for this kind of specialty item. Avsim lists approx 99,000 "Total members" at the bottom of the forum homepage. At the low estimate of $98 million for source data, if you got each of those members to purchase your product for $990 (or $3800 if you paid the high end for the source data) then you break even. No way each of those "members" is probably still an active FSX user, let alone a potential customer for this type of product.

 

Please don't misunderstand, I completely believe you when you mention the cost which you looked into with that company. I am guessing that company mainly sells that data to other large companies and/or governments for real-world projects requiring that kind of imagery. I seriously doubt a company developing photo realistic scenery for an aging flight simulation platform is investing the kind of money you are mentioning for source data ... I just don't think anyone would actually provide that kind of venture capital for such a specialty product with a narrow market. I'm guessing they are getting a massive discount on the source data somehow, such as using "outdated" data or whatnot.

 

I consider myself willing to spend far more on this hobby than the "average" simmer and as I related in my original post, the cost for MSE v2 is by far my biggest stumbling point. Still haven't decided if I'm going to purchase it or not ... I may take PC Aviator's suggestion and pickup one of the smaller (cheaper) states to give it a feel. If I really like it the wife's not going to be happy, because then I'll probably be spending quite a bit of money on simming for the rest of the year!

[Jim Young 2,356]

Just for kicks I just tried the 9.5 LOD out of KDCA and over Virginia and it ran smoothly w/no CTD. FPS ran between 12 and 33. I run at 2560x1600 too in DX10 mode. Here's a picture over my local area at 33fps.... I'll have to give it a real test maybe tomorrow on a long flight to see if I can cause a CTD.

 

 

Best regards,

Jim

[PCAviator 37]

Any idea when Western US states start getting released?

 

I think I will eventually buy at least some of these states if not all, but I wish to start from western states.

 

Hi there... We are working from East to West in the USA with the current MegaSceneryEarth 2.0 project so it will be a little while before we hit the western states, which will naturally be toward the end of the project. However, as a time frame, consider that since late last year, we have already released 23 states, so quite feasibly, we could have the rest of the USA done well within 2013 if we can progress at the same current rate of releases. I'm not going to put an exact or even approximate date on any of these as there are too many variables in the mix which would affect the outcome on a planned date, but as you can see, we are progressing with releases at a very fast rate at the moment!

 

Hi Jim! Looks good... Since I moved to 64-bit Win 7, I havent been able to produce an OOM error yet... I was getting them frequently on Windows 7 32-bit toward the end. Perhaps that plays a role in the issue?

[XPX64man 130]

Re OOMs, I did get those too when setting a high LOD on my old system. It just couldnt cope. I noticed after I switched from Win 7 32-bit to Win 7 64-bit and went from 4Gb to 16Gb RAM, the problems all but disappeared. Later on after that I upgraded my video card to a GTX 670 (from a 470) and that allowed me to up the screen resolution aspect too for even better visuals, and no impact on performance.

 

Rob, 9.5 LOD! Post some screenies for us... Would be interesting to see. The highest I have pushed my setting is to 8.5. Usually stick at 8.0.

 

 

Well, I sure don't understand. I have an Ivy Bridge i7 with 16Gigs of RAM and a nVidia GTX670. FSX runs smooth on high settings, then runs out of memory. I can't even use my AI traffic at all.

When I set my LOD over 7, I couldn't get out of the airport. It's mind boggling when I hear of others that can just run their settings up full, do a six hour flight with the NGX, then land at LAX with Aerosoft's US Cities Los Angeles X and 40% AI traffic.

[gizmosellsbunnys 106]

Texas alone is like 6 times the size of Ohio and 4 times the size of Wisconsin wonder how many will opt for other method of delivery on that item.

[PCAviator 37]

Texas alone is like 6 times the size of Ohio and 4 times the size of Wisconsin wonder how many will opt for other method of delivery on that item.

 

Yes, Texas will likely be quite a massive state in terms of data size no doubt! However, it depends on how much difference, and how often that difference occurs in the actual pixels of the source image when it comes to compression of the imagery... For example, if a state was 95% desert or 95% of a similarly coloured terrain and terrain type, the filesize would be considerably lower than a state of the same actual phyiscal size but with a lot of suburbia or variation in the detail... No doubt that Texas is going to be large in terms of data however. Because we split the download up into many smaller parts means that the actual download of that much data is not terribly problematic, the likely factor for a decision will probably be how much download quota you have on your internet access plan!

[BimmerCop 332]

I've seen 60cm get thrown around so I have to ask... Are the sceneries being displayed at 60cm or is the source used 60cm and downsampled to 1m resolution, which is what's being sold?

 

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

[Guest]

Rob, 9.5 LOD! Post some screenies for us... Would be interesting to see. The highest I have pushed my setting is to 8.5. Usually stick at 8.0.

 

Certainly, any particular location?

 

Please don't misunderstand, I completely believe you when you mention the cost which you looked into with that company. I am guessing that company mainly sells that data to other large companies and/or governments for real-world projects requiring that kind of imagery.

 

Just got another quote from a different company $5-$14 per km2 - 50cm sat and some 30cm aerial -- didn't realize Aerial could go lower, interesting.

 

Needless to say I'm still shopping And yes, obviously there has to be a less expensive sources but the odds of anyone giving those sources away are pretty slim ... as I would expect.

[Guest]

When I set my LOD over 7, I couldn't get out of the airport. It's mind boggling when I hear of others that can just run their settings up full, do a six hour flight with the NGX, then land at LAX with Aerosoft's US Cities Los Angeles X and 40% AI traffic.

 

FYI, I have Aerosoft's MegaCity San Francisco, I don't get OOMs but it will drop my fps down from an average 50 fps to 13 fps ... my solution was sadly to uninstall it :( I haven't hit an OOM yet with NGX, GEX, MSE, REX, GSX, FB KSFO, Traffic 360 ... NGX will eat about 15-20 fps in all it's glory so I only average about 30 fps. 30 fps is my min for acceptable for any worst case scenario type of flying ... normal flight is around 50-80 fps.

 

As for your performance issues, there are just so many things that it could be which makes it hard to know where to start. I use SiSoftware Sandra Pro to test all aspect of my systems performance. If I suspect something is having a significant impact on performance I'll check to see what OS services are running and see what's running under taskmgr. Fortunately with my current sim PC I've not had to mess with the OS at all (Win7 64bit).