I clearly saw a moving vehicle in the video. I'll play it back and ID where in regard to time.

 

It's about 2:07 to 2:12 into the video, on a two lane road moving in the direction the aircraft is flying.

 

So with these sceneries what happens when you fly over an airport like KDOV - Dover Air Force Base, seeing all the photo real detail of the airport, then you descend and land there? The FSX airport does not contain that photo real detail, such as buildings and structures.

 

Good question, but I cannot yet tell you as during this (VFR) flight, I circumnavigated the KDOV 'zone' just as in real life.... those AFB guys don't appreciate a Trike flying on into their zone at 71mph. Especially as my flight plan to Sussex County saw me right in alignment for Dover's main approach path. So I flew around the zone, and have not yet seen that airport, as it sits within MSE.

 

Thanks for the nice comments about the vid - just a quick snippet really. I have now been shown how to record/upload in higher resolutions so will have a nicer one next time!

 

Is MegaScenery Earth 2.0 hard on FPS? Is it compatible other sceneries like Airports? Thanks!

 

Also is this true? Its what they say on their page.

 

"Flying With Such Realism Doesn't Mean A Performance Hit Either...

Framerates With MegaSceneryEarth Are Actually Faster Than Default Scenery."

 

It's incredibly easy on performance. My PC is really pretty modest. It is definitely better frames (and smoothness) than default generic textures. I think as others have said, because of the autogen being turned off. But I'd never use it any way.

 

That's when things get ugly... ^_^ The best thing to do with photoreal is to not takeoff or land but only fly.

 

Sometimes...... but mostly not. It depends where the airport buildings are placed etc. But yes, it can be a little sparse. It sounds silly but in FSX, I tend to look outside during my take off roll, then just watch my instruments for IAS, VS and Heading during my initial climb, so by the time I'm taking in the scenery, it usually looks amazing!

The more upside than downside with photo-scenery. Mid-range computers can handle photo-scenery fine. Airports with 100,000 polygons are nice for 2 seconds for takeoff, with photo-scenery it always changes.

 

The thing about pure photoscenery is that the upsides are awesome - but the downsides are awful. You can either live with those extremes or you have issues with them - me I love it AND hate it. I fly it for a while, reveling in what it does superbly (places like the SoCal desert between LA and Las Vegas, for example, are just amazing in photo), and then I run smack into the bad side (go land at Grand Canyon airport for example, after a wonderful flight over the GC itself) and it just kills it for me.

 

Not sure what "Airports with 100,000 polyons" have to do with anything. It's not about the airport itself (though I hasten to admit that I do value good airports) it's what surrounds them. In the pattern, on approaches and on the ground. So I limit myself to flights like KSNA (where Cities LAX provides a very good set of landmarks around the airport, and MegasceneryX SoCal offers a bit of autogen to provide 3d in the LA basin) to KLAS (where the excellent FSX Acceleration scenery objects combined with FSDT KLAS and, again, MegasceneryX Las Vegas' autogen) fill in gaps at the other end. In between, pure photo is awesome for the overflight, but no way I'm landing at someplace like, oh, Barstow. Fly up to Santa Barbara? Ech! The whole time I'm on approach to that beautiful place, I just cringe.

 

Sorry, not trying to put down what others like - heck I like a lot of it too and will continue to add pieces for flyover country - but I still remain more comfortable with well optimized landclass with photo enhancement like Orbx, and wish there'd be more good combined photo with optimized autogen and scenery objects. As I'd just commented on in another thread, take a look at what was done for Shawbury Fields in the UK, for example. Best of both worlds. All it takes is a ton of work and a boatload of time :-).

 

Scott

The thing about pure photoscenery is that the upsides are awesome - but the downsides are awful. You can either live with those extremes or you have issues with them - me I love it AND hate it. I fly it for a while, reveling in what it does superbly (places like the SoCal desert between LA and Las Vegas, for example, are just amazing in photo), and then I run smack into the bad side (go land at Grand Canyon airport for example, after a wonderful flight over the GC itself) and it just kills it for me.

 

Not sure what "Airports with 100,000 polyons" have to do with anything. It's not about the airport itself (though I hasten to admit that I do value good airports) it's what surrounds them. In the pattern, on approaches and on the ground. So I limit myself to flights like KSNA (where Cities LAX provides a very good set of landmarks around the airport, and MegasceneryX SoCal offers a bit of autogen to provide 3d in the LA basin) to KLAS (where the excellent FSX Acceleration scenery objects combined with FSDT KLAS and, again, MegasceneryX Las Vegas' autogen) fill in gaps at the other end. In between, pure photo is awesome for the overflight, but no way I'm landing at someplace like, oh, Barstow. Fly up to Santa Barbara? Ech! The whole time I'm on approach to that beautiful place, I just cringe.

 

Sorry, not trying to put down what others like - heck I like a lot of it too and will continue to add pieces for flyover country - but I still remain more comfortable with well optimized landclass with photo enhancement like Orbx, and wish there'd be more good combined photo with optimized autogen and scenery objects. As I'd just commented on in another thread, take a look at what was done for Shawbury Fields in the UK, for example. Best of both worlds. All it takes is a ton of work and a boatload of time :-).

 

Scott

 

Sure, understand what your saying, but I think OSM data that could be exported to fsx and exclude landmarks would be good compromise. We do not want autogen taking over Wyatt Casino on the Vegas strip. X-plane has it better with Autogen if your use the OSM data as it can align the buildings with the roads etc. FSX got Open Street Map data complier like X-plane be awesome, and use Instant Object Studio to re-skin buildings them to make them realistic. Like Landmarks,

I am building building a river Casino in Evansville Indiana off Ohio river to add to my MSEv2 scenery and plan on building landmarks for mid-size cities . Orbx does good scenery, but what they do is labor intensive. Orbx is the one of few companies I know that will build airports in Barstow or Wendover.

My approach to Auto gen is don't align with the street do not use it or it like X plane 10 with Chicago style housing projects in San Diego see worst use of Autogen. I know we have our disagreements on it. Do not mean to be-little or sound snippy do not want to be personal, sorry it sound sarcastic. Look at from different approach think Autogen should be used wisely or not at all just do not get annoyed that no auto gen on photo textures . Grew up in Arizona and Utah and FSX default ground textures look terrible compared to photo textures. Use blue sky for Southern Utah and Vegas looks realistic to me. Lake Powell in FSX take off from Page Az in photo-textures the best with good water I fly that at once a month to bullfrog landing strip or Kanab UT the other way. Mean by 10,000 polygon airport buildings some people want Airports so detailed it kills performance get OOM crashes.

So I limit myself to flights like KSNA (where Cities LAX provides a very good set of landmarks around the airport,

 

Does Cities LAX extend that far? Orange County? If so does it provide landmarks like the Anaheim Pond (arena), Angels Stadium, and the Tustin blimp hangars?

Does Cities LAX extend that far? Orange County? If so does it provide landmarks like the Anaheim Pond (arena), Angels Stadium, and the Tustin blimp hangars?

 

The blimp hangars are a major landmark coming into John Wayne, and yes they are there. To be honest, I never went looking for Disneyland, the Pond, the big A or any of that. But I do like the area immediately surronding KSNA.

 

Somewhere on the Aerosoft website you can find a map for the areas enhanced by the LAX product. They don't do a complete fill, instead there are clusters of upgraded sub-areas all around the basin. They don't do any of the airports themselves, but do alot for the areas immediately adjacent to them to help get the landmarks right. Remember, no night textures if that matters to you.

 

Scott

But I do like the area immediately surronding KSNA.

 

I have been looking for that for FSX. I had an FS9 KSNA scenery from someone and another .bgl file that added the hangars. I have a very good KSNA scenery for FSX, have FSDT KLAX, but the area scenery i have is the SoCalBlueSky project and I don't believe it includes the hangars and stadiums.

This is getting slightly OT maybe but talking and reading about MSE made not buy one of their regions yet (sorry! ^_^ ) but today I DID download a few zips from Blue Sky Scenery... and I like what I see!

 

Now, Helen, you said in another topic that BSC was okay but MSE is better. However, after looking at screenshots from MSE and now actually flying about BSC I wonder in what regard exactly MSE is better...? The zips I downloaded didn't show very odd colors (though sometimes I could see a shift in color) and even at flying 1500 AGL it looked nicer then expected. I also seemed to notice that while the MSE textures seem to be photographed at an angle (making buildings look 3D when you look at them from the right angle) the BSC textures seemed to be photographed from straight above. I have to say I like that because that eliminates odd looking buildings like you can see in MSE when you aren't looking at them from the right angle.

 

Anyway, would you be so kind (and everyone else too ^_^ ) to look at my screenshots here http://forum.avsim.n...ery-experience/ and tell me where MSE is better? If you (or someone else) have some convincing things to say, I might buy an MSE region after all. Because although I never got used to it (I own Horizon's England) I do love the positive things of photoreal (what you see is what's really there, no repetition and there are no roads cutting through houses...) But why pay (dearly) for it when you can download BSC for free...?

Jeroen,

 

My experience with Blue Sky (as with most photo "brands") is that there's quite some variability, especially as you move N in CA. I mentioned Santa Barbara earlier because I actually cringe going anywhere north along the coast from LA. Some of the tiles up there get progressively grainier, the colors get poorer, with some awful iridescent fields, and a lot of the 3D effect disappears even at altitude. Helen I wonder if this is where you tried Blue Sky? On the other hand, the CA desert, and most of the tiles I've tried in Utah, NV, AZ are excellent.

 

As for the paying vs free, I would still suggest donations to BS, and MSE v2 is covering areas Blue Sky doesn't.

 

Scott

I have a very good KSNA scenery for FSX, have FSDT KLAX, but the area scenery i have is the SoCalBlueSky project and I don't believe it includes the hangars and stadiums.

 

Blue Sky is pure photo with no autogen. The only 3D features you'll have with it will be scenery objects (not autogen) that are inherent in FSX or anything you add. The Cities pack looks fine on top of Blue Sky, though as the developer points out in the manual, the transition from buildings to no buildings can be abrupt since there's no autogen to smooth transitions. I now use MegasceneryX SoCal, which has some autogen on the photo to flesh out the (to my eye) 2D look of the populated urban areas. Works great with Cities, though the combination of MSX SoCal, Cities and a couple of freeware airports doesn't always mesh will - quite literally.

 

In any case, with Cities, the blimp hangars will be there.

 

Scott

Blue Sky is 1m to 2m resolution Sedona is nice and lake Powell. Bryce Canyon could be better but it free product overall. May load up on Wyoming, but surprised they making photoreal of Wyoming it's barren land.

May load up on Wyoming, but surprised they making photoreal of Wyoming it's barren land.

 

Yer, kiddin', right?

 

If not, then you've never been to the Star Valley, the Wind River range, the Beartooth range, the Absaroka range, Yellowstone NP, Grand Teton NP... All of these and more are in Blue Sky's coverage of WY. I didn't mention the Big Horns, since last time I looked they weren't yet covered. Sure there's lots of wide open semi-arid country in WY, but there's an awful lot of spectacular country as well. Most of the intermountain west is this way - a mix of sparse/dry/open and mountain/valley/canyon.

 

Scott

Yer, kiddin', right?

 

If not, then you've never been to the Star Valley, the Wind River range, the Beartooth range, the Absaroka range, Yellowstone NP, Grand Teton NP... All of these and more are in Blue Sky's coverage of WY. I didn't mention the Big Horns, since last time I looked they weren't yet covered. Sure there's lots of wide open semi-arid country in WY, but there's an awful lot of spectacular country as well. Most of the intermountain west is this way - a mix of sparse/dry/open and mountain/valley/canyon.

 

Scott

 

Yeah, Spear-tooth pass always wanted to drive it or fly it as 30 mile winding road up the mountians. Grew up in Utah we had lots of desert and the forests were always up on the higher elevations. Do miss mountains growing up out there. Liked southern Wyoming by Rock Springs, and Green river near the dams. Red Rocks and desert formations. Wyoming is emptier than any state I driven thru. Sad, is home sick for mountains lol.

It's a pity we can't get scenery that looks like the bird's eye view from Bing maps, but I'm guessing that would be pretty impossible, but one can dream :-)

 

As good as some of the free photosceneries are, I found most are often badly miscolored. I used a few from Spain and when passing over the mountains from the south of France (Where I have paid photo scenery) into Spain, the discoloration and bands completely ruin the experience. Even within Spain itself, you can find different colors along the coast, different in the mountains, and the discoloration lines are easily visible from many kilometers away.

 

I also have Megascenery's Massachusetts and although I find the color a bit faded, at least it's consistent. I think as someone else posted above, because we are used to the real rich colors provided by Orbx, photoscenery can look washed out, but that's what it really does look like :-)