HAve you tried FSAltitiude Greg?

 

No,...I looked at their scenery resolution and just thought it was too low.  Their engine would be great if I could get it to work with MSE (and especially if I could get it to work with ORBX below).

 

Gregg

Photoscenery is not for everyone, but it gives the best experience of flying over a "Real" world than any other scenery product available. So if you want to fly over whats there in the real world, or you want to fly VFR with charts, photoscenery products like MegaSceneryEarth cannot be beat. Autogen is disabled yes. We found the autogen objects actually cover up the much nicer photo textures underneath and it looks wrong. Not to mention the scale of auogen trees is way off (they are far too large).

 

I'd encourage you to take a look at the MegaSceneryEarth website and watch some of the videos available for the various states. These are filmed direct from the scenery with no modification, no post-effects, so its very much WYSIWYG.

 

Also, for those not getting clear textures until above 3,000 ft, you might need to follow the MSE Graphics Tweaking Guide as, with the right graphics settings, you can get the MSE v2 50cm/pixel textures appearing at full clarity from as low as 1,200ft AGL. This is demonstrated in some of the video snippets.

 

Photoscenery is not for everyone, but it gives the best experience of flying over a "Real" world than any other scenery product available.

 

I would respectfully submit that what gives each individual the best simulation of what is "real" is highly subjective and depends a great deal on how "real" is perceived in their minds in a given situation.  Were that not the case, photoscenery would be for everyone.  :mellow:   As noted, I both appreciate and get frustrated at what photo on its own does and does not offer, and as a consequence I actually own quite a lot of it despite being somewhat critical of it.  In some scenarios, photoscenery makes me "believe".  In others, other products do much better.  As in life, so it is in the sim - you have to weight tradeoffs.  And as Gregg notes, to some extent it depends on the kind of flight being done.

 

 

Also, for those not getting clear textures until above 3,000 ft, you might need to follow the MSE Graphics Tweaking Guide as, with the right graphics settings, you can get the MSE v2 50cm/pixel textures appearing at full clarity from as low as 1,200ft AGL.

 

Just to be clear, my photo scenery is perfectly clear and crisp at lower altitudes.  This isn't an FSX tuning issue for me - it's a matter of how far up I need to be for the effect to "sell" me.  For me the specific altitude at which this happens depends on what I'm viewing (kind of terrain, vegetation, color and lighting) and the overall quality of the images being used.

 

Scott

I would respectfully submit that what gives each individual the best simulation of what is "real" is highly subjective and depends a great deal on how "real" is perceived in their minds in a given situation.  Were that not the case, photoscenery would be for everyone.  :mellow:   As noted, I both appreciate and get frustrated at what photo on its own does and does not offer, and as a consequence I actually own quite a lot of it despite being somewhat critical of it.  In some scenarios, photoscenery makes me "believe".  In others, other products do much better.  As in life, so it is in the sim - you have to weight tradeoffs.  And as Gregg notes, to some extent it depends on the kind of flight being done.

 

 

 

Just to be clear, my photo scenery is perfectly clear and crisp at lower altitudes.  This isn't an FSX tuning issue for me - it's a matter of how far up I need to be for the effect to "sell" me.  For me the specific altitude at which this happens depends on what I'm viewing (kind of terrain, vegetation, color and lighting) and the overall quality of the images being used.

 

Scott

I have to agree 100%.  Photoreal works great on my system and I love it up at altitude (above 3000 or thereabouts).  The problem is, I eventually have to land.  If I had lots of airport add-ons that would be better.  There are solutions to the problem apart from the obvious hand-placed scenery option:

 

• Have 'holes' available in the photoscenery around airports and major city cores...the places where you'd likely be low or expect building scenery to be prominent.
• FSAltitude-like behavior.
• Buy tons of custom airports and cities (it'd cost a lot of money).

Truly, it's a bummer that FSX was designed this way in regards to photoreal and autogen.  But in the world we live in, Orbx doesn't compete with Megascenery nor vice-versa.  There are certainly ways they can complement each other.

 

Gregg

Truly, it's a bummer that FSX was designed this way in regards to photoreal and autogen.  But in the world we live in, Orbx doesn't compete with Megascenery nor vice-versa.  There are certainly ways they can complement each other.

 

Gregg

if you like photoscenery and 3D objects, I truly recommend at the very least getting something like instant scenery so you can place objects around the airports you fly into, it's really not hard. better yet, look at the SDK and read up on the autogen annotator, you can add any kind of autogen to any photoreal scenery. It can be a bit tedious for large areas, but not hard once you do it a few times and it really enhances the experience.

 

We found the autogen objects actually cover up the much nicer photo textures underneath and it looks wrong. Not to mention the scale of auogen trees is way off (they are far too large).

 

I have all the MegaSceneryEarth v2.0 and v1.0 and enjoy them.  I do missing autogen.  I also have the Horizon VFR UK scenery and they do something a little different, they have "Treescapes" as a separate product that covers the same scenery areas they sell ... it can get a little expensive to have to buy two products covering the same area, but I find that adding corrected trees in correct locations adds A LOT to the photo scenery experience.  Obviously the UK is a relatively small area compared to the entire US, but it would be nice if the MSE folks would consider a similar approach as "treescapes" with their scenery coverage (as a separate product).

 

On a side note: think of the potential if a dev could create a tool that could scan photo scenery, identify trees (pixel and color proximity adjustable tolerance sorta like how Photoshop selection process), do a little error cleanup, and then produce the autogen files ... seems doable.  Run the process for different tree sample types.

if you like photoscenery and 3D objects, I truly recommend at the very least getting something like instant scenery so you can place objects around the airports you fly into, it's really not hard. better yet, look at the SDK and read up on the autogen annotator, you can add any kind of autogen to any photoreal scenery. It can be a bit tedious for large areas, but not hard once you do it a few times and it really enhances the experience.

 

I have Instant Scenery and Instant Object Studio.  I'm working on one airport in my spare time (LOL...spare time...what's that?).   I don't know anything about the autogen annotator.  Does that come with the SDK?  Some airports seem very doable to add objects to.  Others seem daunting.

After reading your posts I decided to download MSE ( Ohio and Kentucky ) Kentucky is done so I gave it a test flight. Scenry is flat at lower altitudes but if you focus on the plane at that time you won't notice. Higher up, excelent. There's a huge improvement on the ground. The airport has much more detail and truer to life. That in itself is worth it to me. Can't wait to finish Ohio where I live. GO CINCINNATI REDS !

Using Instant Scenery tool is currently the easiest way to add 3D object to MegaSceneryEarth in our opinion. Just about anyone can do it. No coding necessary

 

And re the "Real" comment. I'm talking "Real" as in REAL - what you see with your eyes in the real world. Reality as a construct of what the masses see, vs a belief of what is "real" to an individual person

After reading your posts I decided to download MSE ( Ohio and Kentucky ) Kentucky is done so I gave it a test flight. Scenry is flat at lower altitudes but if you focus on the plane at that time you won't notice. Higher up, excelent. There's a huge improvement on the ground. The airport has much more detail and truer to life. That in itself is worth it to me. Can't wait to finish Ohio where I live. GO CINCINNATI REDS !

 

Glad you are enjoying it jetsmell

Anyone know how VFR-France has been doing their new 3D sceneries?

 

 

They have high resolution photoreal textures and then they have this autogen generator (Dynamic)..which they are calling 3D. Not sure how they have achieved that.

 

From the screen shots it absolutely fantastic.  Its autogen that looks as good as hand placed. It looks that accurate.  And it looks so dense.  Trees/wooded areas  are as dense as Orbx.

 

http://asn.aerosoft.com/?page_id=8968

 

On the topic of Megascenery, night texture is must, At night autogens are less important but lights are critical

Here you can see a lot of pitures with the France VFR 3DA autogen technologie (2 sceneries have been already done called Alsace VFR and Haute-Normandie VFR) and they work great (no heavy loss of FPS) :
http://www.francevfr.com/product_vfralsx2.htm
http://www.francevfr.com/product_vfrhnox.htm
 

Here you can see a lot of pitures with the France VFR 3DA autogen technologie (2 sceneries have been already done called Alsace VFR and Haute-Normandie VFR) and they work great (no heavy loss of FPS) :

http://www.francevfr.com/product_vfralsx2.htm

http://www.francevfr.com/product_vfrhnox.htm

 

Can it be installed like Mega-Earth scenery on separate external disk drive.  Have 1TB external usb 3.0 dedicated to MSE to save space. 

The first install is on the disk where is FSX. After you can move the scenery on a different disk.

(The France VFR forum has a dedicated section for support in english).