November 10, 201312 yr Author Commercial Member While I appreciate the commentary / opinions and the screenshots, I really have to state that my intent on opening this thread was never to bash any particular product. It's pretty clear that It's almost not worth comparing Tile Proxy and a full photo scenery product such as MSE or Blue Sky Scenery. When you can get the tiles downloaded and displayed in FSX, there's clearly an advantage in using the obviously superior commercial imagery that TP draws from. The short helo flights I took around NAS Fallon last night were, to be honest, jaw dropping. But in my opinion, it's kind of an apples to oranges comparison. What I really should of been asking for is for a comparison between MSE and Blue Sky Scenery. I have a good amount / most of the BSS areas, and am quite happy with the quality. My interest in MSE Nevada is due to the fact that it covers far more (all) of the state, which is something BSS does not. If I were to purchase MSE Nevada, seeing as how I've been happy thus far with BSS, would I be pleased with my purchase? Jim Stewart Milviz Person.
November 10, 201312 yr I think I tried Grand Canyon scenery from BSS once, and I think MSE 2 was probably as good or better, but maybe others will weigh in as perhaps my rough opinions have made me look kind of jerky, but I really didn't mean to. I even get irritated at Orbx at Stewart airport because it was such a masterpiece but their freaking autogen on one side of the hill and randomly blocky areas when changing my angles while trying to record videos made a masterpiece not quite a masterpiece. And trust me the mountains in the backdrop of Stewart as you are facing the standard runway starting direction (forgot which way that was), well looking forward those mountains are nothing short of Photo-Real jaw-dropping BLOW TileProxy away amazing. Overall though like everyone else even Orbx has trouble with consistency or too repetetive at times (and yah I know it comes with the territory, Orbx is the best overall I think). Another masterpiece area of Orbx was between Bozeman and Jackson Hole, the grass textures they used there and snow textures at Bozeman airport are nothing short of eye candy greatness. The Grand Canyon is pretty hard for anyone to do, we need Orbx for that one, the problem is on very high cliffs most sat photos mess up the look, need aerial photos too.
November 10, 201312 yr If I were to purchase MSE Nevada, seeing as how I've been happy thus far with BSS, would I be pleased with my purchase? For a good part of it, yes (especially Las Vegas and points east and south. But central Nevada is not terribly pleasing). For the sale price, it's a reasonable buy. For full price, probably not.
November 10, 201312 yr Yah, I took more time just now to take a closer look at MSE 2 and instead of flying NORTH, I decided to start in Henderson. The mountains there were clearer and I rebooted to make sure I had a fresh swap file and clean memory. Some mountains had decent definition and I think playing on a smaller LCD monitor I'd be happy flying even as low as 1000 AGL over CERTAIN parts of the scenery as long as the textures were loading at the speed I was flying properly, but I had to circle or pause a few times to get them to load completely, but in a way I almost feel like TP might be just as good even for a semi-fast flyer by setting up TP as a much lower res (hadn't tried it much). Is it worth $25, maybe on an LCD monitor in some parts of the state, on my projector not really (maybe $5). My personal issue is that I just cannot enjoy this severe drop in color and quality, and that I'd rather spend time dealing with TP pre-caching than dealing with this. However, I also just now briefly flew out of Elko, NV towards the Ruby mountains, and there was no color, and that is not how the ruby mountains look by any stretch. MSE should have applied some color correction and minor re-sampling, and I know the point of a Photo Area is to not over-correct, but some of their photo areas do not even look like the real areas due to terrible color and blotchy imagery.
November 10, 201312 yr Author Commercial Member Well, those are good enough statements for me to make a decision - the comments I've heard here and read about elsewhere in regards to central Nevada not being all that pleasing kinda kills the whole reason why I was looking at the purchase. The L.V. area is already covered quite nicely by BSS. I'll think I'll save my 20-some dollars this time around. Thanks for the help everyone! Jim Stewart Milviz Person.
November 10, 201312 yr It's a fair comparison if you can make TP load as smoothly, let's use Orbx then. Orbx has nice color everywhere, regardless that at times they overdid the auto-gen and repeated textures too much, their color is pretty good. What it comes down to is if you just really want to fly in Nevada, then yes this is way better than the default FSX scenery (no doubt), but I have a feeling another scenery maker might have made a better version of Nevada, no? I might be moving to Nevada soon, so I really wanted to fly there. I will stick with TP and just use some pre-caching waypoint flights on auto-pilot until I get most of NV downloaded. That is just too much more satisfying then dealing with this, sorry, that is IMHO. Please do not let my statements deter your enjoyment of this scenery, though I personally feel like some of MSE 2's stuff is shafting us because they are not doing anything dev-wise other than some water-masking, they are simply throwing the entire image of the state without even modifying a single thing, and charging up to $40. You can also use any program yourself and by following a day's worth of youtube video's, you can make the entire state of NV in better quality than this (sorry).
November 11, 201312 yr Here are some MSE shots from Nevada and New York (city) at various altitudes (and view angles) - images are 2560 x 1600: New York 500 ft http://robainscough.com/images/0088f709dc7deab58fa1f9288e1282cd.jpg 1500 ft http://robainscough.com/images/5a124afddd4d5734e1e2265fe0fd864e.jpg 3000 ft http://robainscough.com/images/b64c40c6d5f422868bdbd89aa1ef1966.jpg 5000 ft http://robainscough.com/images/3216d64e88f89cd9715fabc81491e5b0.jpg 8000 ft http://robainscough.com/images/e745081a34946b3a0ae35c1da9691a75.jpg 12000 ft http://robainscough.com/images/848ebb8c7967073485c612886f3fb32f.jpg 20000 ft http://robainscough.com/images/e3f58088b49ab8f555c04676b26534a4.jpg 30000 ft http://robainscough.com/images/228ad9834f2f37ddd62a328bd1b395d0.jpg 40000 ft http://robainscough.com/images/dc8d7ed2a1b584c4191e02c9ee38619b.jpg Nevada (Top View) 2700 ft (500 AGL) http://robainscough.com/images/af0579329a31e31b6af805edda928fb6.jpg 5000 ft (2900 AGL) http://robainscough.com/images/6cfd4766c8922a60c86798fcbafbabcd.jpg 8000 ft (5900 AGL) http://robainscough.com/images/d3704bb48c63101430ebbdefd2ab5f8b.jpg 12000 ft (9900 AGL) http://robainscough.com/images/105dbfb5288ac51e3558116608327f33.jpg 20000 ft (17900 AGL) http://robainscough.com/images/4bf10c6fe8722dcd44b93ec38ce86e04.jpg 30000 ft (27900 AGL) http://robainscough.com/images/05c3cb50608afaedadadbe9e0b8398f6.jpg 40000 ft (37900 AGL) http://robainscough.com/images/a6927347592c43a045a698d3f31e34e4.jpg Nevada (Angle View) http://robainscough.com/images/b67c9a936d169eed187b2001ef74b28f_v510.jpg http://robainscough.com/images/d0201f7a3a6efe95ac65a48d9e5f23e8_tt7d.jpg http://robainscough.com/images/5a8ff8ad870b6d297f152465f0a5819b_d4s9.jpg http://robainscough.com/images/abd24eea4802ab5355ab0a1263213e7b_5jri.jpg http://robainscough.com/images/05c11784b5e6b16345d4f19a63eb423c_2qed.jpg http://robainscough.com/images/cbdfb6e6024b947c9ed49d379f1520b6.jpg http://robainscough.com/images/9f42dbbbccca0c3d653669125dc4f1a9.jpg
November 11, 201312 yr Yes, those are the same quality I was seeing around the Vegas area, which it is ok looking on an LCD monitor but not blown up on a projector. The color however is still pretty off, and the Central Nevada around Elko was really bad both resolution wise and color-wise, as well as Reno (almost no color). The orthoimagery from the USGS is very inconsistent which is why a developer selling a product at $25 to $40 a state needs to work on more re-sampling, not just water masks. If the cost were $100 for the entire US, I might not be complaining, but at $2000 I think I got a right to say something
November 11, 201312 yr Here is an example of something closer to the real color of the tallest mountains outside of Vegas (even Nevada has some greenery above 10,000 feet). The next pic is near Elko, NV, but in the game these mountains are covered in a black looking slush and brown sand. Nevada is a pretty barren state, but the taller mountains don't look anything like in MSE 2 Nevada. People flying MSE 2 would think there isn't even a single tree in the entire state of NV and that the mountains are covered in black and brown slush texture
November 11, 201312 yr If people think I am just being picky, let's take a look at these 2 shots: Here is how MSE 2 renders the color near Minden, NV (south of Reno) And here is a more accurate rendition of the same area: Now let's please keep in mind that not only is this Payware, but it is one of the more expensive payware sceneries, so no I am sorry, but I'm not impressed.
November 11, 201312 yr Without passing judgement on TP one way or another, I did try to install it myself for comparison only to discover it isn't supported on Windows 8. Is the author even maintaining it? It doesn't look like much has happened by way of development in 5 years (latest I found was Beta 8 from November 2008).
November 11, 201312 yr Without passing judgement on TP one way or another, I did try to install it myself for comparison only to discover it isn't supported on Windows 8. Is the author even maintaining it? It doesn't look like much has happened by way of development in 5 years (latest I found was Beta 8 from November 2008). Unfortunately it is no longer being maintained but the last version works pretty well (Beta 8). You have to use Bing Maps / Microsoft for the best results, and at least a LOD of 6.5 with at least 60cm textures IMO. If you are the type that only has a few hours per week to fly or mess around with this stuff, then I don't really recommend TileProxy because it takes caching time and setup time, tweaking, and all kinds of other stuff (and sometimes can be frustrating). So TileProxy takes a lot of patience and repeat flights, for TileProxy some nice flights are as follows: a) Colorado Springs to Rocky Mtn National Park area is pretty high res from MS b ) WA-State around Tacoma and Seattle is probably the highest Res c) Telluride to Ouray is pretty awesome if you get it pre-cached you can fly pretty fast between the cliffs as the mountains don't require as much loading as a flat scenery d) Most any of the big cities look really good but it takes forever to get them cached e) Pretty much anywhere in the US looks good if you get the tiles downloaded, outside of the US is hit or miss You need a LOT of HD space for TileProxy (eventually 100+GB),
November 11, 201312 yr Author Commercial Member I installed it today on Windows 8. You must disable driver signing and UAC. When I installed it last night on Win 7 64 bit, that whole UAC and driver signing bit threw me for a bit of a loop - wasn't expecting to have to mess around like that. It's definitely not for the casual. Jim Stewart Milviz Person.
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