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Guest melevine

SCENERY COMPATIBILITY QUESTION? What would you do???...

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Guest melevine

I sent the following e-mail today requesting information, and received the following answer. Based on this, I'd like to ask you intelligent flight simmers for your opinion on how I should proceed. What would you do?MY E-MAIL TO IMAGINESIM:Good morning,I've been patiently building up my scenery for the Denver and Front Range areas of the Colorado Rockies. I've been holding off purchasing your (IMAGINESIM'S) Denver airport upgrade (but plan to do so if it will work seamlessly with the other products I've purchased and freeware I've installed.) I'm still awaiting shipment of MegaCity Denver, which will be released on March 7th. I hope you can provide clarification for me based on my current scenery configuration.Here is my status:> 38m mesh for entire USA - installed> Colorado Lakes Project (freeware) - installed> USA ROADS - installed> Airport Environmental Upgrade 7 (freeware) - installed> **Awaiting delivery of MEGACITY DENVER photorealistic sceneryQUESTION: Once I have the entire grouping (above) installed, what should happen when I install your (IMAGINESIM'S) Denver Airport Scenery? All I could find out from one company, thus far, is that when I install the MEGACITY DENVER photo realistic scenery, it should "overlay" USA ROADS for the Denver metro area. What affect, if any, should your airport upgrade have? Will it install and work as advertised?I'm anxiously awaiting your reply. Thanks in advance.

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If you really want a decent KDEN, then get it and live with whatever incompatibilities there may be - the Imagine rendition is excellent. There is no reason that the airport should not install and operate. I use the FSGenesis mesh and USA Roads with no problems with Denver other than the airport sits on a slightly raised area. That's typical of airports on 3rd party mesh as you have probably noticed. IMHO, no airport or scenery developer is responsible for full compatibility with every other possible combination of add ons that are available. There are too many packages and combinations for that to be practical, and the return on investment would be absurdly small or negative.DJ

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Guest sgreenwood

Hi Mike,I agree with DJ, just go for it.Here's a bit more detail on the scope of the problem, from one mesh developer's (equally biased) perspective. To the extent that the term "terrain" used in the email response from IMAGINESIM includes mesh, this information may help explain why this is a perennial problem which isn't going to go away any time soon."It is much easier for the terrain developers to make small patches for airport sceneries than it would be for airport developers to re-position literally thousands of objects to fit with altered terrain."The only "small patches" a terrain mesh developer could provide are flattens, but the scenery developers are better qualified to provide those for their products, and usually do.More complex adjustments of the elevation to fit the scenery are just not practical. We have no convenient tools for adjusting large numbers of elevation points, such as that provided for route designers in MS Train Simulator.This means that individual elevation points would have to be altered manually. One square mile of 10m data involves about 25,000 data points, and I offer mesh for the entire mainland US alone in three resolutions, plus 10m mesh for about 1/4th of the country (including Denver). So this tedious work would have to be replicated three or four times. For each custom version of each airport (how many versions are there for KDEN alone?). And then there are my two resolutions of mesh for most of the rest of the world ... (My "sphere of influence".)And any custom patches would, of course, require that the mesh developer have a copy of the airport the patch is being made for. So this would only be possible for existing products.While I do not wish to demean the extraordinary talents of scenery designers in any way, the amount of work involved "for airport developers to re-position literally thousands of objects to fit with altered terrain" seems quite trivial in comparison. (I wish I had only a few hundred hours invested in the development and testing of my mesh :-).)One alternative is for the airport designers to include their own mesh for the region, perhaps in several resolutions. Mesh development on such a small scale isn't, usually, very complicated. "We have e-mailed several terrain developers on this and other matters but have been somewhat 'under whelmed' by the response (in fact, nil replies to date)."I was not included in that group of terrain developers (although I am reasonably certain I have produced more mesh than any they may have contacted). Perhaps the real magnitude of the task explains why there were no responses. And why scenery designers do not usually include custom mesh with their products.Another alternative for scenery developers is to subcontract the development of such custom local mash to an experienced mesh developer. (No one has ever approached me about such an arrangement, but I understand my generic free mesh for the Seattle/Emma Field area is fairly popular.)I suspect the best we can even hope for is for MS to adjust the software so airports (and all associated design elements) automatically adjust their elevations relative to the underlying terrain. This is probably not a trivial programming task either, so I'm not looking for that resolution any time soon.Regards,Stevewww.fs-traveler.com

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This is one of those interesting problems....looking at the question you posed from your point of view..you made sense to me. However if you view it all from a developers point of view, there is no way to assure a customer compatibility between an unknown skill of other authors, unknown quantity of those other authors, and unknown twists people are now and then inventing.To suggest that one developer or another is more the one that should resolve potential impacts from one addon to another is just avoiding the truth....there are no developers that could or will have the authority or breadth of covereage of the industries offerings to be able to play that roll.I agree with Steve that having a team that allows for a custom version of all features of a scenery is a logical approach to the problem. Still, the expectation on the user is that if he/she buys a team based addon, then the priority for that location is just that addon.Best,Bob Bernstein

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The main problems that I see fall into a couple areas:A. Duplicate coverage. In most cases this can be resolved by scenery layer priority. It would be helpful if developers openly publish the project boundaries such as a screenshot highlighted polyline overlay. So, if there was a need to provide excludes it would be evident.Example: airport scenery includes off-airport landmark objects.B. Geo-framework assumtion. This largely comes down to the question if the scenery was designed to match the default FS world, or if the scenery was designed to match as accurately as possible the real world.Example: city scenery developed to match default coastlines or water bodies.C. Sim limitations. Sometimes you just can't do what you want to do because the sim won't let you.Example: 4m resolution terrain used from resample.C-1. As a subset of this problem, is the need to modify and redistribute edited versions default files.Example: default airport flatten removed or modified.I think if developers would address these problem areas, potential users/buyers would have more confidence in using their work. I think this can be done without having to coordinate with other developers.In particular I think the KDEN developers could provide answers to these problem areas and give you more to work with.scott s..

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Guest melevine

Steve,DJ,Scott and Bob,Thanks so much for you thoughtful replies. I'm not a software engineer, but I'm a very detail-oriented person (a health professional currently involved in biomedical research).....so I can understand the various nuances you mention relating to the development of the software you produce. It is enlightening to see the different perspectives on the issues....yours and Imaginesim's, and to now recognize that this type of issue isn't going to go away anytime soon. Based on the feedback I've now seen, I am going to purchase the KDEN upgrade from them, and "hope for the best" when I later install the MegaCity Denver scenery. Please note, I also posted this question on the MSFS Scenery Developer Forum and just saw responses from Justin Tyme, etc. Very interesting comments.Thanks again,Mike

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You're welcome. I think you will enjoy Denver - they did a very nice job...DJ

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Guest melevine

I purchased and downloaded KDEN tonight. I took off from Colorado Springs and did a precision approach to RR 35L at KDEN using the PMDG Beech 1900D. I then taxied around the entire airport and was almost speechless at the amazing detail that this product has captured. I frequently fly out of KDEN on business and am quite familiar with the "lay of the land" and the appearance of the buildings there. This is right on! I'm also glad that I have a robust computer and graphics card (P4 3.6 w/1GB DDR RAM and 256 PCI Express card) as this scenery will definitely tax a lesser CPU.Thanks again for the help....yes...it surely seems to be worth it.Good night.Mike

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