I see MegaSceneryEarth has released another European product, England and Wales...

 

http://www.megasceneryearth.com/store/cart.php?target=product&product_id=861&category_id=171

 

$39.95

 

Thoughts? 

 

 

I wish ORBX had released it that way.   :ph34r:

The resolution will be shocking if its only 30Gb for the whole of England and Wales, Horizon simulations product that was released in 2006 was 75Gb for the same area. This may be cheap but it will look crap at anything below 5000 feet.

 

One other problem with these &@($* holes is that you will get constantly spammed 2 or 3 times a week about money off voucher codes for other Megascenery products even if you send them an unsubscribe email. I've tried to get removed from their spam lists for the last 6 months and still keep getting emailed every week.

The resolution will be shocking if its only 30Gb for the whole of England and Wales, Horizon simulations product that was released in 2006 was 75Gb for the same area. This may be cheap but it will look crap at anything below 5000 feet.

 

One other problem with these &@($* holes is that you will get constantly spammed 2 or 3 times a week about money off voucher codes for other Megascenery products even if you send them an unsubscribe email. I've tried to get removed from their spam lists for the last 6 months and still keep getting emailed every week.

Oh ****;-)

Wish I'd read that before buying and starting the download.  I stupidly asumed it would be like the rest of the stuff.  Oops!  I should know better but it's been a looooong day, week, month, year;-)))

The Horizon product came with an option to only install the low resolution textures i.e. the 2.4 metre textures and I remember people complained about how bad that looked. I imagine you are in for a similar thing, I know I wasn't happy with their California bundle, I thought I had gone back in time to FS9 days it looked so poor in comparison to Horizon Simulations England and Wales. Only Megascenery's really new 50cm (its actually 60cm so that is a con too) products will look OK, this England and Wales product isn't that resolution though otherwise it would be about 300Gb not 30.

Andy,

 

The England & Wales scenery is apparently 50cm per pixel source data that has been resampled to 1 metre per pixel. That's from Dean over at PC Aviator.

 

EDIT: The area quoted next to the download link is 11787 sq.miles, but the total area of England & Wales is stated elsewhere as 58,300 sq.miles (which is basically correct). I suspect that the description has been copied from another product, and not updated properly.

Seems they don't know what they are selling as it would be impossible to get England and Wales into 30Gb of space, I was on the Horizon beta team, I know what I'm talking about when it comes to Photo Scenery development. It's either extremely heavily compressed or its actually 2.4 metre per pixel. Either way it will still look worse than Horizons product from 2006.

I've just looked at the box for one of the 3 areas that England and Wales is sold in and one volume is 28Gb, there are 3 volumes in total that go into making the Horizon England and Wales bundle. I remember checking the install size on disk with all three volumes installed and it came to about 75Gb and that was an upto 1.2 metre per pixel product.

Yes, but is the quoted 30GB for the 11787 sq.miles stated in the Details section, or for the 58300 sq.miles stated in the Description? If the product really is 50cm per pixel source data resampled at 1 metre per pixel, then the filesize should be similar to the PlayHorizon product? That figure of 11787 sq.miles doesn't make sense.

There is no such thing as 1m per pixel in FSX, its 1.2m the same as Horizons scenery, so it stands to be the same file size as that I posted in my previous post i.e. 75Gb give or take a few meg.

Just out of curiosity, what filesize would you expect for an area of 11787 sq.miles at 60cm per pixel resolution?

Each doubling of resolution results in file sizes 4 times bigger.

Seems they don't know what they are selling as it would be impossible to get England and Wales into 30Gb of space,

 

Seems like you don't know what you are talking about.

 

England + Wales size in Square Miles = About 58 368 , 30GB

 

Georgia = 59 425 Square Miles, 24.4 GB

 

So yes, in modern FSX BGL format it's perfectly possible to have England + Wales in adequate quality with 30GB size. 300GB would be just ridiculous. 

 

Not sure about the exact resolution but I've been perfectly happy with what MSE offers in the US. Also unlike Horizon stuff this can be bought as a download. 

What resolution is Georgia, FScamp?

Seems like you don't know what you are talking about.

 

 

My, that's a nasty tone to throw at someone. Your experience making photo based scenery is ... what?

 

My experience is that I've made it and sold it in the past. A product that will rise above "adequate quality" does not come out at .50gb per 1K sq. miles. At the generally accepted settings used by developers who want to make a quality product and not a quantity product yield about 1gb per 1K sq. miles.

 

Now if you don't do any quality enhancements to the source imagery, so that it all looks like the washed out uhhhmmm that's sold under the Mega Scenery Earth banner, then it's possible to get smaller file size yields. Those people seem to fall under the "adequate quality" and "perfectly happy" types of users.

 

I hope that there will be developers who expect better and do not pander to those who will accept lesser quality, just because there's no one else making the stuff? And for reference, should I get around to finishing the state of California, U.S. the total file size will be around 145gb. Sourced at 1m, compiled at 1.19m, one season, no night time included. Just high quality photo based work.

This is an interesting thread. That Georgia photoscenery is quoted as "50cm aerial imagery throughout", and yet that is 24.4GB for 59000 sq.miles. The PlayHorizon GenX photoscenery of England and Wales (as Andy has already pointed out) comes in at approximately 75GB for a roughly equivalent geographical area, and that is at 1.2m per pixel resolution.

 

Something definitely does not add up here.....