megascenery Italy with errors and bad looking tiles

[Jakob Arnholtz 0]

Hi.

 

I downloaded the Megascenery Italy the other day, and to be frank, I am disapointed.

There are missing tiles in the download, and some really odd looking scenery in the Alpi di Dolomiti. A ugly green colorcast is present over large parts of these Alps, and gruppe di Sella is partly in a really low resolution.

 

Am I just unlucky or are my download corupted, Or is this scenery marred with faults?

 

Anyone here with simmilar observations?

 

 

 

 

[1st fltsimguy 466]

I went for the freeware download myself.  So far it seems pretty good.  Can't speak on the above issues as I did not buy it, but just thought I would let you know about the freeware version with autogen etc.

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/453886-full-italy-at-last/#entry3099468

[Jakob Arnholtz 0]

I have redownloadet all of the files and made a clean install, but the same files or tiles are missing. I have tried to contact the support but alas, no life sign yet! The problem with the missing tiles did also occur in the Germany scenery recently released and was here related to the naming of the tiles. I hope someone from Megasceneryearth will read my post and kook into the matter. Releasing software with this amount of errors is not the greatest way of advertising and a real pain for the customer.

[GSalden 4,656]

The green colorcast I see too.

 

Last week I sent them an email, but did not get a reply.

When asking something about purchasing the scenery I got a reply within 2 days...

[Gartro 18]

Gerard

 

Who did you buy it from and who did you email?

 

If it was the Australian store of PC Aviator, Dean (the Manager) frequents this Forum and I have found him to be prompt in responding to communications. The Australian website has details of the extent of its closure over the Christmas/New Year holidays and the five days on which email support is offered.

 

If it was the US store or some other retail outlet, I can't help you with any availability information.

 

Gary

[Jakob Arnholtz 0]

I has used the customer support on the Megasceneryearth homepage!

I has used the customer support on the Megasceneryearth homepage!

[Jim Young 2,356]

I am pretty sure, well positive, the developers of this scenery see the OP's complaint.  Perhaps they will fix it in a future update if they see an issue with the scenery.  I have bought almost all of the US States products and have seen missing tiles too only to discover they were there on my system but the folder where I extracted the zipped files did not unzip those files to the correct drive or the files were corrupted.  There are a lot of files to be downloaded and then the installer must accurately extract the files in each zipped download and then run the installer.  When you extracted the files which contain the missing tiles, did you direct the installer to C:\MegasceneryEarth\Italy instead of the actual installation folder on Drive D or E (for example).  If that happened, it's simple to move those files to the installation folder and go fly.  So, look on your various HDD's for any similar files that appear to be installed in the wrong location.  I am sure that the developer installed the product on a computer before releasing it.  Is everyone who owns this product missing tiles (I see Gerard above is not missing any but has the same issue as you with the "green color-cast").  Of course we see some anomalies in the US MSE V2 products too.  Probably the area was cloudy or had a few clouds and they tried to mask them out.  I don't know what they can do about that other than get data for the area that does not contain clouds.  In most of the products, water-masking is non-existent and there are no plans on fixing these areas.  Maybe in a future product.  It is frustrating but I think these anomalies have to be taken for granted with photosceneries.  I would think it is very difficult to get perfect data for every section of the world.  I guess we expect that at $14.99 though for many of the US State products (I got a heavy discount for many States when I had purchased other States, sometimes up to 50%).

 

For me, it is a well-known fact PC Aviator no longer runs a support forum (they did several years ago and it usually got very, very ugly).  It is one of the reasons Tom decided to form a photo scenery forum here.  So, if you cannot get the answer to your questions here, then I'm afraid you are out of luck.  Personally I got a lot of support here from many other users.  I am happy to see comments from the OP and Gerard above though as I was thinking seriously of buying Italy, Switzerland, and Germany too, at 40% off.  I think I'll wait a bit longer and see what develops.  Maybe a better version will someday be released.  All I know is that I have plenty of places to fly here in the USA and most of it is pretty neat (just don't look at the water!! ).

 

Best regards,

[Gartro 18]

Jim

 

My involvement with FSX only goes back to early 2012. Therefore, I don't what the historical situation my have been with PC Aviator and forums.

 

However, there is a dedicated MSE2 Sub-forum on the PC Aviator Australia Community Forum which has been operating since March 2013. The Administrator of the Forum is Dean, the manager of PC Aviator Australia. The Sub-forum heading/details appear as: 

"MegaSceneryEarth 2.0 General Discussion

The forum for your questions, comments and discussions regarding the MegaSceneryEarth 2.0 product line!"

 

Gary

[Jakob Arnholtz 0]

Thx for that link Gary. This was also where I got help with the Germany scenery, wich (also!) happened to contain missing files in the first month or so. I just couldn't remember the address !

 

Thx again

 

Kindly

 

Jakob

[ikarus2553 1]

I don't know whether I am too late to post a commend nearly one year later. Anyhow, I have encountered the same very ugly depictions of a vast area in northern Italy.I am so much disappointed wiht MSE that they release a product which is full of errors.

 

Best regards to all of you 

 

Alfred 

[fscottee 10]

You have to swallow the poor areas with the good ones.  Like putting ketchup on your caviar.

[ikarus2553 1]

To swallow the errors? no chance of a patch? How can MSE sell such a faulty product and doesn't care about improving it. ?  I have contacted them by mail directly and I wonder how they react or may be don't do it at all...But that would be a great disappointment of this wellknown simproduct developper. 

[bernd1151 5,854]

Hi Alfred, I am sorry to say that, but it seems that with the American side of this company there is no customer support whatsoever. I have bought their products for the last three years, the US scenery, as Jim already said, is mostly pretty good, if you can live with the fact that they just don't know how to fix the water masking problems. That means, live with it or don't buy it. Their European scenery is just plain horrible. I have bought the German and Swiss scenery, have written at least four emails to Robert Ferraro, who runs the show, I have never received an answer. So I guess, don't expect an answer from him yourself. That seems to be the way Mr. Ferraro runs his business.

 

By the way, the good news is, there is an excellent Italian photoscenery available for free. If you go to the screenshot forum, you will see pictures of it.  If you can't find it, let me know and I'll give you the link.

 

 

Bernd 

[fscottee 10]

I mean the low resolution areas.  Errors, no they need to be fixed.   Photoscenery is very subject to a range of quality depending on where the source comes from.  Excellent quality source material is expensive.  Most commercial stuff you see are free.  The MSE2 stuff is mostly the same source as the National Map Viewer. 

 

As a side note.. I think MSE should move into the X-Plane world.  Their sceneries will automatically have tons of trees and OSM based buildings and objects on top of the scenery.  There's a market there just waiting.

[Christopher Low 5,352]

 

You have to swallow the poor areas with the good ones.

 

There is a limit to that. Some parts of the PlayHorizon VFR GenX photoscenery are of lesser quality than others (relatively poor colour saturation and resolution), but they are still (just about) good enough to be acceptable, and with proper watermasking. On the other hand, when I see no watermasking whatsoever, default scenery "sticking out" from underneath the photoscenery, and shabby rendering of coastlines...that's where I draw a line, followed very quickly by uninstallation of the offending material.