I recently decided to take advantage of a 50% discount offer on MegaScenery Earth 2 products to purchase a copy of MSE2 Ireland. I already have the PlayHorizon VFR GenX Republic of Ireland scenery (which is excellent), and I took a gamble on the Northern Ireland part of the MSE2 product being good enough for me to complete my "Ireland photoscenery" collection. Unfortunately, that is not the case.......

 

 

Massive wedge of default scenery in Belfast Harbour (with the EireSim EGAC Belfast scenery to the right)

http://www.mediafire.com/view/hxli4puoyqrugb2/Prepar3D_2015-07-11_13-20-58-79.jpg

 

Mahee Island and Reagh Island in Strangford Lough. Note the poor coastline detail, and double images.

http://www.mediafire.com/view/mglpprxzf8pk6mq/Prepar3D_2015-07-11_13-22-18-38.jpg

 

More (lack of) detail southeast of Mahee Island (there should be lots of islands here).

http://www.mediafire.com/view/n83pltwpcr6jigd/Prepar3D_2015-07-11_13-22-36-58.jpg

 

Visible default scenery, and extremely poor coastline definition in the southern section of Strangford Lough.

http://www.mediafire.com/view/s48d39yi67adw9u/Prepar3D_2015-07-11_13-23-07-83.jpg

 

Lough Neagh in all its textured glory. In other words, no watermasking whatsoever. It's a huge texture sheet!

http://www.mediafire.com/view/lyl6y2423uu9zel/Prepar3D_2015-07-11_13-23-41-26.jpg

 

Rathlin Island (north of the Ireland mainland), with visible default scenery, and poor coastline definition.

http://www.mediafire.com/view/8nhxsac51gd304z/Prepar3D_2015-07-11_13-24-18-22.jpg

 

Poor quality default scenery coastline near EGAE Londonderry Eglinton airport.

http://www.mediafire.com/view/fcm9gtz6pb5j3h6/Prepar3D_2015-07-11_13-24-58-66.jpg

 

Lower Lough Erne, again depiced as a huge texture sheet with no watermasking whatsoever.

http://www.mediafire.com/view/tu58c508ebmqx76/Prepar3D_2015-07-11_13-25-42-45.jpg

 

 

I find it extremely difficult to understand how a payware photoscenery product can be released in such a poor quality state. Lough Neagh and Lower Lough Erne are relatively (for the UK and Ireland) huge bodies of water, and yet no attempt has been made to provide even rudimentary watermasking. Compare this with the PlayHorizon VFR GenX products, where just about every single body of water (down to ponds on golf courses) have been carefully watermasked, with stunning results. This is bad enough, but then we are supposed to accept visible (and butt ugly) default scenery all over the place? Just look at the poor definition of those coastlines in Strangford Lough!! How could something as shoddy as this have passed through beta testing unscathed? :huh:

 

I really don't understand this. The overall quality of this product is poor, which is a shame because the quality and colouration of the textures themselves are not bad. So why the sloppy attention to detail on coastlines and elsewhere? Why no attempt at watermasking? This is a payware product, not a freeware scenery that someone has thrown together in their spare time.

 

I don't care about the £7.24 that I spent purchasing this at a 50% discount. The money is irrelevant to me. What I do care about is that this was an opportunity to release a good quality photoscenery rendition of Northern Ireland that would have completed my "UK and Ireland" collection. Sadly, this is not the product many of us were hoping for :(

 

 

I didn't read you're text, just clicked the photos and thought to myself "why is he banging on about this scenery" I then decided to read what you wrote and I have to say, I agree.

 

Some of those pictures, at best, look...weird!

Yeah, I guess most people expect to see wonderful screenshots posted in this section of the forum, so apologies for that!

Chris, MSE makes no attempt to colour correct or watermask their products. its all about getting the source imagery, banging it through resample and pushing it out the door quickly. Sadly it appears you have been a victim of classic "wish hard enough and they'll make a quality product" syndrome! :( Dont waste your time on their stuff until they prove they WANT to do better...

Don't worry, Kevin. I will not make the same mistake twice! However, I thought that other potential purchasers of this product should be warned. It really isn't good enough.

MSE is aggressively pursuing the world with HD photoscenery but there are things they do not do well.

The way flight simmers build their computers they can not have much HD photoscenery so it's not profitable!

 

HLJAMES

It's a huge waste of the Northern Ireland licence though. Of course, there is no other payware Northern Ireland photoscenery product available, so they have everyone by the *****.

Dont buy make it yourself..

.....and that would take a considerable amount of time and effort, Kevin. Time that I don't have when I want to actually fly in my flight simulator, in addition to the beta testing duties that I have, and all of the tweaks that I like to make to AFD files for my own personal use! Oh, and then there's online racing in Assetto Corsa. Maybe if I win the lottery and retire, I might just have enough time to consider it :wink:

Send me a kml file of the area you need Chris.

The problem is that I need quite a few areas, Kevin. Assuming that I was using the two Belfast airports, I would need northern, eastern, and southern exits to fly to and from Scotland/England/Republic of Ireland. That includes quite a lot of dodgy territory that needs to be sorted out. I would certainly be interested in helping you with a project of that nature, but I think you probably have a busy schedule yourself :wink:

humour me... I definitely wont be able to do 100% accurate transparency masking but it may be possible to do it patch by patch in small chunks without being excessively time consuming..