Future of photoreal

[GSalden 4,656]

4 hours ago, Zimmerbz said:

What are you using for that?  It looks good.  

NL2000 : freeware 

Photoreal scenery + AG + custom objects

[tonywob 4,768]

1 hour ago, GSalden said:

A FTX Region is also not cheap, so I prefer photoreal scenery + custom AG.

Actually, I'm referring to the cost for a company to license orthos as opposed to how much they cost for users to buy. ORBX have stated they would love to make a photoreal Norway (Imagine that :D), or the UK, but the costs are so prohibitively high that they sadly just can't. So landclass scenery is here to stay unless you know how to roll your own.

Fans of US orthos though are in luck. Since high quality imagery is actually in the public domain, anyone, including ORBX can make scenery for it. I'm really really looking forward to their photoreal PNW scenery, one of the best regions to fly no doubt.

 

[GSalden 4,656]

Imho the future will be :

- Fast IN connection

- DL the season dependent photo files from the LM server ( placed on your pc ) . 

- Only AG and objects in the cliënt install

- Addon airports can be bought or licensed for 1 time use

 

[Clutch Cargo 384]

Since photoreal scenery development has been my "life" for the past two years I'll chime in with my 2-cents.   Just like any  other flightsim scenery, photoreal can be as ever incredibly immersive and detailed as any of the top add-ons or can be very basic and lackluster.  It depends on the developer AND the available data and what simmer is content with.

The issue of creating seasons, at least for me, is not an issue.  It is the space required on the end-user's system.  Because every square mile (kilometer), is unique adding all five seasons can make the size upwards to five times!  Most users are not ready for those types of downloads or storing so I think developers concentrate of one season... summer or perhaps a summer and winter season.

I think for the USA one is looking at 12-15 TB for the entire USA.  Storage prices continue to drop.  I see Seagate has 8TB drives on sale for $179,99 USD so in theory one could have to drop $400 USD just to store the scenery.

To answer a poster above... yes, PR scenery will load even if you are not flying in that area however an easy solution is to only "check" on those areas you are flying through.  P3D, FSX, etc, will not load the scenery if it is checked OFF. 

I always ask myself will simmers even care if you add 3D detail to PR scenery?  I mean if you are flying over a remote desert area and pass over en entire town in a matter of seconds does it matter.  Maybe just releaseing massive areas with no 3D is good enough (think MegaSceenry).  I guess I will know once we release something (ha!).

[klamal 282]

9 minutes ago, Clutch Cargo said:

I always ask myself will simmers even care if you add 3D detail to PR scenery?  I mean if you are flying over a remote desert area and pass over en entire town in a matter of seconds does it matter.  Maybe just releaseing massive areas with no 3D is good enough (think MegaSceenry).  I guess I will know once we release something (ha!).

I think 3D at least around the airports matters.  Over a desert that doesn't have much 3D even in real life or flying at altitude does not matter(obviously).  I've made my own photoreal scenery too and in some cases have used scenproc to add 3D around airports only.  I wish MegaScenery would do this or some developer anyway.  Create the photoreal for whole countries and then go back and add 3D within a 20nm radius of the airports(all or only the medium and larger maybe?) in the area.  To me, that would be the perfect combination.

[pmb 5,137]

Obviously there's no GA/VFR flyer left over besides me.

Kind regards, Michael

 

[OzWhitey 3,353]

I fly orthoscenery 95% of the time. 

Megascenery v3 is pretty good.

Landclass - ugg, only if nothing else is available, Very fake. Bad!

usually, I just make my own orthoscenery, trees around airports are essential though, and IS3 is great for this. Also good to rework airports to match photoscenery.

Am brewing some NC smoky mountain scenery tonight, 12.5 cm per pixel, sweet. Storage space is cheapnthese days!

 

[irishsooner 9]

wonder what direction Megascenery Earth will go, with only about 4 states left to release.

[klamal 282]

19 hours ago, OzWhitey said:

Megascenery v3 is pretty good

Does Megascenery's water masking use the underlying photoreal water textures or do they completely remove them and you end up w/ "default" water?  From the images on their website, it looks like it does the latter which is the biggest reason why I haven't taken the plunge yet on any of their v3 stuff.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

22 hours ago, klamal said:

Does Megascenery's water masking use the underlying photoreal water textures or do they completely remove them and you end up w/ "default" water?  From the images on their website, it looks like it does the latter which is the biggest reason why I haven't taken the plunge yet on any of their v3 stuff.

The pics on the website are accurate, yes it's 'holes punched through the scenery', to show default water. 

I think it looks ok, when I make photoscenery I sometimes mask with an areaKML path from google earth (coast and deep water), that looks a bit better. I've actually been trying to learn more about blend masks for the last few days, haven't had much success yet!

[klamal 282]

3 hours ago, OzWhitey said:

The pics on the website are accurate, yes it's 'holes punched through the scenery', to show default water. 

I think it looks ok, when I make photoscenery I sometimes mask with an areaKML path from google earth (coast and deep water), that looks a bit better. I've actually been trying to learn more about blend masks for the last few days, haven't had much success yet!

Thanks.  Yeah, I think I'd rather make my own then too.  I don't like the look of default water...or should I say at least the fact that all water looks the same - everywhere in the world - in default.  Water, lakes, rivers, coasts, all have their own unique characteristics that have yet to be brought out w/ default water classification that exists.  So I much prefer photoreal - even if it's not "annotated" as water.

[Pease_W 6]

On 11/14/2017 at 8:18 AM, Clutch Cargo said:

To answer a poster above... yes, PR scenery will load even if you are not flying in that area however an easy solution is to only "check" on those areas you are flying through.  P3D, FSX, etc, will not load the scenery if it is checked OFF. 

I see comments like this and just chuckle. IIRC, NL2000 is something like 30gb+ and runs in FSX. FSX is a 32bit program, limited to no more than 4gb of RAM. How's all that photo work fitting into 4gb of RAM? Or Mega Cali or Texas or most any other US state?

Without going into a detailed explanation of SDK files and indexing, can we please stop saying photo work is always loaded into memory? Unless someone cares to put up pics of their 64bit system running 192gb of RAM?