I just bought Orbx True Earth Netherlands.  72GB.  I am waiting until we go someplace for the weekend to start installing it.

The thought came to me that The Netherlands is a pretty small country.  If True Earth is the future of Orbx scenery how big a drive am I going to need for say True Earth Northern California?

I recall the first computer I bought.  It was an IBM I think with a DOS OS.  My brother was helping me select what I needed.  He said buy two 10MB Hard Drives and that's all you'll need for the rest of your life.  I was so proud of it because all my friends were still swapping 5 1/4 inch floppys.  You youngsters probably don't remember those days of yore when we thought we were experts because we knew how to tune the win.ini file.  No graphics then.  Just text...white or yellow letters on a black screen.  It was really something when page white with black letters arrived on the scene.

We've come a long way guys.  And looking at True Earth Netherlands the road still stretches to an ever moving horizon.

Noel

 

I plan on about 300 terrabytes, LOL.

3 hours ago, birdguy said:

If True Earth is the future of Orbx scenery how big a drive am I going to need for say True Earth Northern California?

72 GB... not sure if this is apples and apples but the Aerofly AF2 version is 17GB and doesn't look too bad.

Perhaps the future could be predicted by the fact that your 10MB HDD was probably the same physical size as my 2TB one today!

 

Edited September 12, 20187 yr by WingZ

Hey Noel.....I remember when there was no such thing as a HDD on a personal computer...😁 .  I don't think anyone knows how much space will be required. But, I do know two things.....1) it will be a lot and, because of the cost, there is no way I'd put it on SSD's and 2) if ORBX continues with this insanity of download only (no DVD or USB option) I won't be buying any. of any it....................Doug

 

It is never ending Noel, I got started with Pong, then the Commodore PET, list goes on

Best thing about the PET was everything was stored on Cassette Tape, no shortage of storage space, lots of Cassette Tapes kicking around 😎

Edited September 12, 20187 yr by Matthew Kane

This is why I've been pushing for P3D to support of BC6H/BC7 introduced in DX11+ ... higher quality, faster/accelerated, smaller file size, better compression ... my pleas to LM since they moved to DX11 have sadly fallen on deaf ears, most likely because of the "ball and chain" (aka compatibility).

I believe Google Earth is around 20,500 TB ... (with "partial" seasons).  To put that into perspective, you'll need 205 of these 100TB SSDs from Nimbus.  Considering the cost of a 15TB SSD is around $10,000 US I can only imagine what a single 100TB SSD would cost $65,000?  X 205 = $13,325,000 US.  I have a big tech budget, but it's not that big.

So we better hope for some break-thru in storage technology if we want high quality res PR around the globe.  But now you can see why LC (landclass) is still a good idea 🙂

Cheers, Rob.

 

5 hours ago, birdguy said:

He said buy two 10MB Hard Drives and that's all you'll need for the rest of your life.  I was so proud of it because all my friends were still swapping 5 1/4 inch floppys.

I remember when such a "big HDD" cost almost as much as my used car at that time was worth! Man, those things were expensive...

Okay, they were only about $500 each, but then I drove a junker for a car too!

Heh.  Yes, I was a just a kid, flying FS-II from 5 1/4" floppys.  The first hard drive I saw was amazing to me.

Indeed LC is still a good idea.   A pretty ingenious system, really.  I do see the "storage crunch" coming soon (or here already) for us FS guys -- to the point where I've considered buying a NAS for scenery.  I think LM realizes the storage issue, as they have introduced the capability to install outside of the P3D folder structure.  We may have very decentralized setups in the future.

Plus if you fly multiple sims, like DCS or XPlane, the storage problem is even worse.

 

6 minutes ago, Mace said:

Plus if you fly multiple sims, like DCS or XPlane, the storage problem is even worse.

Yes, Ortho4XP PR files can add-up VERY quickly and those aren't high resolution.  100Gb/s LAN/NAS 200-800TB is an "ok" option (still very expensive) but still considerably slower than internal SSD or M.2 but "might" be fast enough?  LC is going to provide the best resolution and quality for some time to come ... it just a case of quality (LC) vs. "moment in time" accuracy and lower res (PR).

To be honest, I would have preferred products like "True Earth HD Netherlands" by Orbx with an option that used LC rather than PR for P3D ... however, not so for AF2 as the PR comes out well but would still prefer a bump in resolution but such a bump would increase file sizes dramatically.

But who knows what the future might bring ... DNA storage (the molecule) was able to store 2.2 PB (Petabytes) per gram in recent experiments ... but encoding and decoding is as you can imagine was extremely slow and costly.  But just as with OLED (organic) the future holds perhaps a merging of biological and electrical technologies.  There is also quantum computing and quantum entanglement but that's even more "cutting edge" than DNA storage.  But for the more "near" future with practical implementations, I'd expect to see HAMR mechanical drives around 30TB and 128TB SSDs.

Hopefully before I expire, I'll be able to realize a full globe at high res with procedural snow implementations ... so I'll return to this thread in 30 years 😉 to see if I was correct.

Cheers, Rob.

IMO, good HD landclass scenery is perfect for airliners, up high, the realism that is seen with Orbx is as good (almost) IMO as photoscenery, with a massive saving on rediculous file sizes. Low down, flying GA is another story, and I think sceneries such as Orbx TrueEarth really shine through, but at a price for storage. Having said that, with my experience with slow loading photo textures in P3D, I will stick with landclass sceneries for the foreseeable future, until which time LM resolve this issue.

Rob, I'll be looking for you here when I'm 114 years old.

Noel

Edited September 17, 20187 yr by birdguy

I am not interested one bit in Landclass scenery. ORBx TrueEarth is the "holy grail" of flight simulation scenery for me. I couldn't care less how much hard disk space is required.

Edited September 17, 20187 yr by Christopher Low

On 9/12/2018 at 4:13 PM, Rob Ainscough said:

This is why I've been pushing for P3D to support of BC6H/BC7 introduced in DX11+ ... higher quality, faster/accelerated, smaller file size, better compression ... my pleas to LM since they moved to DX11 have sadly fallen on deaf ears, most likely because of the "ball and chain" (aka compatibility).

I believe Google Earth is around 20,500 TB ... (with "partial" seasons).  To put that into perspective, you'll need 205 of these 100TB SSDs from Nimbus.  Considering the cost of a 15TB SSD is around $10,000 US I can only imagine what a single 100TB SSD would cost $65,000?  X 205 = $13,325,000 US.  I have a big tech budget, but it's not that big.

So we better hope for some break-thru in storage technology if we want high quality res PR around the globe.  But now you can see why LC (landclass) is still a good idea 🙂

Cheers, Rob.

 

How about ORBX uses your Vatsim history, VA history or FSX, P3D flight history and download only the parts of the world you actually fly over.  My guess is this will meet the needs of 95% of where each individual simmer flies at much smaller storage footprint and then download anything missing before each flight.  It still might need us to wait a few years for the storage capacity required to meet a reasonable budget but is probably a better way to go.

All of you young "whippersnappers" and your floppy discs and HDD. I worked on a billing and accounting system that had 4K of program memory and 1  and 1/2 K of data memory.  Core memory...little doughnuts with a wire going through it.  And sequential access.

33 minutes ago, charliearon said:

All of you young "whippersnappers" and your floppy dice and HDD. I worked on a billing and accounting system that had 4K of program memory and 1  and 1/2 K of data memory.  Core memory...little doughnuts with a wire going through it.

My Dad's workplace had a superior system, 256K but the computers (twin computers actually) weighed 275 tons and took up 11,900 square feet of floor space. My Dad's job was in electronics; the system used a total of 60,000 vacuum tubes (he was kept busy)!