Photoreal scenery + FSX = big problem???

[ibanez737 2]

With the increased ground resolution in FSX, it occured to me that it is going to take far more hard drive space to store photoreal scenery textures at the new resolutions, meaning that areas of photoreal scenery made for FSX will probably have higher detail, but will be made for smaller areas in order to keep file sizes down. I heard somewhere that the new ground textures are 16 times more detailed- I take this to mean that they will be displayed at a resolution of 1.2 meters per pixel (which seems about right by looking at the screenshots), instead of the currect 4.8 (1.2 squared goes into 4.8 squared 16 times). This means that in order to cover the same area at the new, high resolution, the file size will have to be 16 times larger. If Megascenery Pacific Northwest (which currently takes up 13GB of my hard drive) were to be released at the full resolution capable by FSX, it would take up... 208GB!!!! (13gb x 16 = 208). If I have all this right, which of course I'm not certain of, there could be a pretty big change in the way photoreal scenery is done for FS.Which leads me to my question: will ground textures at lower (read current 4.8 meters per pixel) resolutions be able to be displayed in FSX, allowing us to keep our current photoreal sceneries?-Scott Armstrong

[michal 44]

>Which leads me to my question: will ground textures at lower>(read current 4.8 meters per pixel) resolutions be able to be>displayed in FSX, allowing us to keep our current photoreal>sceneries?My guess is that the answer is going to be: YES.By the way, I always felt that photoreal sceneries will be less and less viable with increased reolution. Not only the size of the scenery on the disk but just delivering such scenery to the market may be very hard to do in terms of human effort.Michael J.http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/pmdg_744F.jpghttp://sales.hifisim.com/pub-download/asv6-banner-beta.jpg

[Guest Fjorko]

Bring on them higher resolution textures ..i'm sick of blurry ground, i wanna see some propper soil for a change ;-)I'll go buy a larger HDD if that's what it takes...

[ibanez737 2]

Hey, I'm all for high rez ground, don't get me wrong! :-jumpy I'm just curious about how the tradeoff is going to work out...

[Guest Fjorko]

>Hey, I'm all for high rez ground, don't get me wrong! :-jumpy> I'm just curious about how the tradeoff is going to work>out...It's gonna work out just fine mate ! Don't worry about it... maybe FSX will ship with a massive 320GB HDD - NOT !

[ibanez737 2]

>maybe FSX will ship with a massive 320GB HDD - NOT !Hey, it's okay to hope, isn't it? :)

[KERNEL32 500]

>If Megascenery Pacific Northwest>(which currently takes up 13GB of my hard drive) were to be>released at the full resolution capable by FSX, it would take>up... 208GB!!!!>-Scott Armstrong208GB! Yup and I remember when 40 *MB* was a stretch! ;)

[tasmanet 0]

" X-Plane v8 + Global-Scenery is out ! It is shipped in 7 DVDs double layer. The disk requirement to install the entire planet is 60 Gig."http://www.global-scenery.org/

[Guest]

> " X-Plane v8 + Global-Scenery is out !No way jose :-erks Don't even consider buying that.

[Guest pixelpoke_from_MSFT]

>With the increased ground resolution in FSX, it occured to me>that it is going to take far more hard drive space to store>photoreal scenery textures at the new resolutions, meaning>that areas of photoreal scenery made for FSX will probably>have higher detail, but will be made for smaller areas in>order to keep file sizes down. I heard somewhere that the new>ground textures are 16 times more detailed- I take this to>mean that they will be displayed at a resolution of 1.2 meters>per pixel (which seems about right by looking at the>screenshots), instead of the currect 4.8 (1.2 squared goes>into 4.8 squared 16 times). This means that in order to cover>the same area at the new, high resolution, the file size will>have to be 16 times larger. If Megascenery Pacific Northwest>(which currently takes up 13GB of my hard drive) were to be>released at the full resolution capable by FSX, it would take>up... 208GB!!!! (13gb x 16 = 208). If I have all this>right, which of course I'm not certain of, there could be a>pretty big change in the way photoreal scenery is done for>FS.>>Which leads me to my question: will ground textures at lower>(read current 4.8 meters per pixel) resolutions be able to be>displayed in FSX, allowing us to keep our current photoreal>sceneries?>>-Scott ArmstrongUnless somehing drastically changes from now until ship (which can happen), yes older style photosceneries should work. Cheers,Jason

[Forkboy2 27]

A year from now, the average hard drive will probably be over a TB anyway so not worried about hard drive space. I'm not expert, but I would think the limitation we are going to reach with something like MegaScenery at 1.2 m/p would be related more to video memory and how fast data can be moved from hard drive to video card. If my math is correct, a visibility of 50 miles would be about 80,000 square miles of textures to display. Not sure how many gigabytes of textures that would equate to at 1.2m/p, but it's a lot.Matt Fox

[michal 44]

On the other hand I wonder where outfits like Megascenery would come up with color data for 1.2m scenery resolution. The real such data is very expensive and though you can get such resolution in B&W for next to free colorized B&W photography never produced good results. Michael J.http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/pmdg_744F.jpghttp://sales.hifisim.com/pub-download/asv6-banner-beta.jpg

[Guest pixelpoke_from_MSFT]

>On the other hand I wonder where outfits like Megascenery>would come up with color data for 1.2m scenery resolution. The>real such data is very expensive and though you can get such>resolution in B&W for next to free colorized B&W photography>never produced good results. >>Michael J.>http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/pmdg_744F.jpg>http://sales.hifisim.com/pub-download/asv6-banner-beta.jpgI believe they already have data at that resolution.

[ibanez737 2]

Their "Megacity" photoscenery comes from free USGS color aerial photos of US cities, which are originally .3 meters per pixel. Getting good high rez satellite or airphotos for bigger areas will definitely be expensive though, but I'm sure they can work out deals. Their new Southern California V2 terrain comes from high rez images of some kind that they didn't get from the USGS, so maybe they already have the resources to do this.-Scott

[mgh 89]

A point to remember is that digital aerial photographs have a significant commercial value. In the UK 1m resolution photographs cost