How Much is One Petabyte of Storage?

[BIGSKY 316]

https://www.aberdeeninc.com/systems/storage/san/petarack

[Dominique_K 10,133]

This Pb thing is overrated. Google Earth is about 20 Pb and we all run it on our machine without even thinking of it.

The real question is how large will be the chunk to be downloaded in hybrid (cache) mode for a flight like, for instance, Paris to Geneva or Miami to Orlando at ZL19.

Edited October 4, 2019 by domkle

[Wobbie 938]

The whole flight we saw in the demo used about 60GB

Edited October 4, 2019 by Wobbie

[nickhod 425]

2 hours ago, domkle said:

The real question is how large will be the chunk to be downloaded in hybrid (cache) mode for a flight like, for instance, Paris to Geneva or Miami to Orlando at ZL19.

In one of the recent YouTube videos, one of the Asobo devs states that on each of the press demo PCs there's a 60GB cache of the Renton / (South?) Seattle area and the ground was cached at ZL19.

It's a lot of data for a small-ish area, but that is at very high quality.

The "petabtye" thing is largely irrelevant, as you say. No one is going to try to cache the entire earth at ZL19.

 

[Dominique_K 10,133]

Thanks for the info, Nick. Don't you think that would bring a medium haul flight at the Tb level ("cache") ?

Edited October 4, 2019 by domkle

[pracines 823]

As long as many consecutive 16+ hour flights are possible in very complex airliners (B787/777/A340/350) without CTD or performance loss, I'm good.👨‍✈️😁

[Casualcas 830]

Since nobody answered your question 

 

1024 terabytes

 

[nickhod 425]

29 minutes ago, domkle said:

Thanks for the info, Nick. Don't you think that would bring a medium haul flight at the Tb level ("cache") ?

I think it'll depend on the satellite imagery quality you want. Drop down to ZL16 - 17 and you can cover the whole of Britain with tens of GB.

Remember each zoom level is four times more detail than the previous.

The OrbX TrueEarth GB packs are around 25GB compressed. There's 3 of them, and I think that's ZL16 plus all the millions of houses and trees.

[nickhod 425]

Also I should add, my understanding of the modes so far (with a bit of guess work based on recent videos) are:

Full online Mode: Streams all data, maybe does some pre-caching in your direction of travel

Cached Mode: Uses pre-downloaded cache first, then streams non-cached areas relative to available bandwidth. (Good for slow connections)

Offline Mode: Only uses pre-downloaded cache and does not attempt to stream. I'm guessing non-cached areas are shown as very low resolution satellite imagery, or maybe land-class if it's still there as a fall back.

Edited October 4, 2019 by nickhod

[virtualstuff 751]

3 hours ago, domkle said:

This Pb thing is overrated. Google Earth is about 20 Pb and we all run it on our machine without even thinking of it.

The real question is how large will be the chunk to be downloaded in hybrid (cache) mode for a flight like, for instance, Paris to Geneva or Miami to Orlando at ZL19.

Indeed cache and internet connection will be the key for high detail and of course the local hardware stuff  🙂

[Dominique_K 10,133]

The recent Orbx debate ZL16 vs 17 was interesting and a majority of customers was, with good reasons, againts the ZL16 pushed by John Venema. On another trhead, a fellow simmer gives a link to Simhaven which carries a comparison between ZL16, 17,18 and 19. Very telling.

My question is really about the cache mode. At ZL19 what kind of SSD storage would be needed for Paris/Geneva or Miami/Orlando. Also if I have to download first 300 Gb, I'd better plan my flights a week in advance. 

I mean, is the hybrid mode the panacea for bandwidth challenged people ?

 

[cepact 517]

Someone here should buy one or two of these petaracks and download the entire world when msfs is released. We need to have some backup inside the community in case MS shuts down the servers

Edited October 4, 2019 by cepact

[nickhod 425]

14 minutes ago, domkle said:

The recent Orbx debate ZL16 vs 17 was interesting and a majority of customers was, with good reasons, againts the ZL16 pushed by John Venema. On another trhead, a fellow simmer gives a link to Simhaven which carries a comparison between ZL16, 17,18 and 19. Very telling.

My question is really about the cache mode. At ZL19 what kind of SSD storage would be needed for Paris/Geneva or Miami/Orlando. Also if I have to download first 300 Gb, I'd better plan my flights a week in advance. 

Yep, I was wrong; TrueEarth is ZL17 but it's compressed to within an inch of its life. I was fairly underwhelmed by the quality up close to be honest.

Paris to Geneva at ZL19 is going to be huge (TBs). I'd doubt you need it all at ZL19 though. You'd want the area around the Paris and Geneva airports at ZL19. The Paris and Geneva metro area at ZL 18, then the 'cruise' part of the flight at ZL17 or ZL16.

How much flexibility MSFS will give to achieve that is another matter though.

[Dominique_K 10,133]

Venema said this week that the bgl format allows much more compression than the XP dds format. How much I don't know.

 

[FizziPop 14]

1 hour ago, cepact said:

Someone here should buy one or two of these petaracks and download the entire world when msfs is released. We need to have some backup inside the community in case MS shuts down the servers

MS will support the game for a MINIMUM of 10 years