Hi

Just wondering if anyone knows whether the “streaming scenery” will consider ISP data caps?

My connection is reasonably fast (100Mbps) but here in AU a lot of ISPs have data caps of a few hundred GB... if the whole world is petabytes of data then wouldn’t a long haul 14hr flight consume 10s if not 100s of gigabytes? 

Cheers

Alex

49 minutes ago, ah2511 said:

Hi

Just wondering if anyone knows whether the “streaming scenery” will consider ISP data caps?

My connection is reasonably fast (100Mbps) but here in AU a lot of ISPs have data caps of a few hundred GB... if the whole world is petabytes of data then wouldn’t a long haul 14hr flight consume 10s if not 100s of gigabytes? 

Cheers

Alex

2 Petabytes is the ammount of data they had available just from Bing, to build the world as we see, as I understood, they used also other sources for things missing in Bing. But it doesn't mean you would have to download 2 PB of data (or more) to fly the whole planet. There's data compression and also the data source size doesn't mean the scenery will be this large. Let's say their raw data for the mesh elevations is 500TB, when converting it to the Simulator files so the engine can read them, it can be compressed and the total size of the files will be a lot smaller.

But yes, I think if you fly a lot of long hauls a month, you may have some issues with your intenet provider. 

At this stage, I wouldn't be so worried, as you don't know yet the details of the sim engine. Maybe, when cruising over the scenery in high altitudes, the servers will send you smaller files as you wouldn't need a very accurate ground scenery when you are that high. Maybe there will be options to turn-off the photoimagery and mesh data to save some data. 

I would wait for more details before worrying too much.

Edited October 6, 20196 yr by ca_metal

1 hour ago, ah2511 said:

Hi

Just wondering if anyone knows whether the “streaming scenery” will consider ISP data caps?

My connection is reasonably fast (100Mbps) but here in AU a lot of ISPs have data caps of a few hundred GB... if the whole world is petabytes of data then wouldn’t a long haul 14hr flight consume 10s if not 100s of gigabytes? 

Cheers

Alex

The best solution for you I think is to use the hybrid mode.

You will be able to choose how much data you want to download from the cloud and pre-cache your scenery on your computer, then fly in offline mode.

Basically, you can download any part of the world in advance. You will also be able to fly in "non-downloaded areas" but with default basic scenery (non-ortho)

For example if you want to do a long haul flight (Sydney - Tokyo) you can very well download the Sydney region , the Tokyo region and for the cruise use de default scenery as you will be at 40000 feet. The world in between those 2 regions will still look interesting at this altitude (better than default XPlane or P3D)

Another tool available is the controlled bandwith feature where you can choose the maximum bandwith you want to use. But I think this option is more for people who don't have cap but a poor internet connection.

You don't have to be worry, just organized 😉

 

 

Edited October 6, 20196 yr by Noooch

You could also just do some math and work out what to set the bandwidth limit to. For example, using a 25mbps bandwidth cap, you will consume about 11GB of data every hour. And that's assuming the simulator is maxing this bandwidth all the time, I assume there would be some optimisations for cruise flight which would reduce load on both the server and your connection because the same LOD just isn't required than when at lower altitudes.

Just to rectify myself, according to this video (XBOX official) the offline mode will feature orthophotos but not photogrametry, only procedural generated and "augmented Bing".

 

I wonder how big will be the install package if it features orthophotos for the entire planet 🙂

It really boggles my mind that data caps are still a thing in many countries these days...🤔 I wonder what's the main reason?
In most of Europe I guess -at least in France for sure- it's been gone a looong time ago.

1 hour ago, Jonathan Berthier said:

 
 at least in France for sure- it's been gone a looong time ago.

You kiddin' ? I live in a village in the 06 with a 4.5 mbps (nominal) unreliable connection !  

 

2 hours ago, Noooch said:

Just to rectify myself, according to this video (XBOX official) the offline mode will feature orthophotos but not photogrametry, only procedural generated and "augmented Bing".

 

Take it with a pinch of salt. It's not an official xbox channel.

32 minutes ago, domkle said:

You kiddin' ? I live in a village in the 06 with a 4.5 mbps (nominal) unreliable connection !  

 

He is talking about data caps, not overall connection speed 🙂

21 hours ago, ah2511 said:

My connection is reasonably fast (100Mbps) but here in AU a lot of ISPs have data caps of a few hundred GB... if the whole world is petabytes of data then wouldn’t a long haul 14hr flight consume 10s if not 100s of gigabytes? 

Only if you're doing a 14hr flight 500 feet above the ground so it needs to stream ZL19 constantly.

At higher altitudes it will stream the minimum zoom level required to still look good, which will be much, much smaller.

Just now, france89 said:

 

He is talking about data caps, not overall connection speed 🙂

OK, I stand corrected here. We don't have caps in France indeed, to my knwoledge.

37 minutes ago, domkle said:

You kiddin' ? I live in a village in the 06 with a 4.5 mbps (nominal) unreliable connection !  

 

I was not talking about slow/unreliable connections but the fact that there are still connections that have data caps (a limit of how many Gb of data you can download before either your connection speed is throttled or you're paying extra money for it), to my knowledge there has been no such restriction in France for a long time.
Meaning that even if your connection speed is bad you can still download as many Gb of data as you want 🙂

Edit: I'm too slow 😅

Edited October 7, 20196 yr by Jonathan Berthier

I have some mates who work for a big ISP in the UK and they will tell you IPS`s will throttle if demand gets high so your speed will fluctuate depending on the time of day, even with an unlimited data contract which I have, it is suspect it is sometimes used to get you to upgrade, this is why in the UK Ofcom is now making ISP`s  give customers the info on best speed for the location, pointless have the biggest data package if the in your location is 40% of that.

32 minutes ago, Jonathan Berthier said:

I was not talking about slow/unreliable connections but the fact that there are still connections that have data caps (a limit of how many Gb of data you can download before either your connection speed is throttled or you're paying extra money for it), to my knowledge there has been no such restriction in France for a long time.
Meaning that even if your connection speed is bad you can still download as many Gb of data as you want 🙂

Edit: I'm too slow 😅

Yes sorry for the misunderstanding. You are absolutely right.

I am a little incensed to see the gap between French politicians boasting about their great plans for a fast internet for everybody and the implementation that I jumped the gun.  

Edited October 7, 20196 yr by domkle

3 hours ago, Jonathan Berthier said:

It really boggles my mind that data caps are still a thing in many countries these days...🤔 I wonder what's the main reason?
In most of Europe I guess -at least in France for sure- it's been gone a looong time ago.

You'll have to do some traveling, my friend!.

Cheers, Ed