MegasceneryEarth where no Orbx available

[AndrejS 25]

Hey guys,

first and foremost, Happy New Year to all.

Now to my question. I'm only flying GA planes, only VFR style, so it matters if scenery is visually correct. I'd like to extend my American trip (currently from KDFW to PAKN crossing all of the available Orbx sceneries and visiting 140 airports, 7800 nm) and make it a trip from east coast KBHB down to Florida and then west to KDFW and all the way up to PAKN. But since it will be a VFR trip, i'd like to have the path as "scenic" as possible. Btw, what path from KBHB to KDFW would you recommend, where the flight would be the most interesting visually? And since Orbx hasn't done any East or Central scenery, i'd like to use any other scenery combination as a base layer for this trip. For FL Megascenery earth would be ok for FL, but i'd like AG coverage too. Nuvecta 3d objects add AG but quality is nowhere near Orbx's AG placement. To me, it does matter whether houses are just laid over FL (Nuvecta) or if they are also aligned with the FL (Orbx). So, is there any combination FL+AG that can compare to Orbx american sceneries? What do you use and would you recommend it to others?

Oh, i'll be using combination of the following planes (depending on the leg length)

AC500s
DO228
PA28
C182
PA34
TB21
PC6
DA62
TBM850

Thanks for your suggestions

[fppilot 4,371]

14 minutes ago, AndrejS said:

and make it a trip from east coast KBHB down to Florida and then west to KDFW

 

14 minutes ago, AndrejS said:

Btw, what path from KBHB to KDFW would you recommend, where the flight would be the most interesting visually?

A bit confused here.  You first mention from KBHB to Florida, then ask for the most interesting route from KBHB to KDFW.  Most of a trip from KBHB to Florida to KDFW would be coastal, and particularly for scenery.  However there are inland scenic areas between Maine and Texas if Florida is not in the mix.  Areas such as the Appalachian mountain ranges, the mountainous lakes and waterways that were built under the Tennessee Valley Authority, even some interesting cities to overfly.  You would not experience those on a coastal route to Florida.  And you would need to travel way out of the way to include them between Florida and KDFW. 

Also, Florida is mostly a large N to S peninsula.  So is there any location in Florida that is a destination?  I would prefer the gulf coast of Florida and the Keys to the Atlantic coast, but you could make a long loop down the Florida Atlantic coast to the Keys and then up the Gulf coast before turning west toward Texas.  The Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana Gulf coast provides nice scenery.

[AndrejS 25]

Oh, going down to Florida doesn't mean i have to go straight down, that's why the total length of my current trip is 7800 nm. I guess it'll take more than a year to finish the trip, since i won't be able to fly every day. I'm willing to visit all the places that are worthy of flying over. I'll be visiting Great Lakes, i'm used to going zig-zag, so going to Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee and find interesting spots is fine with me. 
And, you won't believe it, KMIA and KDFW are on my route because two Slovenians play an important role in the Heat and Mavericks (LD77) basketball team, so i have to pay them a visit, right?

So, if you can help me some more, that would be awesome. Do i need separate AG packages "over" the FL sceneries?

Edited January 1, 2020 by AndrejS

[AndrejS 25]

2 hours ago, fppilot said:

 

A bit confused here.  You first mention from KBHB to Florida, then ask for the most interesting route from KBHB to KDFW.  Most of a trip from KBHB to Florida to KDFW would be coastal, and particularly for scenery.  However there are inland scenic areas between Maine and Texas if Florida is not in the mix.  Areas such as the Appalachian mountain ranges, the mountainous lakes and waterways that were built under the Tennessee Valley Authority, even some interesting cities to overfly.  You would not experience those on a coastal route to Florida.  And you would need to travel way out of the way to include them between Florida and KDFW. 

Also, Florida is mostly a large N to S peninsula.  So is there any location in Florida that is a destination?  I would prefer the gulf coast of Florida and the Keys to the Atlantic coast, but you could make a long loop down the Florida Atlantic coast to the Keys and then up the Gulf coast before turning west toward Texas.  The Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana Gulf coast provides nice scenery.

Just checked the PC Aviator and there's a 50% Megascenery sale going on, so i'll grab a few sceneries. Hope there's a AG to go with it, albeit separate package. 

[pgde 571]

Nuvecta is one of two available AG for Photoscenery. The other is RWS (https://realworldscenery.com/). I think Nuvecta is considered to be the best of the two. I didn't like RWS. I think you will find Megascenery great as long as you stay above 2,000 feet or so. I am a heavy Megascenery user.

Good luck and Happy New Year,

[AndrejS 25]

16 minutes ago, pgde said:

Nuvecta is one of two available AG for Photoscenery. The other is RWS (https://realworldscenery.com/). I think Nuvecta is considered to be the best of the two. I didn't like RWS. I think you will find Megascenery great as long as you stay above 2,000 feet or so. I am a heavy Megascenery user.

Good luck and Happy New Year,

Above 2000 feet, i was hoping i could go like 700-1000 feet? Are you using the 2017 versions?

Nuvecta, at least based on that little info that's available (only a couple of videos on YT), seems like it's been AG populated based on an algortihm not on a RL imagery. I guess object alignment isn't that disturbing when flying higher, that's why 2000 feet?

 

Edited January 1, 2020 by AndrejS

[pgde 571]

Quoting from the MSE website:

 

"MegaScenery doesn't do anything to upgrade visuals of 3D objects or airports. The 3D objects and airports are default FSX airports. You do not see any changes to your scenery until you start flying and look down at the ground below.

MegaScenery is designed for low altitude and high altitude cross country flying. The nature of bitmap photoscenery is that the lower you are the blurrier the scenery becomes. Before the days of 50 cm source imagery that meant that when you were below around 2000 feet the scenery was quite blurred. We're happy to report however that with 50 cm source imagery, you can get as low as 500 to 1000 feet and the scenery, although it is blurred, is still quite good and enables you to clear identify ground objects. Still better than artificial scenery in our opinion.

Generally though - flying above 2000 feet will give you better clarity, so plan and do your flying at altitudes above this to enjoy high quality, clear eye candy while you are flying."

I don't agree that it is blur-free at 500-1000 feet. Yes, I have the entire US with various dates of release.

[AndrejS 25]

15 hours ago, pgde said:

Nuvecta is one of two available AG for Photoscenery. The other is RWS (https://realworldscenery.com/). I think Nuvecta is considered to be the best of the two. I didn't like RWS. I think you will find Megascenery great as long as you stay above 2,000 feet or so. I am a heavy Megascenery user.

Hm, i have a bad feeling MSE won't fit my needs. I've only tried Maine V3 but it's a pain for the eyes to watch that awful bleak (sorry, it really is no match for the colors of Orbx) FL, that is of high quality only when flying directly above it. I'll try the Rhode Island scenery but if this won't be any different, i'll just use the default Orbx NA scenery. Hopefully, there are some other sceneries, perhaps even free, like 

https://italyphotoreal.weebly.com/download.html

or 

https://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/files/18211/fsx-guide-for-free-photoscenery-of-spain/

14 hours ago, pgde said:

Yes, I have the entire US with various dates of release.

Are you happy with the quality, have you compared it to Orbx? 

Thanks for your help,

[flyblueskies 143]

I agree about the color mismatch compared to Orbx. Orbx does a very good job of color matching their products along with adding great amounts of autogen.

I do, however, really enjoy the Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana Megascenery. It is a bit strange to see the color mismatch when flying near the borders of these states, even though Megascenery claims it is color matched. But, just the same, I enjoying flying over these Megascenery areas.

I also use the Nuvecta Autogen products. While it is no match for Orbx autogen, it does a decent enough job making these Megascenery areas enjoyable for me.

[AndrejS 25]

52 minutes ago, flyblueskies said:

I agree about the color mismatch compared to Orbx. Orbx does a very good job of color matching their products along with adding great amounts of autogen.

Do you perhaps know if it's possible to recolor the sceneries? I know, this isn't even allowed, but those white, blue, green and grey colors really hurt my eyes. Not a shade of warmth in them, like all the imagery was taken in winter time. 

I'm downloading North Hampshire with Nuvecta right know, i've added Nuvecta to Maine and aside from colors, it kind of looks ok. 

Oh, one more question, regarding the scenery. Do i have to buy separate mesh for all those FL or are they ok?

[RALF9636 1,956]

Megascenery Earth combined with Nuvecta leaves a lot to be desired and is far away from what you see in the Orbx TrueEarth products.

Nevertheless I would always prefer it over any landclass scenery even if it is by Orbx.

But if you are fine with landclass products I would stay with them.

 

Anyway before getting heavily invested in Megascenery Earth maybe consider waiting for the new MSFS which will most probably make any Megascenery Earth product obsolete.

 

Edited January 2, 2020 by RALF9636

[flyblueskies 143]

I've not been able to figure out how to color match. I also use freemesh usa, which is pretty good...except with airport elevations. You have to accept there will be plateaus in mountainous areas.

I agree Orbx is much better and use a lot of it. However, for the areas I mention above, I like Megascenery. If Orbx came out with the same areas in True Earth (for P3DV4), I would use it instead.

[Benjamin J 751]

Color matching is tricky and is unlikely to give consistent results all over - there's always going to be an area that's off. Also important to point out that the quality of the photoscenery will depend a lot on the local weather. I have generally noticed that MSE scenery for the American Southwest is high quality, with beautiful colors. Northern California, less so. Still looks fine, but nowhere near the clarity and contrasts of Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico etc. i would not expect New England to look as good as the American Southwest, either.

I would like to point out that OrbX faces much the same issues. Their recoloring and color balance is by no means perfect in their TE GB scenery, as evidenced by the green roads in parts of that scenery. It takes forever to do a good job on this, even if it's a small piece of photoscenery. I will agree that, on the whole, their efforts are better and more consistent over the span of the country than some MSE titles are for certain states. But again, this is true much more so for those states that do not have a dry and arid climate. Variables such as humidity can really change the photoscenery!

With regards to autogen: the accuracy of autogen depends entirely on the algorithms used to place them (because all these approaches use scripts to generate them automatically). OrbX, I'm pretty sure, use custom scripts that (1) extract placement information from vector data and (2) if vector is unavailable, attempt to extract data directly from the the photoscenery itself. You can imagine this working as such: if there is a strong contrast in color between two pixels, and that contrasting region has a rectangular shape, it might be a roof of a house (contrast of a dark red/black roof with the green garden, for example).

So why is OrbX mroe detailed then Nuvecta and RWS? For one, I think that RWS, in their older offerings, are only basing their products on vector, and vector data doe snot have 100% coverage of buildings footprints, definitely not outside major cities. E.g. I tried Nuvecta and RWS for LA and SF, and found their products identical in these cities. However, fly 15 minutes north, and you'll see that Nuvecta has much more accurate coverage for smaller towns and villages, and their trees seem much better placed than RWS's. This suggests that Nuvecta, unlike RWS, try to place autogen based on photoscenery directly if vector data is unavailable. Which leads us to OrbX: given what they advertise, they probably spent an endless amount of time honing their scripts for correct autogen placement. In addition, I imagine they might have spent some time doing manual placements as well, in areas where automated autogen placement fails.

In the end, I do like MSE + Nuvecta a lot, and I have covered the entire Americna Southwest, up to Colorado with it. I have not gone further (1) because the file size starts getting too big to handle, (2) I'm not convinced by the quality of some other states I would care to buy, or (3) there are freeware altrernatives.

with regards to the freeware, I do see that you intend to fly all the way to PAKN, although I'ma  little confused about your route. At any rate, I'm just going to throw this out there: Take a look at Blue Sky Scenery. They do freeware photoscenery for a large part of the American Southwest, going up to Pacific as well, to Washington. And from what I can see, the level of detail is not that much worse than MSE, perhaps even on par in some areas. It's just more of a hassle to download it all.

As an additional plug, you might be interested in the sceneries Matthias is generating for Africa, as well as parts of Europe. If you go to the Showroom forum at the FSDeveloper forums, you will find a Project Africa topic, detailing his more recent advances for Africa. These sceneries are incredible and FREE. Photoscenery plus full autogen, base don scripts that work in much the same was as IO outlined above (Indeed! you do NOT need to be a payware developer to make something like this!). I also have the scenery he did for Belgium, which is really very nice and blends surprisngly well with OrbX's TE NL. But, of course not seasons...

[Clutch Cargo 384]

If you want good ground color for photoreal and matching autogen, take a look at simwestSOCAL.

Best of the new year. 😊

[klamal 282]

4 hours ago, AndrejS said:

Oh, one more question, regarding the scenery. Do i have to buy separate mesh for all those FL or are they ok?

You do not have to buy separate mesh.  The sim will use whatever mesh you already have, default or otherwise.