Can someone define photoreal scenery to me please?? I am starting to get an idea what mesh is but it's still a little confusing to me. FSX default is using mesh at 19m?? What about texture resolution?? What is texture resolution?? What scenery does FSX use and what are the measurements (if you will)??

Hey, I'd be glad to try to clear this up for you. First to define "photoreal". Flight Simulator allows people to paste down satellite or aerial photos to their real-world locations within the sim, so when you fly over those areas you are essentially flying over a photo of that area. Very similar to programs like Google Earth. If made properly, this can result in a very realistic-looking rendition of the real world. Hence, "photoreal".Mesh is simply the actual 3-D model of the terrain. If there was no mesh in the sim, everything would be completely flat. Mesh creates the mountains, valleys, and all other features in the sim that have to do with elevation. The accuracy of mesh to the real world is determined by its resolution; mesh is made up of a grid of elevation points spaced out at even distances, and these distances determine the resolution. If the distance between points is 19 meters, the mesh has a resolution of 19 meters. FSX can handle all different resolutions of mesh, shown in the slider in the Scenery Display Options page. I believe the highest-resolution default mesh in FSX is 19 meters, while the lowest is 1 km (I might be wrong about that part). Texture Resolution refers to how detailed the textures are that cover the Earth's surface in FSX. This is determined by how much area each pixel of the ground texture will cover. The maximum texture resolution for FS2004 was 4.8 meters per pixel, but in FSX it can go all the way up to 7 cm per pixel. The default game, however, ships with ground textures at 1 meter per pixel.Hope this helps, just ask if you need anything cleared up =)-Scott

If I could add to that fine explanation.Photo real is a texture. A Texture can be photo real (A real rendition of what you would find in that geographical spot) or a stock/fake texture.If a particular spot is known as a desert area,... you could just display stock footage in that spot. A desert is a desert is a desert. .. You have a collection of stock textures like "Forest" "desert" "suburb" "farm land", and various kinds of farm land... .and you just display those standard stock textures. A building you see on these standard stock texture may not be there in real life...but its highly probably..there is some sort of a building there in real life. The problem with stock texture is..when you fly high you may start seeing repeating patterns.But how does the sim know that at a particular spot is a farm land and not a subdivision? Well! There is a file called "Land Class". This is a data file..that says...how a particular country is georgprahically made up. Weather a particular geography is a farm land or a residential area or mountains or desert. So the systems reads the Land class data...and then goes to the texture library and picks the stock texture and puts it there in that geographic location. But ofcourse if you have photoreal texture...then its better. Its more real.Now you understand..that the stock texture can be used again and again... but a Photo texture can be used in only one spot. So photo textrues for the entire US would need a very large Disk space. :)Manny

And just to wrinkle the old noodle even more, FSX comes with Photoreal stock textures. This adds another variance to the definition. In the broad sense, "photoreal" is "photographically realistic", or as has already been said, a photograph. If you look at FSX's stock textures, they're all a mishmash of actual photographs that have been assembled to appear random.Hope that doesn't confuse too much. ;)

Ok so can somebody explain why I (and I assume most others) see a flat zoomed in ground when flying at low altitudes?? Is the photo-real scenery taken from a satellite?? It seems as if the default photo-scenery used in FSX was taken from a satellite and is best viewed from at least 1000 ASL and looking as straight down as possible (because this is how the picture was taken). How would one achieve beautiful graphics from an angle such as landing or taking off at lower altitudes (1000-ASL)?? Would better resolution be the trick or would it have to rely on excellent resolution in the autogen?? It seems like you can't really expect too much out of flying low over a picture that was taken from up above unless you believe in magic??low res version:http://www.crs4.it/vic/data/multimedia/sho...eo111divx_s.avihigh res version:http://www.crs4.it/vic/data/multimedia/mov...ideo111divx.aviI am trying to link the thread that this clip was taken from but I not sure how to at the moment. I don't know how this video was taken but it's very interesting.

perhaps you said this and i just didn't understand:What's the difference between mesh complexity and mesh resolution?