Greater Toronto Area Enhancement Pack v2.2 (free)

[elmar01 11]

17 hours ago, Keto Ketchup said:

There is a delicious irony that Microsoft finds itself depending on Google to make one of its products much better 😛

The only thing ironic here is that you think you are being clever and witty :))

[canadiantree 233]

I'm absolutely floored by this, thanks so much buddy

[CFIJose 5,485]

7 hours ago, romandesign said:

 

Thanks, glad you like it! Can't wait to experience it myself in VR...

Have some fun! Then, I hope you can bring us an enhanced Niagara Falls.

[CFIJose 5,485]

7 hours ago, romandesign said:

 

Thanks, glad you like it! Can't wait to experience it myself in VR...

Have some fun! Then, I hope you can bring us an enhanced Niagara Falls.

[kama2004 74]

Thanks a lot for the hard work.

[jcjimmy 150]

romandesign

Hi, Many thanks for your work on Toronto and area. I can remember the glass floor near the top of the tower. Quite a view - straight down.

The many contributions to the sim by people like you have been remarkable.

Keep up the good work.

[Roman Design 344]

6 hours ago, DJJose said:

Have some fun! Then, I hope you can bring us an enhanced Niagara Falls.

As far as I know, there is no way to do waterfalls or running water at the moment in SDK. But I am considering doing at least the better mesh to the falls, so they don't look as broken as they do now...

[Roman Design 344]

On 9/24/2020 at 11:00 PM, espent said:

That is a fantastic scenery.

You should add the "Buy me a coffee" button to your download page.

Actually, I just added that yesterday - seems that many people do that, and the flightsim.to has native support for is, and PayPal donations, so why not... Nobody actually donated yet...  If people donat, I may look into doing other areas or more frequent updates.

Just reached 1500+ downloads on flightsim.to plus another 447 on nexusmods.

Edited September 26, 2020 by romandesign

[wthomas33065 994]

On 9/25/2020 at 8:59 AM, Keto Ketchup said:

There is a delicious irony that Microsoft finds itself depending on Google to make one of its products much better 😛

What I find ironic is that people would yell up a storm if MS charged people more money for the product because it had to license the data from Google, when they have already had their own data with Bing.

Also, a lot of areas that have widespread use of Google imagery have a huge performance hit, and this scenery is no exception.

The OP did amazing work and is to be congratulated.  But the performance hit for my system is almost 40% and that's with me locked at 30fps.  So I've had to delete it from my community folder until I get a machine upgrade.

Bottom line is that Google Maps data is not optimized for this product, and can cause serious performance issues when used over widespread areas.  Not a criticism of the OP, just a statement of fact.

So yes, for individual objects Google does wonders (like Devil's tower or a couple of buildings at Kennedy Space Center) but for entire regions, not so much, unless you have a high end system that can brute force their way through the area without becoming choppy.  

21 hours ago, Virtual-Chris said:

BTW, with a lot of the scenery enhancements coming from Google data, it makes me wonder how long it takes before some clever developer comes up with a way to stream Google data into the sim in real time as you fly 😄

1.  Pretty sure that in itself would violate it's fair use policy

2.  Relying strictly on Google streamed data would result in a slide show as it is not optimized for use in MSFS..  Also, Google data does not have night textures, that all has to be done by hand.

Look, Google Maps is great and I'm glad that the freeware community can utilize that data (until Google decides to say Nyet).  But it's a bit over the top to praise Google and bash Microsoft when the Google data isn't designed for MSFS, does not perform as well in MSFS, and if it HAD been utilized by Microsoft would have added cost to the final product.

[Roman Design 344]

31 minutes ago, wthomas33065 said:

Also, a lot of areas that have widespread use of Google imagery have a huge performance hit, and this scenery is no exception.

The OP did amazing work and is to be congratulated.  But the performance hit for my system is almost 40% and that's with me locked at 30fps.  So I've had to delete it from my community folder until I get a machine upgrade.

Mine is more or less best case scenario for a scenery that large. Any detailed scenery in any sim has always ment an FPS hit. Take any complex commercial MSFS scenery - you will see a hit, although perhaps a smaller one if it's well-optimized. I have taken all emasures possilbe to minimize the impact: 3 LOD levels, manual optimizing of the meshes (merge by distance in Blender), manualy removing as much as possible of the mesh (ground, trees etc.). And most importantly - only doing a selected blocks of buildings, not the entire regions etc. But Google meshes are very complex, so yes, the FPS loss is there. More than with a scenery created from scratch from simple models. But most other Google-derived sceneries don't use LOD and often don't have color correction, so the result is much hogher FPS hit, and a bluish bright look in the sim. Mine doesn't have that. But still, you will pay fir a few FPS for the nice looks, that's life.

Edited September 26, 2020 by romandesign

[Barnes 192]

Is there any way to install individual objects from the scenery, rather than installing the whole thing to save some frames? 

I would like to be able to pick out the individual scenery items that are important to me personally, without installing the entire area.

For example, when you are approaching the downtown area from a distance, the stock Bing version of the CN Tower looks like a melted candle. Your version looks great from a distance (and up close) and I would like to install just the tower without the rest of the Toronto scenery.

I would love to be able to run the whole scenery, but my system can't handle it.

Edited September 26, 2020 by Barnes

[wthomas33065 994]

1 hour ago, romandesign said:

Mine is more or less best case scenario for a scenery that large.

I was not trying to criticize you in any way.  In fact i know you have tried to make the area is impact free as possible.  What my point was is that as great as Google Maps objects are, they are not optimized for MSFS, and as thus should not be seen as the knight on the white horse that will save MSFS from itself.  

Google didn't design the stuff to be flown around at 30 to 60 fps with fluid motion, so it's understandable.  

[RJC68 823]

Romandesign,

You sir are a hero. Thank you so much for giving this to the community.

I can’t wait to try it 🙂

[andy1252 3,862]

@romandesign, let me add another "thanks" for this. Got it yesterday - love it.

[ryanbatc 12,856]

Wow, impressive work....that looks like it took some time!