Well, this is my rough estimate. Of course you're free to disagree! :)In my opinion, MS will choose to offer satellite/aerial photoreal images as default scenery only when:1) it will be possible to accomodate it on user HD (and not by internet streaming), and2) when buildings will be directly integrated in the satellite/aerial imagery.So, Earth land surface is about 1,5e14 square metres. If we suppose a texture resolution of 1m and a mesh resolution of 1m (this in order to have "satellite-generated" buildings), and if we suppose 24 bits (3 bytes) to be used for textures and 24 bits for meshes, then we have:1,5e14 * 6 bytes / 1e12 = 900 TB (Terabyte), that is 900,000 GB.Considering a compression factor of, say, 5, we have 180,000 GB.This is about 3,000 times more than what could be reasonably offered today (say, 60 GB).If Moore's law continues to hold validity with regard to hard drives (and it did, until now), HD capacity will double approximately every 18 months. So, this means we will see it in about 16-20 years, around FS2025.Marco

A much more elegant way is to just download for the current flying session the photo real scenery you need-either route of flight or area. Seems like that can be done now. Delete it when done.Aerosoft has a product announced that will add the buildings too.http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

Satellite imagery needs "improvement" as well - some images show seams, others have clouds, still others might have unique issues such as forest fires and the like. All images will need to be brought into unison regarding time-of-day shadows and seasonal effects. Then, everything has to be repeated for night and dusk/dawn scenarios. The amount of artwork that would have to go into "massaging" that much data would be phenomenal. On the plus side, as you mentioned, hardware technology continues to improve, as well as software compression. Still, none of this is impossible, it just takes a lot of expensive work. Jeff ShylukAvsim Product Reviewer

>>Marco>Marco a 300gb drive is in our country already normal ;-)I think it will go faster as you think within three years :-)Terabytes will be sooner as most of us think too lolImagine in 5 years you have a drive of 100TB lolCheersAndr

hmm yeah true andre! :Dhowever... all of the above for Dawn Day Dusk Night... (overcast/sunny?) Winter Spring Summer Autumn... the installation only would already take like 2 months lol :-loldelivered on 12000 blu ray discs :DBetter take a week off from work when starting a flight, Im already having a hard time being patient waiting for FSX to load :(nice post ;-) :-waveshocky :-hahhttp://img7.exs.cx/img7/5379/Banner21.jpg

>however... all of the above for Dawn Day Dusk Night...>(overcast/sunny?) Winter Spring Summer Autumn... the>installation only would already take like 2 months lol :-lolHi Shocky,with a good lighting model there won't be necessary dawn/dusk/overcast textures.Also, remember that night textures are only necessary for populated areas (that is a small percentage of total land surface).Seasonal textures, at most, will double space requirements. That means a shift of 2-3 years at most.>Satellite imagery needs "improvement" as well - some images>show seams, others have clouds, still others might have unique>issues such as forest fires and the like. All images will>need to be brought into unison regarding time-of-day shadows>and seasonal effects. Then, everything has to be repeated for>night and dusk/dawn scenarios. The amount of artwork that>would have to go into "massaging" that much data would be>phenomenal.Hi Jeff,my opinion is that in 15 years we'll have satellite images with much higher quality and uniformity. See above for the dawn/dusk issue.:)Marco

>hmm yeah>true andre! :D>>however... all of the above for Dawn Day Dusk Night...>(overcast/sunny?) Winter Spring Summer Autumn... the>installation only would already take like 2 months lol :-lol>>delivered on 12000 blu ray discs :D>>Better take a week off from work when starting a flight, Im>already having a hard time being patient waiting for FSX to>load :(>>nice post ;-)>> >:-wave>>>shocky :-hah>>http://img7.exs.cx/img7/5379/Banner21.jpgLol yeah but we will have faster CPU too :9A week off that should be great lol but then again maybe we don't have HD's anymore ;-)I love the future :-)Cheers,Andr

>>my opinion is that in 15 years we'll have satellite images>with much higher quality and uniformity. See above for the>dawn/dusk issue.>>:)>>Marco>>Marco I think too that's the real show stopper indeed not enough quality and uniformity pictures indeed...But if you look back 20 years ago it has gone fast with hardware and software and the net...Now you can see your home from a satellite picture with a mouse click away :-)Curious indeed how this all will evolve :-)Andr

I think at some point, when FSX was being developed, that a member of the ACES team (tdragger??) either here at the avsim forums or on their own blog said that the team did consider photographic imagery as an option for scenery in FS. However, like the posts here have pointed out the imagery is either not consistent enough or that it is not able to provide seasonal textures. However, I think if implemented into FS at a later date it could be offered as an alternative. For example if you wanted to fly totally VFR you could switch to photographic scenery through the internet and then revert back to the original textures when you wanted to do some "general" flying such as IMC. I think that in the next few years we will see more photographic acquisition throughout the globe because this data is becoming very important for everyday use. I am from the UK and we are very lucky here to have very good coverage of the country. It would be really nice to see other countries photographed in high detail and available for the average simmer to use. TileProxy has proven quite adeqately that it can distrobute photographic scenery without the use of huge HDD's and I think this should be developed upon.Rhydianwww.cessnasim.blogspot.com

I think the best way to load high definition would be by streaming it from the internet and saving it to your hard disc space (almost like it is now). But it would be cool if there was a way to make a custom path of the high definition scenery you want for your flight. if there was a way to select areas on a map that you want satellite imagery for and then having the simulator preload it to your computer before flight that would be cool. Perhaps some of the hardcore programmers could figure out a way to do this? I bet it's possible.

My fantasy is a scenery databank on line where you can file a flight plan and the system will download (or possibly stream) only the scenery necessary for that flight. Hopefully streaming technology will improve enough over time to make such things appropriate.Dewey

By then, Why rely on textures files? What about having a live satellite feed. We need to start saving and get our own SimSat in orbit!

I like they way you think! Each package of FSXX comes with its own image satellite and launcher right in the box. You charge up the engines with your USB and point it at the sky the next day, when it will launch itself and achieve LMAO (Low Microsoft Atmospheric Orbit). Heaven help you, though, if your satellite de-orbits and clonks someone on the head, or if you have to re-install your software.Jeff ShylukAvsim Product Reviewer

Why not just have your own real plane when you buy fsx. you can then fly FS anywere around the world and have live feed of the scenery you are seeing from your plane. lol

now, well, THAT's just silly :)