dtmicro

@rlkjmt23 ------------------------------ There are ways of simply programming a texture load with more textures without having to provide a sophisticated texture map for each individual area. For instance, by using border areas, cities, and other things to provide more variety they can apply different textures in different areas that border other areas. Also some of Orbx rock textures are too sandy/muddy and need more rock. I am sure it's more work, but they are spending too much time on flooding us with new mass produced airports for $30 every few days than they are on actually working on new textures. They appear to still be using many of the same textures they created 2+ years ago? So some of the objects at the airports are pristine (I know auto-gen is different), but the point is they definitely have quite a bit of room for improvement. A lot of these Orbx textures were not even hand edited, they were just images broken up by texturing and then using averaging, that is why the trees don't blend. I've seen more advanced texturing even in some old PC games like Just Cause 2 (admittedly it has a better and more up-to-date engine), but the graphics cards are at least able to allocate about 1.5GB of memory to FSX, and those who are able to do UsePools=0 without artifacting mostly have the textures in the card's memory from my understanding. So IMHO, they need to stop focusing so much on airports and work on re-vamping mountain textures and blend-zones, that is where they are the weakest. I am impressed by Orbx's ability to model in 3D using polygon friendly techniques, but I am not impressed as much by their texturing (Some of it is good, some of it not). If I were at Orbx, I would release a new texture pack and sell it for another $50 to $100 or something, call it HD Texture Enhancement. I think we need more variety, as good as Orbx stuff is, sometimes I feel like flying Photo-Real because of the better textures like in TP.

Interesting comparison, below you can see a 30cm shot from TP in the Grand Tetons. I think where TP shines though is on mountains and land textures, not always above cities unless you are flying 500+ AGL or maybe even over 2000+ AGL. The problem I have with TP is that I cannot reliably keep the textures at 30cm even when I have the area cached, it usually falls back to 60 or 1.2m unless I pause or reload. Not sure if it is my settings or my config or TP itself. I just got a new PC so I haven't optimized this one as good as my last one, even though my last one was slower I didn't use as many add-ons as I do now. This is a 30cm shot in the Tetons, and this time my textures are fully resolved.

Not quite to that extent, but you got the general idea. Is that screen you posted from Orbx or something else?

Orbx textures are pretty good, no doubt, and like many noted it will only get better. My one complaint is they haven't built enough variety in their textures yet, but that may be due to performance. They are using too many repeating textures in some places (the PNW pine forest one with the black checkerboard ground, that is used way too much across all their regions). They also need to work on their rendition of mountains, sometimes their holgermesh looks like a holger-MESS. Probably harder to do in FSX than in some engines though, but we know it can be done properly because we've seen some mountains look great. The mountains in PNW don't really look that close to the real mountains (been there many times), they are too generic looking. The mountains in CRM in some places are better, but the Tetons are kind of messy looking close up. If only we could see near Photo-Real mountains everywhere we go and have a better variety of textures, for now I'm holding off on FTX Global because I am already getting sick of some of the textures in Orbx's standard regions. They are good, but they need more variety.

See screenshots below for Orbx true Photo-Real where they actually used more pure PR techniques without much modifications... The best graphics Orbx has to offer is at their Stewart airport (I haven't seen Juneua yet though), but at least what I've seen so far. Too bad they cannot make the whole world look like this I take back what I said before about Stewart Airport not being 100% masterpiece, it definitely is. For some reason I had to reboot my comp as my textures were loading wrong before. I flew all over the place the last couple days, and thus far I must say that the Stewart Airport in Canada still wins, but I don't own all their airports. There may be some New Zealand or Australia airports that can match it, but I have doubts. Many of their airports are not worth the cost, but this one definitely is. I would venture to even say that the Stewart Airport is the best graphics ever made for FSX, most likely. The blending of auto-gen and true PR at this airport is nothing short of a miracle. When I flew into it in 3D, I got goose bumps and felt like I was really flying in Canada. The sharpness of the textures were even greater than those screenshots show, as the JPEG compression de-sharpens them somewhat.

Why do you guys run Dx10, just curious not meant as a trolling question... Did it give you better framerates on your system?

Interesting, see that is exactly why I was complaining about no color correction in MSE 2. MSE has been around for a while, and while many other providers such as thsi one are now including color correction and 30cm areas of some airports and cities for areas under $50 (albeit usually smaller areas than MSE), some of the MSE products I tried had color akin to a purple chicken. I mean I have 24 core PC's that used to be in a DC sitting here doing nothing, I could probably color correct an entire state in 3 days just leaving the computer alone. Please let us know how this looks, I may bite.

Easy, because they were the cheapest two haha... You get what you pay for!

It has to use the unsigned driver to always automatically overlay the scenery top most in real-time and to process the hooks and files. There might have been a way to do this without an unsigned driver, but he likely didn't get the same warning in XP when he was originally developing it so that he didn't want to rewrite it for Windows 7. I've written programs for XP in the old days where they did weird things in 7 (different warnings), as it is a totally different security model.

I will give another one of your products a try, since some others PM'd me and said they think Northern Nevada was one of the worst ones in the whole collection and that only the Vegas area looked right (some of Vegas scenery looked right). Tell me this though, since I did not like Hawaii or Nevada, what is the best you have in the collection, would you say NH, Texas, or Vermont, or what, if you had to pick just one, which one came out the best? I really was not trying to bash your product, but I've been to some of those areas in real life, and it looked so far from reality that it was just disappointing a bit

It is more for fun relating to comparing the best Orbx spots and figuring out where those are so we can fly them more often and enjoy the best scenery Most people know it since they've used all the products, but the lurkers may not find it in a thread. When I was lurking in here after having only used PNW demo, I was not able to find any info about how the other areas looked, and Orbx screenshots did not do it justice IMO (their videos were better). I was NOT inclined to buy ORBX products because I did not think the PNW demo was so much greater than other stuff I had. The only reason I even tried Orbx was because of the Stewart airport videos, once I saw that I had to try it. Orbx is pretty good though, people are missing out if they are judging a small demo area and expecting that is what Orbx has to offer.

Probably true, it's like owning a golf course, rich people often don't do it because it's the most profitable thing, they just want to tell someone they own a golf course Any business where hobbyists are rampant always ends up being tough. I think Orbx with FTX-Global and some of their newer stuff coming though is doing quite well, or is about to. I expect their sales are going up not down. I didn't mean to imply they were, but they have enough to pay some overhead, and we know VC's wouldn't touch this business with a 500-foot pole, so someone is doing some sales. I agree it is not a good business money-wise, but it's so fun to do... If I were doing everything for money, I'd have probably been a dentist not a computer guy, but sticking hands in peoples' mouths is not my idea of a fun day

But having spent all day yesterday comparing Orbx to Photo-Real, there are many areas where you can spot real buildings. Missoula has a bunch of the real buildings, so does Bozeman, and so does Portland. Though I agree it is sparser. They may not be exact duplicates, but in all honesty flying VFR in Photo-Real the buildings are too smushed to be as recognizable as if you were flying VFR in a Cessna at low altitudes in real life. Plus I was able to follow an interstate highway between cities and it pretty much perfectly matched Orbx's rendition, and some of the buildings did match, even saw a tourist stop that eerily matched the real buidlings between Great Falls and Helena.

Yah I imagine disk duds can be an issue, but assuming a more high-end burner using better commercial software would work (admittedly haven't tried). Automating the burning process would be a little expensive too, like you said not enough money in it to put all your efforts there. Somehow though Orbx is squeezing out a decent amount of money, but I guess they are the only one (maybe them and a few of the plane and airport designers). I am just saying I don't think your produce has lower sales just because of the market, I think people buying Orbx means less money to buy your stuff (even if they want PhotoReal as well). Competing with Orbx is hell, but they are not without their faults. Like I said their PNW auto-gen texture is pretty bad, plus they are not exactly doing all these tiled textures by hand either, a good majority of them are photo-based tiling tricks, and then they are just tweaking them by hand.

Yah, I wouldn't go into this for the money, but it's fun. I'm not an expert modeller, I'm a programmer that's done light modelling on the side as a hobby (and a little professionally when coding and modeling overlapped). I am actually better at 2D texturing than I am at 3D modelling. That's why I figured I'd give this a shot just for the heck of it... You may not think you compete against Orbx, but you do. If I am flying Eastern Oregon where the Orbx textures are so close to Photo-Real that when I visited Bend it looks nearly precisely how I remember it, then yah you are competing with Orbx

It does take a lot of time to download, but it is a one-time thing for someone doing a mass distribution, but my point was it's like anything else, once you've done it once, you know how to do it easier the second and 50th time. I can do my downloads from a Gigabit DC connection if I want though, and I'm assuming so can they. Cogent bandwidth and a few other providers have gotten dirt cheap, so it's not really that expensive to just download them. Now letting everyone download them from you does cost some bandwidth, and I realize that is part of their $40 cost, but it's really cheap to just mail out some burned Bluray disk copies USPS (At least in the US). I agree with you guys though, if MSE is barely breaking 1000 copies, then I am wrong, that is a harsh business. I figured as long as they've been around they were doing better. Also, let us not forget that Bluray readers are very cheap now-a-days, and that you can burn some pretty large size disks. I think a better model is not downloading these things, but instead to ship them out when it comes to Photo-Scenery. I wouldn't have an issue with the $40 if it was clearer and color-corrected, there are some simple standardized ways of increasing sharpness in textures with some standard filtering techniques. I am a videophile so I am a bit OCD about this stuff. BTW, also keep in mind I am on a 106" screen, some of you guys are playing on an LCD monitor! So I see every flaw in its GREAT blown up glory. Oh btw, cannot say this enough, don't forget to calibrate your monitor (even if just by eye) to get FSX looking better, because I find a default calibration doesn't look as good.

50 TB is do-able these days in a storage array if you are willing to spend the money. You can find 2-4 TB drives in bulk OEM for about 70% of newegg cost sometimes. It will cost a couple thousand in hard drives, but some people have spent more than that on just a single Yoke and controls Anyhow, darn these forums for getting me hooked on this hobby (hehe), now I've got all these huge plans and no time to have a real life. Right now I'm using a projector, but I want to use three in one of my spare rooms and project an entire cockpit, but I also would like to figure out how to make it 3D without having to wear glasses (not just passive 3D, but active 3D without glasses). I'm thinking some type of active panel material in front of the screens. Anyways that is off-topic. My dream though is a full-sized (well bigger than full size) 180 degree cockpit made with 3D projectors

Thanks for the comments, I didn't realize the project was owned or sponsored by you, my bad. Yah, that is a tough business then, my fault (I did say either or). I figured it might be, but I do appreciate the info you provided. 1000 copies is tough, but I think your problem is the Orbx scenery, you need to figure out some new techniques instead of using pure unsampled maps. I am not expecting (but am hoping) to be able to get to Orbx quality for at least one thing I make, I mean I can dream. Hard to say what my own limitations will be as I used to graphics work all the back to the 1980's, but after a month of studying in FS-Developer, oh my this is a difficult thing to do. Modeling and stuff like that is simple compared to dealing with FSX limitations, heck anyone can open up Vue 'd Esprit and make something awesome (3DS Max is harder), but I mean in general the FSX SDK does not make this stuff easy, nor does the frame rate issue. I am not for knocking the other guy down or just trying to make a bunch of money (that's not why I do this of course), I just love doing it. It'd be great to make a living doing this than my regular job, but I know it's a fat chance 1 in 100 at best (if that). FSX is one of the harder methods I've ever seen for compiling sceneries, ouch... So many technicalities, and the fact it's a sim means things need to be in the right place generally, in other games/apps you can cheat with that.

Some of the problem is their source maps (USGS isn't that great, it's ok), but there are ways to get better quality and to re-sample. Garbage In/Garbage out does apply to some degree, but these days there are very advanced ways of re-sampling and re-mastering things. I don't understand why they are claiming they don't have enough money or sales to do any of this (come on). If that is true, this most be a horrible business or they are just hoarding the money because they have no competition. I am seriously contemplating releasing my own Photo-Scenery as some freeware at first, then if I can get it good enough maybe some payware (a big IF, I am still studying). I've been coding for 20+ years and have done a lot of re-sampling graphics over the years, so I have the experience, but FSX limits you to what you can do. Regardless of how technical you are, FSX is limiting and it requires trickery. The problem with MSE 2 is they are not sampling the photo-real correctly, the fact that a re-sample would affect all textures is not true, you can resample based on histogram and charted color response (or a hundred other ways of re-sampling only certain areas). That said, I am not giving all my secrets away as I want to do my own scenery. I am just working on a single airport for now though, might take me 6-12 months of learning before I can even START to build a region, unless I were to just download USGS maps like MSE 2 did and release those, sell them for $40, and claim it took a developer a bunch of time to do that (some time for water masking, otherwise there was no DEV in this). The cost is too high for a near-zero dev project. I know it's harder than just creating your own photo-real quickly in FSET or similar, but the truth is that other than the water masking, they didn't do a single darn thing. Yes, there is complexity navigating the USGS site and getting the right files, and then compiling them, this takes some time to figure out, but it certainly isn't worth $40 state

Tileproxy will work differently for everyone, it depends not just on your connection speed but how fast a particular cloud server that is providing the maps is loading to you at a given time. It is better after midnight (sometimes). It's because I am presuming MS throttles now, I used to fly at 60cm with very little pixelization at around 300-500+ knots in some areas by flying a square pattern (but I wouldn't call it in flying in circles either). You can sometimes fly at 60cm without too much trouble if you are lucky, but it depends on a lot of things. Also you really have to experiment quite a lot to get this done by lod exclusions so that TP doesn't download too much data. Best and easiest solution is to just auto-pilot square or circular waypoint patterns overnight, then come back. That said, TP has some caching bugs (or something), sometimes even when an area is cached exceptionally well it resets when you load FSX. Though that area will be better after the re-load, it will not be fully resolved. I had over 1+ TB of TileProxy cache on my drive one time, so I should know. The caching bug is the main reason I quit Tile Proxy, though some may have better luck with it. Actually I didn't totally "quit" Tile Proxy as every now and then I'll fire it up, but am enjoying Orbx more now. I started a thread showing some problems with Orbx as well, though many times Orbx looks great, they are not without faults either. All of these methods have their advantages/disadvantages. Personally though, if Orbx just re-did some of the tree texturing, I'd pretty much be in constant FSX nirvana. Please Orbx, focus on fixing auto-gen trees, your trees are sometimes worse than MS default auto-gen... STOP using the same auto-gen trees that you created 3 years ago! Their trees around airports are often exceptional, but their black checkerboard auto-gen tree texture has to go. It bothers me so much I've tried to find the file to replace it myself for my own personal uses! http://forum.avsim.net/topic/425893-screenshots-orbx-uses-photo-scenery-too/

I created a new thread to post some Orbx screenshots to demonstrate Orbx's use of PR tech. If I have time, I may do a three-way comparison of some areas (Orbx vs. TP vs. MSE 2), but not right now. I am just focusing on Orbx screenshots at first. Orbx is a strange breed in certain areas as they mix True PR, some PR, tiled PR (fake but real), and autogen together. Sometimes it works very well, and sometimes it does not. This is the starter post, but I will get some better ones as I come across them during flying. Let me grab some Stewart shots. Here are some of the Good's and Bad's of Orbx Photo-Real: GOOD (Missoula) Blends in nicely overall and everything works together, grass texture is likely fake PR (generic tiles based on real photos though). Some of the city area around here appears to be REAL PR mixed with auto-gen, like the buildings. Some of it has to be real PR or tiled PR because I saw shots of cars in parking lots that were not rendered. BAD My textures weren't fully resolved in this shot (apologies), but it gives the general idea of the shot. Orbx needs to re-do the tree texturing they use on the left side. I see this same texture used in PNW and I do not like it. It is too abundant and it ruins many areas when flying low to mid-level. It looks OK in the very far distance, but close up it looks bad. The texture on the right (sand trees) is better, though that one appears to be PR tiles (fake PR derived from real PR). The black checkerboard texture Orbx uses in so many places HAS got to go, please!... Acceptable (not bad) Here we have a shot kind of between the other two, I much prefer the sand-tree texture over the PNW tree texture, even though it is not perfect it maintains a more realistic and less-pixelated look. If only Orbx could spend more time on their tree texturing. There is some blockying of the textures because I am flying really low and fast, if I paused it they would clear up eventually, also flying in a relatively complex auto-gen area (Missoula). Ok will post some more that is the start. Going to get some PURE Photo-Gen from Orbx next from Bozeman, Stewart, and maybe Alaska later. Here is a shot near Bend, Or that is not true Photo-Real but looks very close to how that area really looks (I've driven all over the PNW area in real life and around Bend). Good job Orbx for a NON-PR Shot looking like PR!

Agree, you need 100+ GB of cache for TileProxy to start to shine. I know I know, though what I meant was TP doesn't look as good in all areas, some areas are better than others. That said, for people that really want the end-all of all experiences, you need a 3D projector. I am not a fan of 3D, as a matter of fact other than an occasional animated movie, I don't really watch 3D movies as they drive me crazy. However, with the correct 3D projector, Microsoft FSX comes alive (it's alive son, heh j.k). I use a Benq w7000 which cost about $2000, but you can now get some good 3D PJ's under $1000. In 3D, the textures automatically look better and higher-res because it creates extra dimensions. The only problem is the airport lights and night flying is useless. I am not sure how 3D on monitors compares to on a projector, as I've never tried it. Microsoft FSX + Orbx was made for 3D, this is the only game I ever play 3D in, and it is like these two are soul-mates. Again, I think some will be surprised at how good Orbx can look (2d as well), Orbx own screenshots don't do their own product justice funny enough. Their screens aren't nearly as high quality looking. Orbx free PNW region isn't near or even close to how good some of Orbx is. Flying now and grabbing some of the best Orbx shots

This is going to be a LONG post, so my apologies, for anyone not wanting to read a long post, please skip over For those of you trying to find the best scenery and that don't own much Orbx stufff yet, I think you might find some good info in here. I think much of Orbx stuff is better than TileProxy on average, even though at its best TP can look better than Orbx. I will post some Orbx screenshots in a moment. The big disadvantage to Orbx is they mis-textured some areas and some of their trees look bad when flying low sometimes (but that is ok because a lot of Orbx stuff is mind-blowing quality). Orbx is magical in some regions. If your machine is configured properly and you fly at the correct speed, then Orbx looks Photo-real in many places even when a certain area doesn't have much PR coverage, because I think they based some repeating textures on Photos, so really there is a lot of near Photo-Real Orbx coverage if you know where to look. The desert mountains N and NW of Bend OR are fabulous looking. The mountains right outside of Stewart airport from Orbx if you buy it and own PFJ as well are true photo-real in a small area and those look good. The grass textures and city area of Missoula, Montana is I think a mix of PR and regular by Orbx and is incredible and a masterpiece, as well as the Spring and Summer textures around Bozeman, MT (if you buy the Bozeman airport). The winter textures around Bozeman also look good (though a bit cartoony). The Grand Tetons though (but maybe Jackson airport helps this) aren't that great by Orbx, they are ok. I own CRM but not Jackson airport (will get Jackson later). The Tetons lack definition and it takes a while to load them if flying close up. Orbx does best at mountains that are in real-life somewhat rounded, rather than steep cliffs like the Tetons. I think the 2 weaknesses of Orbx are that and the trees, but otherwise Orbx is near perfect. Steep cliffs also require more complex loading in FSX, rounded mountains are easier on the game. One thing is many people are probably not seeing Orbx textures at full quality because sometimes they don't load fast enough at 1920x1080x32 (at least on my i5, not sure about an i7). Flat areas (even photo-real) pretty much always loaded fine from Orbx on my machine, but the mountains texture-lag to me unless I am viewing in the distance. Hence, closeup mountain flights Orbx textures always had loaded too slow for me. I decided to play at 1280x720 instead, it doesn't look much worse (occasionally some pixelization in clouds), and the instrument panels are harder to read, but otherwise if you want textures to load faster, this might help maybe (not sure still testing). I will try 1920x1080 again, but for me right now 720p is working better even on my 106" projector screen. I'm able to fly 250+ knots without Orbx textures lag-loading on me too much. I think a lot of the tweakers online are full of BS so be careful about those, of course HighMemFix and UsePools can help, but many of those tweaks just mess your system up. So I don't use TileProxy that much anymore, I think Orbx is funner and less hassle. I'm not trying to make trouble, but those screenshots above are not even close to realizing what TP can do. My screenshots from the other thread were not edited, that is not true. Microsoft Bing maps bought the highest detail possible around their hometown area (Seattle and Tacoma) and the source quality there is unbelievable. Go fly just south east of Tacoma, WA and see for yourself. THIS IS NOT EDITED... Tileproxy is an absolute monster to configure properly, you can make it work much much better by excluding LOD's and using the correct mapping provider. The problem with TileProxy isn't just the connection speed so much, it's the map providers throttling. In the old days, I flew over the Rockies without caching at around 500 knots and the textures kept up as good as Orbx textures. I don't have that great of a machine anyhow with my i5 running at 3.7 ghz. That said, if you want to fly just any flight path, then yah TP requires an insane amount of caching. You need to get it to around 100+ GB of cache just for some of the popular spots in the Western US before you even start to fly around properly, which means about a week of setting up auto-pilot flights in circles. There are places where TileProxy cannot work right with the current map provider, these places include Hawaii and Arizona and a few other states (some of AZ and Hawaii look right, but much of it doesn't). The biggest disadvantage of TP is straight-up cliffs in some cases to where it darkens them due to a lack of angle on the photo. It however can do Rocky Mtn Park and Glacier Mtn Park pretty good for the most part. If you only buy two things from Orbx, definitely get PNW and CRM and then fly Bozeman to Missoula (or was Missoula NRM), anyhow do Bend to Govt. Camp, Bend to Eureka. Much of those flights will satisfy your photo-real cravings. None-the-less, My next post won't contain rambling, just screenshots

MSE 2 and Tile Proxy are very different if going purely by MAX possible graphics. Yes, MSE 2 is much more convenient due to not needing to pre-cache stuff, but TP can look like a high def photo or a Discovery Channel video if you have an area cached in 30cm. Those are pretty blurry for what TP can do. Takes a lot of caching to get max quality in TP, you need to choose the Addon Menu from within FSX and then select TileProxy > Refresh Scenery unless you already have an area heavily cached (either that or fly in circles or pause the game for a while)...

Unfortunately it is no longer being maintained but the last version works pretty well (Beta 8). You have to use Bing Maps / Microsoft for the best results, and at least a LOD of 6.5 with at least 60cm textures IMO. If you are the type that only has a few hours per week to fly or mess around with this stuff, then I don't really recommend TileProxy because it takes caching time and setup time, tweaking, and all kinds of other stuff (and sometimes can be frustrating). So TileProxy takes a lot of patience and repeat flights, for TileProxy some nice flights are as follows: a) Colorado Springs to Rocky Mtn National Park area is pretty high res from MS b ) WA-State around Tacoma and Seattle is probably the highest Res c) Telluride to Ouray is pretty awesome if you get it pre-cached you can fly pretty fast between the cliffs as the mountains don't require as much loading as a flat scenery d) Most any of the big cities look really good but it takes forever to get them cached e) Pretty much anywhere in the US looks good if you get the tiles downloaded, outside of the US is hit or miss You need a LOT of HD space for TileProxy (eventually 100+GB),