dtmicro

Not sure if a thread like this already exists, but I thought it might be interesting to see some videos posted here in the forums instead of just in Youtube which highlights interesting aspects of FSX: Post video links of tricks / landings / effects / airports / new add-ons, etc... I find that on Youtube searching does not always bring things up correctly and sometimes the videos are too long, so how about short videos like 2 mins or less that highlight interesting things to do in FSX? Is this a bad idea, if so a Mod can delete it? I'm not much of a video maker, but here are two to get started: A Landing of the 757 Freemium at Orbx's Stewart Airport: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqYABqs3YRk Before the landing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZFSnL5Bj-M Note: You wouldn't normally land a 757 at an airport like this (especially in bad weather), so that is kind of my point on videos. Something unique and interesting... I'm sure other members have better ones. I say we generally stay away from crash videos... Video Ideas Crosswind landings, problematic takeoffs, interesting things a plugin did, bizarre looking clouds, incredible scenery, cool airport effects, etc...

If people think I am just being picky, let's take a look at these 2 shots: Here is how MSE 2 renders the color near Minden, NV (south of Reno) And here is a more accurate rendition of the same area: Now let's please keep in mind that not only is this Payware, but it is one of the more expensive payware sceneries, so no I am sorry, but I'm not impressed.

Here is an example of something closer to the real color of the tallest mountains outside of Vegas (even Nevada has some greenery above 10,000 feet). The next pic is near Elko, NV, but in the game these mountains are covered in a black looking slush and brown sand. Nevada is a pretty barren state, but the taller mountains don't look anything like in MSE 2 Nevada. People flying MSE 2 would think there isn't even a single tree in the entire state of NV and that the mountains are covered in black and brown slush texture

Yes, those are the same quality I was seeing around the Vegas area, which it is ok looking on an LCD monitor but not blown up on a projector. The color however is still pretty off, and the Central Nevada around Elko was really bad both resolution wise and color-wise, as well as Reno (almost no color). The orthoimagery from the USGS is very inconsistent which is why a developer selling a product at $25 to $40 a state needs to work on more re-sampling, not just water masks. If the cost were $100 for the entire US, I might not be complaining, but at $2000 I think I got a right to say something

It's a fair comparison if you can make TP load as smoothly, let's use Orbx then. Orbx has nice color everywhere, regardless that at times they overdid the auto-gen and repeated textures too much, their color is pretty good. What it comes down to is if you just really want to fly in Nevada, then yes this is way better than the default FSX scenery (no doubt), but I have a feeling another scenery maker might have made a better version of Nevada, no? I might be moving to Nevada soon, so I really wanted to fly there. I will stick with TP and just use some pre-caching waypoint flights on auto-pilot until I get most of NV downloaded. That is just too much more satisfying then dealing with this, sorry, that is IMHO. Please do not let my statements deter your enjoyment of this scenery, though I personally feel like some of MSE 2's stuff is shafting us because they are not doing anything dev-wise other than some water-masking, they are simply throwing the entire image of the state without even modifying a single thing, and charging up to $40. You can also use any program yourself and by following a day's worth of youtube video's, you can make the entire state of NV in better quality than this (sorry).

Yah, I took more time just now to take a closer look at MSE 2 and instead of flying NORTH, I decided to start in Henderson. The mountains there were clearer and I rebooted to make sure I had a fresh swap file and clean memory. Some mountains had decent definition and I think playing on a smaller LCD monitor I'd be happy flying even as low as 1000 AGL over CERTAIN parts of the scenery as long as the textures were loading at the speed I was flying properly, but I had to circle or pause a few times to get them to load completely, but in a way I almost feel like TP might be just as good even for a semi-fast flyer by setting up TP as a much lower res (hadn't tried it much). Is it worth $25, maybe on an LCD monitor in some parts of the state, on my projector not really (maybe $5). My personal issue is that I just cannot enjoy this severe drop in color and quality, and that I'd rather spend time dealing with TP pre-caching than dealing with this. However, I also just now briefly flew out of Elko, NV towards the Ruby mountains, and there was no color, and that is not how the ruby mountains look by any stretch. MSE should have applied some color correction and minor re-sampling, and I know the point of a Photo Area is to not over-correct, but some of their photo areas do not even look like the real areas due to terrible color and blotchy imagery.

I think I tried Grand Canyon scenery from BSS once, and I think MSE 2 was probably as good or better, but maybe others will weigh in as perhaps my rough opinions have made me look kind of jerky, but I really didn't mean to. I even get irritated at Orbx at Stewart airport because it was such a masterpiece but their freaking autogen on one side of the hill and randomly blocky areas when changing my angles while trying to record videos made a masterpiece not quite a masterpiece. And trust me the mountains in the backdrop of Stewart as you are facing the standard runway starting direction (forgot which way that was), well looking forward those mountains are nothing short of Photo-Real jaw-dropping BLOW TileProxy away amazing. Overall though like everyone else even Orbx has trouble with consistency or too repetetive at times (and yah I know it comes with the territory, Orbx is the best overall I think). Another masterpiece area of Orbx was between Bozeman and Jackson Hole, the grass textures they used there and snow textures at Bozeman airport are nothing short of eye candy greatness. The Grand Canyon is pretty hard for anyone to do, we need Orbx for that one, the problem is on very high cliffs most sat photos mess up the look, need aerial photos too.

OK fair enough, but I thought it was right because from a very far distance the mountains looked fine. I will mess with again later, but let me see if I can get a clearer shot. I am very very familiar with all the tweaks, and I have everything near max relatively speaking in the configs. 4096 textures, 7.5 LOD, all FSX sliders near or at max except autogen, and LD = off (Land Detail works ok I just don't particularly like it). Unless MSE 2 just fails with high settings (kind of doubt it).

It's because that particular angle and what not, I agree the pic was worse than it could have been, not intentionally I just took it fast. In the MSE one I am flying lower than it looks like, I was about to crash into the ground and mountain. I agree it wasn't the best comparison shot, I rushed it, but I took 3 screens and the other 2 looked even worse over the city with all the smushed buildings in MSE 2

I am trying to potentially get into building my own airports and sceneries and I have been studying different products on how they do things. If I am ever able to release my own, I will welcome the same harsh comparisons and criticisms so that I can figure out how to make it better. However, I doubt I would have done what MSE did and not at least try to add something custom to the maps (I mean anything, even some optional resample filters like TP does, even the FREE TP has some color filtering). MSE does nothing to the photos from what I can tell, and we all know MSE has had some decent sales, they have plenty of money to do SOMETHING (anything, I mean come on)... Also, because TileProxy requires that you either pre-cache the data and that you repeat flights and since I use my PC for DEV + a lot of flying, I don't always feel like repeating flights. Also TP's load-times are inconsistent and sometimes MS / Bing maps seem to throttle your bandwidth after using them too much (but that is just one theory of mine, not sure). So TP works differently in different situations, it also isn't perfect, but I am just saying I cannot live with MSE 2 on a 106" screen. On an LCD monitor maybe when I am flying high.

I don't think it is my settings, you are flying above the hills pretty high. I noted some shots would probably look a little better because I didn't sit there and try to find the best shot nor was I flying high. However, those screenshots though a tiny bit better are still pretty rough. Honestly, my intent was not to bash their product or make people feel bad that bought it, I was simply giving my opinion that on my 106" projector screen, it looks awful.

No, I'd have suggested that they properly sampled the USGS maps in the first place and that they at least spent some time cleaning it up. Otherwise what did they do, they used a program to just compile the maps. You think their DEVS spent anytime on this, no they did not, they just let their PC sit there and compile the maps. Look at Hawaii, that's why it came out that way and then they tried to say "oh we are working on getting better images", yah really because you sampled it automatically and didn't look until the entire state was done so you said, hey we can still sell this for $5 while looking for better images. Then I might have suggested that they use some re-mastering techniques and other tricks, as well as possibly getting a few higher quality aerial photos and re-sampling for at least some of the state. They are expensive, but they can get aerial photos of some places in some states especially Nevada which has an abundance of aerial photos available. Orbx has some nice PhotoReal in some areas that is done properly, and they sell their regions even cheaper than MSE 2.x's state, and in many cases the Orbx area region is even larger, even though the PR area is overall smaller...

Let me get some coords and I will post them, but I think it's easier if people judge for themselves on their own machine by trying both products. I don't know what this is going to prove, that MSE 2 doesn't use mostly unedited USGS maps and charge $20-$40 per state slice (or $2000 for the US for something they get almost free)? Perhaps, but seems that way. Tileproxy at 60cm looks better than MSE 2 at 50cm, my settings are maxed out, I have spent countless hours optimizing my settings, unless somehow my higher settings are ruining MSE 2 (but it doesn't usually work that way). I wanted to find a PhotoReal product to free me from the bounds of TP's slow loading and pre-caching flight requirements, but this isn't doing it for me. I didn't buy MSE 2 with the intent of bashing it, but that is what is happening because I really feel it is junk.

Again, it is the closeness of the image, you are flying way too high. Again, try flying 500 feet AGL not 15,000+ and don't show such a distant horizontal perspective. Videos flying that high and far prove nothing, it depends on the angle of the video to what distance you are viewing something at. I am sorry, but I did not edit the Nevada image in any program other than labeling it in MS Paint, I took the image VERY quickly last night and did not have time to do any cherry picking. The reason I took that angle within MSE 2.x is because there were buildings behind me and so I had to completely reload the game/scenery to switch between TP and MSE, so I didn't mark my spot exactly as to where TileProxy had left off. I will try to provide a better MSE 2 one, but I would have to fly much higher most likely. I can include city shots, but then MSE 2 looks so far worse than TP in cities that it would be even a less fair comparison.

There are ways to change it in mid-flight, but it has to reload unless you use an add-on or script it yourself. I'm not an expert in that, you'd be better off posing the question in the fsdeveloper.com forums or in a forum where this is a TileProxy thread specifically about TP (these are semi-dead, but I think a few are still barely active). You can exclude LOD's, it is in the ProxyUser.cfg, I agree 60cm also looks good, but at 30cm I can fly pretty low. One thing about TileProxy that helps, is you need to set a plane on auto-pilot with waypoints while you are away from the PC to download the scenery areas you need. You set the pattern in kind of circular fly-out search pattern (think many 8's connected like a slinky). Then it will have some of the scenery pre-cached, but Tileproxy seems it doesn't always pre-cache correctly either (sometimes). I never figured out why it does that, but I think it has something to do with it never having the full area in full res. TileProxy will essentially continue to download endlessly until the area you are flying over has every texture downloaded at full res within the total LOD radius. I don't know what all it's capabilities are as far as mixing scenery like MSE 2 and TP, as I never tried it, but I assume it would need to reload when changing between them unless you somehow make an invisible layer or just use some LOD Stacking utility or something, not sure how to do it manually.

It's because of how close I am to the ground and where the mountains are in relation to the direction of the satellite photo they used. I don't think people are going to take someone posting from a store that sells their product seriously as a debunk (no offense). I am not trying to damage anyone's reputation that makes scenery or hurt anyone's sales, but at the same time MSE 2.x is using some pretty newb and cheesy Photo-Real techniques. I was comparing closer shots, sure if I take the shot far enough away MSE 2 looks a bit improved but IMO still not good enough on a big screen. His video appears to be taken from about 15,000+ feet AGL plus his video is using horizontal distance perspective (so it's more like several miles), mine is taken only about 1000 feet in front of a mountain and relatively close to the ground.

Tile proxy vs. MSE 2.x comparison screenshot below, you be the judge... In that video above you are flying very high and the screen is shrunk, it is hard to judge FSX by videos sometimes because videos have different AGL's. IMO, MSE is doing nothing more than re-distributing un-edited US GS maps that are provided as freeware by the US Geological Survey. I don't think MSE even has any licensing costs for what they are selling. I do not mean to bash them, but unless people are pretty well-off money wise and not willing to compile it themselves, I don't believe most of you should be bothering with MSE 2.x. On a 106" screen MSE 2 is unbareable to me if flying below 15,000 feet. In Tile Proxy I can fly at 500 feet AGL. In this screen shot, I apologize that one image is in another perspective. I will post some other TP screenshots if people want to see more comparisons, but it's not even close. I think many people that try Tile Proxy do not set it up correctly, it is not simple to setup. Tileproxy is the only time I've ever seen true photo-real looking graphics thus far in FSX... Well with the exception of the sparse Orbx photoreal areas, like Orbx @ Stewart airport, but the problem with Orbx Photo-real areas is they are blended into the repetitive forest / tree texturing and it doesn't always look right. Orbx weakest area is the autogen trees (but at the same time the fact Orbx has autogen is also nice at times), but autogen is too repetetive after a while. Again, you be the judge... MegaScenery Earth Nevada 2.x vs TileProxy The TP screenshot above was taken while flying at 1,154 KIAS, it was cached from a previous flight of course. People could say I cherry picked the image, but I didn't, if I compare "non-custom" random city areas in TP vs. MSE 2, then MSE 2 loses even more so. In any city that you don't have a scenery pack for, Tile Proxy still looks good at 500 AGL, MSE 2.x looks bad above cities even around 6000-10,0000 AGL. IMO, MSE doesn't know how to correctly apply LOD sampling in their scenery, they are using a single unsampled LOD and because of that it looks bad. That is why MSE 2.x crushes buildings so extremely. All Photo-Real will give a slight crush/flat effect at times, but nothing as bad as MSE 2.x does. I use a special lod exclusion technique in Tile Proxy to speed up rendering, and the key to acheiving these results in TP is the 30cm at 7.5 LOD radius with custom vertical lod exclusions.

Just for a taste, here is TileProxy flying near Tacoma, WA --- this is a real shot I promise And some parts of the SW US look almost that good in Tileproxy, not quite, but almost. The above takes a lot of tweaking to get it to look like that. A shot of TileProxy flying through the Mt. Rainier foothills, look at the detail of the trees even in this LOW fly-over. I can't always reproduce this quality in TileProxy, it varies, but when the quality comes through this good, it is amazing, and IMO even Orbx cannot match Tileproxy sometimes... The issue with Tileproxy is that every flight the quality seems different, to some degree. I should qualify my post and note that I am playing on a 106" projector screen, if you are playing on an LCD monitor, it will probably look a lot better, depending on how big your monitor is. I think Orbx stuff looks good on my 106" screen (most of the time), but MSE 2 is blah. Tileproxy is very tough at that speed, but it is all hit or miss. There are places and times I have flown at MAX 30cm quality in Tile Proxy at 1000+ knts, but lately I am having trouble replicating that as it seems after a while MS / Bing might limit your bandwidth. I have a 25Mbps connection. I flew at that speed on a route that was already cached. Tile proxy will cache a route, but it seems to me what Tile Proxy does is only cache the lower resolution version and then re-downloads and re-samples it in real-time. If you fly a route in TP repeatedly enough, it starts looking as clear as those two screenshots (in certain places). Really steep canyons like the Grand Canyon are about the only thing that gives TileProxy issues. Even flying into Reno I don't notice smushed buildings because by the time I am low enough to notice, I am already too close to the airport most of the time and not seeing the city anymore. Also, some city add-ons do overlay on top of Tileproxy just fine, and most airports do as well, which can make for a mesmerizing experience.

I don't want to be a sour goose, but I am not impressed by MSE 2.x scenery and I think the Nevada one was my last purchase. I am sorry if I am coming off harsh, and apologize if we are not supposed to post our real opinions, but here is my real opinion... The houses, rocks, trees, cliffs looked smushed even from 8,000 feet AGL, this is unacceptable. The clarity of the mountains are good from like 10 miles away, but close up look pretty mediocre, in a few spots better than others. To me it appears they are using USGS sources and throwing them together quickly with little or no hand-editing other than just compiling the graphics. I could make these sceneries myself at a higher resolution. Tileproxy blows MSE 2.x away if you have a fast enough Internet connection, even Tileproxy's inconsistent loading still looks better than MSE 2.x. Sorry, that is just my opinion, I hope I don't ruin anyone's enjoyment of this scenery, as I might still enjoy flying over the mountains at a very high distance, but it's hard to use this after seeing Nevada in Tile Proxy. Heck I flew into Reno in TileProxy using Bing maps and I could fly as low as 200 feet without any smushing appearance of buildings, it looked REAL. This does not look real it looks like a bad sample. I am sure some of the problem is 50cm vs 30cm, but I think it really seems they are doing nothing to fix this problem, I mean come on, enough people have bought their stuff where they can kindly figure out how to resample the houses using aerial photos, at least of the major cities. And... how about an option for them to provide us 30cm sampling at an extra cost, it would be worth it, 50cm does not do it for me. I would at least expect 80% of TileProxy quality at 1000x the price, cause after all TileProxy is free!

Sorry for the newbie question, but as this is one of my only payware aircraft, where the heck is the knob or button to adjust the auto-pilot heading, looked all over the virtual cockpit. I know I know, RTFM --- but it is A LOT to read and I have eye strain right now...

I just bought it (downloading - haven't tried it yet), though I'd rather they sampled stuff at 30cm instead of 50cm. I tried their Hawaii 2.0 since it was on sale for $5.00 due to the sat photo issue of clouds. The Hawaii one was pretty bad even forgiving the clouds on ground issue, I mean overall the detail just was not there and the cliffs were blackened due to photo angle. Hopefully this Nevada one was worth the $23 I just spent, figured it will be nice to close in the Orbx gap between WA-OR-ID-CA-ROCKIES area, so that almost the entire NW is now covered. So far from what I've seen TileProxy looks best for PhotoScenery but you have to fly in circles and it fails to properly perma-cache tiles even when you set it to do so (it re-downloads them anyways). Overall Orbx probably still looks the best even though Orbx is only partially photo, with TileProxy a close second to Orbx only if TileProxy is working at its best in a specific area, and MSE 2.x a distant third. Note that using Bing's server in TileProxy houses do not look flat until you fly lower than about 200 AGL, in MSE 2.x they look flat even from 1500 AGL. So they did something wrong in some of their samplings.

My favorite thus far is probably Stewart Orbx (CZST), not just because of the graphics (which are some of the best in the game), but because it is one of the few bush airports I can land a 757 on I practice my No-ILS 757 landings at that airport, I am about 50/50 thus far in living through the landing The Instant Replays are incredible at that airport.

You can land a heavy almost anywhere, just set a massive crosswind and do a side slip + crab + stall combo landing technique and you can place the plane basically like a helicopter almost . Not sure that even works in FSX, you'd probably need an add-on.

I've been using Flight Sim casually on and off since way back 20+ years ago in the super old versions. I've never bought payware in all that time believe it or not, but finally the bug hit me. 1) Not an add-on, but bought a New PC (My old Quad Core wasn't cutting it), but now I also realize I should have bought an i7 and not an i5, so I'm RMA'n the CPU only for an i7 and re-building. For others looking at a new PC, I highly recommending skipping the cheaper i5's, you'll be dissapointed in big cities like Seattle/Portland/Vancouver, etc... It's pretty unplayable in certain areas even after doing the tweak guides, unless you really crank things down. 2) Bought all the ORBX Regions at once except FSX Global (will buy later), and only bought 2 airports. 3) Bought the Stewart Airport (CZST) and Bozeman, MT (KBZN). I doubt I'll buy all the airports, as they are kind of expensive for the purpose of just seeing some extra graphics and enhanced grass. I bought these two because I watched videos of each airport, and these two looked like candidates to be some of the best out of the NA areas, plus I need one airport large enough to land Heavies (hence KBZN). I highly recommend both these airports, CZST and Bozeman are amazing! 4) Bought Rex Essentials + OD, paid full price one day before it went on sale (what a bummer!)... Great program though. 5) Bought the Carenado B200 HD, my first payware aircraft. Honestly I was a tad dissapointed, it was ok but I don't think the flight mechanics are very realistic (the pitch is way too sensitive, in real life if a plane flew like that they'd send it back to the physics department). I use my FSX on a projector @ 110" screen and do 3D sometimes with the glasses. There is nothing more REAL than doing FSX in 3d on a projector, you can buy all the add-ons you want, but nothing will come close to this. I am only saying that to inform others, forget measly 30" cockpit monitors, setup a 3D projector system. One thing though, my middle-aged eyes get tired in 3D after an hour or so, so I don't fly always in 3D, only when I am on a scenic ride and it is one HECK OF A RIDE!

Here is another thing many people may not realize about this stuff, one very important aspect to how these textures look is the color calibration on your monitor. I don't mean you need to do a D65 calibration, but I actually use a non-standard "by eye" calibration that bumps the GREEN gray-scale levels up above normal that gives the grass and trees a MUCH richer look to them. Sometimes you lose a little realism on some trees, but the grass looks more like it just rained outside (how the desert looks after a summer rain). Realism is a somewhat debatable topic for scenery, because some times of the year scenery looks better than others in the same place. The color adjustments on your monitor makes a BIG difference at improving the richness and saturation of the textures, and a default calibration or what looks good in most games does not look as good in FSX, FSX needs a bit more HSL bump and Green + Blue Gray-scale. Also make sure to do the FSX.cfg tweaks and NVIDIA Tweaks as this can greatly affect the way textures look, by default most NVIDIA video drivers down-scale texture quality. In FPS games you want it to do that, but not in FSX because 3 more FPS isn't worth a hit to the quality, anything at 20-30 fps usually works, though some would say its smoother at 40-50 fps (may be true, but I'm used to 25-30 and works for me).