Shhh! Don't tell anyone... MSE 2.0 England/Wales

[PCAviator 30]

As a non-photo scenery kind of simmer I must say this looked very good (but I think I'll stick with my ORBX-scenery for now though).

 

As Joe said the colors are great, with very nice saturation. The photo scenery I've tried previously tend to have a more washed out feel to it. Are you using any HDR plug-in for the shots, or is this the "out-of the box" look?

 

No HDR or any modification to the images. This is how you would see it yourself. 

Note that there does exist some areas in the coverage area which are more contrasted than others... A by-product of the multiple sources needed to cover the entire England/Wales coverage area. 

[PCAviator 30]

Hi Dean,

 

These are very good,  nice coloration and detail.

 

Any idea how old the data is?

 

I am not sure of the date of the data. Perhaps someone here who lives in or is more familiar with the area might know better than I. 

However, note that because we do source imagery from multiple sources, the chance the entire coverage area imagery was taken on the same date, or even close dates is remote. There would likely be a mix of dates for when the source images were taken depending on the area of the country you are in.

That's vague I know!

[UKJim 502]

I've not used any of the hi-res scenery you guys have produced in the past - but I thought I would put this out there... have you guys ever thought about splitting the isles up into smaller chunks and releasing 50cm/pixel versions?

 

I just think many people like the low and slow flights and this is especially for people that use photoscenery - so to get the additional sharpness would obviously be beneficial.

 

I do use GenX and from the images above I do think it looks sharper - but is it enough for people to splash out the cash, I don't know.

 

Thanks,

Jim

[Kevin Firth 114]

Thanks Dean, my view is only that, and everyone else is free to consider me an idiot But the water is a deal breaker for me unfortunately

I'll refrain from comment on the image quality because I've only seen the screenies in my phone but I will compare them with GenX if I can work out where they all are

Thanks for the info anyway, I find your openness about talking technicalities really valuable, there are few devs who do!

Cheers K

[Christopher Low 63]

I have to agree with Kevin. I was under the impression that this product would release with water masks, although that is probably only because Kevin mentioned it, so I will blame him It is a bit of a deal breaker for me aswell, because I love the detailed water masks in the PlayHorizon GenX scenery. If this product had included them, then I would have been very tempted to purchase it, because I get the feeling that the quality of the textures may be a lot more consistent than GenX. There are a few areas in GenX (for example the area around EGDN RAF Lyneham) that look decidedly dodgy as far as quality and colour saturation are concerned.

[PCAviator 30]

Kevin, thanks for your reply. I don't think anyone considers you an idiot. You have valid questions, and hopefully I have answered them sufficiently with the knowledge I have.

Chris, this MSE package also has some elect areas of colour changes and saturation. Hard to tell if they are the same or different areas to GenX or not without seeing the two side-by-side I guess.

It looks like we are going for launch on this package shortly. I think it will not suit some, but others will enjoy it. But then again, this is no different to any other MSE package we have released. You have tolike the photoreal scenery type. Those that prefer autogen/landclass type scenery will not enjoy photoscenery, no matter how good, bad or high-res it is!

[MyPC8MyBrain 273]

looks magnificent Dean; beautiful vibrant colors ; looks like a must have.

 

as a side note in regards to water body’s; these are used significantly in real world piloting

VFR pilots constantly look for the shimmer at the corner of their eye as indicator

[rob16584 42]

I might have missed this in the thread somewhere, but will there be seasonal variations in the scenery or will it just be summer all the way?

[PCAviator 30]

Rob,

 

Summer only. Seasons in true photoreal scenery on such massive scales is not really possible. Well, its possible, but far from practical. We would have to charge a massive amount for the product (a huge workload to artificially seasonalise a photoscenery - there is no source imagery for any other season), the product size would blow out by 4-5x the original (already large) size, and there are other issues to contend with.

 

[PCAviator 30]

I've not used any of the hi-res scenery you guys have produced in the past - but I thought I would put this out there... have you guys ever thought about splitting the isles up into smaller chunks and releasing 50cm/pixel versions?

 

I just think many people like the low and slow flights and this is especially for people that use photoscenery - so to get the additional sharpness would obviously be beneficial.

 

I do use GenX and from the images above I do think it looks sharper - but is it enough for people to splash out the cash, I don't know.

 

Thanks,

Jim

 

Hi Jim,

 

That's not a bad idea I guess. I will pitch it to the boss. We are doing that kind of thing already with the Ultra-Res City packs for the U.S. Cities at the moment. I guess if there was enough interest, then it might be possible, but the downside is that the high-res, smaller areas would end up costing quite a bit more to get the same full country coverage area as the standard MSE 2.0 package. A large chunk fo the cost you pay for the product goes into paying for delivery of the product (server costs, bandwidth etc). Delivery of files in the size and magnitude that the MSE project is handling right now has never been done before in Flight Sim, and not often in any other software field either. California and Texas photosceneries are 100Gb+ downloads each... The average filesize of a MSE release across the board is around 25Gb (Gigabytes). Times that by the 70 or so MSE 2.0 products we currently offer, and then times that by the number of customers who have purchased and download them, you can see the data stream is handling a lot of Terrabytes on a daily basis. This requires some expensive hardware and connections to maintain to ensure good download speeds and solid uptimes so customers can reply on our servers to get their products on a 24/7 basis.

[PCAviator 30]

looks magnificent Dean; beautiful vibrant colors ; looks like a must have.

 

as a side note in regards to water body’s; these are used significantly in real world piloting

VFR pilots constantly look for the shimmer at the corner of their eye as indicator

 

Good point Chris.

I did a flight by pure VFR last night with the England and Wales Scenery. There was more than enough VFR reference points without having to look for smaller lakes etc. The larger lakes and water bodies are still easily spotted in the scenery (even when not wtaermasked) but I can appreciate in other parts of the world, like Texas or desert/remote/undeveloped locations where water bodies for VFR reference points would be crucial yes.

[UKJim 502]

Thanks for that - it is a good point regarding size but I can only give my opinion about it. I would be interested in buying the full scenery package as a 'base' layer, and then if say areas got realeased in hi-res; like East Midlands I would also get that and use that on top of the package. 

 

I mainly fly VFR around East Midlands with flights only lasting a few hours; if I go further I go higher and detail is less important. 

 

It is just an idea I suppose so thanks for taking it on board mate.

 

Jim

[PCAviator 30]

Jim,

 

No problem. Yes you could always use the base package, and just upgrade the higher-res area you live or fly in. I'm guessing a little way down the track, there will probably be an Ultra-Res London package released at least. I guess if we get enough feedback and requests from other users for separate Ultra-Res area packs for England/Wales, the possibility will be explored in more depth.

 

Thanks for the suggestion. Really do appreciate it.

[MyPC8MyBrain 273]

i have to say Dean is shockingly straight up with his answers; as difficult as they may be

as a dev i have to highlight his words; seasonal files are simply the same image

with enhanced or reduced color tone; there is no such thing as seasonal imagery

no one can take clean shoots with overcast sky or pollution; season files has to be manipulated manually

i think not charging for such simple feature is very considerate of MSC

that’s just plain fair business to me

[Kevin Firth 114]

seasonal files are simply the same image

with enhanced or reduced color tone

Only true at the most basic level. There are algorithms that can create pretty realistic hard winter scenes from a basic summer image. That's not just colour tone changes..(please note the spelling Chris if you've seen the latest TA diaries episode you'll understand how superior everything British is ) K

*all ribbing meant in best possible friendly way no offence intended to anyone living or dead real or fictional no animals were hurt in the creation of this post no Arab countries have been invaded whilst you read this but all worldly references to FIFA, Qatar and anything underhand may well have been mysteriously erased by the application of stupendously enormous mountains of cash.

[Christopher Low 63]

That second job as a comedian appears to be working very well, Kevin

[MyPC8MyBrain 273]

Only true at the most basic level. There are algorithms that can create pretty realistic hard winter scenes from a basic summer image. That's not just colour tone changes.

 

may i ask what do you apply those on?

[rob16584 42]

Ultra res London? Who's interested in that? What you need is Ultra-Res Yorkshire, or at the very least Pontefract

[hifly 925]

Ultra res London? Who's interested in that? What you need is Ultra-Res Yorkshire, or at the very least Pontefract

 

And then we could use it for target practice.

 

[rob16584 42]

It could only be an improvement for ponte

[hifly 925]

It could only be an improvement for ponte

 

That would make the population FRACTious.

 

[mutley 4,487]

So long as they don't hit Morrisons and their supply of Piledriver!

[rob16584 42]

It's ok, I know someone who works at one not in ponte

On another note.....

It's released!

Use code ENG25 for 25% discount

[Christopher Low 63]

Dean,

 

Can you have a look at this link to the MSE England & Wales product? The figures don't make sense.....

 

http://www.megasceneryearth.com/store/cart.php?target=product&product_id=861&category_id=171

[PCAviator 30]

Kevin,

 

You may be able to do that (re seasonal algorithm) if all the source imagery was the same colour with no variation etc across the whole country, but think of it as more of a collage where you would need lots of different algorithms to create a consistent end result, and even then, some of those algorithms would have to be constantly adjusted against each other to get more consistency because of the collage of sources. And even then, you still have the data size problem. That is the biggest issue really. Even if you can get a good colour match across all sources for all seasons, each season still needs it own full set of imagery, so England and Wales alone would be more like 120+Gb download for 4 seasons, then more if you wanted to do a "night season" too.