Photoreal for FSX

[toprob]

I thought I might do a quick preview showing how photoreal textures display at a higher resolution in FSX. These are just 2.5 metres/pixel, but this is double the resolution available in FS9.
(Blenheim area)

[Chris Donaldson]

Well that scenery certainly looks a lot sharper.

I wont be buying FSX I don't think, 1) I'm not prepared to buy a new computer to run it when I only upgraded a year ago 2) Vista, and DX10 hardware isn't even out & 3)All the addon developers will have to update their software to be compatible

Sorry if I sound like a "cynic" but I have Flight Sim running smoothly now so there's no point messing with it.

I may upgrade end of next year or so, but for now my system has a lot of life left in her

[Zöltuger]

Sorry if I sound like a "cynic" but I have Flight Sim running smoothly now so there's no point messing with it.

sounds more pragmatic than cynical

[Zenith]

I agree with Chris! When I got FS9 my old putter was boarderline at 1.8ghz, 64mb Graphics and 1Gb Ram.
Now a few upgrades it runs smooth as silk plus the few addons invested in that as yet may not be upgradable. Even then I do notice that tha PMDG Beech 1900s still have a frame rate hit, which if theres a slight drop in performance with FSX on my system is bound to make my PC feel like it did pre upgrade runnning FS9.

So no I am not prepared to UPGRADE to FSX for another few years unless my CPU gets cooked.
Got to many spare parts of older PCs lying around going to waste as it is.

Back to topic and yes very nice Robin but I can not see much differance to the photoreal of FS9 and texture improvements that have already beeen released.

[Charl]

Not bad...what's the limitation, FSX or the available aerial photos?

[toprob]

Not bad...what's the limitation, FSX or the available aerial photos?

The standard LINZ high resolution is 2.5 metres, the sim can handle up to 7 cm, apparently.
Going higher in NZ would probably be restricted to the immediate area around the airport, as I'd need to purchase the images. I did consider this for Wellington, but in the end the cost of the images would have added $15 to the price of the scenery. It is tempting, though, to do a scenery comparable to the FlightZone stuff.

My experiments here were to figure out if FSX was restricted to LODs, in which case the 2.5 metre images would still be downsampled to the lower LOD of 4.8 metres, which wouldn't be an improvement over FS9. Luckily it uses the full resolution, so it may be of use to redo the existing photoreal in the future for FSX.
This scenery is also rendered a lot better in FSX -- I think that it's less 'damaged' by resampling, plus it stays sharp futher into the distance.
However to get it down to a managable filesize I'd need to compress it, so now I have to test how compression affects the quality.
Redoing Auckland City without compression would require about 1.5GB. Hmmm, I'd still like to see that....

[kimz28]

I for one would have no problem paying extra for high res scenery around NZ.

Knowing that the hardware spec's are always going to be high as each new version of FlightSim comes out I anticipated this and earlier this year rebuilt my system to be able to handle a DX10 video card when they become available.

Purchasing FSX was never going to be an option for me, I had to have it though I spend 90% of my flight time with FS9 due to my add-ons, and 10% checking out what FSX has to offer.

[Timmo]

Toprob- you should be able to contact Regional or local councils for higher res photos...I have access to 0.8m resolution orthophotos for the whole of the Bay of Plenty as well as higher resolution photos for urban areas (I.e 12cm per pixel around Whakatane)

Not sure what other people charge but we provide a tile for $15 (5k by 7.5k) to members of the public although i have talked to my boss and I could possibly provide some areas free of charge provided that you arent going to make money off it (Dont hold me to that promise though..id have to double check)....

But certainly small areas of interest are do-able for free....i dont mind paying for the images if someone spends the time putting it into Fs9/Fsx (Someone mentioned White Island? We have some nice images of White, Whale islands etc plus Mt Tarawera)

[toprob]

Toprob- you should be able to contact Regional or local councils for higher res photos...I have access to 0.8m resolution orthophotos for the whole of the Bay of Plenty as well as higher resolution photos for urban areas (I.e 12cm per pixel around Whakatane)

Not sure what other people charge but we provide a tile for $15 (5k by 7.5k) to members of the public although i have talked to my boss and I could possibly provide some areas free of charge provided that you arent going to make money off it (Dont hold me to that promise though..id have to double check)....

But certainly small areas of interest are do-able for free....i dont mind paying for the images if someone spends the time putting it into Fs9/Fsx (Someone mentioned White Island? We have some nice images of White, Whale islands etc plus Mt Tarawera)

Thanks for the info, Timmo. I'd be interestied in knowing whether the council owns the images, or just licenses them. In my experience most councils license aerial imagery from Terralink, who are not known for giving stuff away. For example, to cover the immediate Wellington airport area at 12cm would have required 9 tiles @ $300 per tile.

The problem is I do have to charge for my scenery, since this is how I make my living.

I'd certainly like to have a go at a freeware White Island, though!

[Timmo]

Nope, we own them
We have many hardcopy photos, some of which I think are owned by NZAM but the latest photos we have had done (of which we recieved both the contact prints and digital Orthorectified images for use in our various GIS systems) were done for us by and australian firm.....Frugo

The higher resolution stuff for the urban areas is usually via data-sharing agreement (ie In exhange for the rest of the Whakatane district at 0.8m, we got their high resolution urban area photos...id need to check up on how we share/supply that data but AFAIK i can supply it free provided that you make no money off it)

Ill look into it....I may have to make something up about how it will benefit the Bay of Plenty region blah blah