Look at this picture

[khaliah]

http://www.flightsim.com/notams06/fsx0104/fsgrab06.jpg

Nobody can't honestly tell me this picture is not fs2004/fs2002 with a better auto-gen. Why can't they use real images for the ground.

[jcmissionary]

Because real images would be too large, for one. If they were to use Google Earth, for example, you would need over 1 terrabyte of HD space. Pixelpoke explains it all here: http://blogs.technet.com/pixelpoke/archive/2005/12/30/416494.aspx

And to be honest, lets keep this "isn't better than FS9" talk in the threads that are already going. I imagine that a number of other people are getting sick of all the "FSX sucks" threads, myself included. No need to start new threads when we've already got:

http://www.flightsim.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=32&topic_id=460&mesg_id=460&page=
http://www.flightsim.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=32&topic_id=416&mesg_id=416&page=

It just looks like you're whining for attention, because nobody is agreeing with you in that other thread. Time to lighten up.

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[madtun]

The Simulator is not even out yet. Give it time. Dont be like me when FS9 came out and I expected it to modify itself and make it's own adjustments. I had to adjust FS2k2 so why not FS9. Guess what you will have to make adjustments to FSX as well.

[khaliah]

I seriously doubt it would take 1 tera. It's just a picture pasted as texture. FS2000 had it in the Las Vegas area. If the 1 tera represent the earth land mass, then that Las Vegas picture was at least 100 megs. Does that makes sense to you?

[madtun]

People add-ons. You ever heard of Mega scenery and FSGenesis. FSX is just the base program.

[Nels_Anderson]

We are gradually moving towards photo scenery. But consider our current photo scenery from MegaScenery and Horizon. Each packages covers a relatively small part of the earth, yet the storage requirements, by today's standards at least, are huge!

But take a look at what's good in that screen shot. It seems to me that the autogen is less repetitive than in FS2004. And, am I imagining, things or do the buildings actually line up with the streets in the ground textures? If so, that's a significant improvement.

[jcmissionary]

Straight from the horse's mouth.

"Jason Dent and I talked a few years ago about what it would take to do aerial imagery for the planet at 8 meters per pixel (Flight Sim currently uses a resolution of approx 4.8 meters per pixel), and we came up with a figure of around a terrabyte (for just one season/time of day, if I remember right)."

Please, take the time to read the article. It'll help, I promise.

Edit: This is my last response in this thread. I'm convinced that no matter what is shown to you, you'll still be convinced that you're right.

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[khaliah]

I read the article when it was first posted. Microsoft has yet to make a 4.8 meter per pixel simulator and that includes FSX. Besides we don't need that type of detail for something sitting under auto-gen. A very low detail imagine of the earth UNDER the auto-gen objects would work and inhance low auto-gen areas.

Microsoft is still working on fsx. We need to let them know what we like and what we don't like. Maybe they can fix or improve.

[RogerA]

A very low-detail image of the earth would NOT work in my opinion. Look at Megascenery, they've got autogen on satelite images. Any lower res than that, and landclass would be a much better looking alternative.

[n4gix]

Just where do you think the SIDEWALKS and DRIVEWAYS came from, eh?

I think some folks need to start OBSERVING more carefully, and engaging their congnitive processes before setting fingers to keyboard!

<sheesh!>

I can guarantee you that ACES haven't even shown 1% of what's in store so far!

;)

[pdecker]

What everyone seems to be missing is the fact that if we came up with a general way to handle arbitrary scenery, (within reason), you don't have to have the whole world on your hard drvie if you have a high-speed internet connection. As with Google Earth, when you zoom in on a section it loads the data as necessary, you could do the same with FS, and load the scenery from the servers as needed. You only need to load the scenery covering the region the aircraft is in.

Problem is that as soon as this were implemented everyone would cry that they don't have a high-speed connection, and that M$ is in cahoots with Comcast or Qwest or DSL/Cable provider X, (where X is any DSL/Cable provider on Earth).

But, I think that this is the ultimate direction that it will take, eliminating the need to have hundreds of Gigs worth of imagery data stored locally, (which if you think about it is terribly redundant from an efficiency point of view, and also doesn't allow easy updates to scenery).

[khaliah]

I respect your opinion but I disagree. FSX needs more work, those pictures are nothing more than fs2004 in make up. Maybe those pictures is of microsoft testing the new auto-gen on the old fs2004 until the real scenery is done. I am very happy with the fsx auto-gen, but the texture it's sitting on has to go.

Ok, enough about graphics. Any word on the atc? That pc magazine, so far, was accurate. Did microsoft solve the go around? Guns on the plane will fix that. Overcast looks fixed. One bit of sad news, this will be microsoft first version of FS without Miegs. Since fs3, my first flight in a new version was always Miegs to O'hare.

[jcmissionary]

Nevermind. It's not worth arguing over.

[khaliah]

>What everyone seems to be missing is the fact that if we came
>up with a general way to handle arbitrary scenery, (within
>reason), you don't have to have the whole world on your
>hard drvie if you have a high-speed internet connection.
>As with Google Earth, when you zoom in on a section it loads
>the data as necessary, you could do the same with FS, and load
>the scenery from the servers as needed. You only need to load
>the scenery covering the region the aircraft is in.
>
>Problem is that as soon as this were implemented everyone
>would cry that they don't have a high-speed connection,
>and that M$ is in cahoots with Comcast or Qwest or DSL/Cable
>provider X, (where X is any DSL/Cable provider on Earth).
>
>But, I think that this is the ultimate direction that it will
>take, eliminating the need to have hundreds of Gigs worth of
>imagery data stored locally, (which if you think about it is
>terribly redundant from an efficiency point of view, and also
>doesn't allow easy updates to scenery).
>
>


That seem like the next logical step, however I think hardware memory will step up. I believe hologram hard-drives will be available for FS12 release in about 7 years. I estimate a hologram-hard drive will hold 10 to 20 teras.

"Holographic recording technology records data on discs in the form of laser interference fringes, enabling existing discs the same size as today's DVDs to store more than one terabyte of data (200 times the capacity of a single layer DVD), with a transfer rate of over one gigabit per second (40 times the speed of DVD). This approach is rapidly gaining attention as a high-capacity, high-speed data storage technology for the age of broadband. "