PhotoReal Scenery - What is it?

Can someone tell me exactly what PhotoReal Scenery?

Is it just a label or type of scenery add on?

I've got FSX VFR GenX Photoreal scenery for Southern England, here my Tiger Moth is flying over Henley-on-Thames.

Every road, street, alleyway, rail line, chip shop and your house etc is in its proper place because its basically simply a photograph of the ground. Hills and mountains are there too.

But as Lesh said you have to stay above about 1500 feet or it looks blurry lower down.

And as Gridnorth said its good for navigating by eyeball, I keep that map open on my lap as I'm flying like lightplane pilots do, great fun..:)

PS- I also use the Treescapes program which puts 3D trees in there.

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/FSX-TMothb.gif

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/FSX-henleyb.gif

It's scenery usually produced from satellite imagery of the real world. From my experience, it looks excellent from several thousand feet plus, but at lower levels it tends to look flat and increasingly pixelated as you get lower. The packages that I tried also displayed without autogen so, again, looked odd and unrealistic below about 1500 feet. However, I have to say that it been a few years since I last tried it - that said, because of the way it's produced I don't imagine that it's improved much at low level.

Another issue is quite often the texture colors will clash with the default

ground colors, which will make the photo scenery stick out. I had some photo

scenery of KHOU I tried for a while, but ended up taking it off because the textures

really clashed with the default textures. So you see a big glaring square around the

airport, surrounded by the default textures.

Another issue is many or most only show one season, which would be the season

in which the original photo's were taken. I saw this in photo textures of MHTG, where

the ground textures seemed to be brown winter textures. It's not brown around MHTG

too much as I far as I know. So in the warm seasons, a section of brown surrounded

by lush green. I did ponder repainting the textures to make a "green" summer version,

but never got around to it.

And like many, I'm not too crazy about flat earth with no autogen. When I'm sitting

on the runway, I like to see stuff on the horizon like buildings, trees, etc.

But if properly color matched, photo scenery can look really good when above 1500-

2000 feet or so. And it's generally better for VFR flying as it shows actual real world

objects and roads.

But.. I went towards the "ORBX" global and vector route myself, as I don't like a pancake

earth, and I do still like to fly low and slow at times over good scenery when not playing

airline buoy.

With FTX Vector, I do have accurate road and river/stream scenery for VFR. But

my buildings are all autogen and do not match real world unless a specific scenery

show small sections of photo real textures, or you see large buildings which are added

via scenery, vs the autogen.

Myself, I was willing to live with that to have a more lively world down low.

And it all looks about the same when flying a tube liner at 30k plus, so doesn't matter

a whole lot either way there, except that Global added much better night lighting.

So the vector added highways and such are usually better lit, which they would not be

on the photo textures unless someone layers lights over them. Some do, some don't..

In the case of say the Latin VFR MHTG scenery, they used photoreal and scenery buildings

with autogen both. So it still looked pretty lively down low. Came out pretty good actually,

except that there was only one season, which was the one that is usually not in effect

there the majority of the time.

Actually feathering photoscenery to help it to blend with the surrounding default is quite easy. Ideally of course, you want to cover the whole area you want to fly over in photoscenery. Many of the packages available are indeed quite large.

If you want to try some for free, pop over to Bluesky, who have some great scenery covering some of the USA.

You can also make your own with FSEarthTiles if you are so inclined. I made some stuff for the UK Channel Islands, which I enjoy (but for the fact that I can't get or make decent mesh for it and the default doesn't fit well).

IAN

If you want to try some for free, pop over to Bluesky, who have some great scenery covering some of the USA.

IAN

Blueskyscenery.com is a great way to get familiar with photoscenery. Good call, Ian.

Yes. No buildings. No Trees. Just the underlying mesh (=ground elevation = hills, ridges etc.)

Unless you put your own buildings in or use some autogen (=buildings and trees) product for the region you have the photo scenery for. There are some around.

I enjoy photoreal scenery. I still use the now defunct Sim Savvy scenery.

Yes, it's flat while on the ground, but the plus side is, better frame rates. And once in the air, I can fly over my house....my real house, not a generic one!

Negative is, as was mentioned, it's only summertime textures, so flying in January and seeing lush green trees and such is weird, lol. Especially when I see snow fall outside my window..... Haha.

Not all photoreal scenery is 'flat', in my experience. I have Bluesky installed for the SFO area and he has used the default buildings and merely added to what's already there for a very nice look.

By "flat" I think people mean no autogen.

Default non-autogen objects should show up on any photoreal.

Certainly you will see airport buildings and custom scenery objects like the CBD and the Golden Gate, I doubt you see trees and houses in the neighborhoods.

peace,

the Bean

Negative is, as was mentioned, it's only summertime textures, so flying in January and seeing lush green trees and such is weird, lol. Especially when I see snow fall outside my window..... Haha.

While this is true for most commercial photoscenery out there, if you were to decide to create your own photoreal scenery through sbuilderx or others, there is an option to create seasons as well.

It's scenery usually produced from satellite imagery of the real world. From my experience, it looks excellent from several thousand feet plus, but at lower levels it tends to look flat and increasingly pixelated as you get lower. The packages that I tried also displayed without autogen so, again, looked odd and unrealistic below about 1500 feet. However, I have to say that it been a few years since I last tried it - that said, because of the way it's produced I don't imagine that it's improved much at low level.

Again, this depends on the photoreal scenery. A few years ago anything below even 2000 feet might have looked weird, but depending on the level of detail of your satellite image, nowadays it could look really good even at 500 feet.

Here's another batch of VFR GenX Photoreal screenshots I took in FSX-

A Taylorcraft Auster over Plymouth, England, I can see my house, the funfair on the Hoe, the chip shop, Mayflower Steps, pub, it's all there-

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/sub2/FSX-GenX-Plymouth_zpsqljhnoiy.jpg~original

Still in photoreal, this is a Magister over Windsor at about 2000 feet, the buildings are pancake flat but at this height they look like 3D-

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/sub2/FSX-windsor1_zpslzphtgpi.jpg~original

Dropping down to below about 1000 feet, the 3D illusion is beginning to disappear and things are getting blurry.

Incidentally that's Windsor Castle in the background in true 3D, there are various other 3D landmarks dotted around too like Cathedrals etc, and London is full of 3D buildings-

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/sub2/FSX-windsor4_zpsmm3lcmgy.jpg~original

Dropping even lower, the 3D illusion has gone except for Windsor Castle.

Incidentally I use the 'Treescapes' addon prog to add 3D trees, they really bring the scenery alive, (and there ARE hills and contours in photoreal)

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/sub2/FSX-windsor5_zpsjz4dadvs.jpg~original

By "flat" I think people mean no autogen.

 

peace,

the Bean

Exactly. Photoscenery is not flat (as in 'no elevation') at all...