are MegaEarth sceneries good?

What is it like if installed over FTX Global? Is it photoreal with or without autogen? it is hard to say from their preview pictures. I have KSTL scenery by Taxi2Gate and they have photoreal area around it, autogenless, it looks like a hairless skin head with hair drawn-up on top of it, not good. On the other head, the photorealism that FTX applied to NCA and SCA is another story, they did much more work than just pasting a cheap photograph that takes 7 seconds to do.

So, MegaEarth, where in between is it? They release many sceneries but there is no discussion about it. Anybody's using it?

Edit: the concern is the regional/state sceneries, like Florida and just release Connecticut etc...

I've been using photoreal scenery for years, including SimSavvy scenery and the various versions of Megasceneryearth. I also have been using the Orbx FTX sceneries, airports and regions, from Tasmania to Australia to the US Pacific Northwest and now California.

I've settled on using BOTH types of sceneries COMBINED together, the Megascenery photoreal for the regional areas and the Orbx for the airport areas. For example, if I have the Megasceneryearth area turned on in the FSX Scenery Library, and I also have the Orbx region (and airports) turned on in Orbx Central, then the Megascenery photoreal scenery prevails and shows up in the general areas, while the Orbx autogen three-dimensional airports and surrounding areas show up in the airport areas. This seems to give me the best of both worlds, scenery accuracy and diversity while flying high, and three-dimensional accuracy when landing and taking off.

Orbx keeps improving their sceneries with more detail and movement such as people walking and leaves falling, while Megasceneryearth is now coming out with their new, very impressive, high-resolution and perfectly-accurate "4X" photoreal sceneries.

There are a lot of issues involved when comparing the two types of sceneries, such as seasons, night lights, water masks, framerates and cpu speed, blending of areas, color accuracy, hard drive storage capacity, etc. It's a big subject.

What is it like if installed over FTX Global? Is it photoreal with or without autogen? it is hard to say from their preview pictures. I have KSTL scenery by Taxi2Gate and they have photoreal area around it, autogenless, it looks like a hairless skin head with hair drawn-up on top of it, not good. On the other head, the photorealism that FTX applied to NCA and SCA is another story, they did much more work than just pasting a cheap photograph that takes 7 seconds to do.

So, MegaEarth, where in between is it? They release many sceneries but there is no discussion about it. Anybody's using it?

 

Edit: the concern is the regional/state sceneries, like Florida and just release Connecticut etc...

I've used MSE Nevada for awhile now. At lower altitudes, it tends to get a tad blurry. However, if you like the idea of flying over your ACTUAL HOUSE, and not seeing a cheap imitation, than it may be for you.

Sorry, I don't have any ORBX products to give an opinion on the two combined together.

The one big disadvantage to me regarding photorealistic scenery is that they only cover one season, Summer, which is understandable since even one season take up a lot of real estate on the hdd or solid state drive.

So I have photoreal scenery for SOCAL, AZ and NM on my system as the scenery in the summer for these areas are, with some exceptions, generally similar to what it looks like for the other seasons.

The one big disadvantage to me regarding photorealistic scenery is that they only cover one season, Summer, which is understandable since even one season take up a lot of real estate on the hdd or solid state drive.

 

So I have photoreal scenery for SOCAL, AZ and NM on my system as the scenery in the summer for these areas are, with some exceptions, generally similar to what it looks like for the other seasons.

+1. I also object to the smashed look at less than about FL200. If you're into tube liners, the smashed look is probably not as much of an issue. However I like to fly low and do a lot of STOL approaches. I really don't enjoy seeing the whole landscape looking like some huge giant stepped on everything, especially buildings and trees, and smashed them flat.

To each his/her own. Try a piece of each and see what works. But remember either style eats a lot of CPU time so if you start combining them as a hybrid solution, you're going to make your computer very busy and probably hugely slow your frame rates.

+1. I also object to the smashed look at less than about FL200. If you're into tube liners, the smashed look is probably not as much of an issue. However I like to fly low and do a lot of STOL approaches. I really don't enjoy seeing the whole landscape looking like some huge giant stepped on everything, especially buildings and trees, and smashed them flat.

 

To each his/her own. Try a piece of each and see what works. But remember either style eats a lot of CPU time so if you start combining them as a hybrid solution, you're going to make your computer very busy and probably hugely slow your frame rates.

Photoreal scenery is less demanding on the cpu than autogen scenery. I get much higher frame rates when running photoreal (Megasceneryearth) scenery compared to running autogen (Orbx FTX) scenery. And when I run a hybrid of MSE for the region and Orbx for the airports, I get higher frame rates than when I run pure Orbx region/airports. That's the way it works with my system - things might be different for others.

I've noticed that in FSX the autogen density slider affects mainly the regional scenery, while the scenery complexity slider affects mainly the airport scenery. When running a hybrid of Orbx airports and MSE regions, the scenery complexity slider seems to be way more important than the autogen slider in regards to frame rates.

I mentioned the hybrid option simply as something that people might want to experiment with. Tastes, systems and situations vary. It's very easy to compare a hybrid operation with a full Orbx operation. All you have to do is go to the Scenery Library and turn the photoreal scenery on/off. When the photoreal is turned on, it overrides the Orbx in the regional areas, but not at the airports. When the photoreal is turned off, you have full Orbx sceneries. This change can be done while flying, without exiting the FSX flight.

Even with a hybrid operation, it's still important to possess the Orbx region (and turned on in FTX Central) in order to have the hundreds of fixed/aligned/upgraded airports that Orbx provides with its regions. With pure photoscenery you usually end up with a bunch of blurry photoreal airports imposed adjacent to the misplaced and misaligned FSX default airports.