vfr_steve Posted October 16, 2018 Share Posted October 16, 2018 Hi all, New here but an avid simmer since the fs95 days, my first impressions of the new UK scenery are overall great, but... I already have the entire UK at z17/18 with a multitude of freeware object packages, so I bought this first region with great anticipation. Overall the colours and autogen are wonderful (although I've noticed many of the objects seem to be the same ones used in GB Pro) - However I just wish the resolution was sharper, as houses and roads are a blurry mess. There are however many advantages over the Ortho version, being better colours (which are wonderful) and landmarks. However I really do miss the amazing resolution Ortho provides, being able to see gardens, cars, hedges, roads with markings, even sheep is amazing. It would be great if you were able to provide costumers with a higher res version. I may post a few comparisons to illustrate this, as once you see the UK at such clarity, it's very hard to go backwards. Cheers, Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Venema Posted October 16, 2018 Share Posted October 16, 2018 We are using ZL17 but the imagery has been through numerous editing and processing iterations and is also heavily compressed as part of our delivery system. We had to find a balance between quality and product size to best suit the needs of 99% of our customers. We also could not justify the cost of licensing higher resolution imagery. There have been some murmurings around the net about “my ZL18/19 is much crisper and better” but that misses the point of this product. We have provided an easy to install solution that is fully colour corrected with millions of correctly placed trees, buildings and POI 3D objects which is something which you cannot achieve using freeware tools. Whilst some people may have 4TB or even larger disk drives to store a huge amount of ortho on them, that is the exception rather than the rule. As a company we do aim to make a modest profit from our products and if we offered ZL18 or 19 versions of Great Britain it would firstly cost over half a million pounds in imagery license fees, and secondly about the same in hosting and internet bandwidth costs, completely defeating the purpose of making the product at all. It is one thing to use freeware tools to scrape imagery off Bing or Google and not pay one cent for it. It is an entire different proposition when you are a business which wants to use licensed imagery to sell commercially. I’m sorry if this is not the answer you are perhaps looking for but that is the reality of the situation . The reason you recognise some GBPro elements in our product is because we have purchased the IP from the author of that package to use in this and other projects. The internal version we are using has had two years of extra development added to it since GBPro was released. The feedback on TrueEarth Great Britain South on various forums, YouTube videos and Facebook groups is overwhelmingly positive and that the pros of the whole unified colour-corrected package outweighs the cons of our processed imagery. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vfr_steve Posted October 16, 2018 Author Share Posted October 16, 2018 Interesting and thanks for your reply and giving me an insight into the unavoidable 'business' related decisions you had to make. I did wonder how you went about this and appreciate being payware, licences are a huge cost. Z17 would actually be perfect, it's a pity this has been lost in the processing - Would it be too much to offer an uncompressed version to download? As downloading large files is more of the norm for many of us these days (even with terrible internet like myself). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Cooper Posted October 16, 2018 Share Posted October 16, 2018 Hello, at around 127 GB, I think not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vfr_steve Posted October 16, 2018 Author Share Posted October 16, 2018 There are certainly simmers who would be happy to download that sort of size, after all many us already have - But I do get it, we are probably the minority of your overall customer base. I'd love to see some screenshots of the uncompressed version though, as the processing/compression hampers an otherwise perfect product, and I just feel if you have gone to all that trouble of purchasing the images at z17 (which is the perfect resolution vs size vs clarity), it seems a waste to not show them off in all their glory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Cooper Posted October 16, 2018 Share Posted October 16, 2018 Hmm, don't they decompress when installed or am I misunderstanding you? As far as my limited understanding goes, the files are compressed to provide a reasonable download size and the decompressed locally to their original size. At least somehow the 26GB download becomes 125GB or so once installed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vfr_steve Posted October 16, 2018 Author Share Posted October 16, 2018 Yes they do, OrbX have worked wonders to compress all that down to such a small size (I think mine is around 123gb or something) but has this been at a cost to the core resolution? As John mentioned ''We are using ZL17 but the imagery has been through numerous editing and processing iterations and is also heavily compressed as part of our delivery system ''- My point is, the end result looks more like z15 rather than z17 which seems counter productive when you have already paid a substantial amount for a higher image clarity (kind of like converting a WAV file to mp3) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vfr_steve Posted October 16, 2018 Author Share Posted October 16, 2018 Just as I post this, I see another post complaining about the size of GB South... as I say whatever you do will be wrong! But these are just merely my thoughts and please be assured - I love GB South (especially in VR) enough for me to stop using my Ortho. I plan on buying the rest too, but I just feel it's a shame you couldn't have retained the ZL17 clarity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Museumkeeper Posted October 16, 2018 Share Posted October 16, 2018 Hi all GCSE Bitesize Computer Science Compression We use compression to reduce file sizes. It makes it easier to store, stream and download videos, audio and other digital assets. There are two types of compression: lossy and lossless. Lossy compression means removing data to reduce the file size. But lossless compression shrinks the whole file, keeping all of the quality. With lossless compression, files can be restored back to their original state. With lossy compression, once you’ve removed the data, it’s gone for good. Kind regards Ian S Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vfr_steve Posted October 16, 2018 Author Share Posted October 16, 2018 So if it's not the way you have compressed the files that's caused the degradation in quality, it's your processing of the images (maybe during the colour correction itself). I'm only reporting what I'm seeing - and the end result does not look anything like ZL17, thankfully many of the excellent 3D buildings and structures make this less obvious. A side by side comparison of the images would make this very clear (pardon the pun) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Venema Posted October 16, 2018 Share Posted October 16, 2018 Steve, I think this discussion has run its course. We aren't going to provide a higher ZL or any alternative imagery sources. Enjoy TE GB for what it is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fltsimguy Posted October 16, 2018 Share Posted October 16, 2018 Thanks JV, this all seems so logical to me. I have terabytes of ortho, anyone who is into it knows the higher the zoom level the vastly greater data storage requirement. The product is great and a great compromise on resolution in my view. I will add this though, with the inception of your TrueEarth products and more to come, and those of us who are already into ortho, know fully well that one needs to have massive data storage. Lets face it today's world is all about data. So one must buy large (external most likely) HDs, mine for instance are 6 terabytes each, 7200 rpm. AND one must install the scenery on these drives and shortcut link the scenery into the Custom Scenery folder of XP, its simple, its effective. I bought two 6 terabyte drives from Costo each for $114. Look for the deals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
styckx Posted October 16, 2018 Share Posted October 16, 2018 Add me also to understanding the "Give and Take" involved here from a commercial point of view.. John made every valid point possible in explaining it. I'm an avid Ortho user and have all sorts of libraries installed to help make scenery generation "as accurate" as possible.. Maintaining those libraries is also a job among itself. But.. I'll take what Orbx is providing any day of the week over Ortho scraping Binge and dealing with the teething issues that come along with it.. ie: Trees growing in the middle of airports, houses, factories, golf course fairways, clouds caught in imagery, shadows in imagery, bad color capturing.. Orbx have done an amazing job here.. I thought Netherlands for Prepar3D was great... Great Britain South for X-Plane has upped the bar even from that.. It's... It's a work of art.. Every developers hand involved in can be felt as you fly across it.. This was an effort from people you can feel who truly love doing their jobs.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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