John Venema Posted December 19, 2018 Share Posted December 19, 2018 For those concerned about the cost to store ever larger TE regions on fast storage, PC Gamer predicts that the glut of NAND memory will force prices down in 2019, with 1TB SSDs heading below $100. https://www.pcgamer.com/solid-state-drive-pricing-could-drop-even-further-in-2019/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W2DR Posted December 19, 2018 Share Posted December 19, 2018 Maybe you (or anybody) can help clear this up for me John. Other than the initial load times, what are the benefits of putting scenery files on SSD's rather than much less expensive HDD's? I've tried it both ways and since the in-game performance appears to be the same on either device , at least to my old eyes, I just don't get it..........Doug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Venema Posted December 19, 2018 Author Share Posted December 19, 2018 SSDs will load your flights much faster and also improve performance mid-flight as the sim loads in new scenery when you cross one scenery zone to another. SSDs have been known to help cure the 'stutters' a sim exhibits when loading in new scenery files. SSDs have no moving parts so are much more reliable as well. Here's a good article comparing the two technologies: https://www.stellarinfo.co.in/kb/ssd-vs-hdd.php Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FILOU Posted December 19, 2018 Share Posted December 19, 2018 In its category with its great capacity it is the most affordable even if it remains expensive but for the TrueEarth fans it can be the solution. SSD 860 QVO 4 To (500 euros) https://www.samsung.com/uk/memory-storage/860-qvo-sata-3-2-5-ssd/MZ-76Q4T0BW/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W2DR Posted December 19, 2018 Share Posted December 19, 2018 Thanks John. Interesting article. But, for now, I'm sticking to HDD's. Merry Christmas...........Doug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Braun Posted December 21, 2018 Share Posted December 21, 2018 On 12/19/2018 at 8:32 AM, W2DR said: Thanks John. Interesting article. But, for now, I'm sticking to HDD's. Merry Christmas...........Doug Horses for courses I guess. Me, I'll take digital spindle over physical any day. Night and day performance AND MTBF. It IS the Twenty-First Century after all. :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craigeaglefire Posted December 24, 2018 Share Posted December 24, 2018 Merry Christmas to all the Orbx flight simmers & team! & i have a simple wishlist... if all TrueEarth & CityScapes require huge amounts of storage into the future - multi TerraBytes - it seems silly that FTX Central cannot distribute Orbx assets over multiple drives (with DRM asset management)... Nick Cooper was so helpful to get me going with the Link Shell Extension (LSE) solution - alas, it failed me once & i cannot ever try that solution again... on the subject of SSDs - i believe that for 2019 you would need at least 2TB SSD to accommodate FULL Orbx deployment with P3D v4+, let alone XP11... only with P3D v4.4 - lots of Orbx (no True Earth regions) - i am using about 500 GB SSD space (on Samsung 1TB)... your thoughts would be most appreciated... cheers, craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tennyson Posted December 24, 2018 Share Posted December 24, 2018 4Tb Samsung SSD's are under the 1000 bucks in Oz. I paid nearly 800 bucks last year for a 2Tb, so the costs are dropping quickly, Frank Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craigeaglefire Posted December 25, 2018 Share Posted December 25, 2018 you are absolutely correct, tennyson my nuance is that there are SSDs & SSDs... i cannot find a 4TB Samsung NVMe drive @ moment (a whole heap faster than regular PCI SSDs)... & further to my comment - i agree that 4TB (rather than 2TB) is just about a fully loaded/optioned flight sim sweet spot - to cater for EVERY add on - future-proofing... all the best, craig australia Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tennyson Posted December 25, 2018 Share Posted December 25, 2018 I'm not so sure about future-proofing, as I have a lot of scenery add-ons and fully loaded, I still only get to about 800Gb, running Win 10 Pro and all of the sim gear (including all of my avionics and associated cockpit software), so at the moment a 2TB is ample. Who knows what will happen if we have more True Earth software to load. Frank Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craigeaglefire Posted December 26, 2018 Share Posted December 26, 2018 once again tennyson, you are correct... it is simple to say 2TB - allow for formatting & 10% headroom you are looking at safely 1.5TB max... 10 x TrueEarth regions will gobble up, let's say 700 GB + Pilot's NG 2018 mesh + P3Dv4 itself + the huge amounts of add on airports we have deployed... i come from a P3D space... it does not take much more calculation - when you bring XP11 into the equation - that a 4TB SSD (probably safely deployed at 3.2TB maximum) just about covers all bases according to the Orbx 2019 roadmap... thanks for your time & consideration, craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craigeaglefire Posted December 26, 2018 Share Posted December 26, 2018 & further discussion, tennyson the Orbx 'True Earth' deployments do not excite me that much - they are very much, very rough - True Earth approximations (lots of inaccuracies)... even on sale they did not tempt me... i have heaps of Orbx regions & airports - overall very happy... FSiPanel is brilliant for practising landings... i'll deploy a 9900k, RTX2080ti, Z390 mobo & Samsung 2TB SSD NVMe M.2 combo very soon... all the best, craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antonvs Posted December 26, 2018 Share Posted December 26, 2018 On 12/20/2018 at 12:32 AM, W2DR said: Maybe you (or anybody) can help clear this up for me John. Other than the initial load times, what are the benefits of putting scenery files on SSD's rather than much less expensive HDD's? I've tried it both ways and since the in-game performance appears to be the same on either device , at least to my old eyes, I just don't get it..........Doug Hi Doug, there is another good reason to use SSD’s that seems to not be recognised. SSD’s don’t get fragmented therefore you don’t need to regularly run a de-fragmenting tool (in fact you should not). This to me is a big plus as it saves time and means that your drive remains optimised. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W2DR Posted December 26, 2018 Share Posted December 26, 2018 Granted, I don't fully understand what's involved is estimating TE sizes but just looking at the west coast of the United States (California, Oregon and Washington) the size in square miles is roughly 20 times that of the Netherlands. That equates to some 1.4TB for those states alone. I must have missed something. I still have no clue as to how much storage will eventually be needed but I hope it's not that much..........Doug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FILOU Posted December 26, 2018 Share Posted December 26, 2018 3 hours ago, craigeaglefire said: & further discussion, tennyson the Orbx 'True Earth' deployments do not excite me that much - they are very much, very rough - True Earth approximations (lots of inaccuracies)... even on sale they did not tempt me... i have heaps of Orbx regions & airports - overall very happy... FSiPanel is brilliant for practising landings... i'll deploy a 9900k, RTX2080ti, Z390 mobo & Samsung 2TB SSD NVMe M.2 combo very soon... all the best, craig Hello craig, That TrueEarth do not interest you it's one thing that I respect but let me add that you have with TrueEarth the best scenery that exists in its category.There is only one scenery that has a higher level than TrueEarth and nothing else,it's the real world. Cheers, Filou Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lawrence aldrich Posted December 26, 2018 Share Posted December 26, 2018 3 hours ago, craigeaglefire said: & further discussion, tennyson the Orbx 'True Earth' deployments do not excite me that much - they are very much, very rough - True Earth approximations (lots of inaccuracies)... even on sale they did not tempt me... i have heaps of Orbx regions & airports - overall very happy... FSiPanel is brilliant for practising landings... i'll deploy a 9900k, RTX2080ti, Z390 mobo & Samsung 2TB SSD NVMe M.2 combo very soon... all the best, craig For what it's worth, I'll second that....so far Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Venema Posted December 26, 2018 Author Share Posted December 26, 2018 I’m confused here. Are folks saying that TrueEarth is less accurate than our landclass based regions? You actually can’t get more accurate than using aerial photos of the real world in their correct position, unless you fly a real plane. So please enlighten us about any “inaccuracies” you’ve found? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W2DR Posted December 26, 2018 Share Posted December 26, 2018 Please enlighten us as to how much storage the furure TE releases are going to take. I'm trying to put together a new system and I haven't a clue as to what the HDD/SDD requirements are. Please understand thatI have 22 drives on this system and the configuration of the new system is critical. Once I commit there is no going back.....Doug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthew Kane Posted December 26, 2018 Share Posted December 26, 2018 1 hour ago, W2DR said: Please enlighten us as to how much storage the furure TE releases are going to take. I'm trying to put together a new system and I haven't a clue as to what the HDD/SDD requirements are. Please understand thatI have 22 drives on this system and the configuration of the new system is critical. Once I commit there is no going back.....Doug Hi Doug, Systems are supposed to be expanded upon over time, not sure why you are saying no going back. You get best value for your dollar if you are expanding your needs over time according performance needs and market prices. Buying now for the future doesn't make any sense unless you want to pay quadruple now to meet your needs a year away. Drives can be added anytime down the road when needed. I would consider drives to be consumables and expanded only when required. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W2DR Posted December 26, 2018 Share Posted December 26, 2018 Be that as it arguably may, there is still nothing available that addresses the size of the coming TE files. Why does no one from the ORBX staff want to talk about this issue? It's a simple question...what are the probable storage requirements for future releases? Or, has it already been discussed somewhere and I just missed it?.....................Doug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FireRx Posted December 26, 2018 Share Posted December 26, 2018 Seeing that the TE will only enhance what we already have installed Base ,regions, LC's, I don;t see us getting the file size issue we had with Netherland since it was everything over Global base. Am I wrote in that assumption, Big John? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craigeaglefire Posted December 27, 2018 Share Posted December 27, 2018 to John Venema & Orbx team, to clarify my comments, i believe that the current Orbx deployment system (disk management) is very substandard for 2019... to cut to the chase, i believe we loyal Orbx users require some flexibility to allocate disk installation locations (rather than forced into - in my case - the LM4.4 installation folder)... when we start talking about the current & upcoming TrueEarth series for both P3Dv4+ & XP11 - a 2TB NVMe M.2 drive when formatted & allowing for spare disk-space headroom is cutting it extremely fine - even if this '2TB' drive is dedicated to flight sim, which is a luxury considering a lot of us have other 'gaming' titles (i cannot find a Samsung 4TB NVMe M.2 drive at the moment)... i hope i have expressed myself clearly - Disk Management flexibility (particularly SSD) for the user is the issue... best regards, craig australia Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tennyson Posted December 27, 2018 Share Posted December 27, 2018 To get back on track here and re-direct the conversation, I was merely pointing out that the 4Tb series were very affordable now (sub 1000 dollars), so I'll be looking at adding that to my already 2Tb drives, not substituting. And as for the comment about de-fragmentation, it is still important to maintain an SSD by trim and keeping it lean by removing all the dead and orphan files. I have regular maintenance intervals where I do maintenance on my drives, do updates and fix small issues within my cockpit. The systems we run do not maintain themselves, yet! Frank Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthew Kane Posted December 27, 2018 Share Posted December 27, 2018 Some on this thread seem to have the mindset that ORBX should just stay in place, that is the wrong way of thinking. ORBX should push the limits with everything available from the latest Hardware from Video Cards to Solid State Drives and CPU's, etc. that is how the technology moves forward, that is how this hobby moves forward. No one has to get TrueEarth if that doesn't suit you. You can still use EU England, or you have the option to get TrueEarth England if you prefer, You could still use NA Pacific Northwest, or you could also use TrueEarth Pacific Northwest. Keep your old drives as long as you like and skip out on TrueEarth altogether, that option works fine for some too. Photo Scenery takes up lots of space, always has, and always will, if you want to take advantage of TrueEarth you will need more space and faster read times, that is just the reality of it, all the comments on these threads will never change that. FTX Central will change too as ORBX has already pointed out upcoming changes to make downloading faster as well to accommodate the demands on the servers, I look forward to all of this Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Clarke Posted December 27, 2018 Share Posted December 27, 2018 Logic dictates that the more you want and have, the more space you need. This could be a drawer, a cupboard, a flat , a house or even dare I say Hard Drives to hold all your sceneries in flightsim. As for TE having "lots of inaccuracies" I can only assume it refers to some autogen/object placements. After all it is actually what GB south and central look like in real life. If you don't like the autogen/objects then just install the Orthos............good luck with that in low and slow immersion !! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Venema Posted December 27, 2018 Author Share Posted December 27, 2018 We are moving to the Lockheed Martin xml installation model. This will come with the new Central. We have nearly 200 products in our catalog, and most of them were around long before any architectural changes to various sims occurred, so it’s not quite fair to accuse us of being behind the times etc. We just can’t wave a magic wand and have all our products instantly comply, particularly when some of the global series change system files for the target sim. But we will allow all the target drive/location flexibility you need, in due course. For what it’s worth, my XP11/P3Dv4.4 and AFS2 installations all live on an external USB 31 2TB SSD and there is a ton of space left on the drive even after the all the cross platform TE betas are installed. No need to panic quite yet. I have already answered the disk space requirements for TEGB North in about 5 different topics, but I’ll cover it here again. At this stage factor in 150GB give or take 10GB. On 12/26/2018 at 10:17 AM, craigeaglefire said: the Orbx 'True Earth' deployments do not excite me that much - they are very much, very rough - True Earth approximations (lots of inaccuracies)... even on sale they did not tempt me... i have heaps of Orbx regions & airports - overall very happy... Craig, you still have not clarified or explained your comment about TrueEarth inaccuracies. You have deflected your clarification to product deployment (disk space and target location issues) instead. I do take exception at our products being unfairly critiqued if you cannot back up your statements. So I ask again, what is inaccurate about TE regions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craigeaglefire Posted December 27, 2018 Share Posted December 27, 2018 thank you John for your comprehensive reply, very welcome news about the upgraded installation model in the new Central - it will be great if this allows multiple custom locations for Orbx products - fantastic for disk management... btw, i have always been very impressed with Orbx's e-commerce check out, file download & the smooth interface of FTX Central... my information about inaccuracy of TE regions is available on this very Orbx forum - i followed the initial Netherlands TE release news and feedback rather carefully... i simply note for starters:- kind regards, craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craigeaglefire Posted December 28, 2018 Share Posted December 28, 2018 hi John Venema, i think i (mostly your paying customers) answered your TrueEarth Orbx inaccuracies question (indeed from your very own forum that i would have thought you would have noted as CEO) - i think Orbx P3Dv4 Netherlands is due for a service pack at the very least... 'TrueEarth' as marketing - to me - somewhat implies Google Earth quality... 75GB of disk space just about gives me full Forza 7 - complete simulator & racetracks & cars + brilliant graphics & frame-rates - for about $100... this started as an affordable SSD thread... $100 for 1TB SSD is your claim... i can tell you now my 512GB 960 Pro M.2 is running at 2500MB/s sequential read i can tell you now my 512 GB 850 Pro & 1TB Evo are running at 470MB/s sequential read i can tell you now my 6TB WD Black is running at 210 MB/s sequential read my point is that there are drives & drives... i have only been into flight simming for just over a year - i wish i had been properly informed as to how expensive it can be... i frankly thought you would have replied to my response to your 'TrueEarth' inaccuracy challenge - but personally i do not care... Happy New Year 2019 - we are almost into the 3rd decade of the 21st century! all imho, craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Venema Posted December 28, 2018 Author Share Posted December 28, 2018 Oh but you do care, as witnessed by your double post response above. Frankly I am slightly bemused, but let me humour you. You defend your claimed ‘inaccuracies’ by way of reference to threads on our forums from TE Netherlands customers who are pointing out missing 3D POI interest models, certain office buildings, windmills, wind farms and other items. The scope of a TrueEarth region is NOT to create a million 3D models of every single building which may be personally more important to individuals to depict their own towns and cities. There are generally millions of buildings or structures not critical to creating an accurate representation of the region from about 2000FT AGL, but which can be represented with accurate building shapes and heights. Do we really need to see every building in the country as it looks like in Google Earth? If you want that, just fly the simulator inside GE and be happy. But Orbx is not Google, or Apple, or Microsoft; nor has tens of billions of spare dollars to invent in global mapping and imaging projects these companies indulge in. You can not compare Orbx’s resources to those of the world’s biggest companies. Get some context about what Orbx can and cannot do, and that this is flight simulation software with a limited development budget. With TE Netherlands we spent a significant amount of money in modelling many hundreds of 3D models which we felt were significant enough to be included. Of course we may not have covered every significant building or POI, and the service pack has been in development for some time to address many things raised by customers, including a reworking of all the airports (no small task), but again - there is more accuracy and content in TE Netherlands than any other Orbx products released before it, including Global Base, OLC Europe and Vector, none of which has a single POI model. So to shut down this discussion once and for all, you claim to be entirely happy with our landclass based products which do an admirable job of providing a facsimile of Netherlands; even though they don’t show any building footprints in the right place, not have a single 3D POI model, nor show the actual photoreal ground terrain as it is in real life - but then have the gall to criticise TE Netherlands which offers more detail than any other products we have released, by calling it “inaccurate” or comparing it o Google Earth? It may be prudent perhaps for you and others to reset expectations as to what you get for a €35 add-on. Regardless, Many thousands of people have purchased and are enjoying TE Netherlands for what it is without resorting to nitpicking. Have a happy new year Craig, and thanks for being a customer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GCBraun Posted December 28, 2018 Share Posted December 28, 2018 For XP11 I have been using some high-end 4Tb HDDs for a while not and have not noticed any performance issues during flight. Sure, they take a while to load initially, but once it is done, everything runs perfectly fine. I assume the same is true for P3D. If you are just using one or two TE regions, SSDs are fine, but I have almost 35% of the globe in Ortho4XP, therefore using only SSDs would be cost-prohibitive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craigeaglefire Posted December 29, 2018 Share Posted December 29, 2018 thank you very much, JV you expressed yourself very clearly... personally, some guesstimate GB sizes of your proposed TE regions would be very helpful... Australia V2 will be a day one purchase for me (just like Gold Coast CityScene &.YBCG) & I believe Orbx has already stated Australia will never be a TE region... (I hope you model Byron Bay lighthouse)... once again JV, thank you for your valuable time & explanations - am extra happy Orbx customer... & may all our 2019s be prosperous & fulfilling! craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Harris Posted December 29, 2018 Share Posted December 29, 2018 1 hour ago, craigeaglefire said: personally, some guesstimate GB sizes of your proposed TE regions would be very helpful... The current TrueEarth GB South for P3D4.4 beta is 49GB installed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RHaas Posted December 29, 2018 Share Posted December 29, 2018 On 12/26/2018 at 2:43 AM, antonvs said: Hi Doug, there is another good reason to use SSD’s that seems to not be recognised. SSD’s don’t get fragmented therefore you don’t need to regularly run a de-fragmenting tool (in fact you should not). This to me is a big plus as it saves time and means that your drive remains optimised. Hi Antonvs, there is a trim function in Windows 7 and above that is similar to defrag but for only SSD's. Sort of a garbage collection and clean up for SSD's. The use of TRIM can improve the performance of writing data to SSDs and contribute to longer SSD life. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craigeaglefire Posted December 31, 2018 Share Posted December 31, 2018 Big John (JV), you will be pleased to know i have just very happily purchased Netherlands TE for P3Dv4 (thanks for the info & sale!)... i look forward to the service pack for this product that you confirmed is in the works... & i so respect a CEO that is hands on, informed & speaks with the customers & leads a very impressive team... Nick Cooper is a legend & i am very sure he will be happy with the 2019 plans for Orbx Central disk management (no more symbolic link questions to answer!)... all the best, craig australia Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craigeaglefire Posted December 31, 2018 Share Posted December 31, 2018 a NYE update for you JV, just downloaded and installed 72GB+ Netherlands & had quick 'Winter' flight in my trusty A2A Cessna Skylane 182 from Schiphol Airport over Amsterdam at dusk - all within 7 hour download time & setup & quick test - all at 4K and at locked 30fps - indeed, very happy... Netherlands TE is indeed a signature Orbx project - a collectors item, actually... JV, i have a story for you from 1997, working for a cottage industry 'Byron Bay' locale video production house - we were quoted $0.19 per MB of served data - that is $190 per GB... so your single 72+GB OrbxTE Netherlands HD download i did today - in 1997 Australian internet served data $ terms equates to - wait for it - approx AUD$13,680... i hope you enjoy my comments & it does actually put things into historical perspective... we are very lucky Orbx simmers indeed! cheers, craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Venema Posted December 31, 2018 Author Share Posted December 31, 2018 You don’t want to know our annual bandwidth bill. It’s well into 6 figures though, and climbing... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevinfirth Posted January 3, 2019 Share Posted January 3, 2019 On 12/29/2018 at 3:52 AM, Tim Harris said: The current TrueEarth GB South for P3D4.4 beta is 49GB installed Hi Tim, the legacy Horizon photoscenery (which I hope should be rendered obsolete to me shortly), consisted of a set of 1.2m/pp imagery and also a set if 2.4m/pp imagery covering the same areas. Viewed in tmfviewer its clear that they were compiled for different LODs, no doubt to reduce system overhead in terms of data transfer, the 32bit environment it had to run in, and VRAM availability of the day.. The key of this method was of course that 2.4m bgls are by definition much much smaller, meaning the sim didnt have to handle large file sizes to display low res imagery in the distance, it simply called the higher LOD ranged data which the sim gave priority to closer to ones a/c. As JV has pointed out in a seasons thread, PR scenery towards the horizon looks the same regardless of LOD14/15. Obviously not all users will have TE on M2 or even SSDs... Will TE-UK be deployed with a single 1.2m/pp imagery set for all LODs or will it still be of benefit to deploy it in higher and lower detail sets to minimise the necessary data transfer requirements (a la Horizon) please? Thanks K Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
W2DR Posted January 3, 2019 Share Posted January 3, 2019 On 12/28/2018 at 6:26 AM, craigeaglefire said: i can tell you now my 512GB 960 Pro M.2 is running at 2500MB/s sequential read i can tell you now my 512 GB 850 Pro & 1TB Evo are running at 470MB/s sequential read i can tell you now my 6TB WD Black is running at 210 MB/s sequential read my point is that there are drives & drives... So...how much actual noticeable performance difference do you see in-game when comparing the WD Black to the 850 Pro? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craigeaglefire Posted January 3, 2019 Share Posted January 3, 2019 my disk tests were done using User Benchmark on my system about a week ago & of course these different drives have different response times... I do not use the WD Black for my P3Dv4.4, using the 1TB Evo SATA SSD - for example, at detailed areas like CityScape Gold Coast with YBCG, I still get some occasional loading scenery issues in flight... personally, I am inclined to go large capacity NVMe M.2 Samsung drives (2TB maximum available at moment) for best flight sim performance - the benchmarks are real - & I notice Z390 mobos with up to 3 M.2 slots (be careful of shared SATA bus considerations)... & this is also why I would like the ability to split Orbx sceneries over different drives via upgraded Orbx Central for disk management flexibility... hope this helps, craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Harris Posted January 4, 2019 Share Posted January 4, 2019 3 hours ago, kevinfirth said: Will TE-UK be deployed with a single 1.2m/pp imagery set for all LODs Hi Kevin, yes it will, single set, divided into a grid Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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