NeilG Posted February 1, 2019 Share Posted February 1, 2019 Hello all Out of interest, has anyone ever tried to work out how many GBs it would take to cover the whole world in True Earth? even an estimation would be interesting. Take care Neil G. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Dow Posted February 1, 2019 Share Posted February 1, 2019 About 609 UKs. Area of land: 148 326 000 km2 The total area of the United Kingdom is approximately 243,610 square kilometres Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F737MAX Posted February 1, 2019 Share Posted February 1, 2019 2 hours ago, NeilG said: Out of interest, has anyone ever tried to work out how many GBs it would take to cover the whole world in True Earth? even an estimation would be interesting. Neil, I'm making an assumption that you mean Gigabytes as opposed to the number of multiples of the 3 TrueEarth GB products combined? If so, then based on XP11 numbers: TE GB North = 144GB, TE GB Central = 77GB and TE GB South = 127GB. Total = 348 GB for 234,402km2 for Great Britain and politically attached islands (e.g. Anglesey, IoW, Orkney and Shetlands), but Northern Ireland and the smaller separate political entity islands such as Isle of Man and Channel Islands excluded. That gives an average of 673.57km2 per GB of data. Extrapolate that to the whole world of 148,980,000km2 gives a total of 221,180GB or 221.18TB - that's a lot of HDD / SDD space and a whole wheelbarrow full of $ / € / £ needed to buy. I don't think we're ready for 'TrueEarth Earth' any time soon! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buffy Foster Posted February 1, 2019 Share Posted February 1, 2019 I'm ready! \o/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FalconAF Posted February 1, 2019 Share Posted February 1, 2019 Oh, c'mon. This is within reach now. A little math..... A 2TB Samsung SSD on Newegg costs $428. To store 221.18 TB of True Earth you would then need (221.18 divided by 2 equals) 110.59 SSD's (we'll round it up to 111 SSD's). 111 SSD's at $428 each costs only $47,508. That's probably much less than the cost of JV's Porsche (or whatever he's driving now). Let's throw in another...hmmm...couple thousand for additional hardware, like external USB ports (for 111 USB cables) and a fire suppression system for the computer (I recommend a UL Labs Certified Halon system) and we are still under $50K. Disclaimer: The above example may be a bit underestimated if the user doesn't know how to get the ENTIRE 2TB capacity of the external SSD's to be used as storage. You also need to increase the price if you would like to have a complete backup capability for all of the files. However, if you use good backup software that compresses the backups, you could probably get by for under $70K, give or take a few thousand. Just sayin'. Some of us already spend more than that on our vehicles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Clarke Posted February 1, 2019 Share Posted February 1, 2019 They don't have to be SSDs. There are good standard HDDs that would suffice. Only downside might be the loading times, which could reach almost one month Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FalconAF Posted February 1, 2019 Share Posted February 1, 2019 34 minutes ago, jjaycee1 said: They don't have to be SSDs. There are good standard HDDs that would suffice. Only downside might be the loading times, which could reach almost one month True, true. But I quit buying cassette tape storage when they came out with floppy disks. Then I went to standard HDD's to replace floppies. Now I buy SSD's. I'm a glutton for punishment. But you would save even more using standard HHD's for your backups. Would be well under $60K total cost then. I already told my grandkids not to expect a free-ride inheritance from me when I die. They'll need to get their own jobs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BobT Posted February 1, 2019 Share Posted February 1, 2019 LOL HD space and cost! But it could be a moot point considering how many lifetimes would it take to fly the whole world, say in a 172, with CAVOK conditions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianV Posted February 1, 2019 Share Posted February 1, 2019 Not to speak about updates and seasons... I think we have to wait another century or two before this is feasible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
z06z33 Posted February 1, 2019 Share Posted February 1, 2019 A 6tb had is like $230so it would only cost $8700 with a 7200 rpm drive Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeilG Posted February 2, 2019 Author Share Posted February 2, 2019 Lol, thank God someone was prepared to do the maths for me. Well, all I can say is that a little less than 25 years ago my mum bought me a brand new state of the art PC. It was an Atari ST1040 and the really big deal about it was that it had a whole 1MB of memory. Those figures that we’ve mentioned may look big now but one day....... On 2/1/2019 at 2:44 AM, F737NG said: Neil, I'm making an assumption that you mean Gigabytes as opposed to the number of multiples of the 3 TrueEarth GB products combined? If so, then based on XP11 numbers: TE GB North = 144GB, TE GB Central = 77GB and TE GB South = 127GB. Total = 348 GB for 234,402km2 for Great Britain and politically attached islands (e.g. Anglesey, IoW, Orkney and Shetlands), but Northern Ireland and the smaller separate political entity islands such as Isle of Man and Channel Islands excluded. That gives an average of 673.57km2 per GB of data. Extrapolate that to the whole world of 148,980,000km2 gives a total of 221,180GB or 221.18TB - that's a lot of HDD / SDD space and a whole wheelbarrow full of $ / € / £ needed to buy. I don't think we're ready for 'TrueEarth Earth' any time soon! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Lars Posted February 2, 2019 Share Posted February 2, 2019 Since most parts of the world are not as densely inhabited than the UK, we could do probably with a bit less storage, say 150 TB. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave302 Posted February 2, 2019 Share Posted February 2, 2019 On 1/31/2019 at 8:44 PM, F737NG said: Neil, I'm making an assumption that you mean Gigabytes as opposed to the number of multiples of the 3 TrueEarth GB products combined? If so, then based on XP11 numbers: TE GB North = 144GB, TE GB Central = 77GB and TE GB South = 127GB. Total = 348 GB for 234,402km2 for Great Britain and politically attached islands (e.g. Anglesey, IoW, Orkney and Shetlands), but Northern Ireland and the smaller separate political entity islands such as Isle of Man and Channel Islands excluded. That gives an average of 673.57km2 per GB of data. Extrapolate that to the whole world of 148,980,000km2 gives a total of 221,180GB or 221.18TB - that's a lot of HDD / SDD space and a whole wheelbarrow full of $ / € / £ needed to buy. I don't think we're ready for 'TrueEarth Earth' any time soon! And that's just the data storage cost. This isn't even factoring in the cost of the scenery for the entire world, although one can purchase this in "chunks" and so spread out the cost over time making it more affordable. I think ORBX is actually very reasonable where the cost is concerned. The cost of data storage will continue to decrease over time, and the density will increase meaning smaller devices will store more data, so I don't think that's a problem, really. My issue has always been the lack of coverage in the near term. Right now I can fly to the UK and really enjoy the Trueearth scenery as long as I stay within the confines of the UK. This is easy as the UK is an island, plus you have a water transition before you get there. On the other hand, I imagine flying across Europe and having Germany covered by beautiful Trueearth scenery but all the other countries not covered and thus looking decidedly different. This is simply a reality of developing new cutting edge scenery. The developers just can't cover the world fast enough. I'm pretty happy with ORBX's approach to scenery development. Soon they will release openLC Middle East/Africa and hopefully within a year a subsequent openLC Asia to finish out the rest of the world, while at the same time they continue to develop the Trueearth scenery. Exciting times... Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F737MAX Posted February 3, 2019 Share Posted February 3, 2019 8 hours ago, dave302 said: And that's just the data storage cost. This isn't even factoring in the cost of the scenery for the entire world, although one can purchase this in "chunks" and so spread out the cost over time making it more affordable. I think ORBX is actually very reasonable where the cost is concerned. It could be argued that the scenery cost is not high enough for the extra development cost incurred by ORBX on making TE compared to FTX regions. But JV has said they expect to make a profit in the longer run on the current pricing strategy. I feel TE pricing is extremely reasonable. 8 hours ago, dave302 said: On the other hand, I imagine flying across Europe and having Germany covered by beautiful Trueearth scenery but all the other countries not covered and thus looking decidedly different. It's not as bad as you may think. So long as TE can have seasons (either extra textures from ORBX or new shader tech to display them), the results are fairly even because of the excellent colour matching. Here's an example on the border of TE NED and FTX Germany North: As long as there are options: TE with seasons, TE without, continued OLC development, further FTX-style regions, etc., while covering all the sims, then I see no reason why all simmers can't be excited by what ORBX has in store for us. 10 hours ago, NeilG said: Well, all I can say is that a little less than 25 years ago my mum bought me a brand new state of the art PC. It was an Atari ST1040 and the really big deal about it was that it had a whole 1MB of memory. Those figures that we’ve mentioned may look big now but one day....... When I get to retire in 25 years from now, I imagine TB might well be the current equivalent of kb in data size. Didn't a certain Bill Gates once equivocally state that computers wouldn't need more than 640K? (He never actually said that apparently). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yanlaoge Posted February 3, 2019 Share Posted February 3, 2019 It can be stored in the cloud, and streamed to the users as provided by Google Earth. It’s more convenient than download. We need only some monthly subscription fee. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FalconAF Posted February 7, 2019 Share Posted February 7, 2019 On 2/2/2019 at 4:58 PM, yanlaoge said: It can be stored in the cloud, and streamed to the users as provided by Google Earth. It’s more convenient than download. We need only some monthly subscription fee. Uh-huh. Just like my high speed cable company used to charge me only $64/month for 100mb/s download speed with a 1TB download limit per month. They just raised it to $94/month for the same service. I can't wait to see how much they would want me to pay to stream 200TB+ per month on a regular basis (I can get an additional 500GB/month for ONLY an extra $29.95 now...yeah...right). "The Cloud" is not a solution to repetitive large download requirements. It's a good "store something here and save it for a rainy day" scenario, but not for continual streaming use with massive transfer requirements (unless you have unlimited funding). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Triplane Posted February 7, 2019 Share Posted February 7, 2019 All of the above is why I won't even consider True Earth. I'm quite happy with what I have...................... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andy1252 Posted February 7, 2019 Share Posted February 7, 2019 Storage isn't that big a deal these days. My sim machine has 32tb, all but 3.5 tb spinning HDs and all my True Earth (XP) scenery is on the HDs with no ill effects in terms of loading or running speeds, and those drives are nothing special - no exotic black drives or anything like that. I've got a bunch of other PCs for various stuff, and in all I've probably got over 50 tb spread around the house. I don't like the cloud concept, so everything I have (30 plus years of fiddling around) is duplicated and the small amount of really important stuff triplicated, which is why the capacity has slowly crept up over the decades. And yes, I realize that if the house burns down my backups won't help me but I figure if the house burns down worrying about my data will probably be fairly low on the list. So if by some miracle True Earth Earth makes it out the door while I'm still able to rattle a joystick - I'll buy it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FalconAF Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 42 minutes ago, andy1252 said: And yes, I realize that if the house burns down my backups won't help me but I figure if the house burns down worrying about my data will probably be fairly low on the list. Offsite storage should not be an issue for anyone anymore. You don't need it (in most cases) as a non-commercial entity. What you do need is a simple home fireproof safe. Do a Google search using "home fireproof safe" to see them. They aren't the size of bank vaults and for most people the one you need will fit on the floor in a closet. For less than $200...less than the price of a 6TB hard disk drive (depending on where you buy it)...you can have a fireproof safe rated to protect whatever paper and DIGITAL items (like backup hard drives) up to temperatures of 1800-degrees F for a couple hours. That would protect most people's documents and data storage devices in most house fires (I was a Michigan state certified volunteer fireman for several years before I joined the Air Force). The one I own cost $220 and can hold all my important paper documents (passport, copies of wills, power of attorneys, etc) and I keep an 8TB external HDD in it also with important/critical digital files on it (among other things also on the drive). I update the backups on the drive on a regular basis as needed, then just put it back in the safe. If my house catches on fire, I get my butt out of the house without worrying about anything else. If you get one, make sure it is rated as fireproof AND waterproof, even if you aren't worried about your house flooding. When the fire department comes to put your fire out, things are gonna get wet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Triplane Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 +1. I have 56TB of storage on this system (54TB on HDD's). I too have a safe that I keep in the garage. It's both fireproof and waterproof. I have all the really important stuff backed up on two 4TB HDD's that I update every month or so (stuff like photos, financial records, wills, powers of attorney, etc.). That's in addition to the backups that I keep in the computer room. All the other stuff can be replaced but there are some things that are just too important to leave to chance. I spent many years in my working life as a CDRP (Certified Disaster Recovery Planner) and I can't emphasize enough the importance of either off-prem backups. Use a safe at home, or a safe deposit box at the bank, or give the drives to a neighbor. But, above all, do something. The old theory of it-can-never-happen-to-me isn't the best course of action.......... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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