active True Earth Great Britain South: Mesh does not appear to be 10m (50m at best!!)

[OldHobber]

Hi. I recently purchased X-Plane 11 on the strength that Orbx would be supporting that product with future releases, and purchased True Earth products before even loading X-Plane.

 

One of the the major features of True Earth GB South is a "Sharp and detailed 10-meter mesh (which)  brings out stunning detail in natural features such as hills and beaches".

 

However, the mesh that I appear to be left with is clearly not 10 meter, and I would say it is at best 50 meter. Rough comparison with the default mesh seems to suggest little or no improvement.

 

For example, Silbury Hill in Wiltshire 40 meters tall,  is little more than an undefined bump, and the hills around it have unrepresentative contouring.

 

I have changed the load order of the True Earth products, but to no avail. I have attached the scenery_packs.ini to show the ini created by X-Plane.

 

Please can someone tell me what I have to do to get the 10 meter mesh? Thanks...

scenery_packs.ini

[Jon Clarke]

I will let Orbx answer your query as to whether you are seeing their 10 mesh or not as I don't see any pics to verify either way.

Anyway i have rearranged your Scenery_packs.ini for you. The only area I have no knowledge about in your .ini is the Monument Valley stuff. Insert this revised .ini and see if it is OK with you. I suggest you first try EGLC London City, because the way your original .ini was layered, you would not have seen the London landmarks correctly.

Then check if Monument Valley looks OK. If it doesn't then take ALL the Monument Valley files/entries, and put them ALL above Global Airports. Orbx addons which include meshes like MV are autonomous packages and therefore can be layered together, despite the norm for any mesh to placed at the bottom of the .ini. The mesh in MV is not universal and only pertains to the MV area so can be placed with the rest of the MV files.

Here is your new .ini

scenery_packs.ini

[Nick Cooper]

Please see your other topic whre there are answers to your questions.

 

[Tony Wroblewski]

See my answer in the post above that Nick linked to on why this is the case:

 

However your statement that it's 50m at best is false. X-Plane's default mesh is approximately 50m and it's quite easy to see the difference if you check out the coastline around places like Cornwall and the mountains in the Lake District and Snowdonia.

 

[OldHobber]

12 hours ago, tonywob said:

See my answer in the post above that Nick linked to on why this is the case:

 

However your statement that it's 50m at best is false. X-Plane's default mesh is approximately 50m and it's quite easy to see the difference if you check out the coastline around places like Cornwall and the mountains in the Lake District and Snowdonia.

 

Well, no.

 

The mesh in the area I described above is clearly no better than 50m at best, so I stated nothing that was false.

 

It is apparent, from your clear and helpful post in the other thread, that it is not a product wide10m. It is a limited 10m mesh. If that is how it had been described in the advertising, I would have waited for a later generation. I understand the issues you have in producing your otherwise excellent products, but that is no reason to misrepresent them.

[Tony Wroblewski]

@OldHobber I'm not here to argue about semantics with you, but rather to work out what's going on. I've checked Silbury Hill in the height data we've used and it's smoothed down in there as well, so what is likely is that it was seen as a man-made structure (which technically it is ), because the process used to generate the height data from LiDAR (Lasers) data may have considered it a building or man-made structure and blended it out. This is generally a good thing as it will stop the terrain being really bumpy over cities/forests and built-up areas, but it's also not a perfect process and these things can and will happen. We use a digital terrain model (DTM) and not a digital surface model (DSM), the difference being what is considered the elevation (top of building or tree vs the ground )

 

Either way, I think this one would make a good POI for a future service pack and would need a custom model to bring out the detail needed as I don't think even a 10M would pull out enough detail here, it would probably end up looking like an Egyptian pyramid if the DTM was used.

 

@Byron Farrow Can you add this one to your list please.

[OldHobber]

Hi Tony,

 

I appreciate that you are looking further into this. The area around Silbury is very familiar to me including the surrounding natural hills. I did not expect there to be a fully conformed model of Silbury Hill! The hi-res meshes on FSX did not do that, but there was a representation of a hill, where here there is virtually nothing. I am not looking to slag off the product, just to clarify that it is not a 10m mesh, which was a requirement when I purchased it. 

 

Orbx products are absolute quality, and, as I have been repeating an awful lot, it was the fact that you are now supporting X-Plane with the TE products that brought me into that camp, where previously I have substantially invested in your products for FSX.

 

It seems now that P3D may be the better option; well, that or hold on to see what X-Plane 12 offers. I hope you can see that I am still, even now, gauging my options based on how they will work with Orbx!

 

Honestly. If there had been a quicker and more knowledgeable response (saving jjaycee1 and myself from spending time trying to put right what is actually a feature of the product) to my post three weeks ago then we wouldn't be here and the matter of the refund could have been dealt with in a number of different ways that would have guaranteed my ongoing custom. Your input is appreciated, and the fact that I have been refunded without further fuss is a positive. It seems clear that some people at Orbx are as disappointed with my attitude as I have been with theirs! But in the end, at least, I believe they have done the right thing.

 

Once again. Your products are excellent. They are worth the money. But in the case of TE UK for X-Plane, at the moment, it is not yet the product I am waiting for.