Firstly some words about myself. I am high functioning autistic (Asperger's Syndrome, I only found out through 4 years ago unexpectedly via diagnosis), and geography and maps has been a passionate obsession of mine since childhood. Concordantly I read for at University and earned a BSc Geography degree, thus I can confidently say that I am an expert geographer on this area. In the computer and internet era, it was natural that this autistic obsession will graduate to Flight Simulation on my self built (& repeatedly rebuilt) PC, and although I have a good career relevant to my degree, in my spare time for the past 6 years I always dwelved with digital elevation models and flight simulator meshes, and had produced my own, but never got round to uploading and selling them. This drive to produce meshes, was also informed by my desire to fly over an accurate and high quality terrain, over the mountain of my childhood and origin, Pelion in Greece, which I have been hiking since 2013 during my summer holidays. Initially as 30M (but instead only 90M) SRTM was not available, I was playing with ASTER 30M V1 (not that good) and then AW3D30 (still the best for 30mresolution but not suitable for built up areas so we need accurate land use data to use it in an area) and then assessed SRTM 30m when it came out, and combining these later 2 by land use criteria. This approach as it was successful and satisfactory, led me to implement this to the rest of Europe, also exploring and incorporating higher resolution data and completing a mesh for the whole of Europe, and from different data, N. America (and another a number of other areas from higher quality data) 3 years ago . So this autistic passion of mine kept expanding and expanding into a desire to fly in the best possible mesh anywhere in the word. And this was only possible if I personally made this mesh! Now with time on my hands since April due to the lockdown, I had to complete this work of producing the best quality mesh everywhere. which had always been bothering me inside whilst not completed.
Now I have just finished developing a global terrain mesh product which is not yet another mesh. It is compatible with FSX &P3D v1-5 & FSW (all sims in that family). This will be at a minimum LOD10, based on NASADEM, rather than SRTM V3 which is the standard for current mesh products. The advantage is that NASADEM is a reprocessing of the original SRTM data to minimise data voids, occurring predominantly in mountainous areas (which in SRTM are filled with much worse quality data), and then these data voids, which in NASADEM are a fraction of what they are in SRTM, are filled with higher quality data, like AW3dD30 or ASTER GDEM V3.
Thus mountainous terrain or high relief areas outside of Europe and N. America, like the Andes or the Himalayas, will be much more accurately represented, compared to meshes based on SRTM (where rendering these areas at HD/38m would effectively be lost). A demo of how this transforms the terrain, can be seen in NASADEMs own YouTube clip here:
Some continents (N.America & Europe) are done at LOD12-11 from different, higher resolution datasets than the global product (N.America on national 10-22.5m datasets, processed at a corresponding LOD quality for sake of fidelity, and Europe from 20-30m actual quality data), and certain regions within these continents (75% of Alps in LOD13, most of remaining Italy at LOD12-13, Spain at LOD13 (or outside, Japan, New Zealand) (some regions, like 75% of Alps and Japan for the 1st time ever) done at even higher details like LOD12-13, of course from data of at least 5-10m quality. These higher definition areas arel be included in the global product, but also sold separately as their own 4 products (N. America, Europe-inc. some overseas islands, Japan, New Zealand) with the buyer having the option of paying the difference and upgrading to global later on. In this approach I endeavour to provide a global product, offering the best visible quality possible mesh for any area, and bridging the gap between a global product of standard definition and high quality local meshes, combining the advantages and offering the best of both worlds, and largely eliminating the need to buy any other mesh products. The customer can safely buy their area of interest, try it out and if they like what they see, they can buy the global product, including all the other high quality areas, by simply paying the difference.
I'm curious about what specific differences this product would provide in place of the Pilots worldwide mesh that I currently have installed or FSGenesis which I've also used in the past.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your query.
DeleteWe would advise you to look at all our product descriptions at store.flightsim.com, everything is exhaustively detailed there. The Global mesh description provides a good level overview, but even in that description you are referred to review the descriptions of the 4 regional products, (incorporated in the global mesh). You can then compare this with the descriptions of the mesh you want to compare it with. Nevertheless:
Much vaster tracts of Europe in LOD12 (9.5m) and LOD13 (4.75m) than any other product, based on datasets that actually have these qualities, as opposed to just the Alps in LOD12 and central Alps in Lod 13, but based on 30m quality De Ferranti Data and a higher resolution (10 or 5m) dataset just for Tyrol (and a showcase of 1m resolution for South Tyrol, which in our view-shared by Orbx- is not necessary, you can get the best visual by LOD13). We have provided screenshots of coverage of these resolutions in my Europe product listing, which in its entirety is part of Global. The entire remainder of EU-39 Europe in LOD11 (19.5m) based on actual 20m quality datasets, or for Balkans, Turkey Poland & Sweden, Aw3d30 which is genuine 30m quality. This is instead of smaller areas of Europe (NE Scotland, Spain minus Catalonia, Norway, Corsica-Sardinia, wider Alps, Pyrenees, Caucasus) at LOD11 (19.5) based on SRTM 30m (but actual underlying quality at best 38m) or Aw3d (genuine 30m), and the rest of Europe at LOD10 (38m).
Japan (in its entirety), for the 1st time ever at LOD12(9.5m), from a 10m quality dataset, rather than just the central portion of Honshu Island at LOD11 (19.5m) and the rest of Japan at LOD10 (38m).
New Zealand also on LOD12 9.5m, rather than LOD11 (19m).
The entire continental US, and Hawaii is covered by LOD12 (9.5m) keeping the quality of the NED dataset at 10m. This is instead of just the western end of the continental US (Rockies and West Coast) at LOD12, as well as Southern British Columbia (there is no 10m dataset here, only a 22.5m one, so instead of upsampling, we render it at LOD11 (19m), and South Central Alaska, (there is a 5/10m nominal resolution dataset for the entire Alaska here, but upon visual examination its underlying quality is around 20m, so we render it, at LOD11(19m).
Guaranteed sole use of NASADEM, rather than SRTM for the rest of the world, which means that high relief areas like Himalayas and Andes, and other mountains outside of Japan. N America, New Zealand and Europe, are made with actual 38m quality data. If SRTM would have been used, these mountains, and most likely their peaks and cliffs and other steepest or craggiest parts, would have been full of voids, filled in the dataset by much lower quality data, which means these mountains would not have been really rendered at LOD10 -38m. Also we have opted not to use Aw3d30 data outside of Europe or, for small patches in Canada – Alaska & French Polynesia. This is because outside of the developed world, due to lack of reliable reference elevation points, Aw3d in high relief areas is full of spikes and inaccuracies (running in the 100s of meters), which are not clearly delineated (so we cant edit everything out) but gradated, which means we cannot rely that they give an accurate elevation reading for any mountainous place outside of the developed world. NASADEM which came out last year, is the only reliable dataset, that covers everywhere, including 3rd world mountains with a consistent LOD10 38m quality.
DeleteAlso we guarantee that we will not use lossy compression, which could throw the stated LOD down a notch, (FSGenesis, explicitly acknowledged the use of this at his installers, back in those days of low diskspace, which even at 99% ratio resulted at 10GB for LOD12 continental US, when we running the most advanced lossless compression algorithms can get the US at LOD12 at 33GB, so at 99% lossy compression, 10GB FSgenesis USA was not anywhere near LOD12 in real detail, but at best LOD11, remember you end up getting a quarter of the filesize every notch of LOD you go down) but we always use lossless compression to preserve the quality. By the same token, we will not oversample (for example from 30m to LOD12 (9.5m), or LOD13 (4.75) this would not make any difference to visuals, but we will always render a dataset to LOD that corresponds with its quality. Instead we would endeavour to source and use higher resolution data.
We provide the best visible quality that is available for any area in the globe, having spent hours in the 4 digits sourcing, evaluating editing and putting together the best data for every part in the world. This was done in hyperfocused, autistic obsession mode, which I doubt if it could even be emulated by a company with a team of experienced experts, and even if it would have been, the costs would have made any resulting product prohibitively expensive. But hey, furlough here was a capital, which gave me the time to fulfil a passion that long bothered me. Which is to fly in the best terrain of my making, and also give it to the world at a competitive and affordable price 😊. As a result, and in summary, (and as a reading of my product descriptions would evidence) much larger parts of the worlds are made in much higher resolution from much higher quality datasets. This reflects on the bigger filesize, around 110GB.
Hello , I can not find in your text what is the resolution of Greece continent and islands ,and also Croatia , Montenegro ,Albania ,Bulgaria ,Romania ?
ReplyDeleteAh, my country and wider area of origin. The answer is in my Europe product listing (and I advise in my Global product listing to also look at the regional product listings for full details).
DeleteThe resolution in all these areas is LOD11, 19m. this is based on Aw3d30, which is a genuine 30m quality dataset (or in the case of Corfu and the city of Volos, 19m quality local datasets)