MegaCity DFW - 120 sec review

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dallas

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MegaCity DFW went gold in May instead of their predicted June launch.

This is my first Mega anything and I was expecting more trouble than I
actually got. I didn't change my settings to the suggested settings and
everything runs just fine. FS9 loads in the usual time if you are not
loading into the DFW area. If you are loading into DFW there is an
acceptable wait.

As for using one of these products, it is fun to look down and see what you
would see if you were actually flying over the area. Afterwards, it's a bit
of a disappointment to get back to the Flight Simulator default scenery.
I'm sure it's not technically possible in the near future, but it would be
nice if Flight Simulator could do the whole world like this someday.

I especially like their choice to offer the option of default water or the
actual aerial photographed water. You can't land a float plane on it unless
you change back to the default water which you accomplish by running a
little batch file.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v101/Dallas52/MegaCity%20DFW/MegaCityDFW007.jpg

VFR flying is quite fun. Here is a Keyhole satellite of an airport I've
flown out of in real life:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v101/Dallas52/MegaCity%20DFW/MegaCityvsKeyhole00.jpg

Here it is in MegaCity DFW:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v101/Dallas52/MegaCity%20DFW/MegaCityvsKeyhole01.jpg


They also added a couple of labor intensive little tricks to add to the
overall effects of the scenery. First, they add a fair amount of autogen
that align with the streets over the top of the aerial bitmap that tends to
give a 3-D textured effect to the ground. (Look on both sides of the wing.)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v101/Dallas52/MegaCity%20DFW/MegaCityDFW009.jpg

Secondly, they manually traced over most streets with lighting bitmaps that
create an incredible night effect. It will knock your socks off!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v101/Dallas52/MegaCity%20DFW/MegaCityDFWnight018.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v101/Dallas52/MegaCity%20DFW/MegaCityDFWnight020.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v101/Dallas52/MegaCity%20DFW/MegaCityDFWnight023.jpg


As for any faults -

If you whip around, there is an occasional blurry that takes a few seconds
to resolve itself.

If you use the FAT32 file system (and I do) you only get 1 season out of the
four included. I have no idea why they have this constraint, but if you're
one of the few using FAT32 you're out of luck.

Other than that... I'm actually more pleased with it than I expected to be.

Dallas
 
G

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Archived from groups: alt.games.microsoft.flight-sim (More info?)

In article <Y53qe.1624$NX4.959@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net>,
Cybnorm@spam_me_not.Hotmail.Com says...
> Afterwards, it's a bit
> of a disappointment to get back to the Flight Simulator default scenery.
> I'm sure it's not technically possible in the near future, but it would be
> nice if Flight Simulator could do the whole world like this someday.

Unfortunately it would take several hundred CDs to hold the whole world
at that resolution. Also, and a bigger problem, is that we're spoiled
in the US with the easy availability of inexpensive or free high
resolution satellite imagery. In many parts of the world (even northern
Canada, where I fly a lot) it's not available or is very expensive (eg,
dollars per square mile). In a number of places, such data is
restricted to governmental agencies, since it has military value.

Enjoy your DFW!

/Chris T
 
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Archived from groups: alt.games.microsoft.flight-sim (More info?)

Yes, but I would settle for some mesh that was even remotely like the real
world. The famous rock of Gibraltar, for example was hardly a goose bump in
the MS default scenery. Now I have downloaded a great freeware addon it is
excellent. In too many places the terrain has been laughably inadequate; and
I write as a keen fan of the prog.
--
Cheers
Quilljar


Try 'Living With Technology' magazine, it does yourt heart good.
http://www.livtech.co.uk
 
B

Bob

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Quilljar wrote:
> Yes, but I would settle for some mesh that was even remotely like the real
> world. The famous rock of Gibraltar, for example was hardly a goose bump in
> the MS default scenery. Now I have downloaded a great freeware addon it is
> excellent. In too many places the terrain has been laughably inadequate; and
> I write as a keen fan of the prog.

I also really like the simulator. I would settle for an accurate
Landclass coverage of the US and Europe.

--

(Smiling) boB,
SAG 70

U.S. Army Aviation (retired)
Central Texas - 5NM West of Gray Army Airfield (KGRK)
 
G

GREGORY

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On Thu, 09 Jun 2005 22:08:56 GMT, "Dallas"
<Cybnorm@spam_me_not.Hotmail.Com> brought the following to our
attention:

>MegaCity DFW went gold in May instead of their predicted June launch.
>
>They also added a couple of labor intensive little tricks to add to the
>overall effects of the scenery. First, they add a fair amount of autogen
>that align with the streets over the top of the aerial bitmap that tends to
>give a 3-D textured effect to the ground. (Look on both sides of the wing.)
>
>http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v101/Dallas52/MegaCity%20DFW/MegaCityDFW009.jpg
>

after seeing this shot.. went up, slewed into position and took a
similar shot on old clunker-box Sim platform.. but didn't post. Was
hoping to `show up' your view!! { smile }

>
>If you use the FAT32 file system (and I do) you only get 1 season out of the
>four included. I have no idea why they have this constraint, but if you're
>one of the few using FAT32 you're out of luck.

that's odd.. what's the difference? now many MB of files? didn't you
already CONVERT to NTFS?

>Other than that... I'm actually more pleased with it than I expected to be.
>
>Dallas
>
 
D

dallas

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"Quilljar"
> I would check that gas cap on the wing, it looks a bit loose to me...

Ha... yeah... why didn't they make the cap more flush mounted?

Reminds me of the time I saved a DC-3.

Really... I was a child in Paraguay at the airfield. A Paraguayan Air
Force DC-3 started its port side engine and the gas cap flew off and rolled
past me. I gave it to my dad and he jumped on his Vespa and managed to get
in front of the airplane and stop it.


Dallas
 
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dallas

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"Gregory"
> that's odd.. what's the difference?

I suspect stupid programming... nobody else has a problem with FAT32.

Dallas
 
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In article <Aoiqe.2335$jX6.1137@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net>,
Cybnorm@spam_me_not.Hotmail.Com says...
>
> "Gregory"
> > that's odd.. what's the difference?
>
> I suspect stupid programming... nobody else has a problem with FAT32.
>
> Dallas

I believe the issue is that normally MSFS expects you to have separate
texture files for each season. Since Mega is all texture files, that
would bloat 250,000 files into 1,000,000 (and four times the disk
space). I think they are using an ailas function which only exists in
NTFS to use each file four times instead. Given the way MSFS was
designed, they don't really have much choice.
 
G

Guest

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Archived from groups: alt.games.microsoft.flight-sim (More info?)

Right on the nail. In the latest incarnation of NTFS files can have more
than one stream, in fact you can have as many as you like. A stream can be
likened to a way of attaching a file to another file, which for seasons is
great as the different season textures can reside with each other and the
code can effectivelly load the same files (albiet a different stream) to
reproduce differing seasons. There is a downside to this and that is you
don't actually save much in the way of harddrive space and to make matters
worse, windows explorer can't see the other streams so only reports the size
taken up by the first stream (IE the file you can see). So your harddrive
could be reporting 1 Gb free, when in fact it is taken up by your winter
textures.....

That said I do like Mega Scenery and almost exclusively fly within it.

RobP


"Chris Thomas" <CThomas@mminternet.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.1d13601894f6ea439896a6@news.mminternet.com...
> In article <Aoiqe.2335$jX6.1137@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net>,
> Cybnorm@spam_me_not.Hotmail.Com says...
>>
>> "Gregory"
>> > that's odd.. what's the difference?
>>
>> I suspect stupid programming... nobody else has a problem with FAT32.
>>
>> Dallas
>
> I believe the issue is that normally MSFS expects you to have separate
> texture files for each season. Since Mega is all texture files, that
> would bloat 250,000 files into 1,000,000 (and four times the disk
> space). I think they are using an ailas function which only exists in
> NTFS to use each file four times instead. Given the way MSFS was
> designed, they don't really have much choice.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.microsoft.flight-sim (More info?)

On Thu, 09 Jun 2005 22:08:56 GMT, Dallas wrote:

> MegaCity DFW went gold in May instead of their predicted June launch.

Of course it went gold!
Haven't people been going nuts over it ever since the first screenshots
were released? Consider yourself lucky that it's your backyard.

But it is extremely realistic looking....


> I especially like their choice to offer the option of default water or the
> actual aerial photographed water. You can't land a float plane on it unless
> you change back to the default water which you accomplish by running a
> little batch file.

Now *that's* a bummer!
But what happens if you land a floatplane on it? Do the floats sink through
the MegaCity layer or do they scratch the surface?


> If you use the FAT32 file system (and I do) you only get 1 season out of the
> four included. I have no idea why they have this constraint, but if you're
> one of the few using FAT32 you're out of luck.

Now here's a stupid question!
How is it possible that you're running Windows XP on a FAT32 system?
I thought XP required NTFS to function properly?

--

Marcel (SAG-21)
(Chance favours the prepared mind.)
 
G

Guest

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Archived from groups: alt.games.microsoft.flight-sim (More info?)

>Now here's a stupid question!
>How is it possible that you're running Windows XP on a FAT32 system?
>I thought XP required NTFS to function properly?

XP does not require NTFS, although it is strongly recommended to use
it as a file system (much more robust than any flavor of FAT)

While I'm at it another misconception: you can access NTFS partition
via a network from a 9x machine, even if 9x does not natively support
NTFS, no need to have FAT32 partitions on a home network if you use a
mix of OS.

===
Best Regards
Katy
 
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dallas

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"Katy Pluta"
> While I'm at it another misconception: you can access NTFS partition
> via a network from a 9x machine, even if 9x does not natively support
> NTFS, no need to have FAT32 partitions on a home network if you use a
> mix of OS.


Interesting... here is my deal:
C: drive is WinXP FAT32
D: drive is Win98 FAT32

If I boot the computer using the Win98 on the D: drive, can it see and talk
to the WinXP C: drive if I convert it to NTFS?


Danger Puppy
 
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Archived from groups: alt.games.microsoft.flight-sim (More info?)

>Interesting... here is my deal:
>C: drive is WinXP FAT32
>D: drive is Win98 FAT32
>
>If I boot the computer using the Win98 on the D: drive, can it see and talk
>to the WinXP C: drive if I convert it to NTFS?

No, because you do not access partition C over a network, here you
boot on D and both drives are in the same computer so W98 will not see
the C drive... And I thought that 9x needed to be on the C boot
partition? Or you are using a boot manager...

Woof!

===
Best Regards
Katy
 
D

dallas

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"Katy Pluta"
> Or you are using a boot manager...
> Woof!

Woof, Woof! ( see what boB has done to us? )

Yeah, I was afraid you'd say I couldn't access the WinXP drive. So.. that's
why I use FAT32.
So far it has never inconvenienced me until I met the Mega people.

To boot the D: drive I just jump into the BIOS and change the boot drive.
No big whoop. :)


DP
 
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Guest

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Archived from groups: alt.games.microsoft.flight-sim (More info?)

>"Katy Pluta"
>> Or you are using a boot manager...
>> Woof!
>
>Woof, Woof! ( see what boB has done to us? )
>
>Yeah, I was afraid you'd say I couldn't access the WinXP drive. So.. that's
>why I use FAT32.
>So far it has never inconvenienced me until I met the Mega people.
>
>To boot the D: drive I just jump into the BIOS and change the boot drive.
>No big whoop. :)

Roger roger... And my cat is giving my "the eye" now :)

===
Best Regards
Katy
 
G

Guest

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On Fri, 10 Jun 2005 14:37:07 -0600, Katy Pluta wrote:

> XP does not require NTFS, although it is strongly recommended to use
> it as a file system (much more robust than any flavor of FAT)

Aaaah okay....I was wrongly informed.


> While I'm at it another misconception: you can access NTFS partition
> via a network from a 9x machine, even if 9x does not natively support
> NTFS, no need to have FAT32 partitions on a home network if you use a
> mix of OS.

Hey! I didn't say a thing! :)

--

Marcel (SAG-21)
(That's no moon...it's a space station!)
 
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