Blue Sky Star making entire US Orthos

[whoispankaj 51]

Well Tony ...look at the brighter side..by being lazy we are creating jobs...👻

[Oscar Pilote 22]

Just to mention (even if they didn't have to do so) that they contacted me last December

to ask and tell me about their intention. I forgot about it but checked after a couple of people

wrote me these days.

 

@Pankaj I hope you'll agree that the "lazy" customers as you call them are only one half in the equation,

people involved in the free (software) community also tend to believe they take their part (the debate

whether open source would kill part of the economy as long been settled by the facts).

[Guest Patriot3810]

it doesn't talk all that long, i had already created half the u.s with a 6tb hardrive in 4 days. to pay someone else you can do for free is crazy.

[Kuragiman 227]

Wow those are some pretty high prices

 

Not really.  I bought the entire USA from MegaSceneryEarth and it ran quite a few hundred bucks.   Over 500+ when all said and done but I love flying over Ortho in Heavy Iron.

[wiler 394]

you must not have a job

it doesn't talk all that long, i had already created half the u.s with a 6tb hardrive in 4 days. to pay someone else you can do for free is crazy.

[Guest Patriot3810]

you must not have a job

no i don't have to work, at 39 i was lucky enough in the past month that i don't have to worry about work anymore.

[Guest Guest-475]

Well, all I can say is that I only have about 2-4 hours to spend on flight simming a week (more often 2 than 4), and that includes things like installing interesting scenery, planes, plugins, updating stuff etc. And sometimes I'd like to actually fly. :smile:

 

So I'm definitely not willing to spend the time and ressources on creating own ortho scenery. And running ortho4xp or g2xpl unattended for hours during the night is alos not what I want to do.

Yes, they will most likely use USGS data, so I would expect the end result being about as good or bad as Megascenery Earth, which is fine for me.

 

People spend 30 bucks or more for one single airport, which is something I will never understand, but it's perfectly fine, everyone has his own priorities. Yes, I know it's a lot more work for a developer to create an airport than to do (uncorrected) ortho scenery. But I'm always happy when I finally have left the airport and and am up in the air. :smile:

[tonywob 4,825]

Well Tony ...look at the brighter side..by being lazy we are creating jobs...

 

Ha ha, well that's the truth. I always thought that freeware developers were killing any potential payware market for X-Plane, I guess I'm wrong.

 

 

 

it doesn't talk all that long, i had already created half the u.s with a 6tb hardrive in 4 days. to pay someone else you can do for free is crazy.

 

You should start selling it and make a tidy profit.

 

 

 

Just to mention (even if they didn't have to do so) that they contacted me last December

to ask and tell me about their intention. I forgot about it but checked after a couple of people

wrote me these days.

 

Interesting, so they are just going to use Ortho4XP. I hope you get compensated for this, this would be the moral thing to do (I know the license doesn't require it)

 

 

 

People spend 30 bucks or more for one single airport

 

If it's a good well made airport that you will use more than once then 30 bucks is a good price (When you realise how much work making a high-quality one is). 

[Guest Guest-475]

 

If it's a good well made airport that you will use more than once then 30 bucks is a good price (When you realise how much work making a high-quality one is). 

Sure, I don't want to say that it's not worth 30 bucks. I just don't have use for highly detailed airports, so I would never spend money for airport sceneries personally. I'm fine with having more or less accurate gate positions and taxiways when flying online. :smile:

[Guest]

If they are using USGS imagery which is likely the case, then it can be used freely. This is why I'm often surprised nobody has done this sooner

 

 

It can be used freely, but can it also be sold freely...? 

[tonywob 4,825]

It can be used freely, but can it also be sold freely...?

 

From the USGS website:

 

There are no restrictions on the use of data received from the U.S. Geological Survey's Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center or NASA's Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), unless expressly identified prior to or at the time of receipt.

However, I haven't read through it all, it seems there might be different rules for different states, so always worth checking carefully to avoid getting sued.

[bonchie 2,312]

Yes, I suppose they are doing exactly that (why shouldn't they ... its the obvious way to go). And knowing (or to be correct : suspecting) this tells me, that they won't be able to deliver a "super perfect" continental scale orthophoto mesh ... but just a "cool" orthophoto mesh, which will shine in some areas and less so in others (and will show some "nasty" transition seems here and there ... etc. etc. ...). Depending on the price point and expectations this might be "just right" to some or an "insult" or a "rip off" for others.

 

I was on google maps yesterday and right in my area there's a bad transition. Summer with green trees to winter browns and no leaves.

 

The issues with Orthos are why I ultimately still prefer XP's default scenery and would like to simply see that improved, varied with more textures, and made better.

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

The issues with Orthos are why I ultimately still prefer XP's default scenery and would like to simply see that improved, varied with more textures, and made better.

 

Thats what I'm thinking also now 

[Guest Patriot3810]

It can be used freely, but can it also be sold freely...? 

what i understand, and i could be wrong, it's illegal, but the source data which belongs to the government makes it illegal.i had checked into it back in november. blue star simulations is selling there time as a convenience.you figure 9 TB ,the half of the country i had finished i haven't used in awhile because it took forever to load.loading it from an external hardrive would be even slower. you would need a fast m.2 with 3,000 read, and 2500 write just to get somewhat decent load times. blue star should consider breaking the drives down to 2tb a piece.

   orthoxp can be downloaded in one package and i will post a video showing you how to do it. it's basically set it and forget it.

 for the ones that don't have a fast pc or the time to use orthoxp, it might be worth it. just a single 3tb 7200 rpm hardrive is about 120.00 usd. so they are gonna charge at least that for the cost of the hardrive.i would think blue sky would buy the drives in bulk.i would consider buying them just as a backup depending on the price.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhr4xYosVvI&t=165s

[tonywob 4,825]

 

 

The issues with Orthos are why I ultimately still prefer XP's default scenery and would like to simply see that improved, varied with more textures, and made better.

 

I used to be a die hard ortho fan, but generally it's not just working for me anymore. I recently tried Southern California using Ortho4XP so I could try PilotEdge and even with autogen, the ORBX version just feels more authentic (Which is odd because orthos are what is really there). It could be he baked in shadows or blurriness of the textures at low level, I'm not sure.

 

What I really hate is just plain orthos with no autogen at all, it just looks really bad (Well maybe good flying about 18,000ft).