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jdhaenens
November 22nd, 2008, 06:19
I don't know if any of you have used a mesh scenery product such as FS Genesis. The Ultimate terrain series does a little mesh work, but basically the smaller the distance between samples, the more accurate the terrain is.

FS Dreamscapes offered it's "Pro Mesh" series for Oklahoma recently and being from Oklahoma and relatively conversant with both the terrain and airports here, I couldn't wait to get my hands on the product. See Wiley Post for FSX (KPWA) at your local free download site (shameless plug). The product claimed 5 meter resolution over the entire state. I couldn't get my credit card out fast enough.

To be sure, no one actually needs 5M resolution mesh (vertical resolution is approximately +- 1 Meter) unless you're a scenery geek or government agency. I would fall into the former category as in my previous occupation, colliding with waves on the ocean (unless they were abnormally large) did not have the same disasterous effects as colliding with the ground does for aviators. Understand: 5 meter resolution gives you over 150 height samples on an acre of ground.

The accuracy of the mesh is both a blessing and a curse.

The good, the bad, and the ugly:

The Good:

Of course the first thing I did was to go to places that I could normally recognize by their look. Success! I went to southeastern Oklahoma looking for the Kiamichi River Valley and sure enough, I could pick out geographic points I've known my entire life just by their shape. Among these were Big and Little Buffalo, the Potato Hills, the Kiamichi Mountains, the Stairstep Mountains, and the list goes on. There were the right number of valleys between promontories, and when you're used to using the landscape for direction ("You'll go over two rises, and just about the top of the third, you need to bear right into...." you get the picture) that's just erie. The accuracy was outstanding!

The Bad:

The chances of land around airports actually being flat is exactly zero, and the software doesn't care. If you have a mesh package for Flight Simulator X, it seems to me that you should at least offer a blending function for the existing airports with a maximum rise/fall around the airport flattens to let the rest of the scenery blend in. Not so. EVERY airport I went to, including Will Rogers, Wiley Post, OU Westheimer, Tinker AFB, Vance AFB, Altus AFB, Ada Municipal, Tulsa, and OK81 either had plateaus or were sunken in a hole. This software seemed to be a simple regurgitation of someone's high accuracy DEM data as far as blending goes. I hovered at the end of Tinker's North-South runway and varied the mesh resolution from 5M to 38M before the scenery heights blended enough to look semi-natural. So if you want things to look smooth, you might as well use the FSX default mesh. I believe the default is already sampled at 38 Meters in the area...but it may be 78.

The Ugly:

After two hours of flying I received my first EVER Out of Memory error in FSX. I'm running 4 gigs of OCZ dominator DDR1200 memory on the Gigabyte (Ted's favorite} Mobo, with an Intel 9650 quad ciore and a ATI 4870 OC'd vid card. The power supply is an OCZ 850 Watt gaming supply. I verified that the addressable memory extension mod was active as well. OS is XP Pro 32 bit. There's something just not right there.

Conclusion:

I'll probably uninstall FS Dreamscapes Pro Mesh Oklahoma until Dreamscapes comes up with some blending and addresses the memory problem. That's about $35.00 lost, but maybe you won't make the same mistake after this review.


The pictures below are the default Tinker AFB runway 17 between 5m and 38M mesh settings in FSX. The road in the foreground would be I 40. No other scenery or terrain enhancements are installed.

Jim

falcon409
November 22nd, 2008, 06:35
Great review Jim and thanks for taking the time to let everyone else know what you found. If there's one thing that kills the "Real as it gets" feeling in FS9/FSX it's the conflict between addon meshes and airports. We all know there isn't a real airport anywhere that's sunk in a hole a mile deep and very few (if any) that are on plateaus as high as we encounter in FS and yet with all the advancements in technology over these two sims, we haven't moved an inch in that respect.

Thanks again!

txnetcop
November 22nd, 2008, 08:14
Yep must be something in the way it address memory because I am building an ASUS RAMPAGE EXTREME X48(which I also like) and the guy sent over the file this morning for me to add. He is from Durant, OK. I thought it might be something I did wrong in the build. Heck, I can build these X48s blindfolded now, but every other game he wanted checks out just fine except Crysis, as do his other payware sceneries for FSX. Thanks Jim! I thought I had just joint the CRS club, as I was comtemplating tearing this beast down and starting over.

You are correct I have built just about every computer board there is and my favorite is still Gigabyte X-48. I will be doing an i7 Core in two weeks for friend in another forum with the Asus P6T Deluxe X-58. At TechCorp we found the Gigabyte X-58 was more stable when overclocking...we'll see it they have improved things since we received the test board.

Thanks again for that review.
Ted

If you guys are into exteme overclocking this board is really nice-never thought I would say that about ASUS again after some of their stinkers:
http://techgage.com/article/asus_rampage_extreme/

spotlope
November 22nd, 2008, 09:08
I hope you know how much effort it's requiring for me to not make some sort of snide remark about Oklahoma terrain. :costumes:

Seriously, though--I've run into this in other places, too. Sadly, having hyper-accurate terrain only serves to heighten the problems of plateaus & craters for our airports. As for OOM errors, maybe the mesh has uncovered some dicey memory management in FSX itself. Then again, maybe it's unrelated. Stranger things have happened.

jdhaenens
November 22nd, 2008, 09:12
LOL...Oregon...ahhh that's right....Great Beavers!:jump:

Don't know about the memory...but when Ted rogered up for seeing the same thing.... I uninstalled all the scenery and still got it with the mesh installed. Seems to be a little too coincidental.

Ripcord
May 20th, 2013, 14:56
Jim, the news reports coming out of the sooner state look pretty grim -- I hope you and yours are all in good shape.

Timbohobo
May 20th, 2013, 16:22
Hello, I'm a closet mesh pervert :a1089:

While the 5m stuff is rather sexy, its the airport elevations that are not.

Always before purchasing a mesh product ask the developer/s if the airports are 'fixed', this lesson I learnt the hard way.....

ST0RM
May 20th, 2013, 16:27
No photos were posted in the thread.

I live in Oklahoma and out here in the South/West corner, we do have the Wichita Mountains. Laugh, but its not as flat as Kansas. And they do make for some pretty camping views. Anyhow, Fort Sill owns most of the range, and they do CAS exercises with the F-16s.

I've currently got GEX/UTX installed and they dont do these rocks justice.

-Jeff

NWarty
May 21st, 2013, 17:06
No photos were posted in the thread.

I live in Oklahoma and out here in the South/West corner, we do have the Wichita Mountains. Laugh, but its not as flat as Kansas. And they do make for some pretty camping views. Anyhow, Fort Sill owns most of the range, and they do CAS exercises with the F-16s.

I've currently got GEX/UTX installed and they dont do these rocks justice.

-Jeff

Yep. Mt. Scott is great and I always thought that the ridgelines around Ft. Sill and Lawton shielded us from Tornadoes. Cool little area around Lawton and NOT FLAT :D

airattackimages
May 22nd, 2013, 05:38
Are you safe Jim? This one was relatively close to you...

falcon409
May 22nd, 2013, 06:23
Sure would like to hear from you Jim. Since almost all the coverage I've seen seems to center on Moore rather than Norman, I'm hoping maybe it's just a case of the Comm lines being interrupted for a time.

jdhaenens
May 22nd, 2013, 18:01
I'm OK. Moore is between where I live, Norman, and where I work, Oklahoma City. One of the guys who works for me lost his house. Lots of hurting folks. Lots of heroes. Lots of volunteers.

Spent some quality time in the storm shelter during Sunday's outbreak.

The Oklahoma Standard is in effect.

Thanks for your concern.

Jim