Reno

[Xflyboy]

Hello,

I just purchased & installed the scenery, looks great.

However, I started a flight a KRNO and have noticed that there are no terminal buildings at all, is this normal for this scenery?

Are there any airports that are modeled with the scenery at all?

Thank you for your time.

ed

[Cameron]

Hello,

I just purchased & installed the scenery, looks great.

Hi, Ed,

Thanks for the compliments!

However, I started a flight a KRNO and have noticed that there are no terminal buildings at all, is this normal for this scenery?

Are there any airports that are modeled with the scenery at all?

No buildings are not included with this scenery pack, just as with previous other RealScenery products. The aim for these products is to increase the realism by means of VFR, and Reno enhances this further with the "Enhanced" line of work noted in the comparison chart on the page here over the old sceneries of the past: http://www.x-aviation.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=24&products_id=64

You are always free to add an overlay custom scenery pack to show buildings on top of the scenery, or you can also download and convert sceneries from the MSFS world (there are some good one's for Reno...like Mach1 designs version) and have objects placed that way.

Thanks again for purchasing another RealScenery product. We're happy you enjoy what you've seen.

[Simmo W]

Congrats to all the team (Eric, Cameron, Ben & anyone else), I bought it today and am very impressed! Downloader worked perfectly.

I'm a little underwhelmed by the night textures, but that's the only negative bit. Probably confusing xplane 10 with 9 capabilities.  The day however - colours, the textures and terrain resolution are excellent! I'm posting a favourable review soon.

Well done again.

Simon

[Cameron]

Congrats to all the team (Eric, Cameron, Ben & anyone else), I bought it today and am very impressed!

Thank you.

I'm a little underwhelmed by the night textures, but that's the only negative bit.

Been playing a little too much GT5, Simon?

Back to reality...

I challenge you to find a better night lighting system across X-Plane and even MSFS when it comes to orthophoto scenery. In the MSFS world it's pretty subpar, especially in urban and rural detection, and we've gone the extra mile to do so. Bear in mind that we cover large amounts of area with accurate light outlines where you would typically see lights in REAL life, and not just sporadic placement....something that has taken months of programming and careful thinking to accomplish.

The other alternative is to go back to the old way...nothing but black at night. That's not so fun.

Probably confusing xplane 10 with 9 capabilities.

Assuming you're speaking of night lighting seen in XP 10...it's based on global lights, and something X-Plane 9 is not capable of accomplishing today. Fair is fair, right?

[MichaelV]

Hello,

i too purchased the new Reno scenery and seeing the screenshots it looks really great.

But i have a big problem with the installer.

First the download speed is incredible low (i have high speed internet access), no matter how i used the "throttle". Then, after downloading 9 hours the download stopped.

So i relaunched the installer and started again. what i get is following

Reno: How to install html = FAIL: Access Denied

Same with the next points.

That means, also for Reno.7z.001, z7.002 Access denied (those two files remained unfinished)

Now it is downloading Reno : Reno.7z.004 with 63 Kb/sec and it tells me ETA 6.7 hours.

Suddenly the throttle worked and the download was completed after 6 minutes.

So, i have two unfinished files (Reno.7z.001, 002) and two finished files (003, 004).

I tried to run the download installer again to get a complete version, but i only get for every file: FAIL: Assess denied!

Does that mean, that you only can download once?

thank you for your help

Michael

[Ben Russell]

Hi,

Sorry that you're having problems.

The download servers are using Amazons network.

They have data centers in Singapore, Ireland and various locations around the US, I believe.

I'm sorry that you were having slow speeds but there's not much more we can do and no way we can ever hope to buy faster servers.

The new download system is more restrictive about allowing multiple downloads because we are trying to bring you best product at the best price.

Cameron can fix this by allowing you more downloads on a case by case basis as needed. It won't take him long once he reads your email and hopefully you will be able to download at full speed!

Apologies for the hassles, thank you for your patience and patronage. We appreciate the support.

[Simmo W]

Cameron, as I've said, it's only my opinion about the night textures, just not being as crisp as i expected. But yes, these would still be the best night textured orthophotos I've seen.

Ha, GT5 does have great night lighting, but it's not a fair comparison. Rise of Flight is a fairer comparo, Check out THIS -

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=ITcWgoxZDrQ

Regardless of this point, again congrats to all for a stunning scenery package, the day colours, textures and terrain are fantastic, as I say in my review below.

As I told Cameron, screenshots or videos don't really do it justice, the crispness in sim is really something.

My download only took me 2 hrs and worked first time, no hiccups.

http://xplane10.wordpress.com/2010/12/22/x-aviation-reno-scenery-released-reviewed

(plenty of screenshots, I got carried away with the beauty!)

[Cameron]

Hello,

i too purchased the new Reno scenery and seeing the screenshots it looks really great.

Thanks!

First the download speed is incredible low (i have high speed internet access), no matter how i used the "throttle". Then, after downloading 9 hours the download stopped.

I assume you selected the European region for download? You should not be getting too slow of a download speed like you suggest. Users have been reporting very high download speeds up to this point. These products are based on about as fast of a server as you can possibly get.

So i relaunched the installer and started again. what i get is following

Reno: How to install html = FAIL: Access Denied

Same with the next points.

That means, also for Reno.7z.001, z7.002 Access denied (those two files remained unfinished)

This is not the place for support regarding this particular issue. Easy fix, but requires more sensitive information from you that shouldn't be shared with the public. Please send in a support request with your order details here: http://www.x-aviation.com/catalog/contact_us.php

Now it is downloading Reno : Reno.7z.004 with 63 Kb/sec and it tells me ETA 6.7 hours.

Suddenly the throttle worked and the download was completed after 6 minutes.

Okay, so it sounds like it was an issue of your throttle not responding and not so much the download speed? Sounds like it went up to a very reasonable download speed.

I tried to run the download installer again to get a complete version, but i only get for every file: FAIL: Assess denied!

Does that mean, that you only can download once?

No, but for whatever reason your download attempts were exhausted on those particular files. Easy fix, just send in that support e-mail!

thank you for your help

Thanks for purchasing!

[RealScenery]

Hey Simon,

Thanks for the quick review! Glad you were impressed with the scenery and the downloading/installation experience. We've worked really hard to get both the scenery and the delivery the best they can be for our customers. X-Aviation has built a delivery system that is the best there is in the flight-sim world, both in terms of high-speed, high-capacity servers, and a very easy installation experience. For those that haven't read the review yet, here are some of my favorite quotes:

Really, the colouring of the desert and mountains is superb! Just wonderful to explore a location, in such high resolution, knowing I may never be there. I had a few ‘wow’ moments flying around the north-western mountainous ranges, especially at dusk.

The matching of textures to mountainous terrain is excellent, you can spot rivers between mountain ridges by seeing treelines exactly where they should be. This reveals accurate placement of the images over uneven terrain. Magic stuff.

...this Reno pack is a MASSIVE improvement over the default scenery. I don’t know how you would fly over this area without photoscenery.

I just wanted to clarify some of the background that went into making the night textures. The night textures are definitely the best out there for X-Plane within a large scenery package. Due to how X-Plane 9 renders the images, especially in the distance, these night textures are the best balance of size and distance visibility. They were also designed to give the best appearance over a range of altitudes. We spent a few months developing both the software and the correct output to provide the best experience when flying at dusk/night at different altitudes and visibilities.

Changing the size of the lighting often reduces the quality of the lighting in the distance. I really wanted to make you feel like you were flying over a large metropolitan area when at altitude, as well as still being able to see subtle details and smaller towns in the distance. This really adds to the immersion of the sim. The lighting also matches the roads perfectly, and also includes many subtle color variations just as you would find when flying over a real city. A well-known scenery vendor on the MSFS side has night textures that don't even come close to these, and their alignment with the actual roads in the imagery is off in many places by a considerable distance. Everyone will have a slightly different opinion of the textures, both day and night, but I think we've achieved about the best that can be done with a scenery package within X-Plane 9. Are these the same as the default X-Plane textures? No. However, I think once you start flying with them regularly, you'll like them better.

I also want to mention that all of the water features showing X-Plane water, were digitized by hand to match the shorelines in the imagery exactly. No more jaggy shorelines that don't match the underlying imagery!

As you mentioned, even though it's one degree², it's really a huge area. I still find myself exploring up close. You never know what's around that next hill! The Reno-Stead airport is my favorite, on the north end of the city of Reno.

Thanks for your many positive comments. I really enjoyed reading it. Have fun flying!

Eric

[lasagna]

The new download system is more restrictive about allowing multiple downloads because we are trying to bring you best product at the best price.

How do increased restrictions on multiple downloads make it easier to provide the best product at the best price? The way I see it, increased restrictions just make everything more difficult for users.

[Ben Russell]

The new download system is more restrictive about allowing multiple downloads because we are trying to bring you best product at the best price.

How do increased restrictions on multiple downloads make it easier to provide the best product at the best price? The way I see it, increased restrictions just make everything more difficult for users.

Very very simple.

We charge all users more money for a feature they will probably never use.

Or, we can have 1% of users send us an email.

Are you sure you want us to charge everyone more money for the same thing?

[Cameron]

How do increased restrictions on multiple downloads make it easier to provide the best product at the best price? The way I see it, increased restrictions just make everything more difficult for users.

Our income after overhead is very little on these products. We have elected to take little in income over providing YOU as a customer a lower price. As such, allowing unlimited leeching on a file where we LITERALLY pay a fee for every megabyte transferred does not make sense when it's so easy to ultimately make our overhead cost more than our income. Not smart business, you see.

The other alternative is to sky rocket the price and allow more downloads (very similar to what MSFS equivalents do)...or you could take the more than generous amount given now on initial purchase to obtain your product and back it up just as you should with anything else you purchase. We have measures in place to help those that DO lose their products, but such cases are dealt with on a case by case basis.

One in every few hundred sales (if that) is hardly "difficult" (yes, it's really that rare), and as such this argument is really quite moot.

[Simmo W]

I'm only guessing, but when I was fiddling with the throttle, I think it caused delays at one point (stopped all progress for 4 mins). WHEN I download the next release, I'll definitely leave it at max and leave it to do its job for how many hrs it takes- a few hrs away from the interweb is good for the soul. But I've always got 3G mobile..

About to check out Reno-Stead

[Ben Russell]

Left: Slow.

Right: Fast.

It doesn't attempt to put a number on how slow or fast. It's just a loud pedal.

I put it in because my personal internet connection is ADSL1, 1500/256. About as slow and about as unreliable as it gets.

I cannot get a faster connection, I live in a rural area. If it rains there's a 50:50 chance the line will drop out. Yay.

If I'm leaching a big file in any other app my connection bombs.

iTunes, all web browsers, etc. The whole pipe gets saturated, web browsing becomes unusable, Skype fails, internet radio buffers fail, etc etc etc.

Yay. For. Telstra. (Seriously, I've never had a connection that saturates so easily, its pathetic.)

So I put a throttle in.

When I want to do stuff and have my network usable, while still leaching, I yank it left. (I think.)

When I want it to go fast and leach overnight I push it right....

It shouldn't take more than a few seconds to start reflecting the new speeds unless your actual internet connection is saturated and you're asking for more speed in which case it cannot provide any faster.

I believe, by default, I set it to consume about 75-80% of my possible transfer rate.

It should download at a decent rate without bombing your connection without you touching anything.

Obviously if you have a fiber connection your definition of a decent rate is going to be a long way from mine.

60kb/second is almost a full half of my maximum speed.

Throttle response is non linear. Mid slider will not use half your transfer rate.

It's a convenience feature, spending lots of engineering time on it would defeat the convenience I added it for.

[lasagna]

As such, allowing unlimited leeching on a file where we LITERALLY pay a fee for every megabyte transferred does not make sense when it's so easy to ultimately make our overhead cost more than our income. Not smart business, you see.

I was not previously aware that every unit of transfer increased the cost of the hosting services. It makes more sense now.

Very very simple.

We charge all users more money for a feature they will probably never use.

Or, we can have 1% of users send us an email.

Are you sure you want us to charge everyone more money for the same thing?

But if so few people need repeat downloads, why is it such a concern?

According to the price structures at http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/, data transfer is billed on a per-gigabyte basis, unlike more conventional web hosting which has a tiered pricing structure.

If 1% of customers who have bought RealScenery scenery products re-downloaded their purchased scenery, how much extra would it cost?

[Cameron]

But if so few people need repeat downloads, why is it such a concern?

According to the price structures at http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/, data transfer is billed on a per-gigabyte basis, unlike more conventional web hosting which has a tiered pricing structure.

Don't assume. I can appreciate your attempt to make an educated guess, but our previous method of allowing the re-downloads ended up nearly costing us more than acceptable. In many cases it was a wash and overhead was more than income. There are many fees that are factored in to running this business outside of transfer. There are transaction costs, split revenues, upkeep, and licensing. Please stop challenging. Business is not free, and we'd like to stay in business, not out.

If 1% of customers who have bought RealScenery scenery products re-downloaded their purchased scenery, how much extra would it cost?

1% of the people who GENUINELY deserve a re-download out of some kind of fault of our own, or a malfunction with the delivery process to our customers after initial purchase. Think out of the box!

People are not always honest. Some like to share, some like to come back months later down the road and re-download things from our server on our dime for a new computer, or a re-formatted computer. It's of the essence that you back up and store your products in a safe place, just as you would your X-Plane CD or any other software you may purchase. As a side note, our new system is designed to handle much larger products...some so far anticipated to be in the 90+ GB range.

We want our products to be accessible and within reason cost structure wise. We very much enjoy our products as much as we enjoy making them, and we're happy to be able to extend the hand of lower cost to our customers over the greedy method of charging $200+ for a state package seen in other markets. I would hope our customers are too.

[lasagna]

Good point.