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P3D v5 Photosceneries and Autogen Packages for the world

Dear all,

Just in time for Easter, I've got another big batch of scenery for you.
This time I've mainly been travelling in southern Asia.

But let's start with the Arabian Peninsula, where two countries are still outstanding.

First of all Kuwait:
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... and Qatar:
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Then we move on to the country that borders Iran and Afghanistan: Pakistan!
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And then comes my highlight for today...
Probably the most complicated scenery I've ever built.

India!

More than 1 billion (!) buildings have been placed.

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To the north is Nepal, with its fantastic mountain airfields:
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And of course Bhutan is not to be missed!
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In the south of India lies the island of Sri Lanka:
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And finally, Bangladesh:
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As always, you can find all the information here:

Otherwise - please write me a private message, as always! :)

But there is one thing I would like to get rid of in any case:
At the moment I assume that these were the last sceneries I created for the P3D world.

Even I now use the MSFS 99% of the time, and with the release of a long-haul aircraft for the MSFS, the 99 % will certainly become 100 %.
At the same time, I can also see that interest in my sceneries has really, really declined over the last year. Whereas about a year ago I was answering up to 10 PMs a day, now it's maybe 1-2 a week.

So - from my side, a very, very big THANK YOU to all of you for all your support!

Nevertheless - nothing is set in stone yet, and the servers will continue to run for the time being.

I wish you all a wonderful Easter!
 
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Don't give up yet!! Would be great if you managed to find someone who would be willing to host these all for you if you ultimately decide to "shut er down".
 
With apologies Matthius because I've asked you this before: where do we download the sceneries from?

BTW: I've been to the Taj Mahal. You really need a full day to properly study and appreciate the carvings; I was only there for about four hours in the morning because I had to go on to Agra Fort (which is another utterly stunning piece of Mughal architecture).
 
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Just a quick question if you don't mind. I downloaded and installed the Nepal package. I got the following warning:

"Could not find scenery Area.226 local scenery directory: F:\Addon Scenery P3d\Nepal\SCENERY"

I replied NO to the error and everything seemed to load. Is this a result of having my default scenery on my C: drive and my Addon Scenery on my F: drive? Did Matthias' Nepal scenery load in spite of the error warning? I departed Tribhuvan for Lukla and Tribhuvan had lots of autgen buildings. Also should I have done a season change to ascertain if it was photoscenery or not? Does the use of Holger Sandmann's mesh affect anything in Matthias' scenery?

I'm running P3D 4.5 on Win7Pro.
 

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Just a quick question if you don't mind. I downloaded and installed the Nepal package. I got the following warning:

"Could not find scenery Area.226 local scenery directory: F:\Addon Scenery P3d\Nepal\SCENERY"

I replied NO to the error and everything seemed to load. Is this a result of having my default scenery on my C: drive and my Addon Scenery on my F: drive? Did Matthias' Nepal scenery load in spite of the error warning? I departed Tribhuvan for Lukla and Tribhuvan had lots of autgen buildings. Also should I have done a season change to ascertain if it was photoscenery or not? Does the use of Holger Sandmann's mesh affect anything in Matthias' scenery?

I'm running P3D 4.5 on Win7Pro.
If you have added the Nepal scenery via the included add_to_P3Dv4.cmd, it is not necessary to add the scenery manually to the scenery library.
To be on the safe side, you can check again whether a scenery folder exists under F:\Addon Scenery P3D\Nepal. If not, something went wrong during extracting.

No, any mesh does not intefere at all with my sceneries - you can use it without any problems together!
 
Matthias thanks for your reply. The scenery folder exists with what I assume are all the correct files in F:\Addon Scenery P3D\Nepal.
Your photoscenery is amazing. I even created a little airport for Bumthang that didn't exist before. It's still a work in progress but it lines up nicely.

Oddly enough when I deactivate the "mesh Himalayas by Ferranti & Sandmann" folder, the error goes away.

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A short piece of information:
In June, the image hoster where I uploaded my images for a long time will probably switch off its servers.
As a result, many, many pictures will disappear from this thread.
I will try to move some pictures until then so that it won't look so poor.
But I don't know yet whether I'll be able to move all the pictures by then.

Even if most of the images are only displayed as ‘missing icons’ afterwards, this will of course not affect my sceneries as such!
 
Dear all,

Perhaps some of you have already noticed that my project page for my photoreal sceneries is no longer accessible.

The reason for this is relatively simple:
I have decided with a heavy heart to discontinue this project after about 8 years.

Believe me, I really didn't take the decision lightly, in the end it was the following reasons that spoke in favour of shutting down the servers:

1. financing. Unfortunately, the server costs had not been covered by donations for almost 2 years, in this year 2024 the total ‘donation’ sum was 0 €, in contrast to server costs in the three-digit range. I had already stopped developing new sceneries some time ago for the same reason. The development of a single country alone cost an average of 200-400 € just in electricity costs.

2. although all my sceneries were available free of charge, the download links have recently been passed on very often, so for some time now downloads have also appeared from regions where I never had a request for my sceneries. In some cases I changed the download links again, I don't want and didn't want scenery downloads from Russia or Iran. Unfortunately, this takes up a lot of time that could be used for other things.

3. friendliness. I don't think I need to write much here, the following PN I received a few weeks ago speaks for itself:
‘Give me all your sceneries! it can't be that you have to ask for download links!’
Yes, that was the whole PN. 1:1 copy-and-paste.

4. demand. Since the release of MSFS2020, the interest in my sceneries has constantly decreased. Whereas about a year ago I was allowed to give out several download links almost every day, last month there were exactly 2. And it's just not worth keeping the servers running.

I hope this makes it a little easier to understand why I have switched off the servers and I also hope that nobody will take offence.

From time to time the question arose as to why I didn't bring the sceneries into the MSFS2020.
Unfortunately, the answer was never particularly well received, but nothing has changed in the matter:
As much as I would like to do so: on the one hand, however, there is no need, as the MSFS is already based on satellite imagery anyway, which is simply much higher resolution and more up-to-date due to constant streaming, which I can provide, and on the other hand, it is simply not possible to add new aerial imagery to such large areas with the MSFS SDK.

However, the core focus of my sceneries has always been on the autogen. And here, too, the MSFS is simply better, as the detection of vegetation and buildings was carried out using large servers and convolutional neural networks.
Even though I myself have used CNNs on rather small areas, my sceneries simply cannot keep up here.

So there's not too much left for me to say at this point, except:
MANY THANKS to all who have supported my sceneries and me in the last years, financially as well as with know-how or simply with their interest and favour in my sceneries.

THANK YOU for that!
 
Point 3 I do understand so much. That's one of the reasons I decided to let users search wherever they want... Or ask me kindly. That's easy.

Thank you for all your effort and work you did last years. Shame on all who can't appreciate this!

Matthias, hope you have time now to finally enjoy flightsimming without any stress from now on!
 
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It's been a pleasure having you show your work here at FSDeveloper. Please visit us often here. Your work has been outstanding.
 
That waas an Amazing Project to Follow Matt! sad it came to an end, but also understandable ;)
 
That's terrible timing on my part. I had just come back to P3D in the last year or so (but still using MSFS too) and just today was going through and installing a heap of photoscenery I had, and I thought of your autogen project. Then I found your last post while searching for it. 😅

Not to worry though, I actually have a lot covered already. I completely understand your position, and it is a lot to take on for one person, and when people can't even show gratitude, I could understand that would dissuade you. I also understand the cost must have been great. I also just unsubscribed from a file hosting service I had been paying for the last 10 years, with my France PR. I have no data, but I imagined it had been quite a while since it was last downloaded.

Hopefully you can enjoy your time just flying in the sims now.

Cheers,
 
Hi, I am just noticing this announcement and it is sad to see this project come to an end. I would have loved to complete my Africa landclass on my sim. For what it is worth, I would have loved to purchase your project because it was that good for P3D; something I can enjoy before going into a high budget sim but understanding the nature of MSFS and their popularity compared to P3D, I can definitely understand your position. Thank you very much for your time and dedication to the project. I have been doing a lot of enjoyable flights to West and East Africa thanks to your autogen sceneries and it would not have been possible without you. Thank you again for your dedications

Cheers
 
oh god
thank you for all the works, I really have enjoyed and still enjoying the beautiful world created by you.
🥲
 
this is devastating news. Losing a community member from the sim is a great loss, even more so with what you brought to this community. MFS are lucky to have you. Hopefully one day your old friend will get to be revisited. Nothing lasts forever and I look forward to your return to P3D. o7
 
Very sad reading your posting.... You have dedicated so many hours of hard work making outstanding sceneries for us all. Thank you so much for all the links provided in the past!
Wishing you all the best, Matthias!
PS. Had sent a previous request as I only read your posting a few moments ago. Fully understand your motivation.
 
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