How big should Orbiter be?

[lotbr]

I voted for less than 1GB, and it would be nice to have high resolution textures pack to download, like today. If that pack would be up to 10GB it would be great. I'm struggling a bit with disk free space on my rather old notebook...

 

[jedidia]

Would a HDD or blu-ray shipping service help in that case? I guess Flightgear provides such an option. No idea how to organize this, but may not be too difficult.

Well, the Orbiter Store already exists, so the logistics for sending stuff out would already be in place...
On the other hand, who has a bluray drive in their PC? Don't most PC users usually rely on the net for stuff that won't fit on a reasonable ammount of DVDs?

 

[Evil_Onyx]

In my humble opinion, A working basic Orbiter install should not come in over 1gb, but have the option of adding to that progressively(until everyone gets to there own limit). I would also say that I prefer A BitTorrent distribution method on any file's over 500mb, as not everyone has a constant internet connection and there is nothing more frustrating as getting to 95% complete and losing connection.

 

[Screamer7]

My bandwidth 'cap is 60 GB a month. So I can download large files without being throttled at the end of the month.
And about the size of Orbiter....
As much as it takes!:hmm:

 

[thepenguin]

Given that my current orbiter install is 60MB (textures included), I am probably not the best person to answer this question...

My real question is what the minimum size of an orbiter install would be. I know that the graphics are really what takes up room, so I am more inclined to ask what the smallest graphics package available is (by file size). The current earth textures are 16MB, so I hope Orbiter 2014 will have a similar level of textures available for those who want them.

 

[Linguofreak]

I'd say that 50-100 GiB per body is probably reasonable. Earth would certainly be package-size limited, I'm not sure if the Moon and Mars would be limited by package size or by the resolution of available data, everything else would probably be limited by resolution.

 

[Super_NONO]

Hello all,

this message just to talk about my experience on the "size" of the orbiter 2015 beta textures.
I only had an 120Go SSD inside my computer, and a big NAS on the network, not enough place to put the whole orbiter textures on the SSD, so i've installed the textures of EARTH/MARS/MOON on the NAS and made a symbolic link to it on the SSD orbiter 2015 beta install.
It took me 13:45:08 !!! to unzip the the Earth high resolution texture thru my network...

it recall me the old time where the computer was sssllllooowwww.. and you should be patient to do something with a little bit of calculation behind..

Nota : This Beta release is awesome... definitely keeping it up and tracking the news.

 

[kuddel]

It took me 13:45:08 !!! to unzip the the Earth high resolution texture thru my network...

Which brings up another thought:
Currently the textures a stored as many relatively small files,
combining them to fewer little bit bigger files will reduce that time, too!
Finding the right compromize between (file-)size and number might be
something to think about!

 

[Cras]

Disk space is of no concern to me. Make it as big as it needs to be so it can be the best it can be.

 

[Fabri91]

As long as Orbiter does not practically require an SSD like DCS does to avoid biblical loading times and stutters, even something like 100GB to 1TB is practical, seeing how prices have plummeted for mechanical hard drives, but, as others have mentioned, a basic working install should be under a couple of GBs at most. Download size is of no concern for me as long as it's "non-recurring" stuff.

 

[Keatah]

In this era of big multi-TB disks and hi-speed internet at the $100 price point none of this is a real issue. Do whatever it takes to make Orbiter the best it can be.

In the past I've acquired huge data sets for other projects via FTP and Torrent over the course of several days of start-n-stop downloading. I've also used snail-mail and sent out blank HDD or had the other party (sender) just purchase the disk and copy and send to me.

There's really lots of options, and size shouldn't be an issue.

 

[gertz]

Most of time is still spent in orbit, not like in aircraft. From the other side - no matter how detailed and complex the surface is - it still is empty everywhere but at base patches.

I'd be happy to have the ability to generate and use level 8 textures with heightmaps. Actually, heightmaps themselves might be considered as an additional "level" of quality from some point of view.
Consider me old-fashioned, but I prefer lightweight option, and will be glad to see "basic" Orbiter package shipped with low-res textures, like we have now (~120mb?)

 

[4throck]

Just keep it as the beta.
A modest GBs sized base packs for each planet, then higher resolution patches for the places that matter, as the user sees fit.

As some have mentioned, you only need high res terrain around bases. No point in downloading highres Sahara desert unless you plan to fly there. The same goes for the Moon and Mars.

Now, what we need is higher resolution data around the bases. Some already have it like KSC or Edwards, but I was checking my enhanced bases elsewhere and the resolution is not that good. They look nice with blocks following the terrain (especially in Japan) but we need higher resolution just for 1 or 2 KM around the bases, not the entire planet. :thumbup:

 

[Jumper_001]

I live in the middle of the desert (near Edwards AFB) and I can only download 40GB/month. I think there are a lot of people who either have limitations on their total GBs OR slow service in rural areas around the world. So it's important in my mind to have a basic working version somewhere in the 1-5 GB range.

I would say there are three sizes of interest to me -
-1-5 GB download, up to 10GB uncompressed - bare minimum for people with low bandwidth/low GB restriction.

-~20 GB download, 40 GB uncompressed - a version with high resolution textures in critical areas around bases, etc. This is the size of the largest current PC games like Titanfall. It is also a size that one might be able to fit on a current SSD for fast loading. This version could also be put on 1 single layer Bluray and shipped to people - Bluray data drives are relatively inexpensive now.

-100GB+ - the "insane version", shipped on multiple dual-layer blurays OR a hard drive.

Since I have only tried the lowest resolution textures in the new 2015 Beta, it's not clear to me what the performance impact of running 100s of GB of textures would be when running off a HDD.

I do have space in my PC setup on a RAIDZ2 NAS attached over Gigabit ethernet, spinning HDDs, and SSDs, so if I could get ahold of a copy of the new "insane" textures I would be more than happy to benchmark the 3 use cases for comparison.

 

[Photon305]

I personally would be very happy if textures at the highest feasible resolution that could be made with the Landsat data (and potentially aerial photography in important locations) were available at some point down the line as an option, for example as ultra-hi-res tiles to supplement the current beta hi-res textures. I now love low-altitude sightseeing from the Deltaglider, and after flying around beautiful Florida it makes me sad that my home village across the Atlantic is just a brown smear If areas are available on demand, I don't see a reason for a potential total size of ungodly proportions to an issue, provided hosting etc wasn't a limiting factor.