Welcome to the TileProxy project forum!

[Guest cbuchner1]

This forum is dedicated to discussion about the TileProxy Project, a free photoreal scenery addon for Flight Simulator X. To be more specific, this project downloads scenery from Internet satellite map services as you fly. The project home page is on sourceforge right here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/tileproxy The latest versions will always be available from sourceforge. Major releases (non beta) will find their way into the avsim file library as well.The avsim moderators have set up a separate forum on this topic, as the flurry of threads about this project have overwhelmed the main FSX forum. Please try to help each other out around here, discuss tweaks and fixes to the configuration of the program and help each others troubleshooting problems. The author of TileProxy will try to help out as well, but may not be available at all times.Welcome to the Flight Club.

[Geofa 108]

Congrats on the forum. I know I will be spending a lot of time here!http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

[Guest idratherbeflying]

Here, here !Great move. For the benefit of every flight simmer, this project deserves all the attention / effort it can receive.Christian, if I / we can help in any way, do not hesitate! Thanks again.Louie.

[Guest JohnEGPF]

Well done on the forum got a feeling it will be busy here:).Just curious are you finding tileproxy is working better since SP1?.Sadly I found the ground scenery blurr issue to be a show stopper for me with SP1 with regard to tileproxy , I went back to pre patch FSX and can fly around at 160/200kts with 1m textures showing most of the time ,will wait and see what happens over the next few weeks.Here's a screenshot of the model flying club I belong to some 4 miles from where I live In Central scotland, The landing strip needs a good mow:).http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/171758.jpgThanks Again ChristianJohn

[Guest cbuchner1]

I've only been able to test SP1 for a few days and I believe that loading performance for ground textures has not improved much at all.TileProxy can now more efficiently request data from the Internet for required tiles. The problem is that FSX just isn't "requiring" them fast enough. ;) And so it's easy to fly way ahead of any scenery updates. Maybe we can later find some more FSX configuraiton tweaks to mitigate this problem.I also found a problem with Windows Vista which leads to increased blur ESPECIALLY when circling over an area for a short while. It is related with the way Windows Vista caches files in memory that Vista finds are accessed often.Christian

[Guest cbuchner1]

What special tweaks over TileProxy's default settings did you do to get that good performance?Did you check the box "optimize for high air speed" during installation?

[Guest Bramski]

I'm pulling up a chair cos I'll be spending quite some time here at flight club :)

[Truthan 75]

Excellent! A TileProxy Forum. I hadn't much touched FSX since my initial install last year, and had kept to the excellent performance and landclass sobriety of FS9. Now with FSX SP1 and TP Beta 3 I can FINALLY begin exploring the great American West like it was MEANT to be seen...from the air...with high resolution SATTELITE imagery! My performance with SP1 and TPB3 is much better than last weeks pre-updates. I'm glad to say that at a comfortable 94 knots in a 172 TP loads high resolution sattelite textures at a fantastic rate, and my system isn't even that beefy by the latest standards. I stay locked at a full 24 FPS...and it's smooth and stutter free. FSX will give me twice that but the frame lock helps with texture loading. I've just headed out from St. George, Utah for the wild unkowns of the Great Basin in Nevada and every real world salt flat, crop ring, dirt road, juniper clad desertert range, abandoned mine, ghost town, dune field, us highway, and dirt trail is THERE!This is STUNNING Christian. Thanks so much...Here's a shot from my tour of Montana's Glacier National Park last night,(V*****l E***h textures utilizing the color tweak)...http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/171767.jpg

[Truthan 75]

And oh yes I almost forgot, for anyone curious about comparative SP1/TP3/system specs match ups, etc... my system specs are:Dell XPS Gen 2 DesktopWindows XP Proffesional SP2Pentium 4 3Ghz (Single Core) Hyperthreaded120GB x 2 SATA Raid0 HDD Array (240GB Total)2GB Dual Channel DDR SDRAM at 400mHzEVGA NVidia 7800 GS CO AGP 8x Video Card 256MBSound Blaster Audigy 2 Sound CardFSX Deluxe with SP1 Running TileProxy Beta 3

[Guest JohnEGPF]

I used the following settings in FSX.cfgTEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=400FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=1.20Also have the LOD settings at medium running beta2 with unpatched FSX ( for the moment) and its great, Frame rate capped at 30, flew the default Baron from Newcastle to Manchester earlier cruising at 150KTS IAS at 9000feet clear textures all the way, on the final approach into the airport the textures did blur a little, had to pause for 10 seconds then they snapped back to glorious 1m Hi-res heaven.Perhaps I need to defrag the drive again I have over 3 gig's in the cache alone, scared to look how big the world textures folder is:).CheersJohnWindows XPAsus P5B-deluxe MBE6600@3.2ghz2 gig of fast Corsair ram Geforce 7950 512mb GPU

[Guest cbuchner1]

WOOHAA!! This is ART! I want a print of thatWithout the color_hack option this would be a true Ansel Adams. ;)

[Guest cbuchner1]

You might find it interesting that you're not looking at satellite imagery (except maybe for the color layer). These USGS images were taken during aerial campaigns mostly in the 80's of the last century in the NAPP respectively NHAP programs. So yes, these images were taken from a plane ;-)They're also available on Microsoft's TerraServer project and are considered Public Domain. However the availability on MSN Virtual Earth and/or TerraServer may fall under a "compilation copyright". After all, these terrain tiles are properly geo-registered (means aligned to geo coordinates)Quote: ----------------- snip ---------------National Aerial Photography ProgramThe National Aerial Photography Program (NAPP) was established in 1987 to coordinate aerial photography for the United States among Federal and State agencies. NAPP photographs are used for such purposes as mapping, resource planning, engineering, land use planning, and agricultural monitoring. Private citizens also purchase them for hunting, hiking, and other recreational purposes as well as for inherent qualities such as an unusual perspective on familiar landscapes. Taken from aircraft flying nominally at 20,000 feet above the terrain, each NAPP photograph covers about 32 square miles.National High Altitude Photography ProgramThe National High Altitude Photography (NHAP) program was a Federal Project that preceded NAPP, running from 1978 to 1988. NHAP photographs were taken simultaneously with two cameras, one containing black-and-white film, the other color infrared. The NHAP aircraft flew at 40,000 feet. These photographs cover more area, but show less detail, than NAPP photographs. An NHAP black-and-white photograph covers about 129 square miles, and because of the longer focal length in the second camera, an NHAP color-infrared photograph covers about 68 square miles.------------------------- snap ------------------------

[Truthan 75]

You are right. The highest resolution levels are indeed aerial. V* includes the color versions at hi-res levels throughout much of the central California coast centered around SFO and SAC and on up into the Sierra Nevada a ways. They also appear in Tuscon and Denver...I prefer the the "color hack" process over all though because when using the V* hi-res color areas the lower level "satellite" covereage levels are generally brighter than the hi-res aerials and disturbs the continuity at the lower LOD ring perimeter only a few miles away. Of course G* is generally superior for areas of CONSISTENT coverage but when long range flights cross many wildly divergent boundaries it break the continuity as well. Here's another Great American West "color hack" example from The Great Sand Dunes National Monument on the estern flank Colorado's San Luis Valley at the foot of the Sangre DeCristo Mountains. (I have camped there several times and though a bit bluish from the color layer, this is is JUST as they appear). I'm speechless...http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/171798.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/171799.jpg

[Guest wyoming]

But I would like to add a comment. TileProxy is what is described above but it is also the only presence of creativity I saw in these waters for... well, since Fly! It amazes me to see how little response you got when you first posted your idea and how large a response you got when the idea was eventually published. I see a lesson in that: flight sim lacks creativity but creativity is what we all need. May this forum be a place where an idea, any idea, will not be shot down but fostered. Tile proxy-related or not.And since I mentioned Fly!, I remember having exchanged posts on the dedicated forum several years ago where we were talking about the 2 different ways of approaching flightsim: the reproduction way (i.e. re-producing the real 3D world in 2D) and the representation way (i.e. creating a fac-simile 3D world - diorama). The difference may seem really tiny but it is a qualitative difference. MSFS chose the latter and until TP, there was no alternative. I think it's time that we push this agenda with TP but also in the lighting domain and with the clouds. As far as the latter, I'm sorry to say, for example, that Sky!'s "Stratus Soup" has never been equaled... And it's been 5 years now... my computer was a 300Mhz and my card a 64MB... Emerging from it through whisps of clouds flying by and into the blue sky above the sea spreading to the horizon still remains one of the strongest illusion I ever had.There are so many domains of our hobby where creativity can make a huge difference. Think about Active Camera, for another example, a tiny piece of software that immediately multiplied the immersion factor by several units. There are tons of such ideas out there somewhere and I'd be thrilled to see them flock around here!

[Guest wyoming]

With a less uniform light and some noise to reproduce the shard edges that would be absolutely perfect!