I am still on the sidelines as far as FSX is concerned but read about TileProxy with great interest.The positives are fairly obvious to me but what about potential drawbacks?1. load time?2. availability of textures?3. stutter?4. no autogen?5. night scenery?6. resolution?I am just speculating. Would like to hear some opinions.Michael J.http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/9320/apollo17vf7.jpg

1) Load time can vary-the latest version Christian did though goes a long way to reducing it. Once you have loaded the scenery it is cached (you don't even have to load tileproxy again). I would say it is about the same amount of time as a megascenery title to load. Your level of detail slider also effects the load time-but I find it looks so great at full that it is worth the wait.2) Is easily answered by opening up g earth-and checking out the areas that are well done. Most major cities are done well-sometimes the boonies not so well, and coverage can be uneven. Although lakes and rivers will look more real that default fsx-large bodies of water do not most often look good.3) I get no stutters-some have mentioned a slight stutter when streaming as new tiles are downloaded.4) I find this the ultimate autogen as every tree, house, and man made landmarks are where they belong. They show up very clearly at low altitude-so you will only miss the autogen when very low.5) Night scenery-stick with default fs. (you can disable tileproxy at any time by unchecking the "world" folders in your scenery manager.6) Resolution is fantastic. What remains to hopefully be solved is the scenery will blur after flying a while. The only drawback for me is after experiencing this scenery I can no longer be happy with generic database based scenery...http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

I am investigating the reason initial load takes so long. If it's due to bandwidth, there is nothing we could do about it. However, if it's due to g earth server temp. slow downs, I think using a P2P arrangement can fix it. If enough users are on a P2P network, the g server is irrelavant. A P2P network also enable sharing of custom autogens in real time as well. An added benefit, my old machine use get about 10fps now gets 45fps. It is insane.

With my lowly machine CPU "AMD Athlon XP 2700+" Speed Test 2.215 GhzGeForce 6600 GT FSX was useless to me. Tileproxy not only made it very flyable but took it many steps beyond FS9. I am a scenery developer for FS9 and figured I would just stick with it until I could buy a new machine. Now I rarely start FS9 because Tileproxy has created a sim with amazing realism. It is about the most realistic simming experience I have had on a PC. Sorry for not being more specific but I am giving you impressions since specifics have already been addressed in this thread.

can provide us with tons of opportunities in addition to flying over a reproduction of the real thing.I do not miss autogen one bit. I don't like its ever sunny facades and diorama look anyway, but that's just me. The only problem we have here is with the trees: I tried to fly over the Redwood the other day and you gotta be quite high to get a good feel. Someone will have to come up with something here, not sure it's even possible.

I am with you about the most realistic simming experience. I have never felt any sim to come alive with realism till this (well maybe terrascene for Fly was close).I don't think I will ever go back to the default fs scenery-even with the issues to be worked out with coverage etc. There are enough well done areas to keep me busy for a few years.Geofhttp://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

We need to put the autogen back around the airport areas and out for at least 10 miles. That will give us time to climb to a few thousand feet so autogens aren't necessary.Have you taken off from Juneru Harbor to see if tileproxy fixed the cliff texture on the sides?

I proposed something like this when fsx first came out-and the ms guys said that would take a complete rewrite. But then again there is Christian! :-)http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

There will be more surprises from the community in the future, I am sure.

>Have you taken off from Juneru Harbor to see if tileproxy>fixed the cliff texture on the sides?Why would TileProxy affect the terrain mesh? All it does is download textures to drape over your existing mesh.George

Broken cliffs are caused by hydro polygons that define where rivers, lakes and similar are. A discussion about it is ongoing in the Scenery Design forum.

I am also a real world pilot and I have not had the ability to judge pattern height in a PC sim until Tileproxy came along. There are so many tiny visual cues that we use from the scenery to judge altitude that cannot be created with conventional autogen scenery and textures. The imagery that Tileproxy overlays does that quite nicely. Finally, I can fly a pattern and feel it based on the myriad of visual cues in the scenery.

there are softwares that reproduce a 3D image from a series of 2D shots... If you take a few shots on approach (OK not you, the passenger), that would give enough to the program to work with. That's the way 3d towns are being currently made so it's possible. And that wouldn't be autogen.

"Finally, I can fly a pattern and feel it based on the myriad of visual cues in the scenery..."I quite agree. Many areas which at first may seem unusually sparse or empty due to to autogen's absence, are vibrantly replaced by the complex and never repeated variations of their perfectly placed real world counterparts. The sense of spatial and environmental immersion created by this isn't nessecarily unusual to those that used FS9s MegaScenery titles, but with the combination of FSX's increased resolution and the abilty to generate ground tiles VIRTUALLY ANYWHERE there is coverage of decent quality is simply...intoxicating. It's just simply SOOOOO refreshing after so many years of endlessly repeated texture sets to set out from some wayward airstrip in the wilds of say, Wyoming...and explore the vegetation, environments... even the geology... of so many far flung places and know you're looking at "what's really there"! On an intellectually stimulating level, it's simply light years ahead of lanclass generated texture sets. It will be hard to ever go back...I sincerely hope MS is paying attention and develops this avenue further, even if it had to be a "version option" in the future, say "Flight Simulator 11 - Virtual Version"-Ed

I like the word "intoxicating". As also mentioned in another post above haven't had a flight sim "suck me in" so much since Fly. And I have been using FSX a lot. Being an aussie I was patiently waiting for VOZ 2.0, but this is astounding. Did some flying years ago long enough to go solo and a bit more. This is the first time for me circuits have felt anything like the real thing was - albeit with Track IR helping out. Somehow the flight sim world seems so much BIGGER too - there's so many reference points and so much to explore. FSX was a quantum leap with more roads and rivers, but not the same as having an image of EVERYTHING there. I found a reservoir out the back of Brisbane today I didn't even realise was there (mind you, it probably doesn't really have any water in it with our drought going the way it is).TP is still only Beta, but getting it running right will....."intoxicate" you. Have a go!Rob