What is TileProxy's highest level of detail for FSX?

[RobertRent 17]

When flying over the Google campus in Mountain View California, I am unable to achieve in FSX the same level of detail that is available on Google maps. Can someone tell me what is TileProxy's highest level of detail when running on FSX, and also provide suggestions for the TileProxy and FSX settings needed to achieve that level of detail?Any thoughts or suggestions will be appreciated.Cheers,Robert

[Guest cbuchner1]

It's a known fact that FS9 compatible photoscenery has a limit of 4.75m per pixel. The tiles are 256x256 pixels in size and thousands of BMP files are present, each one depicting a square tile of about 1.1km on the ground.FSX suprisingly tolerates 1024x1024 pixel textures for these files (allthough this feature is not officially documented anywhere) which brings the maximum resolution to about 1m/pixel.Commercial services may offer centimeters per pixel, but the scenery format Tileproxy uses does not allow to go that high.Some commercial add-on sceneries may soon offer 50cm/pixel in the new BGL format supported only by FSX. This uses a hierarchical compression simular to wavelets and is a much more efficient storage format. Unfortunately it cannot be dynamically modified unless Microsoft would be so kind to explain their exact format and compression - so don't expect a Tileproxy for this format anytime soon.

[Guest nakke]

I'm pretty sure it's 1.1m/px, which of course isn't anywhere near the 3"/px Google Earth is offering in at least Las Vegas (http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2006/03/google_releases.html" google earth blog).FSX is capable of 7cm/px (well, at least the slider is ;), but that would be a huge amount of data to download, and I'm sure Google wouldn't like it (this imagery is only available in Google Earth, for verification purposes probably).

[nudata 10]

At Sea Island, Georgia the state of Georgia has a small area at 3inches per pixel. If you grab this in TIFF format and run it through the re-sampler it results in some white area washout. There is also 7inches per pixel for that same area. Here the washout does not happen but there is no advantage. If you fly low enough to take advantage of the high resolution everything looks flat. The shadowing has no ability to provide a false depth perception and thus it look bad. You could install a lot of house and tree objects but that is for the obsessed. 0.25 meters/pixel seems a good target and is available on Terraserver using the JD Cox program to gather in the tiles. I have used it in Concord, CA where I removed the Microsoft synthetic airport and used the photo instead. I find it to be quite acceptable. I surround the airport with 4 meter/pixel photo tiles/textures so that once you gain altitude the ground looks good. Download and compile times, plus file size, limit my enthusiasm for 0.25m/pixel material. Flying into a 0.25m/pixel airport is quite real and the runway has bumps since the 9m mesh does leave gaps. A flatten could fix that but not worth it. Another nice advantage to 0.25m/p airports is that removing the Microsoft airport now gives you the natural slope of the runway. In Alaska I did an airport but the 38m mesh was to coarse to allow landing. So, Using SBuilderX I created a sloping polygon flatten molded to the contours of the 38m mesh. Smoothed it out.Finally a lot of the sources have bad photos. It looks like a lot of the stuff was colorized from black & white with excessive green. Unfortunately you cannot, without extreme patience, touch-up the photos in TileProxy.Regards,Dick BoleyA PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yoke

[Guest Mike707]

Thanks for the information. Do you have any screenshots to share? I would love to see how the 7 inch per pixel landscape in Georgia looks, as well as a .25m/pixel airport that you mention. Any screenshots would be appreciated. Thanks again.

[nudata 10]

I erased the 7 inch stuff. Not worth the space as explained. It is available on USGS site SEAMLESS.0.25m/p at Concord CA.Regards,Dick BoleyA PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yokehttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/176426.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/176427.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/176429.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/176430.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/176431.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/176432.jpg

[RobertRent 17]

Thanks for both your response and your explanation, Christian.May I ask a follow up question? If the highest reasonable FSX resolution when using TileProxy is 1m/pixel, does that imply that there is no value to setting max_lod to anything higher than 15? Also, for service2, what are the reasonable min_level and max_level settings for 1m/pixel?Thanks,Robert

[Guest Dragonlick]

Hello Dick,That is very interesting indeed! I think I am more interested in learning how to turn off the MS runways as you did. I would love to land at some of my fave strips and experience the actual lay of the land there. Can you possibly tell me how to do that or direct me somewhere? Also, I guess the runway lights would also disappear, but that would be fine as I would use it more for non-paved runways.Thanks!Rob L.

[nudata 10]

To eliminate the MS airport it has to be removed from the Scenery folder. I do not remember the process so any guess would mislead you.It is no use doing it unless you have resolution = or > 0.5m/pixel. Otherwise you will land on an out of focus runway and also find it difficult to taxi on indistinct taxiways. This eliminates your favorite dirt strips since hi-res photography is unlikely in their case.Runway lights and taxi signs can be replaced by FSPlanner using a photo background.Regards,Dick BoleyA PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yoke

[Guest cbuchner1]

LOD 15 is the maximum supported resolution. That gets mapped to zoom level 17 on a quadtree based world coordinate system. In other worls, from the top world view (zoom level 1) you have to zoom in by a factor of 2 sixteen times more.The world circumference (equatorial) is about 40000km. Divide by 2 to the power of 16, gives you about 0.61m/pixel in the horizontal direction at the equator. But in the regions of Northern America/Europe you should get somewhat closer to 1m/pixel (the cosine of your latitude comes into play here)Mapped onto a LOD15 tile, you end up with 1.1m/pixel, losing a bit of detail. But LOD15 is the highest I can do in FSX with the terrain method I am using.