Level Mapping Questions

[Guest ddrueding]

Happy new year, all!I have some questions about level mapping, and the LOD rings.Are the sizes of the LOD rings fixed? If so, what are they?Do the sizes depend on the number of rings? If I specify a minimum LOD of 14 and a maximum of 15, does TP affect a smaller area around the aircraft than if I specify 11-17?If I use level mapping to increase the LOD further away, does it really display at the higher resolution at that distance, or does it just downsample the higher res images to what FSX was going to use?I'm sorry for asking so many questions, but I've been using this program quite a bit, and would love to get more out of it.Thanks,David

[Guest cbuchner1]

Happy new year, all!I have some questions about level mapping, and the LOD rings.Are the sizes of the LOD rings fixed? If so, what are they?

The LOD ring size is defined by the Terrain Radius Setting in Flight Simulator. This can in principle take any value, but from the FSX settings you can only choose 2.5 (low), 3.5 (medium) and 4.5 (high). 2.5 means the ring has a radius of 2.5 LOD tiles - or a total diameter of five.Christian

Do the sizes depend on the number of rings? If I specify a minimum LOD of 14 and a maximum of 15, does TP affect a smaller area around the aircraft than if I specify 11-17?If I use level mapping to increase the LOD further away, does it really display at the higher resolution at that distance, or does it just downsample the higher res images to what FSX was going to use?

No, the min_lod and max_lod settings will only affect the minimum and maximum tile resolutions provided by Tileproxy. However FSX will still always try load all the LOD rings - and if Tileproxy supplies a too low resolution for that ring, things may look less detailed. In particular the max_lod setting controls the highest resolution that you can achieve in Tileproxy. It has no influence on the actual ring layout or shape inside FSX.The only exception is the outermost LOD ring (LOD8) in FSX which is now provided by some static photo scenery.

[Guest ddrueding]

Thanks for all of your time Christian, this is a really amazing program.

The LOD ring size is defined by the Terrain Radius Setting in Flight Simulator. This can in principle take any value, but from the FSX settings you can only choose 2.5 (low), 3.5 (medium) and 4.5 (high). 2.5 means the ring has a radius of 2.5 LOD tiles - or a total diameter of five.

So this single value is the radius for every ring? I don't mean to burden you with a full explanation, but where can I find info on this? Is this value able to be edited manually? Where is it?

No, the min_lod and max_lod settings will only affect the minimum and maximum tile resolutions provided by Tileproxy. However FSX will still always try load all the LOD rings - and if Tileproxy supplies a too low resolution for that ring, things may look less detailed. In particular the max_lod setting controls the highest resolution that you can achieve in Tileproxy. It has no influence on the actual ring layout or shape inside FSX.The only exception is the outermost LOD ring (LOD8) in FSX which is now provided by some static photo scenery.

So when I changed the settings from 8-17 to 13-19 and set the mapping accordingly, I actually created a hole in the textures represented by TileProxy? All levels down to 8 must be represented (with 8 being handled by the static textures included)?I'm still just appreciating how complex this project of yours is, thanks again!