Hey Loyd, I have been doing some flying and fiddling and making lots of notes. This has generated lots of interesting observations and inevitably plenty of further questions.Interestingly, whilst paused and waiting for the scenery to "catch up", even though all the ovals were filled, it still took a while for the scenery to snap into focus. Does that mean that its simply processing power the bottlneck here?

I think so. If the tiles/second line of the console is still above 0, then TP is still preparing/updating scenery tiles. If it is 0, then you are waiting for FSX to process and render those files.

Curious, I have been playing around a bit. I tried using everything the exact same at a saved flight over the frontrange, but just substituted the details ( just the internet stuff) for service one. All other variables were exactly the same. However using the exact same settings for service produced crap results. Scenery was a lower resolution and I shortly overflew area that no matter how long I waited, did not snap into focus. Again, even though the ovals all indicated full.Why do you think the differnt map services display so differently? And why did the scenery never catch up?And how can the same settings have such differnt results? In case I made some elementary mistake that accounts for what I saw, I have cut and pasted the 2 versions of the .ini file for you to compare:

Imagery from either service can be made from higher or lower resolution than the other service, so there can be some differences but here's the single most obvious difference I noticed: you had different mappings in the two .ini files as posted.[service Example 3]cache_folder=N:\cache.service3level_mapping=10,11,12,13,16,16,17,18,18 <<--[service Example 1]cache_folder=N:\cache.service1level_mapping=10,11,12,13,14,16,16,17,18 <<--You are telling TP to "Re-construct" all the scenery tiles that come within range (everything you can see) according to a different "mapping configuration". This will occur even if you keep the same service and don't add a single tile. It's the SCENERY elements being revised by TP.This shouldn't cause blurries but you did add a level 14 layer of imagery. There's nothing in the service1 l14 tiles to account for this, they are the same color and quality as the hi-res tiles. Colorado Springs color is "muddier" than up near Evergreen - it's gotten quite nice in that area recently!But still, quality does fall off away from the Front range area so I made myself a "fence" out of a flightplan to show me where the "Good" and "better" imagery was to be had.The other consideration: Did you use a DIFFERENT texture folder or empty out your 202\Texture before switching services?. It might not matter since there would be much rebuilding (due to the mapping difference). But if I were about to do a comparision, I'd use separate Texture folders so there wouldn't be any contamination from previously built scenery and I could switch to the other by renaming again.My scenery for first pass with service "A" would go into\TileProxy Photoreal World\202...TEXTURE <--- this will be used for this flight with service "A"But then I'd rename it TEXTURE_A, and create a new TEXTURE folder also in \202 for the second pass with service "B" so new scenery would go here:My scenery for second pass with service "B" would go into\TileProxy Photoreal World\202...TEXTURE_A...TEXTURE <--- this will be used by the second flight with service "B"If your problem is not one of these, post the lat,lon,alt and heading for your location and we can try to duplicate your view.-----------------------------Hope you had fun in Spain.BTY, do you fly a 'cycle?Loyd

Hey Loyd, hope you are well! My little trip was pretty cool, but I have had a bit of catching up with work and family to do, and so not too much time to devote to this.I am not even going to start messing with texture folders just yet, I feel I still need to understand much of the basics of how this software works and interacts with FSX. Can I just ask, are those settings you gave me, using the max lod 16 and starting with the 10 setting, are they optimised for all service 3 western USA areas? I am trying to find the best combination of texture quality and load times that I can. I have to say, its tricky trying to work this out. Your settings are pretty good, but I still get problems having to stop and wait for the scenery or the software ( or the computer!!) to catch up. I think the biggest problem is the sheer number of variables involved. You have several entries in the FSX .cfg file before you even start messing with any in the TP .ini file. The combinations are endless and probably impossible to investigate, hampered by the small number of scattered users. What would be cool would be TileProxy users posting their .ini file settings along with thier machine specs and the areas they fly in, so there is a database of information as to what works where and with what hardware.Can you just confirm I have this correct:If the top line "individual tile accesses " reads 0 per second, then FSX has made all the tiles, correct? Any number greater that zero indicates FSX is producing tiles, yes? And so any slowdown at that point is due to the computer?All ovals full mean all data downloaded. I find , using your settings that the last oval starts un filling after about 10 seconds and after about 2 minutes, the last 3 are getting empty. This was in the colorado area, but the wierd thing is, different areas behave differently, with variable load times and oval fill times. And sometimes, the ovals vary in shape, why is that? If I am still getting loading problems in an area I have overflown already, is that indicative of my system not coping with the texture loading?cheers, MarkPS, I did not realise you could fly a 'cycle in FSX !!

... are those settings you gave me, using the max lod 16 and starting with the 10 setting, are they optimised for all service 3 western USA areas?

No. I just normally start with level10 or 11 for LOD and go to 15 (4.8m) as a max because there usually isn't any 1m imagery for national parks, forests, wilderness areas etc. Sometimes 20m is all there is... (level 13 tiles) but I hope for at least 4.8m (level 15 tiles)Additionally, I typically use medium scenery range which gives such small 2m and 1m scenery rings that it's usually not worth the overhead to make 1m scenery that I can't even see beneath me out the window

If the top line "individual tile accesses " reads 0 per second, then FSX has made all the tiles, correct? Any number greater that zero indicates FSX is producing tiles, yes? And so any slowdown at that point is due to the computer?

Christian says:The

Hey loyd, yet more stuff to take in!! I wish I could say it is all becoming clearer, but if anything, the opposite is so. I have been playing around still with settings, and in a nutshell, no matter what I do, I cant seem to find a setting that ensures crisp scenery around the plane at all times. Along the way I have been keeping track of my observations as best i can but my big problem is that things do not seem to happen in a logical way> ( Or in any way that seems logical to me based on my understanding at the moment, it may very be logical once other things are understood!!!)I am a great believer in trying to figure things out for yourself, as that is how you learn best, but to be honest, the scale of possible variables and complexity of this software make this impossible in a short time. As someone who has and is obviously studying this in detail I would appreciate your take on the following things I observed, which just serve to confuse me further:For example , last night, I was using this set of variables in the .ini file , to see if it helped with crisper scenery:max_lod=17# Lowest LOD ring to automatically preload tiles for. Must not be lower than 8.preload_min_lod=10# Lowest LOD ring to automatically preload tiles for. Must not be higher than 17.preload_max_lod=17[service Example 3]cache_folder=N:\cache.service3network_module=libnettilemodule_config="conn=20|rate=2.0|verbose=0|server=http://us.maps3.yimg.com|path=/aerial.maps.yimg.com/img?x=%x&y=%y&z=%z&v=%v&t=a|useragent=Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)"min_level=10max_level=19map_version=1.9level_mapping=10,10,11,14,14,16,16,17,18,19color_hack=Nocolor_level=0bulk_extend=50I was getting quite good results with this and decided to see if changing any variables in the FSX .cfg file had any effect. As I am still unsure as to wether it is needed in an SP2 installation, I commented out the FFTF line I had added and changed TBM to 100, , to see the effect. To my suprise, this had the effect of only ovals 2 and 3 filling in the TP DOS screen. The sim loaded fine and scenery was displayed correctly and indeed, pretty nice and crisply. In fact , I had perfectly displayed scenery as far as I could see, whereas before, I could clearly see the lower res tiles around me. TP screen indicated plenty of downloading, at the start, but at no time did any more ovals fill. Why would these settings in the FSX .cfg file affect TP in this way? And what does that tell you about what is going on behind the scenes?Here is a screeny to show you:So, I thought, is this the magic bullet to getting crisp scenery displayed all around you? And if so, why, what is it in the combination of settings that produced this result? I flew for about 5 minutes, but then I noticed that I was not getting crisp scenery, all the tile seemed to change to lower res tiles. Again, this was all around, as far as I could see. There was no download activity after the initial burst when i first loaded the flight, even when I paused the sim. So I paused for about 2 minutes to note this all down and when i returned to the sim, hey presto!! high res tiles again!!! And no evidence of downloading on the TP screen. I then tried the same settings on a different area, results were similar, but I ran into lower res tiles quicker. However, the results were pretty darn good still, here is a screeny taken after about 10 minutes continuos flying, it looks pretty good, although I think I need one step higher res on the nearest tiles for it to be golden. Not sure if I can make that happen, but will give it a try:However, after about 5 minutes flying, I got to an area of low res tiles that did not change even after 10 minutes of waiting. So i am a bit mystified as to what exactly is happening.. EDIT: after a further 10 minutes of waiting, another large area of crisp tiles came into focus, again, with no sign of any download activity in the TP window.... It seems that these settings work very differently from the normal way.So, the best results I have had so far in terms of the radius of clear scenery and the crsipness, seems to be with the settings describes above, that produce the strange behavious with the TP loading ovals and were as a result of the changes i made in the FSX .cfg file. I think this needs further investigation....Also loyd, I have the following questions buzzing round my head in search of an answer! ( It seems everything I do generates more questions than answers!1) What is the advantage of using min and max levels of tile pre load ? I have noticed that whatever settings you seem to choose, it does not have much of an effect on the time taken to load the high res tiles.2) Do the filled ovals represent manufactured tiles by FSX ? 3) Why do i still get download activity wghen flying over an area i have repetaedly already flown over before? Surely all the tiles were downloaded, made and cached before? 4) Why do the ovals fill faster at the initial load, than they do when you pause to allow the scenery to catch up? On some of the settings i have been testing, the last 4 ovals will fill in around 10 seconds before the sim starts, yet may take 3 or 4 minutes to refill when you pause. Any way, please try and replicate what I found and see whart you think and wether you can explain what is happening! Meantime, I am going to try aand digest what you posted. What do the headings .init 2.5, 3.5 and after flight refer to on the table you presented? And when you say you use "medium range scenery", what do you mean by that? Does it mean you set the LOD radius in FSX .cfg to a lower value than 4.5? Or does it mean that you use level mapping in TP to define the scenery range? Sorry for all the questions!!! cheers, Mark

Well, it gets stranger. I tried the same settings on various other saved flights I have. In Washington, out of Bellingham, same thing occurs, and also over the frontal range in colorado. But in other locations, I get the other rings filling - how wierd is that? In the last flight I just did over denver, using the settings again, i was able to not outfly the scenery, only the last 2 ovals emptied and the scenry was looking excellent. But these settings are definitely the best yet. Check out these screen shots from a flight i just did out of Telluride. Again, massive depth of clarity and i did not manage to run out of scenery. This is with FFTF commented out, TBM at 100, LODradius 4.5 in FSX .cfg file, other settings as in last post for the TP .ini:ITs very promising, but I still dont understand what and how is going on !! I tried the telluride flight in a glider and even at that speed, I still lost the fill of the last 2 ovals very quickly. cheers, Mark

Mark,Preloading:The lowest lod changes the least frequently - least benefit: I could fly all day in the same lod8 cell and never even need the preloaded cells outside of my immediate location.Console ovals:represent scenery elements created by Tileproxy - I used to think they were image tiles but they are SCENERY TILES made from "blocks" of jpg's. When an oval starts to show blanks, it means TP needs to make more for that area. It also means I'm moving too fast for TP to keep up the preloading or preparation. It's may be that tiles are needed but I can and do outrun the scenery even with tiles already cached. IF I've already flown this area and have already made the SCENERY, then it means I'm outrunning TP's ability to get the pre-existing scenery into position: FSX needs something that's not yet available;this could be cpu speed, amount of scenery cached, HDD fragmentation or speed, memory limitation. You can aways fly faster than the scenery can be loaded. SR-71's anyone?The displayed ovals represent scenery elements of various scales, sizes proportional to each oval and associated scenery ring.If FSX range is medium - 3.5 elements outward for each ring, approximately - then the sim will want to load and show a collection of elements of reduced resolution at each further range surrounding the aircraft. Tileproxy prepares blocks of scenery meeting this description for FSXdisplay of 1.2m tiles closest to me at med scenery range... shape is consistant with indicated coverage in console ovals - about 3.5 blocks of 1.2m imagery in nearest ring. These are my synthetic photo tiles: Light blue for 1.2m, dark blue for 2.4m in ring #2.Every TP constructed .bmp scenery element must have enough tiles to fill it at the largest scale or it will only use the highest res tile elements that can fill it at each level. This is what it passes to FSX; full resolution in the nearest ring (whatever it's made from), half resolution in the second ring, 1/4 resolution in the third ring, etc (simplfied and incomplete explanation)Why more downloading?even after flying the same area..you could have missed a tile or two previously; increased speed will enlarge the size of the ovals and TP could be adding images from the fringes that are NOW in the range of what you "might" need. Are you asking for a layer of imagery that you skipped on the previous pass? Are you running a higher range in FSX than previously? Other than that, ???Why is initial load faster?see the table from previous post. Everything is smallest initially. The more you fly the more detail you pack into each scenery tile, the larger and more complex each becomes... and yes, the 2.5, 3.5, 4.5 represent short-med-long (standard) scenery ranges in FSXMy "Medium scenery range" meant the 3.5 setting in FSX-------------------------max_lod=17 ## to level 19 (30cm) make and display "30cm scenery"# and make it from nearest-sized available imagery if not downloaded.# This will make EVERY scenery tile that passes within the FSX# lod 17 ring (closest ring available), 3M in size, even if it has low res scenery insidepreload_min_lod=10preload_max_lod=17# prepare rings 3-10 before FSX asks for them.

To my suprise, this had the effect of only ovals 2 and 3 filling in the TP DOS screen. The sim loaded fine and scenery was displayed correctly and indeed, pretty nice and crisply. In fact , I had perfectly displayed scenery as far as I could see, whereas before, I could clearly see the lower res tiles around me. TP screen indicated plenty of downloading, at the start, but at no time did any more ovals fill. Why would these settings in the FSX .cfg file affect TP in this way? And what does that tell you about what is going on behind the scenes?

FSX-TP great mystery: I don't see any connection between the two. True "sharp/crisp" suggests the highest quality image is used to construct all lod levels inside the scenery tile. I can make "sharp" go further out by increasing the scenery range but the price is more large scenery tiles to process. now guessing: low res, gradually sharpening without downloading...The image tiles had to be there but if you don't preload (pre-prepare scenery tiles ahead of time) then you would have to wait once the need occurred (perhaps)... and then send them to FSX for additional conversion for display. I've never flown without preloading. If you flew in a small area that didn't use the extra preloaded scenery, there would be some gain in performance perhaps. If you are constantly flying into new areas, there is always scenery being made continually - either a little in advance, or as needed.What was the geography you were flying over? What image levels are available online and what quality were they. Service 3, at lat? lon? From where to where? I can't quite see your location in the screenie. This makes it a little hard to replicate...Bikes in FSX... after you mentioned Colorado I returned there and took my Ducati over by Red Rocks park... Dang, those hills look a lot bigger from the ground...Loyd

Hey Loyd, thx again, every time you answer, I learn more, its great. However, everytime I use Tile Proxy, I have further questions and further mysteries!! I am also hampered by the fact that while testing, the sim and tile proxy often do not behave the same way, with the same settings. Again, if I could undserstand why, I would be better able to tweak the software to my liking. For instance, last night, using the exact same settings, I flew the flight out of bellingham again, that previously only filled 2 ovals. This time, all the ovals filled. After taking about three minutes to fill Ovals 2 & 3 ( 1 remains empty always at these settings) the remaining ovals all filled very quickly. However, I did not get the same super crisp scenery all round as I experienced before - it was pretty good, but I could see areas of lower resolution tiles nearby and these did not seem to update.So, I tried another area. This time, I managed to get only 2 ovals filling again, the scenery was behaving and looking pretty much as I just described. Then I decided to change back my TBM setting to 400 and put in the FFTF entry again in the FSX .cfg file. This appeared to make little difference.The net effect of a whole evenings playing around with this is that after finally feeling I had made a breakthrough on Sunday, today, I am not so sure, as I cannot seem to replicate what I was seeing then. And I dont understand why! There are still various things I do not understand about the ovals and what they are telling me. After they unfill ( which can happen really quickly, even at speeds of 100kts, I am not sure why? ) they can take ages to refill, if at all- sometimes the last 2 never refill. The other wierd thing I have noticed with the ovals, is sometimes, ovals 2 & 3 fill and the appear to unfill, making funky patterns. I have seen this often, and also, the first row of ovals unfilling, to form various wierd patterns, while the last row of ovals are all completely filled, before the flight loads. What is happening there and what does it signify? BTW, I cant see the attached image loyd, can you re post ? One quick question, you said that most national parks and wilderness areas are not in the ultra high res tiles. As far as I am concerned, 1.2 metre resolution is good enough for the flying that I do ( If there is better available in areas, I will take it though!! ) This corresponds to LOD level 16, right? That would be the second oval in the bottom row, if you have 10 ovals. I have noticed that having this oval filled all the time is crucial to maintaining crisp scenery. Incidentally, how can you easily check the resolution of available tiles using flash earth? Does it actually tell you anywhere, or do you just have to estimate by looking at the area first? So, if I fly mostly in mountainous, scenic national park type areas, and dont want to bother asking FSX and TP to make any tiles greater than 1.2 meter resolution, what would be the best settings for level mapping? My logic is that making and displaying lower res tiles will give me better performance, I thought this:Max lod = 16min lod = 10max lod = 16 ( I wondered if this was right, as doesn't this have to be 2 higher than the max lod setting above? ) level mapping= 10,11,12,16,16,16,16 ( to show the high res 1.2 m tiles all around the plane) Have I got that right ? And can you see any benefit in that? Another question, can you see any benefit, if I have plenty of memeory, both on the video card and system, to leaving both tile cache values at 0 or unlimited? Or is it better to have the values capped . If so why?And lastly, Christian mentions cleaning out the cache files folders. Is this necessary if you have plenty of disk space? I though the more tiles you have cached ready to load, the less workload for TP and FSX and so better performance. Again, have I got that right ? I cant help thinking that I am missing something basic in my set up, as according to Christioan in the manual, he is confident that TP should work very well, with fast loading and no problems outflying the scenery, using low speed ( which I am) and using up to 1.2 m scenery tiles. I am not getting this, yet ! cheers, Mark

Mark,First an image re-post attempt; don't know why they didn't stay - they were visible in the preview and others have posted more and larger images...1.2m image tiles equate to level 17 jpgThe scenery ring that matches this resolution is represented as the center oval, lower level in the console window and is LOD 15 in the lod_max at the top of the .ini if this is your highest res imagery. This was my setting that was shown in the 'ovals' attachment that did make it in the previous post.and what I saw riding around the expressways near Denver - the famed "Red Rocks - Park and Amphitheater" - google for more detail. The photo tiles show very 'bland' coloring here... maybe someday it'll get better. The feature is the 'red' sandstone visible through the gap in the ridge just above the red truck. I have FSG terrain mesh at 10m resolution for this.I'll delve into your questions in the next post. I'll be home recovering from minor surgery all day the 30th and should be able to respond more real-time.. or you can email direct (email is listed in my user profile)Loyd

Hey Larry hope you are recovering well ! I had a prety productive evening last night in terms of understanding and getting it working right. Notwithstanding the fact that I had not had any of your excellent advice yet on the questions raised in my last post, i forged ahead and tried some revised settings anyway.I tried using LOD radius 3,5 in my FSX .cfg file, but really did not like the obviously blurry textures visible nearby. So I tried using 5.5 and it looked much better and did not seem to make too much difference to performance or load times either. I also set TBM at 400 and FFTF at 1.33. ( I am still in the dark as to wether the FFTF setting is required or not for an SP2 installation, but figured as Christian included it and beta 8 was released well after SP", that it must be doing something)My other relevant settings in the .ini file are as follows:max_lod=15preload_min_lod=10preload_max_lod=17min_level=10max_level=17map_version=1.9level_mapping=10,10,11,14,16,16,16,17with these settings, it was pretty darn good. I did find that I could outfly the ovals if I went over about 110 kts, but the display of scenery was perfect, so I just need to work on keeping the ovals loaded as I fly...cheers, Mark

They were there, and now they're gone again.Beats me....Loyd

My other relevant settings in the .ini file are as follows:max_lod=15preload_min_lod=10preload_max_lod=17min_level=10max_level=17map_version=1.9level_mapping=10,10,11,14,16,16,16,17with these settings, it was pretty darn good. I did find that I could outfly the ovals if I went over about 110 kts, but the display of scenery was perfect, so I just need to work on keeping the ovals loaded as I fly...cheers, Mark

I feel like I've been punched in the gut by 4 drunken dwarves so I'm moving kinda slow; we will be taking tomorrow off also and probably Friday...----------------Well, you definitely have the values matched but near the bottom of this post is more about mapping and images that lead me to suggest:.If you have time, try a little test to see if this works as well; it should extend the appearance of the higher res through the 13 level as you did (without loading down other high levels that already look that way... See if you can tell any differencelevel_mapping=10,10,12,14,14,15,16,17I'll have to agree with you that sometimes you don't get the same results flying the same area.I wouldn't expect to EVER get precisely the same results/performance between the initial flight and subsequent flights over the same area.Remember that the initial flight will create the scenery tiles as defined/requested in the .ini file. This is the SMALLEST any of them will ever be. Only the nearest tiles will be of maximum requested resolution (size). But as you fly, every scenery .bmp tile will be updated to the next higher resolution (and size) if it comes inside a sim scenery range RING of higher resolution. This means more tiles added to memory and of increasing size as you fly. But it seems that if I just stay in the very immediate area at which I started, the need to update will stop very quickly. You still get FSX scenery updating even flying around a relatively small locale at 70kts. TP is caching the scenery up to the amount you set but it doesn't seem that FSX can do(or does) that.Things I've noticed about these growing scenery tiles:1) Not all of them remain visible while I fly away from them. This is visible as blocks of low res imagery of a different color "tone" that comes back into view after flying away from them while neighboring tiles remain visible with the color tone of higher res imagery (so you know they're still there). This MIGHT just be memory settings (cache_bytes_limit or cache_tiles_limit)2) If you change nothing in the .ini or .cfg, you SHOULD restart with ALL updated scenery tiles displayed, including the tiles that 'dropped out' previously3)If you change mapping or max_lod or most anything (I guess), you've re-defined what you want TP to provide so it seems to "flush" all the previously built scenery (in range) and begin rebuilding from scratch...though no downloading unless you are also asking for imagery that wasn't requested in the previous configuration.----------Though I fly with all ranges pre-loaded normally, I did try starting with lod8 and then 8 &9 pre-load disabled. Both times the 'disabled' range(s) were skipped in the initial oval filling but then filled fully after the rest as I just let the sim sit paused at the startup point; this is in an area where I have all needed tiles cached and scenery built - nothing to do but gather and present to FSX. The CPU load was necessarily lighter but X didn't seem to load the textures any faster once I started moving back over the previous route. At medium scenery range, as I continued the flight the first two ovals remained full. If this is different than what you are seeing, I have no explanation.Christian says the 5 lower LOD ranges (top row ovals) BENEFIT more because they require multiple .bmp files to build them... but they are further away and don't need updating nearly as often as a nearby tile that contains 1.2m imagery - here there are multiple jpg's needed to build a single scenery tile. If I had to choose, I'd rather have nearby detail updated more frequently than the horizon that is all a blur anyway...----------Image scale: Go to airnav, select an airport and then look at it on the two map servers. MS/Bing zoom level (in the browser address window) matches the tile sizes downloaded; Yh seems to always show 1 zoom level higher for the same image quality. The (MS)level 13 image jpg's have that look of almost having been painted rather than photographed. Level 14 and up are distinctly from a photo source. I'd guess the 13's are from orbit and the rest are from aircraft. Bump up one for Yh equivalent appearance in the browser. Level 13 image is 20m (LOD11). But... when I layered Yh level 15 imagery over MS 13 in the San Francisco area, I got level 15 tiles that 'seem' to have the right amount of detail to be actual 4.8m resolution though they probably show 'zoom 16' in a browser window.So in Flash Earth, I back the MS window out to the level that is clearly level 13 and count my way up to the higher levels - then switch to Yh for comparison.Q: level mapping= 10,11,12,16,16,16,16 ( to show the high res 1.2 m tiles all around the plane)..actually to 17 for 1.2m: so 10,11,12,17,17,17,17,17and you aren't actually showing 1.2m resolution except in the 1.2m ring, but all the scenery tiles lower will need many 17 tiles to 'simulate' the same appearance. It'll take 256 times as many downloaded '17' tiles to make the "13 level" look like it was a 17 if that's what you are going to use.for 4.8m:max_lod=13 (6 ovals)---min_level=10max_level=15 for 1.2m:max_lod=15 (8 ovals)----min_level=10max_level=17You can certainly map level 16 to 15, or 18 to 17 if there were a preferred color to the higher res imagery BUT the scenery tile will still be made to the designated resolution of 15 or 17. The most dramatic color differences occur between level 13 and 14. Substituting 14 for 13 would look very similar to increasing the range to enlarge the scenery rings with perhaps less overhead than increasing the range to max (or beyond).Q: Oval 1 remains empty always at these settings.. are you using the built-in LOD 8 bgl's; I am not - I have it disabled. I would think this would keep the 1 oval empty but not just for skipped pre-load.Q: the incomplete ovals where various elements 'fill and empty' randomly... I see this when I set above normal scenery ranges (like 5.5). It takes a lot longer to bring the sim to 'ready' and fly but I have never noticed the scenery visually show something different because of a 'missing element' in an oval.Loyd

Hi Loyd, apologies for calling you Larry in the last post, I had had a few beers and was in the middle of talking on teamspeak to a guy called larry ( He was guiding me through the use of Global mapper to make scenery actually, pretty interesting! ) so not concentrating properly! Sorry!Dont know whats going on with the images either, I use the system bracketed img and it seems to work ok....Speak soon, Mark

Hey Loyd, hope you are feeling better now, I have been a bit busy the last week, combined with a big night out over the weekend, that left my intellectual facilities somewhat battered!! Consequently, I have not been doing much pondering or much testing either. I did have some excellent results as shown in the other thread, but its not perfect yet....Basically, I think I have the scenery looking pretty good now. My remaining issue is getting the ovals to stay filled. Its perfect up about 80 kts, then it will start to empty quicker than it can re fill. I have tried several differing combinations of settings, but without any success in preventing this.My system is pretty good as well, so I am kind of convinced that it is not the bottleneck and there is still some elusive combination of settings that will enable both clear crisp scenery and faster flight.I am going to go back over my set up after reading your reply to french chap, as I dont think some of my FSX settings match my resolution. And I will keep on experimenting and putting my new found knowldege to work. Many thanks for your informative and illuminating answers on this matter, you are as we say in London, "A top geezer!!"Cheers, Mark

Hey Loyd, I am almost there in terms of getting right now. I am testing 2 .ini files at the moment, one with settings suggested by JohnCi and your recommended settings. The major difference is that he uses several lod 5 layers in his level mapping, whereas your settings start at LOD 10. All other things being equal, what would be the relative differences between these two mappings. I feel that your settings should be less of a workload for the PC, yet when I use your settings, I get a noticable stutter every 6 seconds or so. The actual scenery does not look very different.Have I got that right? Less levels of detail = less work for the computer? Is there an advantage in performance to be gained from using the min / max pre load value? You said you dont use the built in LOD 8 folder, is that because your values start at 10 and go up to 17 and therefore you never need any LOD 8 tiles? cheers,Mark

Mark,

You said you dont use the built in LOD 8 folder, is that because your values start at 10 and go up to 17 and therefore you never need any LOD 8 tiles?

Mark,we still have a level of confusion with the different number standards...Christian refers to the 10 scenery levels displayed in the console window with the LOD designation - LOD8 to LOD17. LOD8 scenery is the first "oval". This is, to my understanding, the most remote scenery level that FSX displays (on top of the built-in FSX "World Image"). With or without TileProxy, with or without the pre-made LOD8 scenery, at any given range setting, I see exactly the same area covered and at the same levels of detail (as best I can tell).When I engage the feature, the outermost ring in the top-down view is distinctly different in color tone and detail from all of my interior rings. Why? I'd guess that the LOD8 imagery that we're getting online is not the same as the "Big Blue Marble" imagery that was used to construct the LOD8 scenery.Because this gives me an additional color difference (ring), I've generally NOT used it, though I do have it turned on at the moment for testing. Using it does improve performance because it is a complete ring for which I do not have to construct scenery tiles; they still have to be fed to FSX and displayed but I don't have to make them as I fly.** this scenery ring, this level of detail (oval 1, LOD8) , is made from images at TILE LEVEL 10 (tile_l10_x543_y660). That's why the mapping starts at 10; mapping, and the parameters in the .ini detail section all refer to IMAGE TILE sizes (numerically 2 higher than the LOD that they're related to).Level 10 imagery is the same resolution as LOD8 scenery. There is nothing to prevent us from using jpg imagery at level 5,6,7,8, or 9 as the image source for LOD8; the visible scenery will be of lower resolution and the horizon a little less detailed than if level 10 imagery is used. Less tiles will be downloaded and disk space would be conserved - but if you offer imagery scaled at other than the matched resolution as a substitute, TileProxy will have to re-scale what it is given and make a LOD8 scenery tile as best it can. I see this as extra but avoidable workload.But this, I hasten to add, is a strict technical, logical approach; I have not tried flying with a bunch of 5's as my outer rings. Maybe I should do so; performance-wise it may be beneficial but final appearance is more important to me.Actually, I'm going to cut this off and go fly some new location with a "5's collection" to see what it looks like. Back in a bit...Loyd