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markturner

Can you use TileProxy in conjnction with other Photoscenery?

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I was wondering how this might work, as i have been recently flying in the Alps, where coverage is a bit variable using service 1. Some areas are fantastic, then you get really terrible patches. As I have Switzerland pro and also Frank Dianese sceneries of this area, I was wondering how best to combine them if its indeed possible. I have tried it out, by starting tileproxy in the normal way and having the sceneries enabled in the library, but the sim crashes after about 5 minutes.And is it possible to use the scenery tiles already created by TileProxy, but without having it running?Cheers Mark

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My recollection of this is a bit vague, but from meomory, it is possible.If I recall correctly, you have to find out what LOD your photoscenery is using and then set your proxyuser.cfg so that it only displays Tileproxy scenery that has a higher LOD than than of your photoscenery.Thus, in theory, you could use both with your photoscenery only being displayed when Tileproxy only had lower resolution images.That's the theory, but how (and whether ) it work in practice, I'm not sure. We haven't heard from Christian in a while but I'm sure he could explain.Cheers, IAN


Ryzen 5800X3D, Nvidia 3080 - 32 Gig DDR4 RAM, 1TB & 2 TB NVME drives - Windows 11 64 bit MSFS 2020 Premium Deluxe Edition Resolution 2560 x 1440 (32 inch curved monitor)

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Hey Loyd, Ian, this seems to have mileage!!It would be good to be able to convert the TileProxy tiles into permanent scenery, then you alter other parameters while using them, like the LOD radius ( I always use 8 with my static photoscenery for example) Also, you could layer to achieve best results when mixing with other sceneries.Looking in the SDK world scenery breakdown, I see that the areas I am currently interested in ( the Alps ) is covered by 0601 and 0602. However those areas together are massive. Is there any way to break down the area into smaller chunks, so for example you grid up the alps, overfly the area thoroughly, get the tiles compiled, then copy them out area by area into a separate folder, which you could add to as you make the differnt areas ?At the moment, if i copy over the 4 or 5 GB of .bgl's i currently have in 0601, i have no way of knowing what i have there in terms of coverage..I think this would be very interesting to look into though.. One advantage would be increased performance as presumably, there would be no CPU cycles wasted downloading and converting the tiles.......BTW, check out some of my recent Alps screenies in the pinned thread - there is some superb imagery there..Loyd, one question, if I start this, i was going to make a zig zag flight plan ( I got that planning software BTW, its pretty neat! thx! ) and just set the plane with unlimited fuel and let it fly over downloading. If you are only worried about collating the images, and not wether they are converted and displayed completely crisply on screen, could you use a faster plane - IE , outfly the rings? Or Do you need to ensure that the programme properly coverts and loads all the high res tiles to get the best quailty tiles stored in photoreal world folder? EDIT: I have just been looking in photorealworld folder, the texture folder seems to have all the large files, all that is in the scenery folder are 2KB sized .bgl and .bglon files. Normal photoscenery has the .bgl files only, and they can be enormous, I was just wondering why TP does it differently and how all the information from the texture files is transferred in to the sim, if you rename the files and import them as described in the linked thread....? also, are the .bglon and .bgl files both the same, just with differnt name types? if so, you could just copy over the .bgl files and save yourself the ag of renaming the others. They seem the same size and everything. what do you think? Anyway, i tried it and it works !!!!! really well!!!! ( the making your own scenery bitthat is, not sure about the renaming or copying of the .bgl files as yet...)Cheers, Mark

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Mark,I once enquired about making permanent scenery from the TP images and was told that I would be better off using Map2bgl (or was it Maps2bgl?), but never got too far with that.Nice pictures of the Alps though.IAN


Ryzen 5800X3D, Nvidia 3080 - 32 Gig DDR4 RAM, 1TB & 2 TB NVME drives - Windows 11 64 bit MSFS 2020 Premium Deluxe Edition Resolution 2560 x 1440 (32 inch curved monitor)

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Mark,I went back and re-read the referenced post again so here's what I'm understanding:First off, I think a lot of 'normal' bgl scenery INCLUDES the bitmaps - TileProxy doesn't. What the TileProxy bgls do is REFERENCE the .bmp scenery files that were constructed during flying. As Hardcore explained the TileProxy bgl files keep the bmp scenery from showing when Tileproxy is not running. When Tileproxy IS running, the bgl's are disabled and the bgl.on files are enabled and these are the ones that allow the TileProxy photo imagery to show through.The re-naming process just enables the bgl.on files to have an extension that FSX will recognize (the original .bgl files to make TileProxy transparent are GONE) and always show the TileProxy scenery without TileProxy being there to enable it. You 'could' theoretically have the sets separated but named the SAME and SWAP them in and out like you do with various payware texture applications like FEX, REX and UTX. Even a simple .bat file could do it. (oh bother, don't let me get started thinking again...)

Is there any way to break down the area into smaller chunks?
Of course; do you have the SDK installed so you can see everything with the TmfViewer; you set gridlines to any level so see where the different scenery boundaries are. Notice that Tileproxy folders and bgls match the FSX scenery organization precisely. Each Folder is QMID4, each bgl is QMID7. That means there will be 64 QMID10 (LOD8) cells referenced in each .bgl and each QMID10 cell will contain 1024 TileProxy (QMID15) scenery tiles. The file size of the tiles themselves tells you EXACTLY what level of imagery is stored in each one.1536 - level 12/38.4m5632 - level 13/19.2m22016 - level 14/9.6m87552 - level 15/4.8m349696 - level 16/2.4m1398272 - level 17/1.2m
i have no way of knowing what i have there in terms of coverage
that's what was visible in the chart pic I emailed you.. the band of level 16 scenery tiles along my route of travel.Ian couldn't run my spreadsheet that tells me all this stuff, but maybe it's time to try it again... perhaps it was just corrupted in transit.So what's the TileProxy advantage anyway? Well, you don't have to have a 10,000 sq km package if all you want is something 6 wide and 15 long.I don't know if Photoreal scenery packages are multi-lod but if they are then I would expect them to be similar in size to TileProxy for the same area - I've just never had any so I can't even guess. Shouldn't be hard to calculate; total filesize/area should get an approximation of how many Mb per sq km. TileProxy scenery tiles are (I think) about 1.2km "square" - and 340k per tile at level 16.
Anyway, i tried it and it works !!!!! really well!!!! ( the making your own scenery bitthat is, not sure about the renaming or copying of the .bgl files as yet...)
Tried what, the autopilot sweep or the scenery conversion?Loyd

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hey loyd, do you think the .bgl and .bgl.on files are written to and changed as you fly tile proxy, or do you think they are just flag or indicators and all the changes happen in the texture folder, as you build new tiles and add imagery? Both the autopilot sweep and the scenery making went fine!..cheers, Mark (thx for the mail)

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