Question regarding the effect of levels on radius

[Guest Comicus]

Fairly new to TP and still trying to wrap my head around what the levels do to what I see on screen. My setup is running well and looks pretty good, with just some performance tweaking left to handle. What I'm still not understanding is this: With my detail in FSX.cfg set to 4.5, do the various levels in TP always work within, and up to, that maximum 4.5 detail radius? In other words, if I have levels 11-17 in my Proxyuser.ini file, that gives me seven "rings"of TP scenery within that 4.5 radius, and if I only choose level 17, then the entire 4.5 detail is covered by the LOD15 scenery tiles (as huge as that would be). Is that correct?I've been playing around with settings and services in the DelMarVa area (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia) and would like to have the scenery tiles draw from the 1-m imagery, even if it's for the LOD12 and 13 tiles, because there are significant changes in the colorization beyond that and it is quite noticeable in the distance as you're flying 2000 AGL.Also, beyond that first level in the sequence, does the rendering default to FSX default scenery, or is it drawing from TP low-res scenery tiles such as the LOD8 folder?Thanks!

[lliaudais 2]

Comicus

With my detail in FSX.cfg set to 4.5, do the various levels in TP always work within, and up to, that maximum 4.5 detail radius?

The difficult thing to grasp about TP initially is that most of the questions are really about FSX scenery management and "display rendering" and not about the source of the scenery. TP provides phototile alternatives to the default scenery tiles - subject to the .ini configuration. Much of the control is FSX settings, the rest is TP settings.So, yes, TP works within whatever radius you set in fsx.cfg. That radius, whether 2.5 or 6.5 limits the maximum size of the "detailed" scenery that we are normally concerned with.A radius of 4.5 means a diameter of 9 so your 'detail' region would be bounded by a width (E-W) and height (N-S) of 9 lod8 scenery 'blocks' arranged in the somewhat circular pattern that you see in the top-down down view and in the TP 'ovals' as they fill. Each "*" in the first oval represents an entire Lod8 region of completed scenery available to FSX.Notice that while we refer to them as scenery 'rings', they are complete circular regions that become 'rings' only when their central region is filled with the next higher resolution scenery - the ring is the area that remains at the lower resolution when the center becomes a higher resolution.Oval 2 represents the preparation of Lod9 regions, still 9 wide, but only half the size, so overlaying only the center of the Lod8 scenery...this process is repeated "visually" up to max_lod for TP, but 'invisibly' continues within FSX up to the "texture resolution" setting of FSX which is effectively the 'upper limit' of detail.

if I have levels 11-17 in my Proxyuser.ini file, that gives me seven "rings"of TP scenery within that 4.5 radius?

if you mean min_level=11 max_level=17then, no, here you are only directing TP to access a POTENTIAL range of 7 levels of photoimagery; the number of actual scenery rings is controlled by FSX.The scenery rings that FSX displays/processes is from the outermost LOD8 ring to whatever is defined as the highest resolution via the TEXTURE_RESOLUTION parameter in FSX.cfg: a texture resolution slider setting of 5m means the smallest 'ring' - the innermost circle - will be composed of Lod13 blocks at 4.8m resolution and a total of 6 rings (8,9,10,11,12,13) will exist; a texture resolution setting of 1m means the smallest region/ring will be composed of Lod15 blocks at 1.2m and FSX scenery will comprise 8 rings of increasing detail.This control of scenery size, range, detail level at center is the same whether TP enabled or not.

if I only choose level 17

do you mean level mapping everything to 17 like this?min_level=11max_level=17level_mapping=17,17,17,17,17,17,17

then the entire 4.5 detail is covered by the LOD15 scenery tiles (as huge as that would be). Is that correct?

In a "loose" theoretical sense perhaps (in that TP would have to download the entire region at 1.2m) but the ONLY scenery elements that TileProxy would actually create at level 17 are those that geographically fall in (or adjacent to) the FSX 1m scenery area. The tiles just outside that area ( the 2.4m 'ring' ) will be created at 2.4m resolution even though they got their 'coloring' from the 1m source imagery. And the next ring out, the same way; it will be only 4.8m even you specified 1.2 photos as the source.All the scenery bmp's that TileProxy creates are multilevel and each covers a LOD13 area regardless of the detail level contained in it. It takes 1024 of these to fill each Lod8 region, 256 to fill each Lod9 region, 64 to fill each LOD10 region etc. etc. What happens is that the scenery tile for any area will increase in content, filessize and detail as the user aircraft's increasingly detailed scenery rings encompass the area. TP prepares scenery to meet FSX's needs.So while you have rings of decreasing resolution around you when you first start a TP flight, those areas that you fly over get increasing detail "added" to them - and that detail remains with the scenery tiles thereafter. Level mapping can give the appearance of higher resolution particularly using the color of higher resolution imagery but every location must pass within the (scenery ring) "reach" of the highest-desired resolution to actually become the resolution you want. Scenery is like a farmers's field and you are the crop 'duster' pilot... if you cover the area, you get 'paid' (in scenery). If you bypass it, you don't.Loyd

[Guest Comicus]

Loyd, thanks for making sense of my post. I realize I could have been a bit more detailed in my questions, but you seem to have done a fine job in deciphering it.I think I have a better understanding now, and from your explanation it would seem that I can in fact use just the LOD15 imagery to generate the scenery, even at the lower resolution rings. Because of the differences in colorization that I mentioned before, I think I will attempt doing this, just to see what happens. What is throwing me off is the description of these level settings stating that you can achieve "even more radius in HQ" by substituting level numbers. Your explanation of utilizing the same 1.2m imagery to generate 4.8m scenery blocks makes sense to me, but not the level mapping if you're still only viewing LOD13 scenery just beyond the LOD14 scenery, which is just beyond the LOD15, even when level mapping is set to 17,17,17.Part of the reason I was asking about what low-res scenery is loaded is because when I set my preload_min_lod=10, it still showed TP preloading the lod8 and lod9 ovals. What I'm guessing is that FSX is preloading those levels regardless of my settings because of the detail extent which exists within the FSX program. If that's the case, fine, but then what effect is the preload settings actually having if it ignores my choosing a higher LOD as my minimum preload setting? My hope was to leave out the LOD8 and 9 so as to leave more cache for the higher-res imagery.

[lliaudais 2]

Comicus

it would seem that I can in fact use just the LOD15 imagery to generate the scenery, even at the lower resolution rings

I hoped to imply that more in a theoritical sense... once you substitute a higher res photo set for lower level more than a layer or two, you run into the problem of insufficient memory and processing time as practical limits... I think I've sucessfully substituted two levels down but it seems like it just 'stalled' out with more than that attempted.When you fly, you are constantly crossing scenery boundaries at every level and each crossing requires scenery 'recalculating' and updating... TP can keep up with a moderate speed flight but for each level substituted, you have to have 4 times the number of images and processing, two levels substituted is 16x images, 3 is 64X, 4 is 256X, 5 levels is 1024X. Seems like you might have to pause quite some time for each update.Second consideration: What is a downloaded 2.4m image but a lower res version of the 1.2m photo? Ditto for the 4.8m photo. TP can make 4.8m scenery from the 1.2 jpg but the COST is in processing time. It takes more HDD space to store multiple res images but for most of us, the most limited resource is processing power, not storage space. Using appropriate level imagery for each level of scenery is probably the only efficient way to handle the constant and continuous updating that occurs when you fly.

even more radius in HQ by substituting level numbers

"Delicately put", I think that is/was a poor choice of words, implying a bit more than was intended. It's FSX's scenery 'rings' that we see on the screen and each ring will have the appropriate resolution and be the proper extent per the FSX.cfg. The scenery tiles made by TP have the appropriate resolution contents for their location at the time they are made and are updated as needed. A scenery tile that contains 2.4m resolution scenery made from 2.4m photo is unlikely to be distunguishable from a 2.4m scenery tile made from 1.2m photo UNLESS the higher res photo has a different color... which is precisely what makes the svc 1 level 10-13 tiles so obviously different than the level 14-17 tiles. I cannot see them being anything other than essentially two image sets - not 8! There is an older satellite set at some level (13, for instance), resampled to become the level 12 set, and resampled again to become the level 11 set etc.. Then there is the higher res set which may be aerial (or satellite, also) that is some maximum resolution ( say level 17/1.2m) that is resampled to become the level 16 set, and again to become the level 15 set and again to be the level 14 set.There is a marked color difference at the 13/14 junction and if you substitute 14 for 13 you will get the immediate impression that your level 13 is now a higher level.... which it most likely isn't. That being said.... it is also possible that my level 13 imagery is actually only an "enlargement" of what was never better than level 12 to begin with... In this case substituting 14 for 13 might actually make an improvement aside from the color.It's all just too full of uncertainties and unknown quantites to be absolutely sure of much. But when all is said and done, I can be in the center of 10,000 square miles of TP-made scenery tiles at level 17 (1.2m) and if FSX is set to 1m and terrain lod to 4.5, then my scenery under the aircraft will max out at 1.2 meters and will extend about a km in each direction, surrounded by a ring of 2.4m resolution an additional km wide and then a ring 2km wide at 4.8m and a 4km wide ring at 10m etc etc etc. Those scenery elements 15 miles away to the southwest can have maximum detail but until I go there, FSX doesn't need the detail that far away and won't display it. It does display the lo-res equivalents at that distance so I can see the COLOR tint of that scenery but that's all... and it doesn't matter at that distance whether I got those colors from a level 14 jpg or a bunch of level 17 jpg's. I specifically substitute 14 for 13 with svc 1 most of the time... to extend the "color" scheme of the high res over a broader area. When processing time becomes an issue, I don't substitute.Hope that isn't too confusing...Loyd

[Guest Comicus]

Thanks for the response again. I actually spent some time testing various settings the other night and switching between the Locked Spot view and the Top Down view. Funny how I haven't used the top down aspect since first installing FSX over a year ago, and yet it gave me a wonderful visual as to what FSX/TP were rendering around my aircraft. Ah well, some of us are a bit slower than others...Regarding the use of 1.2m imagery, I have my max_lod=15, and then level mapping initially set to 11,12,13,14,15,16. I started this way only because I wasn't as concerned with creating the LOD15 scenery tiles just yet, but still wanted to download the imagery as I let the C172 buzz back and forth across northern Maryland to gather imagery resources for later VFR flights. With the settings as such on Service 3, I saw clear differences in colors not too far from the aircraft. Eventually, I ended up with 11,14,14,15,15,16 and that grabbed the imagery at a distance far enough away that it wasn't as noticeable for VFR and good resolution where I look around my aircraft. I'll go back again for more hands-on flying and include the level 17 mapping as well, which should be pretty smooth since I already have the LOD15 imagery files in a specific folder for this area.By the way, I was able to set my sim to 2x speed in the C172 cruising at 90 KIAS with the above TP settings and it rarely had any stutters or delays in creating the scenery tiles. Once I reached the Wilmington, Delaware, area that required more downloads, I had to back down to normal sim rate, but it handled 110 KIAS with no problems. Just for grins, I set my FSX to a detail radius of 6.5...... holy tamales was that a lot of tiles! It was a bit much for my Core2 Quad/4GB RAM to run smoothly, but certainly within reach of a few upgrades in the near future.If time allows, I'm going to be working on my X-Plane scenery this weekend and see what sort of pros/cons there are to using the orthophoto imagery in that. I started to do this a few months ago, but never attempted it on a large state-wide scale. Austin just released another update that claims to further increase performance on Windows systems, so I'm even more curious now.

[markturner 0]

The other thing to remember is that any changes in the .ini file settings, will cause TileProxy to flush out all the tiles labouriously produced already and to remake them all again at the new settings. So you may want to do some file renaming and moving around, to save wasting what you have made already, when you are experimenting with the settings.Cheers,Mark