Bad quality image samples

[ricardo_r 1]

Hi all!I'm new to Tileproxy and I'm having some problems on running Tileproxy flawlessly under my FSX. The problem is that the photoreal quality presented in my installation is not as good as it should be. To better show you what I mean, here are two screenshots captured in the same exact place, except one is Tileproxy's ground and the other is a tile I took from the very same map service with a program called "FSTiles", in which the last one shows how it should look like.Tileproxy:FS Tiles:As you can see, under Tileproxy the ground looks very blurred.At first I let Tileproxy use my self made configuration (configured through Tileproxy's setup wizard), then I tried the pre-configured .ini file, then back to my own config and no matter what, it always looked the same. Dunno what else can I do... I've even increased "Fiber_frame_fraction" and "Texture_Bandwidth" values on FSX.cfg and nothing... The service map version number is also up to date according to the map versions' topic here at Avsim.Over other places from where I've seen screenshots with amazing ground quality (like Fresno and Florida at Tileproxy's homepage), my ground also looks as bad as in the picture above.Here's my config file:

[TileProxy]# Enable or disable worldwide photographic scenery coverage (Yes/True/On to enable)master_enable=On# Write a logfile to disk. In recommend to only turn this on for debugging purposes.# When using FSX RTM or FS 2004, the logfile may grow VERY fast and affect performance.#logfile="C:\logfile.txt"# If you have concerns about possible copyright violations by caching JPEG and BMP tiles# on your hard drive, this switch is the solution. By enabling diskless mode, Tileproxy# will not store a single tile on your hard drive. Expect higher network usage though.# Note that offline mode will depend on tiles being available in the cache.diskless_mode=On# Offline Mode - No network access will occur (Yes/True/On to enable)offline_mode=No# Resolution limiter: 17 = 30cm/pixel, 16 = 60cm/pixel, 15 = 1.1m/pixel, 14 = 2.3m/pixel, 13 = 4.75m/pixel# Lower resolutions load faster, but are visually less appealing. The 30cm resolution may only be feasible# if you have at least 2GB of system memory.max_lod=16# The following two settings allow you to tune Tileproxy to not preload specific LOD levels. This can# be used in conjunction with third party scenery products like "FS Altitude" that provides data only# up to a specific resolution. If you place this scenery higher than Tileproxy's world folders in the# scenery library then it will have precedence over Tileproxy for the specific LOD levels that it# contains. You can then instruct Tileproxy to not preload these low resolution LOD circles because# they are not needed anyway.# Lowest LOD ring to automatically preload tiles for. Must not be lower than 8.preload_min_lod=9# Lowest LOD ring to automatically preload tiles for. Must not be higher than 17.preload_max_lod=16# The maximum number of tile contexts that Tileproxy will send to the filter driver. A context# is essentially a very fast buffer for graphics data sitting in kernel memory that delivers# data right into FSX. Each tile context can hold an entire LOD 8...15 tile. Higher values# mean more use of your precious kernel memory though. The maximum number is 512. Lower if# you run out of RAM during flight and the PC starts to use the paging file a lot.max_contexts=512# Generate Water Mask. This brings back shader-rendered water and allows# for the use of planes with floats (Goose, Beaver, etc...). If you turn this# option off, you get the Tileproxy behavior of Beta 5 and earlier versions.water_mask=On# Recommendation: FSX users: Use water_blending=on, water_smoothing=off# to get soft land/water transitions## FS9 users: Use water_blending=off, water_smoothing=on# to get hard land/water transitions which# Tileproxy tries to match pixel-exact against coast-lines## Combining water_smoothing and water_blending is discouraged.# It's slow and gives weird results.# Use blending techniques to create a soft land/water transition with some# transparency effect near the shoreline. Compatible with FSX only.water_blending=On# The distance in meters that you want land/water blending to extend from the# shore line. Larger values require more processing. Large values are now possible,# useful values are up to 2000 meters. Very high values may be detrimental to water# mask resolution. Loading speed however remains mostly unaffected by this setting.blend_distance=100.0# The rate at which terrain is blended into the water color. 1.0 means a linear# blending, values > 1.0 blend faster. Values < 1.0 blend slower. This works# similarly to a Gamma Curve. An exponent of 2 gives a quadratic blend function,# an exponent of 0.5 results in a square root behavior.blend_exponent=1.0# The minimal and maximal transparency of the water. The lower you choose the min value,# the more reflective the deep water will be. The higher the max value is chosen, the less# reflective the water will be directly at the shore line. The reflectiveness transitions# linearly from max to min throughout the distance given by blend_distance from the shore.# Allowed values are between 0 and 1, and alpha_min should be smaller than alpha_max or# things may look weird.# The following alpha_min values will not give you any dithering artifacts on all-water tiles,# so the use of these is recommended. It is multiples of 16/239 (rounded up slighty)# 0.0700, 0.1339, 0.2009, 0.2678, 0.3348, 0.4017, 0.4687# 0.5356, 0.6026, 0.6695, 0.7365, 0.8034, 0.8703, 0.9373alpha_min=0.2678alpha_max=0.7# The water color in hexadecimal RGB notation. Prefix with #. This should be blue# or greenish blue or some shades of brown, depending on your preference.# Values of #000000 are discouraged when using water blending - it will result# in weird behavior at the shorelines.water_rgb=#000D1A# Try to smooth land/water boundaries by trying to match the water mask to the image content.# This is a a somewhat experimental algorithm.water_smoothing=Off# The decision threshold for water/land when water_smoothing is enabled. 0 means everything# will be turned to land, 1 means everything turns to water. Chose some value inbetween.water_threshold=0.33# Maximum number of bytes allocated to BMP graphics tiles in RAM at any time (0 for unlimited)# The value below states 100 MB.cache_bytes_limit=100000000# Maximum number of BMP tiles to cache in RAM at any time (0 for no limit).cache_tiles_limit=100000# The currently active service is configured here. Only ONE active source please.# The other source statements should be commented out.source=Service Example 1# The sources you want to be able to switch from the GUI menu.# Separate the list entries with | and enclose in quotes. Make sure the# names specified here are valid services which are defined below.# You may want to rename the services according to your preference,# but make sure you replace all occurences of the strings.menu_sources="Service Example 1|Service Example 2|Service Example 3|Service Example 4"# Experimental API Hooking section. Disable if you see strange crashes and effects.# Currently we only have the DirectX 9 hook. More hooks are planned.enable_hooking=No# The DirectX 9 hook enables the moving map overlay. More features are planned.enable_dx9hook=No# A flag whether to show the moving map overlay initially or not.enable_movingmap=No# Dimensions and overlay colors of the moving map. Positions are percentages of the screen.# Width and Height refer to the full 512x512 pixel texture used for the map. To get a round# map circle, the ratio of width and height should match your screen's aspect ratio (e.g. 4:3)# Radius is given in the map texture's pixels where one pixel represents a LOD 15 tile. A# radius of 0 disables the round stencil and shows the entire 512x512 texture. Color is given# in a hexadecimal ARGB notation. movingmap_alpha=255movingmap_color=#ff000000movingmap_xpos=88movingmap_ypos=15movingmap_width=60movingmap_height=80movingmap_radius=60

What am I missing here? Can someone help me please?:rolleyes:Thanks in advance and a very merry Christmas to everyone!:(

[lliaudais 2]

Ricardo,I haven't tried FSTiles yet, so I can't make an equivalent comparison.I do note that my TileProxy scenery tiles are not quite as sharp as the origianl jpg images.How does your FSTiles imagery compare with the original jpgs?Since you get different quality with the two utilities, can you be sure that they are making the same resolution of scenery?In the posted portions of your ini, you omitted the detailed setting of the particular service so I can't see the activemin_level=max_level=level_mapping=These work WITH the max_lod at the topand with the "TEXTURE_RESOLUTION=" of FSX - though I presume your FSX is the same for both flights.You didn't post any system specs so I can't recommend changes yet but on my system I've adjusted the memory specs upward from the default:# 800Mcache_bytes_limit=800000000cache_tiles_limit=200000map version is irrelevant so far as I can tell - setting back to older 'version' numbers made no difference.A single TP scenery tile at .6m (as you have defined in your ini) is about 5.6M - that's a lot of data to move for each 1.2km square scenery tile.If you 'fly' past scenery too quickly, you could be making scenery that is not yet at the final resolution...I have no idea how much storage is used in an equivalent area in FSTiles. My bottleneck is display time by FSX, not the making of the tiles.Does the area of your image attachements even have 60cm imagery?I can see the obvious difference but there are too many unknowns to do more than suggest things that might make a difference.Loyd

[ricardo_r 1]

First off all, thanks for answering!:smile:The FSTiles (FSEarthTiles, forgot the "Earth" in the original post) imagery looks pretty much or even exactly the same as the source imagery (on FSEarthTiles you can choose the resolution you want to compile your .bgl with. I chose the highest setting).I didn't post level settings cause I wasn't sure about permissions to post or not server related content (more specifically its addresses), but here are those settings:min_level=9max_level=19level_mapping=9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19(Virtual Earth, by the way...)I believe these settings depict the maximum resolution for the given place (Aveiro, Portugal, like 1.1m/pix I guess...). The tile I took with FSEarthTiles has an area of about 4~4.2sqnm and the correspondingly .bgl "weighs" about 45mb. Also my screenshots were captured less than 1km southbound of the starting airfield which means Tileproxy didn't have to load much imagery. But anyway how can I know the source imagery resolution?My computer is an Intel Core2Duo E7500@2.93 (stock), 4Gb DDR2 RAM, ATI HD5770 1Gb DDR5 RAM and I'm running a 10Mb Internet connection. FSX settings were exactly the same in both pictures, just changed FSEarthTiles' layer priority between them two.Once again, thanks a lot for your help!:(

[lliaudais 2]

Aveiro, Portugal; LPAVAt least in the immediate vicinity, there is some "60cm" imagery - I didn't go very far - but what is impossible to know: is it actual 60cm imagery or just enlarged 1.2m imagery; it does matter in what you will see.I know there is 60cm imagery because when I went there with settings for such, I got tiles from the server which TP saved and named appropriately. How would you know this without lots of calculation?A. go to a new location with TP set for the desired values; in this case: max_lod=16 <-sets TP's target resolution (60cm in this case) ... min_level=10 max_level=18 # must be at least 2 higher than max_lod but max is 19.B. Once the flight is going and tiles are loaded, pause and do a search in the cache folder for the newest tiles and then look for the tiles with the highest level number in their name and today's creation date - the ones you just downloaded.After starting at Aveiro, I have tiles such as tile_l18_x124708_y163516.jpg. The "l18" tells me it is a level 18 (60cm) image tile so TP can actually make 60cm scenery with this. If you display images then you can even browse among them and recognise ground features seen in the sim - such as the 'resort' just across the water south of the airport, with a circular swimming pool and a tennis court - the lines of which are just slightly visible.HOWEVER, the 60cm scenery ring in FSX is very small and when you look out from the aircraft at something a km or so away, you are looking at the 1.2m or 2.4m scenery ring and it will not be as sharp. The highest resolution is only ever just beneath the aircraft.The only way around this is to set the LOD_RADIUS in FSX manually (in fsx.cfg) to 5.5 or 6.5 (or more). 5.5 is the highest I can use as a practical matter and only when flying relatively slow planes 60-100kts.There is very good HIGH res imagery around KLAX. If you use the same settings here, you will better be able to judge the quality of the imagery you get elsewhere. The on-line imagery is what it is and it is, for sure, of varying quality.Loyd

[ricardo_r 1]

A. go to a new location with TP set for the desired values; in this case: max_lod=16 <-sets TP's target resolution (60cm in this case) ... min_level=10 max_level=18 # must be at least 2 higher than max_lod but max is 19.

Hum... I've tried these settings but it got worse, here's a sample @KLAX:I've also turn off the Diskless mode just to check if Tileproxy is indeed downloading LOD18 textures, and it is, but God knows why FSX is not showing them properly.For the LOD Radius issue, as far as I understand, it can also be handled by the level_mapping setting within Service.x configuration, right? Although it isn't the issue so far, as the ground right bellow my aircraft is all blurred.Thanks again Loyd!:smile:edit: forgot to say, during the tests any kind of security software is active (just in case there could be some interference...).

[lliaudais 2]

The poor results at KLAX definitely indicate system or settings issues, not source imagery. I would recommend staying at that 'known good' location until issues are resolved.

edit: forgot to say, during the tests any kind of security software is active (just in case there could be some interference...).

I usually directed my AV to monitor ONLY Windows and System and NOT the drives/folders that have FSX, TP, caches, and TP world.

For the LOD Radius issue, as far as I understand, it can also be handled by the level_mapping setting within Service.x configuration, right? Although it isn't the issue so far, as the ground right bellow my aircraft is all blurred.

Tileproxy scenery tiles are multilevel and the appropriate resolution displayed is per the sim and NOT by TP.When TP adds a level of resolution to a scenery tile it uses the JPG level per level mapping, if engaged, but "resamples" it to the correct resolution layer for the tile. Level mapping doesn't trick TP into making a 1m layer in place of a 2m layer that makes the 2m scenery ring look as sharp as a 1m ring, it only uses 4 1m jpgs to make a "down-res'd" version of a 2m layer - like splicing 4 pics into a square then resizing to 50% size; resolution is lost. period.The Bing example: MS image colors at level 13 are visually different than level 14. If I make level 13 tiles using level 14 imagery, it will LOOK LIKE it's level 14 but it's still the same resolution as 13. And as I move away from it in the sim, FSX will display it as level 12 and then level 11 etc. The scenery tile isn't changing, FSX is using lower resolution layers from the same tile. If all my nearby tiles are at the same maximum resolution, the nearest ones ONLY will be seen at the best resolution; all rings outside this will be displayed BY FSX at decreasing resolution. The size of each ring is per FSX LOD_RADIUS.TP tiles are LOD13, 1.2km across. If I set FSX resolution at 5m, and radius to 4.5, then my best resolution will be 5m and I will be at the center of a 10km circle of 5m resolution. If I set radius to 3.5, my central 5m resolution will be about 8km etc. The only way to actually extend 'real' resolution is with the LOD_RADIUS.Hope this clarifies a bit...Loyd

[ricardo_r 1]

Ah, ok, my idea was wrong. Understood now!Thanks again!

[lliaudais 2]

Ah, ok, my idea was wrong. Understood now!Thanks again!

You are welcome.That still doesn't address the difference in quality between the two utilities...I hope you find/figure out what the problem is.Thanks, by the way, for giving me a reason to fly in that area:lod_max=11 (20m) the only size that is practical for me at higher altitudes and all that's available in most of the world.FL160water 2x lowrange 3.5 (large)weather Fairvisibility 50nmLoydI think I'll swing by Gibralter and across N. Africa for a ways...