So I finally became frustrated enough with Tileproxy that I decided to do something about it. As ambitious as it is, I've thrown my computer headfirst into downloading photoreal scenery using FS Earth Tiles. I like the idea of having permanently downloaded scenery! I have been following a 4x4 degree grid as seen in the google earth image below. The green tiles indicate my current coverage after just a few days of work. The red tiles indicate scenery remaining. At this rate, I've calculated I'm going to need very roughly 1.5TB of storage for the US alone... but that's an entirely different subject! Perhaps I'll pick up a 3TB HDD when prices drop in the spring.As you can see, I have only downloaded scenery around the central U.S. as I'm a little lost what to do concerning the coastlines. My question is, what is the easiest method of creating water masks along coastlines? If it's possible, I would like the ability to the masks after the scenery has been compiled as a BGL. That way I would have as much time as it takes to create the water masks without having to wait to enjoy the scenery. I realize Microsoft Flight may be out by the time I'm done creating water masks ! I'm not too worried about lakes/rivers as the vast majority of my simming is done at high altitude in commercial airliners.Here's a nice shot near KDFW for grins!

The only thing to say is, Wow! Corey. Very impressive. Nice job and good luck on this massive project.Generally, all Masks must be integrated into the bgl, I believe, although I have never attempted to make the ground textures and the masks separately. You could try and see if it works - it would be an interesting experiment.For small project, most of us simply modify the source bitmap and create the masks from there. For large projects like yours, you may want to take a look at data sources on the Internet. The SRTM data also included water masks:http://dds.cr.usgs.gov/srtm/version2_1/SWBD/I have never used this, but I did mention it a long time ago to the author of TileProxy and I think that is what he used for his tool.Best regards.Luis

It's all part of turning my sim into a PMDG 737NGX simulator!Modifying the source bitmaps is an option I would prefer to avoid if possible. The source files take up 3x or 4x the storage of the completed BGL files. I'm not sure if it's possible to "unpack" a BGL for editing and repack it once complete. Anyway, if something like the SRTM data makes creating water masks quick, easy, and more or less accurate, then editing the source bitmaps may turn out to be the best way. Thanks for sharing that! I will continue to download the interior tiles while I investigate it.It appears the SRTM data is formatted for GIS software. I'm somewhat familiar with using ArcGIS, but is there any freeware GIS software for viewing or converting the SRTM files?Finally, I believe I need two lines to do the blending, correct? If so, is there a software that will offset a line by a specified distance?

I think you have two problems. First is to create the blend or watermask texture for your tiles. Second is to create the hydro polys with elevation. IMO the SRTM data is not suitable for scenery, except in an emergency. If you do have data in shapefile format, with geo projection and WGS84 datum, you can use SBuilderX to import the data and create hydro polys from it. Then the problem is masking your tiles. If there is some photo editing software which could import the shapefile and use it to define a mask, that would be ideal. I don't know of that, though (maybe some photoshop plugin?) For US coastline data, two possibilities are USGS has a product called DLG (digital line graphics) in some areas 25,000:1 and others 100,000:1. The Coast Survey also has some coastline vector data to try here:http://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/csdl/ctp/cm_vs.htmscott s..

Corey, the SRTM Water Bodies Data is presented as a shapefile, that is to say, it is easily imported into SBuilderX. You should not need any other GIS software for this purpose.As for the process for creating the masks, perhaps you could take a look at the following tutorial:Make photo-real ground textures in Flight Simulator Xavailable in the Avsim libraryhttp://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID=fsxsd&DLID=140539Best regards.Luis

Guys,Thanks for all the resources. Looks like I have plenty to keep me busy then!

Corey,In FSET what download resolution are you using? I am undertaking the same task and was wondering.

resolution 3 - using Yahoo maps. That results in approximately 16GB per tile. My computer has been running 24/7 for the past week yielding about 2 tiles per day. How far are you into it?

Started around KDEN, 900GB on compacted hard drives, moving west. I do about 60 FSET tiles per night and during the day while I am at work. This is about 100 X 50 miles. I use resolution 1. I wonder what your resolution 3 looks like in FSX? I started in August.

The FSX screen print above is from the scenery I've already downloaded. It's not great below 2000 feet, but it's not like I spend much time at that altitude in a commercial liner. I will probably come back and download resolution 1 scenery around major airports once I'm done with all the resolution 3 stuff.Photoreal textures are very addicting - they really show how embarrassing the default FSX textures are! Tileproxy got me hooked - but sometimes it would run great and then for no reason whatsoever, I would get really bad blurries.Are you doing any post-processing or are you allowing FSET to spit out the finished product?

Just FSET.

Impressive that both of you are doing this. I started using FSET as a suppliment to sbuilderx and love it. I already have gigs of source data dled and had thought about just what you guys are doing. I'm with Corey, photoscenery is addicting, especially ultra high resolution source. It's like discovering parts of the world you have never been to.

Corey,Can you post a shot of mountains/hills with no parts of the aircraft showing? I may start my project over at a higher resolution. The data size is just too big to do the whole USA at 1.

Here's some shots from Colorado Springs looking 251 degrees W directly over KAFF (US Air Force Academy). I set TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=4096 and LOD_RADIUS=9.500000 in my FSX.CFG, so any imperfections you see should be due to the scenery itself and not FSX. As you can see, it's not great below 2,000 ft, but smooths out greatly between 2,000 and 5,000 ft.2,000 ft above KAFF5,000 ft above KAFF10,000 ft above KAFF15,000 ft above KAFF

Thanks! I am going to start over at LOD 3 in FSET. Your 10K and 15k look as good as my level 1 did so I deleted everything. The only thing I don't worry about is the coastlines. You should note that anything N or S of N.A. do not have data at LOD 3 in Yahoo.