Crowdfunding for orthoimagery - anyone in?

[hjsmuc 393]

Great feedback, thanks to everyone. I think Tony and Desaix agree most with my initial thought: It's doable with mostly ZL 16/17 and selected ZL 18/19. My ZL 17 orthophotos are usually about 2-3 GB with the final scenery package being around 5-8 GB. 

 

We also seem to agree on the following:

 

1. Were we can access excellent and free source material we need to understand how this material can be read by Otho4XP. 

2. Were we are not aware of any such sources we should find out what cost would be incurred to buy the imagery.

 

In both cases we need Oscar's support to make it all work with his tool. I'll invite him to join us here. 

 

And last but not least, we should look forward to any news Tony comes up with because Orthoimagery without his World2Xplane data is only half of the cake, at least outside of the US. 

[Desaix 235]

Uploading jpgs has the plus to let any user easily customize the tile for his own needing: I like to have my town at L19, no problem at all, I load the tileXY.cfg, add some L19 rectangles at my likings, run Ortho4XP and I've probably already the 95/97% ot the tile downloaded.

SimHeaven never had and have any copyrights issues for european textures, I don't think a private repository would incur in any trouble if mantained for personal and free download, but I'm aware that strictly is not allowed. AT the same time I'm quite sure cost of whole tiles should be prohibitive.

[hjsmuc 393]

As far as I know there is no good free data for France. So this would be a good example for trying to find out how to get the necessary data. Bing data for the country is quite good but they have so many different licensing options, it's very confusing. I'll see if I can get some information from them. Maybe it would be helpful to play through a little case study. 

[tonywob 4,768]

Keeping the files as jpegs is a good option as it lets people customise the colours before generating. It would be more a less a case of downloading the zipped tile folder, dropping the folder into the Ortho4XP/Orthophotos folder and generating. The only issue would be that now and then when the coastline changes it may need to grab an extra image, but chances are low that this would happen. If it saves the repeated bombardment of the public WMS servers' bandwidth by 90% of the time then it's a win.

 

Additionally, as well as images, I think sharing generated DEMs and coastlines is a good idea. I used third-party public data for the coastlines and water in the UK, France, Norway and Poland which are superior to OSM. These could be shared as .osm files to be dropped into Ortho4XP/OSM_data folder.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

I'm downloading the entire state of CA (2016 data) at 0.6 m/p right now. It's 10 GB for entire state of CA. It's compressed Mr. Sid format so size is reasonable, although quality slightly degraded. ...

 

MrSID is a multiple LOD format with zoom levels. It is great for display efficiency and a challenge to convert to more common image formats.

[Desaix 235]

 

 

Additionally, as well as images, I think sharing generated DEMs and coastlines is a good idea. I used third-party public data for the coastlines and water in the UK, France, Norway and Poland which are superior to OSM. These could be shared as .osm files to be dropped into Ortho4XP/OSM_data folder.

Bingo.

 

Another advantage: any user could choose his preferences, water ratio, dem ratio, whether selecting mask for inlands or not...indeed the best solution for customization and to save cloud space.

 

We just need an organizer, someone who can check uploaded tile and choose the best or set some guidelines for setting LODs.

My preferences would be for example L17 for base lod and L18 for airports. Maybe offering a base tile both at L17 and L16 would satisfy all users. Places were I just fly with liners I usually set at L16 but airport surroundings, but tiles close to my home base I set to L17.

 

Maybe there is an automatic script to downsize and rename L17 to L16 without the needing to download again the 16 jpgs.

[theskyisthelimit 48]

Is there a huge difference in quality for USGS vs Bing for a given ZL?  Sounds as if many favor the USGS, I was curious?

[Forkboy2 27]

Easiest place to start would be with the USGS for popular regions such as east/west coasts.  However, I think reality is that as long as Bing and USA_2 servers allow unrestricted downloading people will just use Ortho4XP since that is very simple.  If we ever get to the point where Bing/USA_2 start to limit downloads or ban IPs, then other options (torrent, etc.) will be more possible.

 

Different situation for other parts of the world where good/easy source imagery is not available.

 

 

Is there a huge difference in quality for USGS vs Bing for a given ZL? Sounds as if many favor the USGS, I was curious?

 

I've been using Bing, but trying USA_2 now and it also looks pretty good.  I suspect the answer to your question might depend on the specific area of the US that you're looking at.  For some, Bing might be better, for others USGS might be better.

[Mountain Man 142]

I think instead of trying to prebake all the textures for download, time could be better spent creating utilities to make the process as easy and foolproof as possible and then provide detailed instructions for downloading from a variety of services.

 

I'm thinking something where you download the files (or the software could even download it for you), click "Go", and out pops a read-to-use texture package for X-Plane.  That's what I want to see.

[sizziano 172]

I have had good results with ZL15 and even ZL14 over areas you will only be overflying in airliners. Looks great from up there. Check the link.

 

http://imgur.com/a/KEmc2

[FlyIce 354]

Very nice shots! But you never know where you'll end up having a emergency landing... Just kidding.

 

ZL18 orthoimages from Bing are about 7GB/tile, So ZL16 is less than 1G/tile. To cover the whole US should be very doable at somewhere around 700GB orthophotos. Baked tiles will be 4x the size so that'll be around 3TB, still manageable at the today's cheap prices of hard drives. . 

[Forkboy2 27]

 

 

I'm thinking something where you download the files (or the software could even download it for you), click "Go", and out pops a read-to-use texture package for X-Plane. That's what I want to see.

You've pretty much just described Ortho4XP. If you haven't tried it, it's very simple.

 

Problem is that it's success could eventually lead to it's demise. I've already downloaded over 500 GB of imagery tiles from Bing and there are probably thousands of Orth4XP users out there, with more people picking it up every day.   Pretty good bet that Bing will eventually limit requests per IP per day.  Also, Bing is pretty fast, but other servers are slow and/or have usage caps.

[sizziano 172]

I think instead of trying to prebake all the textures for download, time could be better spent creating utilities to make the process as easy and foolproof as possible and then provide detailed instructions for downloading from a variety of services.

 

I'm thinking something where you download the files (or the software could even download it for you), click "Go", and out pops a read-to-use texture package for X-Plane.  That's what I want to see.

 

You have literally just described Ortho4XP

[Mountain Man 142]

You have literally just described Ortho4XP

 

Really?  I'll have to take a look at it some day...

[Desaix 235]

Really?  I'll have to take a look at it some day...

Ortho4XP in last version is fast and easy. What's the problem then?

 

1) As said above unlimited and free download can end any day: the more user start using O4XP the more traffic charged on Bing server. SOme are making lots of yiles at L18 or L19 which means hundreds of GBs

 

2) Crucial point: Downloading and creating a "good" tile is not that easy: sometimes it happens, sometimes textures are mixed, differently coloured, with artifacts, costs don't look good...A fair amount of time is needed to balance colours, give a certain coherency to different textures, try several water and dem ratio...For example I've tried days to generate a decent Venice Ortho and I'm still not satisfied with a small portion where I cannot get rid of terrain which should be water. Eventually I'd like to share my work but without a common repository it's impossible.

More, look at the Norway tiles made by Oscar himself available at Zone Photo: simply stunning, I could waste days without never coming close to that result.Same for Normandy, but they are all baked dds, if I liked to change lod at a given airport I could not.