Ortho4xp for the lazy person...

[longrangecruise 57]

One question concerning storage after tile creation and mowing the tile to my Custom Scenery folder:

 

Do you guys keep the files in the Ortho4XP/ Orthophotos folder? They are large and filling up my drive beside the actual tile.

I have Ortho4XP installed on a SSD. Maybe I could move it to an external drive and check if it takes longer to create a tile.

[soaring_penguin 428]

The limiting factors are download speed, and brute CPU force, I didn't experience a difference between SSD and classic HDD.

Even RAM is not important.

Jan

[longrangecruise 57]

Thanks Jan! Do you still keep those files in the Ortho4xp/ Orthophotos folder? For me it seems like having all in dublicates.

[soaring_penguin 428]

yes, you could make a link to them in the custom scenery folder.

 

There are some tools for windows that can you help you with that.

I am running Linux, but this has been discussed in this forum before.

 

You must make a link to each seperate folder in Ortho4XP\Tiles from X-Plane 11\Custom Scenery.

That way, if you change/improve something, it is immediately noticed in the sim.

[ryanbatc 12,770]

How do I know if the program is running?  I'm watching that tutorial video, and I select my tile, ZL17 etc, check the two boxes he recommends then click "Batch Build" and nothing happens.  There is nothing in the .exe that is running, no on screen info changing.  CPU isn't running any higher.

 

What am I doing wrong?

 

edit:  For some reason the program is not liking the batch process.  So it will work if I manually create everything.

[CaptCWGAllen 49]

For me this video showed me is the easiest way to do it - I looked at a number of them but this really nailed it. I set up Ortho4XP and let it run overnight. You need to watch the whole video as he goes back to a couple of things that he forgets to explain early on which are essential. Everything is pretty much automatic and the fact that the orthos are linked rather than in the XP file means I can really go to town as the hard drive which that are linked is 4TB.

 

 

Cheers

Peter

[Pastaiolo 1,686]

Remember to keep all 3 windows open (the black one, the main one and the one where you select the tile.

 

Also, i just cut and paste the folder from the ortho4xp folder to the custom scenery one

[ryanbatc 12,770]

How can I use default XP water instead of the satellite? Both Google and Bing have watermarks and white textures just off the coast. And what are the odds? Google has ugly early spring textures in my area argh!

[sizziano 172]

Remember to keep all 3 windows open (the black one, the main one and the one where you select the tile.

 

Also, i just cut and paste the folder from the ortho4xp folder to the custom scenery one

 

You don't need to keep the map window open after starting the build process.

 

How can I use default XP water instead of the satellite? Both Google and Bing have watermarks and white textures just off the coast. And what are the odds? Google has ugly early spring textures in my area argh!

 

There is an option in the Ortho4XP.cfg file. I suggest you use Notepad++ to edit it. There are a ton of options in there and some videos on YT that explain what they are.

[kneighbour 32]

 I have had a VERY good experience with Orth4XP - it is one of the best things to come to XP recently. It makes a HUGE difference to the quality of the scenery, but it can take a lot of CPU processing to get there.I am trying to get the scenery around my home base (Australia) as Orth4XP scenery, and it has taken months. Once you get the hang of how Ortho4XP works, it is really a pretty simple system. I 'compile' everything into the Ortho4XP folder (as per default), then use Orth4XP to setup symbolic links into both XP10 and XP11. This is easy to do - just go into the global cfg file and change the XP path, then setup the links.

 

I have found that the BIGGEST problem by far has nothing to do with Ortho4XP, or anything to do with the software. The problem is the source data. ie getting data from wherever on the Internet that is good enough to use. One of the problems is that some areas in a tile might be good - but then a few small sections are awful - because a download was missing (a white square), the photo is a different colour (this happens a lot), or some other weird graphic problem. This is always because the photo that was downloaded has a problem.

 

I have also found that the photos are not the same from the same source at different zoom levels. Weird, but true. I am currently getting a few tiles at ZL 19 as that is the only zoom level that has decent images. And this can take a week to download one tile. So this is where the time comes in - you download a tile at ZL16, look at it, then decide to try ZL17, then ZL18, etc. It is a very slow process.

 

One fix I have found for some issues is to download a tile from one source (ie Bing). Then download the same tile from another source (ie Google). Then go through the images and see which ones are best. You can copy an image from one source to another - just rename that image to the new format and move into the right folder. I did this to fix about 20 or 30 images in one tile that were on the very edge and were just white from one source. The other source had good tiles in this area. But this is a VERY time consuming operation. You also have to download the tile multiple times as you cannot simply download just one or two images from the tile. There is probably a way to do it, but it would be nice if this was a feature in a future version.

 

But once you get a good tile, it is brilliant. I can fly around my local area and see everything!

[ryanbatc 12,770]

Yeah, I just found that one area of my town is taken in Fall, and one in Summer.  Ugh... totally looks horrible.  I'll have to fool around with the source data.  But this is something that just takes a lot of time, and I don't have time to mess around with it.  Someone should do some payware options hehe.

[sizziano 172]

Yeah, I just found that one area of my town is taken in Fall, and one in Summer.  Ugh... totally looks horrible.  I'll have to fool around with the source data.  But this is something that just takes a lot of time, and I don't have time to mess around with it.  Someone should do some payware options hehe.

 

What source are you using? You can check bing maps or google maps respectively to check. I have found USA_2 looks pretty good.

[ryanbatc 12,770]

Maybe I'll try that.  I tried both bing and google.  google looks better than bing but again, fall textures in one area and summer in the other.  

[Desaix 235]

Yeah, I just found that one area of my town is taken in Fall, and one in Summer.  Ugh... totally looks horrible.  I'll have to fool around with the source data.  But this is something that just takes a lot of time, and I don't have time to mess around with it.  Someone should do some payware options hehe.

Nobody will make a payware option when 2/3 of the potential customers prefer to do this painful process on their own. At least this is my case.

 

The big problem is that we cannot share our work with others, at least in Europe, this is the main limitation right now.

[tonywob 4,768]

 

 

The big problem is that we cannot share our work with others, at least in Europe, this is the main limitation right now.

 

Not 100% true. There are some government sources that are sharable, Spain and Italy come to mind, but I'm sure there are others.