New installer to update global scenery

[AnsorgJ 3]

22 hours ago, jh71 said:

There is no trigger, you must download the new installer directly from Laminar, then choose the option "Update Scenery Online".

"Update" instead of "Add or Remove" - thats the key!

Thank you for the hint. I never noticed that option before

[soaring_penguin 428]

20 minutes ago, AnsorgJ said:

"Update" instead of "Add or Remove" - thats the key!

Thank you for the hint. I never noticed that option before

because it wasn't there before :-) 

[alpilotx 505]

37 minutes ago, Sesquashtoo said:

My download was also 47 GB's, due to my installed content.  It did fully download the full 47 GB's.

Yes, because it was really a full re-cut of the entire scenery without any old tile kept in place (and additionally quite a few areas covered which were missing before).

As a side note: the overall size of single DSF files has been reduced by approximately 20% without reducing their information content. This was based on some earlier, important findings by Oscar - the guy behind Ortho4XP - who shared his knowledge with Ben .... and thus Ben could make some things more efficient in the scenery generator code (how it internally orders the data ... and makes it thus much more compressible). This DSF size efficiency improvement was also the main reason, why now Laminar could again extend back  the scenery coverage to areas omitted in the first release.

[HUSSAR 263]

My update was only 3.7 Gb, and I have the entire globe selected, that's small compared to some of the numbers I have seen in this thread. 

[AnsorgJ 3]

11 hours ago, AnsorgJ said:

"Update" instead of "Add or Remove" - thats the key!

Thank you for the hint. I never noticed that option before

 

8 hours ago, HUSSAR said:

My update was only 3.7 Gb, and I have the entire globe selected, that's small compared to some of the numbers I have seen in this thread. 

Look again at the buttons in the installer 

[MarioDonick 752]

12 hours ago, alpilotx said:

In the meantime I checked the water color stuff in XP11b15 and it is definitely in. Go for example to KEYW and zoom out quite a bit (and make a clear, cloud free day to have a good view) .... then you should see some partial turquoise coloring in some areas around the Keys ... 

Hm... can you post a screenshot how it should look like? I don't have turquiose coloring there...

[alpilotx 505]

1 hour ago, MarioDonick said:

Hm... can you post a screenshot how it should look like? I don't have turquiose coloring there...

... hmm ... one possibility would be, that the water color data itself has not been rolled out until now. So, the shader knows how to handle it already, but the official betas don't have the data (whereas I have it from internal DEV sources). Damn ... can't remember how the folder was called (and again no direct access to my X-Plane machine) ... then I could ask you to check if you have it or not.

[MarioDonick 752]

18 minutes ago, alpilotx said:

... hmm ... one possibility would be, that the water color data itself has not been rolled out until now. So, the shader knows how to handle it already, but the official betas don't have the data (whereas I have it from internal DEV sources). Damn ... can't remember how the folder was called (and again no direct access to my X-Plane machine) ... then I could ask you to check if you have it or not.

Ah, I see. Not a big issue :)

Another thing ... although my global scenery has been updated, I still have no scenery for PAUN.

I was assuming that now the previously missing parts of the mesh have been added, but I now see that only +60+000 to  +60+170 are there, but PAUN needs +60-160 ... can anybody confirm that this is missing? Or should I simply try to run the updater again?

[alpilotx 505]

On 22.3.2017 at 7:31 PM, alpilotx said:

Its also quite likely, that for the high but not "very high" buildings, there might come some nice artwork improvement which will make them look even more "natural" (especially in Europe). But you didn't hear anything ... just lets wait and see if or what will make its way to an upcoming XP release.

Beta 16 already delivers some of those artwork updates:

http://www.x-plane.com/kb/x-plane-11-00-release-notes/

• New autogen models for European medium-height buildings.

(so most European cities should look now even nicer )

[Jimm 437]

1 hour ago, alpilotx said:

Beta 16 already delivers some of those artwork updates:

http://www.x-plane.com/kb/x-plane-11-00-release-notes/

• New autogen models for European medium-height buildings.

(so most European cities should look now even nicer )

Is it too early to disable the W2XP models, in favor of the new autogen, or do the two still work with each other?

[tonywob 4,768]

They work together, but I personally think the default autogen looks better when not using photoscenery. A good compromise I've seen is to use the default autogen along with the W2XP landmark packages that adds in churches, etc. With the recent height data improvements, the autogen has improved leaps and bounds from XP10 in Europe.

[Jimm 437]

2 minutes ago, tonywob said:

They work together, but I personally think the default autogen looks better when not using photoscenery. A good compromise I've seen is to use the default autogen along with the W2XP landmark packages that adds in churches, etc. With the recent height data improvements, the autogen has improved leaps and bounds from XP10 in Europe.

Perhaps this is a good time to clear up an latent misconceptions about photoscenery, mainly due to my own confusion.  When I installed XP, it has scenery, but I later downloaded AIPilot's HD Mesh, which is scenery as well.  I created one tile, as an experiment, with ortho4XP, which is photoscenery.  Can you elaborate on what the difference is between them?  I may have been under a misconception that anything added beyond the default was photoscenery, but yet, we hear about orthoscenery too.

Understanding this would make it easier to manage what we have, and whether we would still need to use it.

[tonywob 4,768]

This might be a good post to have a read:

It's a common misconception that Ortho4XP uses/requires HD Mesh and you need both:

• HD Mesh is a standalone scenery which uses the default textures. It upgrades the default scenery with more detailed mountains and coastlines as well as autogen.
• Ortho4XP is a photoscenery which generates its own mesh and uses photoimagery for textures. It does not use HD Mesh and won't work with it. If you have both enabled, then whichever is higher in priority will be used. Ortho4XP does not add roads or autogen.

However, Ortho4XP can actually take out the autogen and roads from HD Mesh and create a scenery from it to overlay on top of the photoscenery, but it doesn't directly use the mesh. So I think this is were some people are confused. The overlay sceneries it can produce will take out the overlay data from the mesh, but not use the mesh directly.

An older payware application called G2XPL would directly use HD Mesh and would retexture it with ortho imagery.

[Jimm 437]

3 minutes ago, tonywob said:

This might be a good post to have a read:

It's a common misconception that Ortho4XP uses/requires HD Mesh and you need both:

• HD Mesh is a standalone scenery which uses the default textures. It upgrades the default scenery with more detailed mountains and coastlines as well as autogen.
• Ortho4XP is a photoscenery which generates its own mesh and uses photoimagery for textures. It does not use HD Mesh and won't work with it. If you have both enabled, then whichever is higher in priority will be used. Ortho4XP does not add roads or autogen.

However, Ortho4XP can actually take out the autogen and roads from HD Mesh and create a scenery from it to overlay on top of the photoscenery, but it doesn't directly use the mesh. So I think this is were some people are confused. The overlay sceneries it can produce will take out the overlay data from the mesh, but not use the mesh directly.

An older payware application called G2XPL would directly use HD Mesh and would retexture it with ortho imagery.

Alright, so in your own professional opinion, which do you recommend to use that produces the best accurate representation that also plays well with Autogen, both default and 3rd party?

[tonywob 4,768]

Honestly, both have their ups and downs.

In my opinion, the best is using photoimagery with either W2XP or extracted autogen from HD Mesh, but this depends on whether you want the hassle of downloading GBs of imagery or just a quick plug and play solution. For someone who flies jets across large areas, I think it's best to stick with HD Mesh or the default scenery. Photoimagery and accurate overlays are only important if you want to see your own house or fly low and slow across familiar terrain. However, I don't think W2XP overlays look good with HD Mesh, and the answer is simply that the ground textures don't match. It looks like someone just chucked some random buildings everywhere without any thought.  Whereas the autogen from X-Plane and HD Mesh include some ground textures and look nicer with the default textures, but not as accurate when used with photoimagery.

I use both HD Mesh and photo/W2XP depending on the region, and it really depends on the type of flying you do and how much patience you have. The great part is that at present both types of scenery are completely free, so it's easy enough to evaluate yourself :)