Ortho4xp-I give up

[JohnJJr 1]

After trying several times to download a tile for the Seattle aiport area I still have yet to see the photo scenery appear in xp10.  When trying this I think several things are also wrong. When I try to piont to my scenery mesh folder (zzz_hd_global_scenery2) for the overlay it tells me " failure: there is no file to sniff from the indicated place." I then went into the ortho4xp cfg folder and told where the default sniff directory was. It  continues to give me the same failure message. So I have to go with the default scenery in the global scenery folder. I think that may be part of my problem. Also after downloading when I check in the tiles/ z ortho4xp_+47-123/ texture folder all the files are there but all the dds texture pictures are blank. I think that's another problem. Anyway according to several tutorial videos I've seen they say that after pionting to the mesh folder for the overlays and picking the tile you want to download you check " build masks and build overlays " and click " batch build " to start the download. Well when I do that nothing happens , and after several minutes I have to manually click though each step of the download. After pasting the new z ortho tile and y ortho  overlay folders into the custom scenery folder I start xp and then adjust the scenery ini file. The zzz_hd_global_scnery2 is at the bottom, then the z ortho+47-123 scenery is on top of that and then the y ortro4xp overlay is on top of that. I still continue to see nothing but my default scenery.

 I've tried eveything  I can think of and I don't know what's wrong.I'm running win 7 and xp10.    

[avgaskoolaid 292]

The overlay sniffs from the folder that contains the 'earth nav data folder', so if your folder is zzz_hd_global_scenery2/+47-123/earth nav data, point it to zzz_hd_global_scenery2/+47-123  By "HD Global Scenery 2" I assume that's "HD Mesh v2". Why are you using v2 when v3 is newer? In any case, you shouldn't be using either. The developer of HD Mesh v3 has acknowledged that XP11's default Global scenery is more up to date, and overlays should be created with it instead. So, make sure "Custom overlay dir" is pointing to "X-Plane 11/Global Scenery/X-Plane 11 Global Scenery" for the most accurate overlay. 

As for 'batch build", when you click on 'batch build' within the 'Tiles Collection' preview window, it will look like nothing is happening. This is just poor design. You tile is building just fine, and you can see its progress by pressing 'exit' out of the preview window. You'll be back at the normal ortho4xp home screen, and there should be all sorts of numbers/processes going by on the right side of the screen. As for why you aren't seeing anything, I can't say I've ran into that problem before. You have the layering correct; just be sure all your ortho tiles are allllll they way at the bottom of the ini. Make sure your checkboxes look like this (provider, zoomlevel, etc is up to you, obviously, just make sure the checkboxes are like mine)

Main page

Batch build page/tile preview page

Also, if you haven't come across it yet, check out this tutorial. It's the most concise and easy to follow one I've found, and is the only one I needed before I got the hang of the process. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhr4xYosVvI&t=1s

[JohnJJr 1]

I've seen that video-it's a good one. In the video though it says that you should have the latest version of python installed on your machine. I've watched other videos that say that's not needed. I did try to install python 3.6 and it didn't help. I still can't see the dds textures in the tile/ortho4xp+47-123/texture folder even though the files are all there. Could that be the reason I'm not seeing the photo scenery in the sim? I checked the ini file and the stack up is the same as the instruction given by the video you recommended. By the way I'm running xp10 now but I  just wanted to see if I can make this work before I get xp11.

[JohnJJr 1]

Update: Success! I finally got to see the photo scenery in the sim. I know what the problem was. I was probably downloading everything correctly but I kept putting the ortho4xp scenery file at the very bottom of the scenery ini file. I forgot that there is also a ksea demo terrain file in my custom scenery folder and therefore also in the ini. The ortho4xp+47-123 file had to be placed on top of that in the ini  in order to see it in the sim. I guess the ksea demo terrain file is a mesh and has to go on the very bottom.

Anyway the sceney is beautiful and makes a big difference. What must I do now  to download the custom autogen to match the photo scenery? Is that w2xp? Would I want to download W2xp America for the ksea area from simheaven for this?

[avgaskoolaid 292]

43 minutes ago, JohnJJr said:

Anyway the sceney is beautiful and makes a big difference. What must I do now  to download the custom autogen to match the photo scenery? Is that w2xp? Would I want to download W2xp America for the ksea area from simheaven for this?

Good that you got it working! I'm guessing you want to know how to have autogen, roads etc overlaid on top of the photo scenery? To do this you don't need w2xp. In fact, I'd recommend not getting w2xp because the data it includes is kind of old and IMO the buildings it uses don't look as good as the default XP ones. XP11 contains OSM data from ~2016 by default, and it's currently the most up-to-date source for roads, buildings, etc. SO, just build an overlay for the tile yourself in ortho4xp as I decribed above. The 'yothto4xpoverlay' entry in the scenery.ini file should be placed somewhere above the ortho tile's entry. 

[JohnJJr 1]

I've done that and downloaded the yortho4xp overlay. It's  placed on top of the orthro+47-123 photo scenery in the ini. and it looks great ! The buildings and roads are all there. Pretty convincing all right. I only thing I don't like is the trees poking up through the photo scenery buildings. Is there anyway to get rid of that? Maybe setup some sort of exclusion parameter? It kinda kills the effect. 

I just wanted to try w2xp to see the comparison. From some screen shots I've seen most of the buildings have a pink tenge to them which I think is very unrealistic. If I didn't like it I thought I could get back to this overlay by arranging the ini again.