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Sesquashtoo

The Ortho4XP 'Virgin'......well..no longer...lol!

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OMG!   Ortho4XP RULES!

My first Ortho-based tile fly over....wow!  OK, I'm hooked.  Going to get a couple of 4TB's just for this....wow.

I also was using Ortho4XP v1.20b, and had Complex Masks and Inland Masks for water. Well...the Great Lakes as well as the Atlantic Ocean looks fabulous. I now see depth and wave swells moving across the water.  This is fantastic. Nothing like the default water masks...nothing!

Another observation, no FPS hits for flying over custom Ortho4XP generated scenery tiles. 

 

Cessna_172_SP_3.png

Cessna_172_SP_1.png

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Another observation....overlay is much greater upon the terrain, commercial buildings, urban sprawl, and buildings are very well placed upon properties.  Churches are no longer haphazard, but are aligned to the actual property they sit upon.  This rocks...perhaps I'll need ten 4GB hard drives...oh Amazon....oh Amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazon...... ;)

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welcome to the club.

I too tried to for the first time a week or so ago...and WOW.  Made a early morning flight in the AirFoiLabs 172 and did a pattern and literally was in awe. 

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49 minutes ago, Sticky said:

welcome to the club.

I too tried to for the first time a week or so ago...and WOW.  Made a early morning flight in the AirFoiLabs 172 and did a pattern and literally was in awe. 

The only problem is this evening, I am getting a lot of openstreetmap timing out's....

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6 hours ago, Sticky said:

welcome to the club.

I too tried to for the first time a week or so ago...and WOW.  Made a early morning flight in the AirFoiLabs 172 and did a pattern and literally was in awe. 

Well, it's 2:20 and still at it. Up to 44 tiles and climbing.  For my flying interests of where I'd like to see Ortho, I probably will generate around 120 tiles.  That's about it.  I based my choices on how many times in the last three months, have I flown over those x/y coordinates.  Anything less than 5 times in 90 days, did not warrant GB's of storage. So, that's my personal decision of what gets 'Ortho'ed' and what stays as default scenery.  

I fly every day in the state of Michigan, I love around Toronto and the Toronto to Niagara Falls shore-line of Lake Ontario, Having enjoyed visiting and vacationing in Nova Scotia, Canada via motorcycle, THAT was a given! Myrtle Beach, S.C. also a given, and around Punta Gorda, Florida, where I have family relations. Another great area to Ortho-treat, is the Lake Ontario corridor between Toronto, and the Quebec border. This encompasses the Thousand Islands that sits on both sides of the province of Ontario, and the state of New York. That's going to get the Ortho treatment as well.  One final stop on the Ortho-fied trail, will be in selected areas of Vermont, where my wife and I hike and go mountain biking. So, I guess my choices are steeped upon actual visitation and great memories at the x/y locations.

In generation of my tile options, I wished to have inland water ways, lakes, rivers, and oceans also at my mesh of z16.  I have also checked off Complex Masks and Use Masks For Inland, and this has produced such as the Great Lakes, with a most beautiful color and pallet, and more importantly...for whatever reason, I now have very visible wave movement swells..yes..full wave animation that can be seen as high as 4,000 ft ASL. I'm now enjoying flying over the Great Lakes, as much as skirting the shorelines.  I'm sure that as I lean more of each feature set, and get comfortable with them, that I will be able to generate even more detailed and demanding tiles as the next few weeks wear on. 

Having a blast...and will have to learn how to create better Overlays from 3rdP sources, and HOPEFULLY, can generate them without the need to regenerate the tile. So...a Newbie is learning...and Old Dogs in this house, WILL learn new tricks...

One thing that I was very surprised about...is that I have not suffered any drop in FPS while flying over Ortho4XP generated tiles, vs XP11 default tiles. Not one. This was a great and most welcome surprise. I can't speak for anybody else's system, but at least with my components, no loss of FPS performance in generating tiles.

Life is good, XP11 is good...Ortho4XP is GOOD!

Cheers, all...and back to the generation screen, and my 4th cup of coffee.  Yeah...I'm having fun...and fun is what, or should be what this hobby is all about. Fun, and learning.... 

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Sort of 'blogging', but my final tile count to generate is 180 tiles.  Time to turn off the monitor, set the program to Shut Down Computer when finished, and wait it out.  

I have generated for Michigan, Ontario/St. Lawrence River towards Quebec City, Moncton, New Brunswick, entire province of Nova Scotia, South Carolina (around Myrtle Beach, Charleston) ,all of: New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts ,Vermont, Maine, Connecticut, and finally on the hit list; Florida.

That's enough! :)

Then...time to enjoy the view below the wing....

Cheers,

Ses

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What sources are you using for orthoimagery in the Maritimes? I couldn't find anything that worked well. I'm hoping to cover some of Canada.

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1 hour ago, ccanadianbacon said:

What sources are you using for orthoimagery in the Maritimes? I couldn't find anything that worked well. I'm hoping to cover some of Canada.

The Ortho4XP conversion program itself. You go to the Map...highlight whatever tile, and then let 'er rip.  You can then also build a custom overlay with W2XP, or whatever.  Nova Scotia is just finishing off, and I have Maine up next.  It's that easy...but very time consuming.  For my z16, including water, I am processing about 4/5 tiles per hour.  You have about 7 or 8 drop-down sources that Ortho4Xp can run with to source out the data strata.

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He means  what imagery source?  In that little dropdown box - yours probably says OSM right now - try USA2 for US - that's what I used in northern MN and WI and also SoCal 

In your first screenshot it doesn't look like ortho scenery for some reason.  OSM isn't a good source in the USA , again try USA2 or BING


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35 minutes ago, ryanbatcund said:

He means  what imagery source?  In that little dropdown box - yours probably says OSM right now - try USA2 for US - that's what I used in northern MN and WI and also SoCal 

In your first screenshot it doesn't look like ortho scenery for some reason.  OSM isn't a good source in the USA , again try USA2 or BING

Actually Ryan, I have Bi(ng) in the Drop Down Box for Source...I'm using Bi(ng), but will swap out to your recommendation when doing the State of Florida...USA-2   Thanks, Ryan.

 

Post Edit:  Ryan, a question, can you use USA-2 also for Canadian tiles, or should you use Bi(ng) for Canadian, and USA-2 for U.S. tiles, or...Bi(ng) for both, for instance where tiles sit upon a border line?

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I'm with Ryan in that none of those screenshots look like ortho to me. Look at the coastline and river banks - very generic XP'ish.

Are you copying/linking your tiles to the Custom Scenery directory?

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Thanks....I tried with Bing around Halifax but didn't look great at z16. Might try z17 later today or try with a different source like USA2. Having trouble finding sources without clouds in this part of the world. Oh well...the default still looks better than any of the other sims I used to use (new X-plane user since version 11).

Wish someone would do a good version of the city of Halifax and CYHZ or maybe more airports in the Maritimes. I found a great version of Sydney, Nova Scotia, but nothing else of this quality.

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1 hour ago, Dazzlercee23 said:

I'm with Ryan in that none of those screenshots look like ortho to me. Look at the coastline and river banks - very generic XP'ish.

Are you copying/linking your tiles to the Custom Scenery directory?

Yep, I placed then all in a Folder called Ortho4XP_Tiles inside the Custom Scenery Folder, and posted that to the .ini file.

I have my folder within the Scenery.ini file sitting just above the UHD and HD Mesh 3, at the very bottom. If that is not the required or optimum location order...please tell me where in the order, you have your converted files?

 

I'll have to snap a few more at other places....

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17 minutes ago, ccanadianbacon said:

Thanks....I tried with Bing around Halifax but didn't look great at z16. Might try z17 later today or try with a different source like USA2. Having trouble finding sources without clouds in this part of the world. Oh well...the default still looks better than any of the other sims I used to use (new X-plane user since version 11).

Wish someone would do a good version of the city of Halifax and CYHZ or maybe more airports in the Maritimes. I found a great version of Sydney, Nova Scotia, but nothing else of this quality.

I'm still playing around as well. Still learning on the curve.  The next batch of tiles (more in Canada and Europe) will be at z17 with the airport mod in the .cfg in place.  I'm just about to generate all of Florida with USA_2 and z17 for land and water.  I also have now in place the airport mod that places all airport properties within the tiles, at z19 to tighten it up against its surroundings. It is set to True.  My default is also now z17 via the .cfg file.

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1 hour ago, Sesquashtoo said:

Yep, I placed then all in a Folder called Ortho4XP_Tiles inside the Custom Scenery Folder, and posted that to the .ini file.

I have my folder within the Scenery.ini file sitting just above the UHD and HD Mesh 3, at the very bottom. If that is not the required or optimum location order...please tell me where in the order, you have your converted files?

 

I'll have to snap a few more at other places....

Mitch - I'm pretty sure that your Tiles should be either linked or copied directly into the Custom Scenery folder and NOT into a separate folder within the CS folder.

EDIT: I've emailed you.

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