X-Plane US Orthophotos Project...

[jt8d9a 1,881]

....by Forkboy2. Now with California, Hawaii, Utah, Colorado, Washington and Oregon.

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/36327-us-orthophotos/

[tonywob 4,768]

I've just started building up my selection of US tiles. I have Washington state, and part of Oregon so far. For me at least, it was faster to just generate the tile with Ortho4XP and the USGS DEM than it was to try and download the torrent of the tile I wanted, but it's great for people who don't have the patience to do so.

Just as a warning, the images provided aren't converted to DDS, and the conversion is a very slow process for me, so I really see little advantage of using this over just making the tiles yourself in Ortho4XP, except for saving the WMS server bandwidth. As the author says, if you download a few tiles, please seed them from your torrent client. It's perfectly legal since they use the public domain imagery.

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

10 hours ago, tonywob said:

I've just started building up my selection of US tiles. I have Washington state, and part of Oregon so far. For me at least, it was faster to just generate the tile with Ortho4XP and the USGS DEM than it was to try and download the torrent of the tile I wanted, but it's great for people who don't have the patience to do so.

Just as a warning, the images provided aren't converted to DDS, and the conversion is a very slow process for me, so I really see little advantage of using this over just making the tiles yourself in Ortho4XP, except for saving the WMS server bandwidth. As the author says, if you download a few tiles, please seed them from your torrent client. It's perfectly legal since they use the public domain imagery.

Tony, what zoom level are you generating your tiles at?  Just curious. :)

[tonywob 4,768]

ZL16 generally, with ZL19 around the airports, but.... interesting places I generally do at 17 or even 18 to get an extra bit of detail. 

How many tiles do you now have Mitch? I can imagine the entire US at the way I'm going would take up about 2TB

[Forkboy2 27]

21 hours ago, tonywob said:

so I really see little advantage of using this over just making the tiles yourself in Ortho4XP

A couple other differences.

- I'm using much higher resolution DEM data to generate the terrain than you get by using Ortho4XP.

- The public domain source I'm using isn't otherwise available in Ortho4XP and has much more consistent coloring.  So you don't see hard breaks between different areas as you often do with Bing and the other sources.  The resolution is slightly lower (but fine for ZL16 and 17), but coloring more consistent.

[jt8d9a 1,881]

Many thanks for your work, Forkboy2! I just installed Washington, which has great quality.

[twiggys 41]

19 hours ago, tonywob said:

ZL16 generally, with ZL19 around the airports

Tony; what's the average tile size for this selection of Ortho? (Can't experiment because I'm all out of space on my 120GB SSD card 😌) I'm looking to do the entire US and a few other regions, with a total estimated tiles of about 1025, so I need to do my computed data calculation for a new HD.

[Forkboy2 27]

39 minutes ago, twiggys said:

Tony; what's the average tile size for this selection of Ortho? 

For the entire US, you are probably looking at about 5 Terrabytes to do entire US with ZL16 and ZL 19 around airports.  About half of that would be the ZL19 tiles so you could save almost 2 TB by using ZL18 instead of ZL19.

 

[twiggys 41]

43 minutes ago, Forkboy2 said:

For the entire US, you are probably looking at about 5 Terrabytes to do entire US with ZL16 and ZL 19 around airports.  About half of that would be the ZL19 tiles so you could save almost 2 TB by using ZL18 instead of ZL19.

 

Thank you, this info helps with my evaluation. 

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

22 hours ago, tonywob said:

ZL16 generally, with ZL19 around the airports, but.... interesting places I generally do at 17 or even 18 to get an extra bit of detail. 

How many tiles do you now have Mitch? I can imagine the entire US at the way I'm going would take up about 2TB

Tony, I have right now 245 tiles and climbing.  All my tiles so far are part of my dedicated area go-to-VRF and some higher IFR flights.  I then intend to fill in between those areas at z16/z19 (for the airport surrounds, but at a extend of 5 KM's out, rather than my normal z17/19 (at 2 KM's out)

So, my end game goal is to have every tile on the Map Page, as converted for all of the Continental U.S. of A. I also intend to do the same for Canada, but leaving the Prairie provinces to XP11 default. All the rest will get the same treatment as my U.S. of A, ortho intentions.  Parts of Mexico (mostly the Riviera destinations) and then eventually, onto Europe for selected airports departure-arrival selects. So, that's the Global Plan for myself. I can't tell you how much the simulation experience has been notched up , by full-State ortho coverage in z17/19 when flying over the entirety of Michigan, as well as New England...simply amazing, to feel those tree canopies are real.  If AF2 via Orbx gets even better than my own created visuals...there might be a medical emergency upon first rotation above it, requiring oxygen, for the first time I fire up Orbx's first two properties for that platform...and all because of the fabulous experience it has been in XP11!

Right now, I'm at, or near the 2TB storage generation mark.  I have 14 more TB's on the sidelines, so I don't fear a loss of capacity anytime soon... :)  I bought those four 4TB My Books, when there was a great sale over a year ago....and just had them ready for 'a need' when I identified one.  That need has been identified, and all are now on-line, LOL!

Cheers,

Ses

[tonywob 4,768]

16 hours ago, twiggys said:

Tony; what's the average tile size for this selection of Ortho?

Each one is around 3GB depending on how much ZL19 I include and the latitude. The further north you are, the more images there are per tile.

I'd love to generate the entire US, but as ForkBoy says, I'd need about 5TB, and I already use nearly 2TB for Europe and Scandinavia. I'm just sticking go generating the interesting places, and California because of PilotEdge.

[tonywob 4,768]

14 hours ago, Sesquashtoo said:

I also intend to do the same for Canada, but leaving the Prairie provinces to XP11 default

Ortho quality is very hit and miss in Canada and Alaska, especially outside of the metropolitan areas. 

[twiggys 41]

6 hours ago, tonywob said:

Each one is around 3GB depending on how much ZL19 I include and the latitude. The further north you are, the more images there are per tile.

Thanks Tony, definitely getting myself a 6TB external HD today and linking to my new XP-11 500GB SSD.

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

On 5/30/2017 at 2:36 AM, tonywob said:

Ortho quality is very hit and miss in Canada and Alaska, especially outside of the metropolitan areas. 

Tony, will certainly keep that in mind. I sure hope British Columbia is well represented!

[Kuragiman 227]

I have the entire US loaded up and Northern Mexico and Baja California on a 4TB drive with ZL16 and ZL19 airports all over the US.    I'll need another drive soon to start building my Europe scenery.