Flight sim'ming-wise, "I am home!"

Northern Michigan, z17/z19, with XP11 cranked out...

Ever since I have gotten into generating my own tiles, for the first time, do I feel that I am actually travelling somewhere, actually FLYING over real-life countryside, of which in actuality, I am...a veritus captured picture of what it would exactly look like had I flown over this area, viewed it from the cockpit at nearly 7,500 AGL, I am really looking at what's below my wing...for I know it is there, in real life.  It doesn't get any better than this, in a flight simulator. No sir.  

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I agree with you Sas, there's no better thing in sim but ...you must be having a really spacious HD aren't you ? =/

I fill up mine with all these mesh/ORBX/landclass/vectors/sceneries/airports/planes and choppers and the rest of similar *hit.. that I got no much room for covering our Planet with full Ortho. Sadly.

And they're so inviting... =\ http://zonephoto.x-plane.fr/Cartes.php

40 minutes ago, gamer19 said:

I agree with you Sas, there's no better thing in sim but ...you must be having a really spacious HD aren't you ? =/

I fill up mine with all these mesh/ORBX/landclass/vectors/sceneries/airports/planes and choppers and the rest of similar *hit.. that I got no much room for covering our Planet with full Ortho. Sadly.

And they're so inviting... =\ http://zonephoto.x-plane.fr/Cartes.php

Actually, I have four 4TB Western Digital My Books, with USB 3.1 SuperSpeed interface. They sit on-top of my tower, in two rows. They are connected to my system, via a 4-port Quad Bus USB 3.x interface card sitting on an 8X-rail.

Their only mission, is to hold ortho-tile creation and data storage for XP10/11 data retrieval, and scenery load-in.

 Right now, to date, I have 2TB's of tile generation, so have plenty of room for where ever I wish to convert.  What my M.O. has been, is to generate 15-20 new tiles, before I go to work, and then set Ortho4XP to shut down the computer when the Batch Run is finished.  When I get home, I re-cut each tile with Step 3 again, as I have seen time and time again, missed texture downloads from whatever server I used to convert from. I do know, that if I ever get a XP notifier, that it can't find or access a texture (and then usually CTD on ya...) I immediately go to the general log, and find out exactly WHAT texture, within what tile, could not be accessed, or is simply missing, because it is missing on the chosen server, or is corrupted upon that server and does not get downloaded, what ever reason...but if I still get an error (depending upon how much system RAM, you have), XP will load in even 8-10 tiles AROUND the tile, your airport is within. So...if you get an texture load error, and a CTD, you truly need to read the log..and address THAT tile, whether by re-cutting, or by re-generating that tile with another source server. I have had two tiles in 200 tiles that had to be re-cut (recreated from scratch) with a different source, because the missing texture that XP11 is looking for...and needs to load...simply is NOT in the generated tile. It is, after generating from another source...and no further CTD and error message box is happening.  I've been doing this pretty much, very intensively, trying this...trying that...seeing that, seeing this....and now can avoid many, many ortho-generating snafu's and delays, before they even would happen, or be created.  Experience, by use...nothing to replace that!

Yes it is absolutely amazing. I have completed a corridor from LAX to SFO. I am still amazed every time I fly this sector.

Now I need to get stuck into some more areas.

Ses, thanks for the heads up on re-doing Step 3 and the possible CTD issue.

Michael

Hey Bob...how's THIS for 3D auto-gen over my generated Toronto Ortho4XP tile? 

10 minutes ago, michaelray said:

Yes it is absolutely amazing. I have completed a corridor from LAX to SFO. I am still amazed every time I fly this sector.

Now I need to get stuck into some more areas.

Ses, thanks for the heads up on re-doing Step 3 and the possible CTD issue.

Michael

You're quite welcome...and even I was surprised in how many surrounding tiles XP11 does cram into system memory. For my system, and for waiting for Toronto to finish loading into XP11 from my My Book, I just took off, made a cup of coffee, and when I came back, I was up to 34 FPS at CYTZ.  All my z17/z19 load in wait times, has been five minutes or less, but closer to five. It's been a crazy good time, and I only expect it continue.  As I stated in another post, I try to generate in the 'off hours' about 15-20 new tiles and areas per night.  It has really worked well, especially with that great in-program feature to have Ortho4XP shut down your entire system, when having finished all its conversion routines.  This is a fabulous feature, indeed! 

What I really admire about the XP platform...is that XP will use every GB of your system memory...and gives back smooth animation, and quite a few miles flown overland, before I see the My Book busy light start to flicker once more.

Batch, baby...batch!

Ses 

The entire US done in ZL16 for me took just under 4TB of space (this includes ZL19 for all the Southwest Airline airports) and took a little over 3 weeks of constant batching to do.   I'd setup about 80 tiles just before I go to bed, get up, go to work and by the time I am getting home I have 80 new tiles ready to fly over.   Rinse and repeat till the entire US is covered from coast to coast.

It can't be beat!!!   These are all ZL16 tiles.    HALF the cost of ZL17 and 4x less cost than ZL19 yet still looks absolutely stunning as low as 5000 feet up.

 

16 minutes ago, Kuragiman said:

The entire US done in ZL16 for me took just under 4TB of space (this includes ZL19 for all the Southwest Airline airports) and took a little over 3 weeks of constant batching to do.   I'd setup about 80 tiles just before I go to bed, get up, go to work and by the time I am getting home I have 80 new tiles ready to fly over.   Rinse and repeat till the entire US is covered from coast to coast.

It can't be beat!!!   These are all ZL16 tiles.    HALF the cost of ZL17 and 4x less cost than ZL19 yet still looks absolutely stunning as low as 5000 feet up.

 

Yeppers, looks good!  I see that you don't run overlays, is that right for the whole run? :)

Now I've taken a different route with the same results. The upside? Pretty much hands off. I donated 10 dollars to the developer of g2xpl. I got the full version which allows higher than 15 zoom. My favorite feature? It took me about 3 minutes of work to kick off my first batch, the SW USA. Just needed to build a polygon in Google Earth, save the .kmz file and designate it in the .ini file and the program does the rest. Downloads, converts and places it ready to go in your custom scenery folder :)

This downloaded and installed while I slept!

 

 

Brian, that is simply amazing.

53 minutes ago, Kuragiman said:

The entire US done in ZL16 for me took just under 4TB of space (this includes ZL19 for all the Southwest Airline airports) and took a little over 3 weeks of constant batching to do.   I'd setup about 80 tiles just before I go to bed, get up, go to work and by the time I am getting home I have 80 new tiles ready to fly over.   Rinse and repeat till the entire US is covered from coast to coast.

It can't be beat!!!   These are all ZL16 tiles.    HALF the cost of ZL17 and 4x less cost than ZL19 yet still looks absolutely stunning as low as 5000 feet up.

 

 

 

 

Is there any tutorial anywhere you can recommend to learn how to do this..?

I'm thinking of just doing the whole USA and throwing it up on a cloud for all to enjoy...

 

I loaded P3D V4....and I'm sorry prepar3d.cfg....I think we should see other people. I'm going to need some time alone but with patience comes reward...and World Traffic V3 :)

There are a lot of tutorials for Ortho4XP on YouTube. Search YouTube for Ortho4XP

20 minutes ago, Raven9000 said:

Is there any tutorial anywhere you can recommend to learn how to do this..?

There sure is...great tutorial available here...

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/37374-g2xpl-tutorial/

1 hour ago, Sesquashtoo said:

Yeppers, looks good!  I see that you don't run overlays, is that right for the whole run? :)

I have full overlays but I don't have my World Objects turned up to a ridiculous level.   I am on medium.  I prefer having 30+ FPS no matter where I am in the world WITH object shadows on.  For my hardware the settings I have get the job done.