Ive had this kinda scenery for 10 years with FSX , plus the autogen looks bad on top of it 

Ortho4XP has one advantage over g2xpl; 100% FREE.   You just need HDD space and time to build the tiles.

Did a couple more flights today with some lovely ZL16 examples to show for it from around the country.   Truly a beautiful world to behold!

 

2 minutes ago, Kuragiman said:

Ortho4XP has one advantage over g2xpl; 100% FREE.   You just need HDD space and time to build the tiles.

Did a couple more flights today with some lovely ZL16 examples to show for it from around the country.   Truly a beautiful world to behold!

 

 

This is where I get a little confused. G2Xpl does ZL15 with no problem for free. I donated $10 and now have a the choice of any zoom level in a fully self-sufficent tool. No sitting around and putting pieces together to build tile after tile after tile. I'm gonna grab a 4TB tomorrow, throw it on my laptop, draw a polygon for Canada/US/Mexico and walk away as it goes to work. Mind you I'm just going to do a giant ZL15 for this first part so that is all still in the free zone.

The first comment in that tutorial that I posted is a guy going off about how it's ransom-ware. Odd to see the 2 extremes. On one side you have people throwing money at the Orbx crew, on the other a guy that took the time to make a tutorial with hopes of assisting others is hearing a story about how a gentleman made a "ransom-ware" tool and should be ashamed of himself. Good grief. A $10 donation is absolutely worth the free time I get in return...and I didn't even have to donate if I didn't want to. Use G2Xpl for ZL15 and Ortho4XP for everything else and people will still have all that money to throw into...well...a .cfg file so that addon wont hinder their enjoyment :)

I started making addon's for FS5.1 in '97 when I was thirteen. My 20 years of tenure is up, time to finally enjoy it for a change. 

 

"Photo or it didn't happen"....fine :)

 

7 hours ago, XMAN said:

Ive had this kinda scenery for 10 years with FSX , plus the autogen looks bad on top of it 

Infact, the big difference is that with X-Plane you can use real buildings (sourced from OSM) instead of the randomly placed autogen. Can't be beaten. Oh, and the other difference is that it's all free/donationware.

 

22 minutes ago, Murmur said:

Infact, the big difference is that with X-Plane you can use real buildings (sourced from OSM) instead of the randomly placed autogen. Can't be beaten. Oh, and the other difference is that it's all free/donationware.

 

very nice and well done video!

Tom

 

I never considered orthos because of their size and flatness, but with ortho4xp and w2xp, the game does indeed change. I can only recommend flying around Salt Lake City to see the massive difference (especially the northern part of the Great Lake Salt, which is actually and massively pink and just looks spectacular from above!)

I still don't think it's the optimal solution for every type of flying, but in my case (mostly airliners), ZL15 (17-18 around airports) is enough and doesn't need that much storage space and time to create. Baked-in lighting and lack of seasonal change are still the most obvious disadvantages though and I'd certainly consider buying an ORBX-style regional texture set if it were available in XP11 for my GA flying.

11 hours ago, Sesquashtoo said:

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 

Ses, when you say XP uses every GB of your system memory, what sort of figure are you talking about?

I thought my system would have utilised the memory more effectively (have 32GB). Over Ortho ZL16 system memory tops out at about 6.5GB. VRAM is between 5 - 6 GB. Currently I have my Ortho tiles on an m2 SSD (obviously not a long term solution as I build more tiles). With that I still get around 5sec pauses at approximately 2 - 3 times per tile worth of flying.

How far can you fly before you have long pauses while further tiles load?

Thanks Michael

 

 

9 hours ago, Kuragiman said:

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.

Well Brian, if medium allows you what you need, than a total thumb's up.  I really enjoy what the level's;  High and Max provide.  As always, each to their own...but I also intend to cover my FL-pathways, with z16 under them...for at the FL's you don't see much on the ground, anyway.  Z17 and Z19 certainly eats into storage resources, but looks great, with 3D looking forestry, that is still actually 2D.  

If I had only my system hard drive to host my files...I certainly would do it all at Z16 as well. Nothing wrong with anything over z15 actually...it's only a matter of personal expectation and taste of the viewer as to what final zoom factor is used. :)

Very nice, wish they had something like this for P3D, Ortho4P3D or something.

 

Btw, you did the entire US using Ortho4XP, what source did you use? Bing?

12 hours ago, Sesquashtoo said:

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

So just the OrthoXp tile and let Xp11 generate the autogen?  iow, the free stuffs from Chris K are not needed anymore?  Thnx

It's a little funny that people balk at paying a little something to a  developer that writes a program that allows them to generate such amazing scenery, but spend hundreds on the hard drives needed to store it. 

4 hours ago, domae001 said:

I never considered orthos because of their size and flatness, but with ortho4xp and w2xp, the game does indeed change. I can only recommend flying around Salt Lake City to see the massive difference (especially the northern part of the Great Lake Salt, which is actually and massively pink and just looks spectacular from above!)

I still don't think it's the optimal solution for every type of flying, but in my case (mostly airliners), ZL15 (17-18 around airports) is enough and doesn't need that much storage space and time to create. Baked-in lighting and lack of seasonal change are still the most obvious disadvantages though and I'd certainly consider buying an ORBX-style regional texture set if it were available in XP11 for my GA flying.

Not to rain on anyone's parade here; I do recognize the attraction of orthos. But for me, it's not an optimal solution. At least not for the kind of low-level flying in bush planes and helicopters that I enjoy in X-Plane.

It breaks immersion (for me) when I see blurry terrain texture at the edge of a sharply detailed runway. XP11's landclass texturing is a better match for those grass or dirt areas between pavement. It's one of the things that puts me off Aerofly FS2 -- those areas between pavement at an otherwise nicely detailed airport that are just a big colored blur. Being able to see something that looks like ground texture instead of a blur is also critical for making a good off-airport landing in a helicopter. That's a purely visual process based on seeing the ground below 20 feet altitude. I know it's possible to use higher-res orthos near airports, but it still doesn't match the texture resolution of XP's landclass terrain at ground level. 

Then there are the artifacts that crop up when flying low, like squashed and flattened cars, buildings, and trees, or baked-in shadows. A heavy overlay of OSM autogen can mask this in urban areas, but it only takes one view of a squashed car for the immersion bubble to break. This happens often in parts of the world where there isn't good OSM data, and the sim is just making a wild guess for autogen. In places like that, it's very obvious that I'm flying over a 2-dimensional photograph. Especially early or late in the day when nothing is casting shadows like it should.

I'll freely admit that all of this is a result of the kind of low-level bush plane and helicopter flying I enjoy. If I only flew airliners in the sim, then I might be using orthos everywhere (and just learn to ignore the blurry ground texture near pavement). And it's definitely a plus that this can be done at zero cost. This should attract more users to XP and help fund development of the things I care about... like better weather. 

I fly pretty much all GA and below FL100.  The incorrect shadows on the terrain doesn't seem to bother me.  Sometimes the seasonal thing does, but as we know, that's a whole other can of worms which will hopefully get addressed some day.  If you do the extra work, you can eliminate the ZL change from airport to general scenery, but I'm too lazy lol.

20 hours ago, Sesquashtoo said:

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!

is there a tutorial to do a batch run? ive not been able to figure that out. ive been doing 1 tile at a time.

16 hours ago, Kuragiman said:

Ortho4XP has one advantage over g2xpl; 100% FREE.   You just need HDD space and time to build the tiles.

Did a couple more flights today with some lovely ZL16 examples to show for it from around the country.   Truly a beautiful world to behold!

 

Looks very good Brian, from those altitudes. Doing the same right now as I type...z16/z19 (2 KM's out) with no overlay for those tiles. Just want to see the 2D ortho. :)