...and on the 7th day, you-know-who, rested...

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

...and on the 23rd day, I rested too, from my final mix n' match ortho generating, of custom Ortho4XP created, tiles...and 'creating the Earth below'....

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...and actually flew cross-country starting at KFNT (Michigan), and ending up in St. John's, Newfoundland.  All over glorious ortho, that created for the very first time...with such a long flight, the sense...the true sense, that I was FLYING over the real earth.  There was never, in this flight simulation, 'flight', one, let alone a couple, of viewpoints, that were the same, very identifiable, synthetic texture groupings, farm fields that you passed at 185 knots, three minutes ago...now just again, coming under your wing.  Oh...there's the same farm house property that I passed ten minutes ago along with the same farm fields and their shapes, (oh yes...of course, taken from a texture library installed in the flight sim), along the flight path. No Orbx, or anybody else's synthetic representation of what is below the wing from A to B.

None of that.  Because the scenery has been in total, generated from real-world satellite photo captures, of what is truly and exactly down below the flight path. Simply ... it was a veritus view.. No need for Land Class files, to try to put it all together, and make look 'believable and plausible'.....no need....

It was the best flight simulation experience, quite frankly, that I have ever had.  It was 'total' immersion.  The feel of viewing down below my wing, upon rotating off of runway 27, near Flint....heading East, with a climb to FL190 cruising over the beautiful Ontario, Canada, the States of Vermont, New Hampshire, turning north-east over the Province of Nova Scotia...and onward over the Atlantic, to  the beautiful city of St. John's, Newfoundland.  This was the 'immersion' I had been waiting for, for over 30 years in the flight simulation hobby.

With sky produced by xEnviro, live time, the REAL WORLD, in high definition, shoulder-to-shoulder, z17/z19/2 graphic tiles....folks, this is what I was hoping for, so , so many long years ago....in 1979...with my Atari 400/800 start into home computing.  Nothing, simply nothing between then, and my flight last night has ever closed all the portals, to 'this is not real...you are not flying over the earth for real'.  Last night, for the full four hour flight, in a G.A. aircraft, I did. I flew over the real world...and you KNEW you were.  Simulation, or not.

So....thank goodness that a very talented, VERY talented person, created such a fabulous, FABULOUS, program such as Ortho4XP, and in my opinion, this should not only win a high-level award, within the flight simulation community, but should be also nominated as a pivital milestone in the pursuit of simulating the real-life experience of piloting a man-made enterprise, over the one's creation, that took HIM seven days to create.  It's there...with a little work and time...it's now there, in every captured detail between your departure, and your arrival airport.

It took the Creator, seven days to create the globe...and took me 20 or more days to capture that glory, for the flight paths that interest me. That of course, and a couple of My Book's, (large smile).

I now have with XP11/Ortho4XP generated orthography, and xEnviro creating what's above it all....true flight simulation, captured realism.

I'm home...but it took 37 years, to get to last evening's flight....37 years! 

I am very excited to await the announced ability for the user of AF2, to also start generating real-world imagery, for the places of interest, that the user soars over...can't wait!  This was the thing we all needed, the ability to have the choice to fly over real-world imagery, rather than closed, in-sim texture libraries. Some like that, and actually prefer that. I get it.  For myself, though...THIS is what I have always hoped for, and always wanted..."...that farm down there...with the out-buildings, the private road, from off of the county road....is REAL. It is there...the lane-way is there, the county road is there...". I can drive to that exact property and see it as it is, from the air.. Man...I don't know about you, the reader, but for myself as regards flight simulation, Ortho4XP, was the 'Holy Grail'.

I have flown over (in my Ortho4XP generated scenery) places (Myrtle Beach) that not only can I identify IN the scenery, (as easily can my wife, in a casual look!!!), but can verify how it looks at 2,700 feet, as we have taken tourist flights over the beach and strand, and it looks EXACTLY, now in my flight simulator platform (XP11), as is does, at Myrtle Beach, in the real world. It can't get any better than this...just the tech...the visuals are deadly clear, and the content is visually accurate.

Nuff said, need to go pick a plane, pick a flight plan...and enjoy my er...'23 day creation...' I'm now resting...and flying. 

Cheers 'n' beers, all. A great time to celebrate!

Mitch

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

Final closing statement about Orthography, 

I have been seriously immersed in this whole deal, trying out everything, in test flights, n' all.

These are my personal recommendations:

If you want to generate your own Ortho-Scenery, from the sources that can be used via Ortho4XP's address book, and runs seamlessly with the program, 

If, most of your interests lay with cross-country, trans-continental flights, that will for the most part of the cruise be above 10,000 feet AGL, then you can get away with generating tiles at a zoom level (zl) of 16, with incurring storage media savings, and time-to-generate-tile savings as well. If you fly anything below 10,000 feet, frankly, the tiles start to look like crap, the lower to the ground you descend.  They need a visual cue height of 10,000 feet above the terrain, to coalesce the graphics, and make believable, the forests, any 'inplied' 3D depth of field, like river beds, and gullies, between valleys, etc...at a height of 10,000 feet, they can be seen with zl16.  Below that...the graphics are too crude, too large, too low in vital resolution, for real-world believable, viewing.

For cruising at all the FL's...they work very well.  They actually look at about the resolution of ground objects that can be seen from the window of a commercial flight, at the same FL cruise levels.  The above is for earth-coverage as seen via Commercial Operations.

If you have the file generation, storage media room, and the time, I can't stress enough, how much better EVERYTHING looks, and from whatever height, there are no visual-cue altitude restrictions, with a zl level of 17, or greater in zoom factor.  No matter WHAT your altitude is, in the flight, from departure, to TOC, to TOD, to the numbers at touch-down, it all looks crisp and quite fabulous.  In otherwords, a tile generation setting of: zl17/zl19/2 (tile cut at zl 17, with zl19 for two km's around each airport, is the absolute sweet setting for tile generation, and expected visual outcome.

For all VFR flights and their real world associated altitude obtainment: without a doubt, do not create a tile less than zl17, or zl17/19/2-5 (whatever you want).

Anything less, for VFR expectations, will for most user's, be visually quite disappointing!

Those are my personal recommendations, by trying out various zl settings and combinations, until I arrived at the above (as recommended by myself) ,mentioned sweet-spot of: zl17/19/2. If you have the storage capacity, or don't have an issue with procuring the storage needed, the territories created for your own unique flight path, departure/arrival parameters, and where they are located upon the planet, will be totally a win/win for all types of operation, whether it be VFR, General Aviation, Helo's, as well as high FL, Commercial IFR flights.  The above recommended generations formula will beautifully serve all your expectations, with visually stunning viewage.

Over n' out, Captains! 

Post Edit:  Since telling W10, to run with external storage O.S. data read/write Caching, where before I changed the Storage Policy in how W10 handles external hard drive interaction, I would have small pauses, in XP11, when it was accessing my My Book USB 3.0 SuperSpeed drives, to load in more ahead-of-the-flight ortho scenery. Since I have upgraded the policy, as I have stated how to do, in the W10 Forum, and am getting read/write data speeds of 158 to 166 MB/s, where before the Policy Upgrade, I had read/write operations topping out at 58-62 MB/s,  I no longer have ANY sim pause, as the tiles load in.  I see my My Book 'busy light flickering' but no effect upon the flight and simulation. Back to the flight...and since finishing my marathon tile generation, am reaping the rewards, and having an absolute XP11 visual, BLAST-O-RAMA!!! :)))))

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