Western Europe Ortho is incredible!

[Bob Tildesley 6]

Those shots look great Mitch! Decals! Yes! From reading some of your posts I see you don't like to use overlays and I see your point with high ZL tiles. But I love the roads cars trains and I think the xplane native autogen is really starting to rock. I don't like too much of the lego buildings that w2xplane displays although RealWest is nice for the western US. So I have settled for Luftbilder's enriched autogen, I think he has most of the world covered now- there is a dropbox link. Let's the xplane autogen shine through. Then I turn down objects one notch so every road isn't lined with houses and the orthos can take up the slack nicely. Freaking awesome. I think making my own w2xplane overlays could be really fun when I get around to it, but flying at the moment is just too much fun.

[Pochi 68]

Thank you very much for the clear explanation and screenshots Mitch! I will try Decal for my tiles.

What I was referring to was your post about using mask ( I can t remember what is the option named) around the border of one tile but not on the next ones that may cause a crash.

Pierre

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

8 hours ago, strider1 said:

Sesquashtoo, what settings are you using for Curv_tol, Masks, Ratio_water, Inland Masks? etc....

Just the defaults.  Played around with them...and actually, DO prefer the 'default' returns.... :)

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

4 hours ago, Bob Tildesley said:

Those shots look great Mitch! Decals! Yes! From reading some of your posts I see you don't like to use overlays and I see your point with high ZL tiles. But I love the roads cars trains and I think the xplane native autogen is really starting to rock. I don't like too much of the lego buildings that w2xplane displays although RealWest is nice for the western US. So I have settled for Luftbilder's enriched autogen, I think he has most of the world covered now- there is a dropbox link. Let's the xplane autogen shine through. Then I turn down objects one notch so every road isn't lined with houses and the orthos can take up the slack nicely. Freaking awesome. I think making my own w2xplane overlays could be really fun when I get around to it, but flying at the moment is just too much fun.

Thanks for the post, Bob.  I actually do use overlays, depending on my mood of the day, or if the flight starts out at dawn, dusk, or full-blown night,  then I get my overlay folder back into the mix.  As you say, I do prefer daylight operations without overlays, as I do see so much more authentic detail, that in the real world, is actually there, and is not masked by XP11 autogen.  Of course, for low-light ops...absolutely overlays is called for. That's the beauty of this all...everyone can have the cake and eat, until they roll away from the table....  

Having a blast....

Cheers, Bob.

[Bob Tildesley 6]

Yes, so many choices, so little time!  BTW have you experimented with the "terrain casts shadows" setting in Ortho4xp global config? It's set to False and I'm pretty sure my terrain is casting shadows. Why would it need to be enabled anyways? Hmmm... seems like a few tantalizing things to find out about in that config. I should read the manual thoroughly unlike the first time! Cheers

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

3 hours ago, Pochi said:

Thank you very much for the clear explanation and screenshots Mitch! I will try Decal for my tiles.

What I was referring to was your post about using mask ( I can t remember what is the option named) around the border of one tile but not on the next ones that may cause a crash.

Pierre

Pierre, all of my posts and threads, since my starting the ortho-fest...is in the XP Addon, or the General Forum.   I'm sure you will find what you wish...or merely look up my Profile, and every post I have ever made, is there, one-by-one...with the link to go right to it. That might be the better route for you.  That aside, I do recommend that one uses the Complex Masks and Use Masks for Inland. I think you might mean, that if you have built up lets say shoulder-to-shoulder 10 or 15 tiles, then it would do you good, to run Step 3 again, with Complex Masks checked off, as what will happen, is that Ortho4XP will sniff two or three tiles out, from your target tile, and grab all the data it needs to build a very complex and fully blended mask from tile to tile, giving great visuals.  It wasn't about crashing.  The crashing, is usually caused by a texture that could be loading into XP11, (that it wants to load that in...) and XP11 can't find it...AND...lo and behold, this texture is actually trying to be loaded into memory, 3 tiles over!

 An example.  I created a clutch of tiles that surround my home base of KFNT.  Now...when I first generated KFNT (in Michigan) it loaded just fine. I then started generating tiles AROUND the tile that held KFNT...the second one...fine, the third one, fine...but the fourth...around Lansing...after I generated that tile...and chose my FBO of KNFT (Flint-Bishop Intl), About two minutes into load-in...XP11 would present a message that it could not load in texture.blah,blah. and then CTD.  Hmmmm.....so I went to my log...and found that the tile that had the missing texture, that caused XP11 to CTD, was in fact, a tile that held the city of Lansing!!!!   I regenerated that tile with the original BI(ng) and fired up KFNT again.  Crash...burn....sitting on my Desktop...

Ok...so I got the idea, that perhaps BI did not have the necessary .jpg capture, that Ortho4XP needed to create a valid and full generation of ground data.  I then changed that one tile to generate with Google...or GO2.  After that completed...I fired up XP11 again...and plopped myself down at my FBO (KFNT) with fingers crossed.   Wham, bam, thank you, Ma'am....no crashes, no error messages....and there I was ready to taxi.

The lesson learned, is that if you do get a crash...it is not a total suspect that it is something wrong with the tile that held your airport...it could be any ONE of tiles 3 or four shoulder-to-shoulder surrounding it. They all need to be valid...and to be able to load into memory, by XP11.  Your log is your best friend here.  It will tell you exactly what tile x/y coordinate numbers it was, that it could not 'find' a needed texture file to load in.  Try a different source for that one tile...regenerate, and then try to make it to your airport of choice.  If it still crashes, then try ANOTHER...source on that problem tile, until that offending tile, becomes fully loadable.  This is what I think you meant about one of my tips/posts. 

Another tip...you can have tiles, shoulder-to-shoulder that are generated by not the same one source...and all that might happen, is that the color of one, might be a little different than another..but, in reality...as soon as you cross over into the 'other' tile, generated by let's say GO2, sitting next to an BI one...your mind will easily adjust and take up the slack. You won't even remember what the other color pallet was of the tile you left behind, as you make your merry way across the tile you are flying over.  So...not to worry, about the source, tile to tile. Yes..you want to have the one same source for a series of tiles, but if you can't...that is no show stopper, whatsoever!

 

Cheers,

Mitch 

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

1 hour ago, Bob Tildesley said:

Yes, so many choices, so little time!  BTW have you experimented with the "terrain casts shadows" setting in Ortho4xp global config? It's set to False and I'm pretty sure my terrain is casting shadows. Why would it need to be enabled anyways? Hmmm... seems like a few tantalizing things to find out about in that config. I should read the manual thoroughly unlike the first time! Cheers

I believe that it will darken the ground under any captured cloud bases, that you will find from time to time.  For myself, I have left that one as default.  You can try it on a tile you have already already generated with the setting off...and re-cut it.  See what it adds to the mix. I might even try that after I finish typing here. If you don't like what it does to that tile...just make it False again...and re-cut your tile.  It will generate back to the way it was, before you enabled that setting.  Also, it will take off of five minutes or less to re-cut any tile...for you already have downloaded all the necessary .jpg's and all the textures of that Sat Service are on your hard drive. BUT...if you change to another source other than what the tile originally generated with...then you will have to download all the .jpg files from that different service as you'd expect to.  

[Bob Tildesley 6]

Wow, that makes sense that it could darken the white cloud textures, sure hope that is true. I will try that tomorrow as well. I just recut a tile that was crashing. I set an new custom zoom set for it using a different zoom where I thought there was some missing tiles causing the crash. And messed a bit with the mesh resolution, more!! Took off from Banff in the trusty 172 and it's looking magnificent especially since I cranked it to ZL19. And .... hasn't crashed yet either, knock on my head (wood)!  Cheers

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

16 minutes ago, Bob Tildesley said:

Wow, that makes sense that it could darken the white cloud textures, sure hope that is true. I will try that tomorrow as well. I just recut a tile that was crashing. I set an new custom zoom set for it using a different zoom where I thought there was some missing tiles causing the crash. And messed a bit with the mesh resolution, more!! Took off from Banff in the trusty 172 and it's looking magnificent especially since I cranked it to ZL19. And .... hasn't crashed yet either, knock on my head (wood)!  Cheers

I just re-cut this tile...with what we were discussing, Bob;

Here they are...with  Terrain Casts Shadows engaged...the sat clouds are casting down upon the ground! These are clouds banks, that were captured on the day of the Sat shot. The clouds way above, are the live, xEnviro sets.  Again, the low ones below me, are now projecting shadows upon the ground to match their shape...wow!

Pretty cool, huh?   This will now stay engaged along with Decals also engaged.   XP11 is now the hottest looking sim, I own!  :)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))0

[Bob Tildesley 6]

Wow, that's fantastic! I'm going to give it a go right away on the same tile I did last night. Right after I said knock on wood it crashed on me. Haaa! There are still a couple of holes in the bing data it appears (as I can see odd chunks of mountain that are just pure white). Try and try again I guess. But ZL 19 on the mountains....holy mother of a thousand yaks, it blows away anything I've seen in a sim. 

I put a 1T SSD in the new computer I built and so far my few tiles have their there home there until I put in a drive just for tiles, and I must say there is zero stuttering during loading while flying. So smooth. I can see that SSD's are gonna be hard on the bank account :)

Cheers!

[Bob Tildesley 6]

2 hours ago, Bob Tildesley said:

There are still a couple of holes in the bing data it appears (as I can see odd chunks of mountain that are just pure white)

A couple? I checked the texture folder in Ortho4xp and my tile has 198 textures that downloaded partially or nothing at all. I guess that's the problem. Deleted the offenders and am now rendering the tile again! Seems weird how the blank textures still are 10.8Mb. Huh? But I have to be careful with my data....in the country with 100GB limit then they cut me down to less than dialup speeds. Won't even let me buy more. Huh? That's even more weird than my tile problem. Cheers

[charleslee201 19]

On ‎6‎/‎29‎/‎2017 at 1:14 AM, Sesquashtoo said:

Just the defaults.  Played around with them...and actually, DO prefer the 'default' returns.... :)

Hi Sesq . could you share your Ortho4xp .cfg   please ,

thanks alot

[Vantskruv 11]

Two questions for those experts here:

1. Are there any flaws with 'use_decal_on_terrain' set to TRUE? I think I read there may be some strange artifacts....but I'm not sure.

2. I've recently bought a 10Tb HDD, and have been starting generate some tiles. If I want to change the the above setting, do I need to delete and download everything again? How do I best regenerate all the generated tiles with the change of above setting?

Edit: For those curious, I running with this settings (only changed are shown):
 

complex_masks        = True
use_masks_for_inland = True
cover_airports_with_highres = True

 

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

12 hours ago, charleslee201 said:

Hi Sesq . could you share your Ortho4xp .cfg   please ,

thanks alot

Here it is:

default_website='BI'
default_zl=17
water_option=3
sea_texture_params=[]
cover_airports_with_highres=True
cover_zl=19
cover_extent=2
min_area=0.01
sea_equiv=['Étang de Berre', 'Estuaire de la Gironde', 'Lac Léman']
do_not_flatten_these_list=[]
meshzl=19
insert_custom_zoom_in_mesh=False
poly_simplification_tol=0.002
overpass_server_list={'1': 'http://api.openstreetmap.fr/oapi/interpreter', '3': 'http://overpass.osm.rambler.ru/cgi/interpreter', '2': 'http://overpass-api.de/api/interpreter'}
overpass_server_choice='1'
curvature_tol=3.0
no_small_angles=False
smallest_angle=5
hmin=20
hmax=2000
tile_has_water_airport=False
water_smoothing=2
sea_smoothing=0
masks_width=8
complex_masks=True
use_masks_for_inland=True
legacy_masks=True
keep_old_pre_mask=False
maskszl=14
use_gimp=False
gimp_cmd='c:\Program Files\GIMP 2\bin\gimp-console-2.8.exe '
ratio_water=0.3
normal_map_strength=0.3
terrain_casts_shadows=True
use_decal_on_terrain=True
dds_or_png='dds'
use_bing_for_non_existent_data=True
max_convert_slots=4
be_nice_timer=0
skip_downloads=False
skip_converts=False
check_tms_response=True
verbose_output=True
clean_tmp_files=True
clean_unused_dds_and_ter_files=False
contrast_adjust={}
brightness_adjust={}
saturation_adjust={}
full_color_correction={}
g2xpl_8_prefix='g2xpl_8_'
g2xpl_8_suffix=''
g2xpl_16_prefix='g2xpl_16_'
g2xpl_16_suffix=''
Custom_scenery_prefix=''
Custom_scenery_dir='G:\X-Plane 11\Custom Scenery'    <-------------------------------------Replace my G:\ with your driver letter
default_sniff_dir='G:\X-Plane11\Global Scenery\X-Plane 11 Global Scenery' <--------------------------------Replace my G:\ with your drive letter
keep_orig_zuv=True
seven_zip=True
landclass_mesh_division=8
snap_to_z_grid=True
overlay_lod=40000
keep_overlays=True
 

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

10 hours ago, Vantskruv said:

Two questions for those experts here:

1. Are there any flaws with 'use_decal_on_terrain' set to TRUE? I think I read there may be some strange artifacts....but I'm not sure.

2. I've recently bought a 10Tb HDD, and have been starting generate some tiles. If I want to change the the above setting, do I need to delete and download everything again? How do I best regenerate all the generated tiles with the change of above setting?

Edit: For those curious, I running with this settings (only changed are shown):
 

complex_masks        = True
use_masks_for_inland = True
cover_airports_with_highres = True

 

You don't need to download everything again, on a tile you already generated.  Set Decals as TRUE in your .cfg screen, and press SAVE. Then re-generate any tile you already have generated. The decal will be added into the re-cut. You are good to fly...