FreeMeshX USA Open Beta Announcement

[AviatorMoser 353]

Hello folks,

The open beta for FreeMeshX USA has begun. This is a 50 GB LOD12 (9.5 m pixel size) terrain mesh that enhances the topography of the continental 48 United States. Note, Hawaii and Alaska are unfinished. The source data used is from the US Geological Survey's National Elevation Database and is the highest quality data we've worked with.

The USA mesh is unfinished. We have not optimized the level of detail for the plethora of terrains found in the CONUS. For example, the Great Plains are also rendered at LOD12, which is a bit of a waste of data, so we will likely cut down the LOD to LOD11 in the future and increase the compression for the flatter areas of the country. This could save quite a bit of HDD space in the end.

We have also filled in gaps between the CONUS and neighboring countries with LOD11 data based on SRTM and CDED data. So the entire world should now be completely replaced with FreeMeshX Global and FreeMeshX USA.

The mesh is compatible with all versions of FSX and P3D. Flight Sim World is not supported -- that's not a permanent declaration -- we just don't know enough about it and haven't tried using FreeMeshX with it.

About the airport plateau problem:

I have not finished my solution to the airport plateau problem, but I've made much progress in that direction. I've withheld the release for this very reason until now because it can break the immersion. As many know, the airport plateau problem is a fundamental issue that affects all meshes. Since the ESP engine forces airports to lie flat on undulating or sloped terrain, these artifacts at airports become quite significant at higher LOD. There is no thorough workaround yet. FTX Vectors can only do so much by adjusting the elevation of a small fraction of the airports. The only true way to fix this issue is by DTG or LM rewriting how airports lie on terrain, but I have not seen any inkling of motivation from them to solve it. Until then, I am working on my own solution that will adjust the mesh around each airport so that the airport blends in seamlessly with the surrounding terrain. It's not an easy task for me. It's an elusive problem that requires thorough planning and testing. I originally withheld release until I had the solution working, but time commitments to my PhD research and limitations of my own has not allowed me to solve it yet. You all have been very patient, and I have decided to release an open beta for those who understand the airport plateau problem and won't report to me every time they see an airport affected by it. Trust me, I'm working on it!

New installer method:

Due to popular demand, we have forgone the 'manual' method of installing for a 'less manual method' FreeMeshX has converted to automatic installers. See for yourself.

As you can see, the installer basically does the job of extracting the FreeMeshX folders into a location of your choice. There is no impact on your system elsewhere. No registry entries. No BS. To uninstall, you just delete the installed folder. Done. Note, you are still required to add the folders to your Scenery Library. Trust me, you don't want us to modify your scenery.cfg, and we don't want to be the culprit if it messes up

Downloading:

The USA expansion is huge. Downloading it will take a long time. Usually 12-24 hours for broadband users when downloading directly without any kind of download accelerator. On top of that, the new installer method can only work with 2.0 GB chunks at a time. That means the installer uses 27 parts.

To simplify the direct download, I have put together a barebones downloader based on wget -- a download manager that will automatically retrieve all parts of the installer with full stop/resume capability. All one has to do is unzip the downloader, double-click on a batch file I provide, and it will run wget to retrieve each file.

A command prompt with a bunch of gibberish will come up, but at the bottom will be the name of the file you are downloading and a progress monitor. Once it has finished one file, it will automatically move onto the next until all files are downloaded. If you want to stop the download, exit out of the command prompt, or hit CTRL + C. To resume, just double click on the batch file, and the installer will resume from where it had stopped. Note, the files will be downloaded into the location where you have run the batch script, so make sure you have enough space first!

We have created installers for the other regions of the world -- fully updated. They aren't uploaded yet, but will be ready soon.

Bit Torrent users:

NOTE: DUE TO THE EVERY INCREASING COSTS OF FILE HOSTING, WE HAVE SUSPENDED THE AUTOMATIC DOWNLOAD SCRIPTS.

PLEASE USE THE BIT TORRENT LINKS.

For Bit Torrent users, the USA mesh will not come with an installer. It is not needed. The entire folder structure can be downloaded intact with Bit Torrent. Download the torrent below.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/2pcecgcd4s4i9n4/FreeMeshX_-_USA.torrent

http://www.mediafire.com/file/pmtwijw53cy7329/FreeMeshX - USA HotFix 1.torrent

FTX compatibility:

The FTX regions with the USA come with their own mesh and they are also rendered at LOD12. We have not tested compatibility extensively, and we would like to see reports from the beta users on how the FTX meshes and FreeMeshX USA mesh conflict. Since they are both the same level of detail, there may be some conflict. If there is, the likely suggestion would be to uncheck FMX - USA from your Scenery Library when flying in the FTX regions. We highly encourage the use of FTX Vectors. Any good mesh needs a good vector replacement package.

IMPORTANT TIPS:

1. Defragment your mechanical HDD. The rendering of the highly detailed mesh requires a fast CPU and quick access to the data on the HDD. Obviously, if the data is fragmented and scattered all over the HDD, then that can slow the rendering down, i.e. blurries.

2. Install the mesh on a fast HDD for similar reasons.

3. Do not expect your computer to keep up if you're doing Mach 1.2 over the terrain unless your computer is very quick! The HDD has to stream the data and then process it via your CPU. That takes some time!

4. Place the FreeMeshX USA folder above the other FreeMeshX folders, including the FreeMeshX Patches folder if you have one, and below any FTX regions in the Scenery Library.

5. To reduce mesh popping (where higher LOD mesh pops in -- another limitation of the ESP engine), use a higher LOD_Radius in your fsx.cfg or p3d.cfg. We recommend a minimum of 6.5. I personally use 8.5 which is a nice compromise between performance, memory, and visuals. The higher the LOD_Radius, the further out the mesh will be drawn at its maximum LOD, less mesh popping, and the better it looks!

6. Obviously, feel free to use your texture and landclass solution. We use FTX Global and openLC USA/Canada. Because it's beautiful.

 

Hot Fix 1 (809 MB)

Fixes the error in the N40W085.bgl file where some terrain was mistakenly set to sea level.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/pmtwijw53cy7329/FreeMeshX - USA HotFix 1.torrent

Thanks!

Nine Two Productions

 

[AviatorMoser 353]

Feel free to use this thread to report problems. I would prefer that over e-mails since it's easier to manage.

[ZLA Steve 370]

YAY! 

[Penz 45]

I get an error while installing:

"D:\FreeMeshX\FreeMeshX - USA\scenery\N35W110.bgl

An error occurred while trying to copy a file:

The source file is corrupted."

I cannot see any obvious errors regarding file sizes or similar, I had the download running overnight. Could you tell me which of the source files contains said BGL, so I can try to redownload that part?

[theeditor6969 5]

I can verify I am getting the same error as Penz.  I have done two downloads of the mesh, one using the provided download and one using DownThemAll download manager in Firefox.  I have extracted both packages multiple times to different drives.  I get the file corruption error at N35W110.bgl.  I also get source file corruption errors, rather randomly, on other files.

  - N45W110bgl

  - N35W115.bgl

Over four different extractions, two for each download set, I always get two errors, one on file N35W110.BGL and 2 out of 4 extracts N45W110.bgl and the other two extracts N35W115.bgl.

[AviatorMoser 353]

Yep, I'm getting reports of it the 11th part becoming corrupted. Something must have corrupted server side, because this exact copy was working perfectly for some internal testers. I'll reupload the part ASAP and let you know when it's completed. Sorry about this!

[AviatorMoser 353]

I just redownloaded the fmx_usa-11.bin once again and ran an MD5SUM hash check on it.

4a272f9a7b07a545fd8f07fae5ea2bce

It's identical to the dev copy. Can anyone run an MD5SUM check on theirs and compare? I'm wondering if the MediaFire servers are having issues (great timing!)

As a reference, here are MD5SUMs for all the parts. I encourage everyone to do a hash check. You can easily do so with a plethora of free tools such as this one.

02fe20db2f9e2c6c2f151134955e5c06 *fmx_usa.exe
b70f9462e236e199b3374414565c1b2e *fmx_usa-1.bin
d13a01c1ba0fcac7f823dbba7adcb818 *fmx_usa-2.bin
033b547558ad0432fbb83a784f362bef *fmx_usa-3.bin
1e8702d942ddf3284173eb25d6257a3d *fmx_usa-4.bin
23169849fbb8f8b661409b9f3d156aba *fmx_usa-5.bin
b278c6513f5e2695286b300cf148f7cd *fmx_usa-6.bin
6efc8b1d9a88ef19d427d7f75150cb56 *fmx_usa-7.bin
5cfcc590e93603d160ded1e73f5e4055 *fmx_usa-8.bin
e95b41b1ee4e6b9e8cdd0055d34fcf45 *fmx_usa-9.bin
4d7d6beaf3fe6a8bc6816483abdf4e39 *fmx_usa-10.bin
4a272f9a7b07a545fd8f07fae5ea2bce *fmx_usa-11.bin
c4d81273a15a406159c0977a27c39258 *fmx_usa-12.bin
e5a7eca88837b2656b6d158ff9ff87b6 *fmx_usa-13.bin
7033141483ac37d6c8f5a990636376fb *fmx_usa-14.bin
1ca3ee3df1009d2c43f0f313d3cdc53f *fmx_usa-15.bin
d77f064163dafe8ead8135bf795e3b09 *fmx_usa-16.bin
dbf731cc6b70ede1f2ddda6ed0510b01 *fmx_usa-17.bin
d4b3a35f75a6ab864db185c475b41079 *fmx_usa-18.bin
a080bac41f523485a6a0b357f4aedfe8 *fmx_usa-19.bin
7fafd577d03de69ed28378f7f921fa30 *fmx_usa-20.bin
165d75a59228e47d39909e53f73fa721 *fmx_usa-21.bin
01267e17ab8d3a99b0ab47618b51989d *fmx_usa-22.bin
9fdbf7ca3406f8f4540ead1ca4149f24 *fmx_usa-23.bin
56eae2ab41787b253bf614f822abe2e3 *fmx_usa-24.bin
bae178b93a499ddc132588e861a705b0 *fmx_usa-25.bin
32afcce2d22a80e95d1670c81c9f9ac9 *fmx_usa-26.bin
72fa257ae84c1162939a667ba0999b2b *fmx_usa-27.bin

 

[Penz 45]

My part 11 has a bad checksum (dccb8266bd1043d005a3ed0f9f2a9b2c), all the others match.

I'll try redownloading.

[AviatorMoser 353]

Just now, Penz said:

My part 11 has a bad checksum (dccb8266bd1043d005a3ed0f9f2a9b2c), all the others match.

I'll try redownloading.

Thanks Penz,

It's most likely the files hosted at Mediafire are mirrored on several servers. One of those servers may be goofing up, while others are just fine.

[Penz 45]

A fresh download yielded a better file!

Now to install ...

[AviatorMoser 353]

That's great news! Maybe the servers corrected themselves.

[AviatorMoser 353]

Updated the downloader with a new link for part 11.

New link for part 11 is http://www.mediafire.com/file/h38803b8vmxxmgy/fmx_usa-11.bin

It should be identical to those who did not have a corrupted download for this part. Still investigating the issue. Looks to be a problem only on MediaFire's end. If your download is going very, very slow (like < 100 kbps), you're likely on one of their problematic servers. I'd recommend you restart the download until you get better speeds which would indicate a server working correctly.

[Cai Zicheng 171]

Hello,

Is anyone else getting this message during installation?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/00k8gpia5eaktmo/Mesh.PNG?dl=0

[Nuno Pinto 1,394]

No problems on my side. Download went well, installation also, so now looking for possible issues.

[AviatorMoser 353]

18 minutes ago, Cai Zicheng said:

Hello,

Is anyone else getting this message during installation?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/00k8gpia5eaktmo/Mesh.PNG?dl=0

 

Hi Cai,

Looks you were bitten by the snake. Try redownloading fmx_usa-11.bin and read above about my suggestion to check the download speed for this particular file. One of the MediaFire servers mirroring this file is corrupted and you can tell whether or not your download for this particular file will corrupt by checking the download speed. If the speed is very slow, then you are likely on a bad server. Cancel the download and try redownloading until you have a good speed.

 

14 minutes ago, Nuno Pinto said:

No problems on my side. Download went well, installation also, so now looking for possible issues.

Awesome!