About a month ago I played around with XP11 a bit and I discovered a freeware tool called Ortho4xp which allows you to create photo scenery for free by downloading the required data from providers such as Google and Bing.

After being used to FSX and later on P3D in combination with the global Orbx stuff the experience of flying over true and detailed photo scenery in XP11 was nothing short of amazing and took the sensation of actually flying to a new level!

Now I'm back in the P3D corner again since there were a number of other things I missed in XP such as great weather simulation, detailed study level aircraft such as those from PMDG, a good and well polished Vatsim client such as vPilot to mention a few.

However as for the scenery it simply isn't any fun flying over generated Orbx scenery any longer now that I've experienced the amazing photo scenery produced by Ortho4XP.

I'm now in a situation where I have all the add-ons I need for the type of flying I'm doing (airlines OPs as close to real life as possible) but without the joy I experienced in XP flying over Ortho4XP scenery that made the flying feel real.

So with all this said I've now started to think of what could give me a similar experience in P3D.

If you ask me, the combination of P3D with all its mature add-ons and its overall stability in combination with the photo scenery available in XP using Ortho4XP would be really close to flightsim heaven.

I just started to read about TileProxy but I'm still not even sure exactly what it is or even less so how to use it so thought I would ask in here as well for tips.

Of course it would be awesome being able to build your own photo scenery for free in the same way you can with Ortho4xp but I would be fine going with payware options as well.

Thanks in advance for any input!

I have made Belgium 2011 with FsEarthtiles , FsxKML and Google Earth.

Officially you do not have permission to dl Tiles from map servers but lots of people do so and share their result as freeware.

The maker from TileProxy made a newer version and even opened a subforum here , but Jim closed it as it was payware and he wanted to make money dl Tiles from mapservers..

2 minutes ago, GSalden said:

Officially you do not have permission to dl Tiles from map servers

Not entirely true. It depends on the server and many of the licenses do allow personal usage.

As for the legal aspect I read quite a bit about that when using Ortho4XP and the conclusion seemed to be that as long as you're using the data for personal usage there's no difference if you watch the data on your mobile phone or in your flight simulator.

Building photo scenery to sell to other people of course is a totally different matter.

19 minutes ago, GSalden said:

I have made Belgium 2011 with FsEarthtiles , FsxKML and Google Earth.

Officially you do not have permission to dl Tiles from map servers but lots of people do so and share their result as freeware.

The maker from TileProxy made a newer version and even opened a subforum here , but Jim closed it as it was payware and he wanted to make money dl Tiles from mapservers..

Do you have any advice what would be a good place starting to learn how to do what you already did?

11 minutes ago, WebMaximus said:

Do you have any advice what would be a good place starting to learn how to do what you already did?

FsEarthtiles

28 minutes ago, Sethos1988 said:

Not entirely true. It depends on the server and many of the licenses do allow personal usage.

None of the known mapservers allow downloading.

Gxxgle even has a built in security system , but some developers already have cracks for that...

8 minutes ago, GSalden said:

None of the known mapservers allow downloading.

Gxxgle even has a built in security system , but some developers already have cracks for that...

Of course they do. That's what you do when you view the data. You can even specifically download from the USGS, as much as you want, all their available data. Some of the providers have restrictive copyrights of what you can do with the data, some also have systems in place to make sure you aren't hogging a metric ton of bandwidth -- That has nothing to do with not being allowed to download specifically. 

11 minutes ago, GSalden said:

FsEarthtiles

Ok, will do some searching for that.

I guess what makes this a bit more "sensitive" in the P3D corner is the number of developers making money on selling products that include photo scenery using data they paid for themselves.

Clearly these guys wouldn't appreciate if there was a tool similar to Ortho4XP for P3D people could use to build their own photo scenery for free.

Take a look at SBuilderX:

 

http://ptsim.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=52&Itemid=56

 

It says it's for FSX, but it works fine in P3Dv4. Bit of a learning curve, but if I can do it...

 

Paywarewise, there's always MegaScenery Earth.

 

Russ

10 minutes ago, b1bmsgt said:

Take a look at SBuilderX:

 

http://ptsim.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=52&Itemid=56

 

It says it's for FSX, but it works fine in P3Dv4. Bit of a learning curve, but if I can do it...

 

Paywarewise, there's always MegaScenery Earth.

 

Russ

Thanks, will check it out.

Just came across this series of tutorials on Youtube:

 

He uses SBuilderX, among other things, so it may be of use to you.

 

Russ

38 minutes ago, b1bmsgt said:

Just came across this series of tutorials on Youtube:

 

He uses SBuilderX, among other things, so it may be of use to you.

 

Russ

Didn't look through the complete clip but seemed to be about creating an airport scenery where I'm more interested in creating nice photo scenery en route between my already existing payware airports.

Thanks anyway for the tip!

3 hours ago, WebMaximus said:

Ok, will do some searching for that.

FSEarthTiles is not as easy as Ortho4XP due to the tedious work to get the water mask right.  MegaSceneryEarth is a better option for the states that you like to fly.  Even with Ortho4XP one has to pick and choose due to the time to generate and disk space.  I plan to use P3D strictly for Airliners where the scenery at high Altitude is pretty good with the generated stuffs.  When doing GA, XP11 and Ortho4XP wins hands down.