alpilotx HD Mesh v4 Announced

[Oscar Pilote 22]

On 05/11/2017 at 8:22 AM, Susu986 said:

Yes, you can use HD Mesh to build overlays for Ortho4XP tiles, and use those overlays (which is basically the autogen buildings, forests, and roads systems on top) with Ortho4XP. However, you won't benefit from HD-Mesh' high resolution terrain mesh at the same time while having orthophotos

True. Yet, the mesh being different doesn't necessarily imply that it is not as good. Here is another side-by-side comparison I wrote back two years ago or so (pay attention to the shapes, not the textures).  Note however that the HD v3 and UHD v1 triangle counts were penalized by a nasty encoding bug (related to the 32 -> 64 bit change, most of the nodes were duplicated) which was also the cause of Laminar's initial "Global scenery release size problem" (if you read about it) for XP11. That bug has been removed now and HD v4 should not suffer from it.  

[Oscar Pilote 22]

On 05/11/2017 at 1:36 PM, alpilotx said:

So, to get the best results, someone would need to capture "side" images of the steep slopes and apply them in the right place .... Yes, doable, but definitely nothing for the faint hearted (and neither something which can be easily automated). But a scenery like this would be the ultimate experience fur sure ...

This is called oblique imagery and is e.g. what Google Earth 3D is using. Once available it is not more complicated to introduce them in the scenery with repect to orthos, only the azimuth (usually 0,90,180 and 270) and zenith (usually 45) angles need to be known. Google used to propose them through their gmap API (although out of big cities most were fake ones - satellite orthos distorted), now it seems they have abandoned it and only serve their already textured (and highly protected!) GE 3D mesh, where available.  Of course oblique imagery does not replaces a good 3D mesh (the video was a joke, buildings are not 3D in the mesh, unlike GE), but for texturing steep cliffs they would be quite handy.   

[alpilotx 505]

16 GBytes of RAM should be OK (but also the bare minimum).

And yes, of course it will still be provided in 10x10 degree regions (which results in some big files).

If you have connection errors. did you ever try to alternate between the different mirrors? I mean, I already offer 3 different download mirrors ... one of them should work. If no works, then you should seriously have your internet connection checked.

[CFIJose 5,485]

28 minutes ago, alpilotx said:

16 GBytes of RAM should be OK (but also the bare minimum).

And yes, of course it will still be provided in 10x10 degree regions (which results in some big files).

If you have connection errors. did you ever try to alternate between the different mirrors? I mean, I already offer 3 different download mirrors ... one of them should work. If no works, then you should seriously have your internet connection checked.

I'm referring to downloading xp 11 scenery ith installer, not your mesh.

I've used the aerosoft servers for your hd sceneries for xp10 without any issues.

Thanks.

[alpilotx 505]

3 hours ago, Oscar Pilote said:

This is called oblique imagery and is e.g. what Google Earth 3D is using. Once available it is not more complicated to introduce them in the scenery with repect to orthos, only the azimuth (usually 0,90,180 and 270) and zenith (usually 45) angles need to be known. Google used to propose them through their gmap API (although out of big cities most were fake ones - satellite orthos distorted), now it seems they have abandoned it and only serve their already textured (and highly protected!) GE 3D mesh, where available.  Of course oblique imagery does not replaces a good 3D mesh (the video was a joke, buildings are not 3D in the mesh, unlike GE), but for texturing steep cliffs they would be quite handy.   

Yes Oscar ... that was exactly my point. Technically it should be doable ... but getting the right data with large enough coverage, consistent data quality and for free (which is an important point for all Otho4XP users) is an entirely differ story. Nevertheless .... once such data would be available, it could indeed bring a big jump in photoscenery quality (especially in mountainous areas).

Well ... in a way, the latest Dolomites 3D scenery is slightly pointing in this direction. Even though it is a - as far as I understand - manually (with a lot of hand work) created scenery (not something that can be automated now).

[CarlosF 1,234]

4 hours ago, DJJose said:

I'm referring to downloading xp 11 scenery ith installer, not your mesh.

Try downloading the installer again and retry downloading scenery

http://www.x-plane.com/kb/digital-download-install/

[CFIJose 5,485]

I managed to download Europe by stopping the installer when I noticed a lock up while downloading, then I resumed the download. It took about 100 times, but I'm finally done downloading.

[Colonel X 1,428]

On 6.11.2017 at 6:08 PM, alpilotx said:

16 GBytes of RAM should be OK (but also the bare minimum).

And yes, of course it will still be provided in 10x10 degree regions (which results in some big files).

If you have connection errors. did you ever try to alternate between the different mirrors? I mean, I already offer 3 different download mirrors ... one of them should work. If no works, then you should seriously have your internet connection checked.

It would be beyond awesome if Laminar would integrate HD scenery download in their installer (with a disclaimer of course).

But then, there's many thing in life that would be totally awesome and yet never happen.

[Paraffin 2,197]

2 hours ago, Colonel X said:

It would be beyond awesome if Laminar would integrate HD scenery download in their installer (with a disclaimer of course).

But then, there's many thing in life that would be totally awesome and yet never happen.

I've wondered about that. They're still distributing on physical DVDs, but they could make HD optional in the installer as further downloads.

The two drawbacks I can see (for Laminar) would be higher bandwidth costs for the direct purchase versions, and having to figure out how to manage it for the Steam version. It's a lot of files if you download them all, and they're huge. I don't think there's anything like that on Steam right now as free DLC.

[N1125Y 22]

On ‎11‎/‎6‎/‎2017 at 0:52 AM, MarioDonick said:

No. When I wrote "I prefer to NOT show any overlays generated based on default or HD mesh at all on top of photo scenery" I was referring to scenery priorities. I do have the Ortho4XP overlays installed, but on top of them I use the W2XP overlays which have exclusion zones.

(I use the "W2XP Europe Mix", but in fact have deleted all but 6 scenery tiles from it, so only my home area in Germany is covered: Magdeburg, Brandenburg, Berlin, Halle, Leipzig, Dresden. Outside this area I use default mesh and default autogen. In other regions I use other photoscenery / building combinations, such as London with GB Pro, or Paris with XPFR scenery, and so on.)

Okay. so technically, you are generating overlays by Pointing Ortho4XP to the HD mesh, and when setting up priorities you put the w2xp on top of Ortho4 XP overlay, did I get it right ? 

   ( BTW I don't like the things that is happening with the tress, w2xp is scettering them all over, I wonder if there is a way to delete/ ignore w2xp trees ??)  

[alpilotx 505]

Hey guys ... could we stay halfway on-topic

I know, its never possible to stay 100% on-topic, but at least a little bit ... There are enough discussions (or you can open new ones) in the scenery sub-forum about w2xp and Ortho4XP.

[tonywob 4,768]

Agree with alpilotx. Please keep this discussion about HD Mesh v4.

[Murfman 47]

Hi, I have a question for AIPilotX. Will Lake Constance be fixed in this mesh? I have a beautiful little payware airport, Altenrhein, on the south shore, which makes a nice starting point for heading to Germany or Austria, but I can't stand taking off from there and seeing a lake consisting of trees instead of water.

Thanks,

Tom

[manuthie 242]

This should be fixed in the default scenery as well. I noticed that Lake Constance was missing when X-Plane 11 was first released but I now have it. Just try to run the X-Plane 11 Installer and select "Update Scenery Online" on the first screen.

@alpilotx: I'm a succer for screenshots. Would you mind showing some more?

[alpilotx 505]

Lake Constance has been fixed for a long time. As manuthie pointed out, it has been fixed in the final version of the XP11 default mesh (it was a nasty data mess in OSM, which ha been fixed by the community). The missing lake issue was only valid for the beta version of the default mesh. Use the scenery update feature of the XP11 updater to get the latest mesh update.

... thus, of course its present in HD Mesh Scenery v4 too.

Screenshots? We will see ... I have a few 100 of them (part of my testing ... going trough a lot of the scenery). At some point I will start creating the release "album".