Hello all.

As I have stated many time in this and other forae, I only fly in Australia. Given the huge (?) XPlane scenery development scenerio for Australia, (to my knowledge only YBRM by ORBX) I downloaded the Forkboy ortho scenery and installed it.  It is actually much worse than the default scenery (which is OK but not great) and that indicates that I have done something incredibly wrong.  Example is that YBCS looks like almost the entire are is flooded with no detail at all and there are no buildings at the airport but all the runways and taxiways are there in quite good detail,

I am wondering if there are any Ozzies out there who have downloaded and installed it who could clarify for me what needs to be done.

I would also be very much interested in doing a complete revamp of this scenery in the highest resolution possible.  This download would also be released on the AVSIM forum for free download when completed.

A couple of questions though,

Can anybody give me a rough idea how much data this would involve,  I know the Forkboy one is nearly 70gb but I would be happy to go to around 250gb or more.

I am also unsure about the relationship to airports with these downloads.  By that, I mean,  when downloaded at the highest resolution, are the airports interactive with flights or do I need to download individual airports as well. Can airport road traffic, ai Aircraft and software like the JAR design Xlife etc be overlayed and therefore functional.

I would really appreciate a PM and the ability to exchange phone numbers etc 

I further appreciate that relatively few people confine their flying activities to Australia and by virtue of that, I am appealing to a small audience.

Any assistance appreciated 

I pretty much only fly is AUS though am looking at going across the pond to NZ, Dont use ortho, couldnt be bothered, Except for weather im pretty much default. Ye Orbex have forgotten there roots, but if they ever do an AU i will get it, had a lot of there stuff ib FSX. Im busy updating default airports working on YSSY, and every little airport i happen to go to that has gaff scenery.

Hello,

Are you familiar with ORTHO4XP?

I'm from Western Europe, but I decided to build a tile for YBCS after reading your topic. Just using Default X-plane scenery for the overlays (the autogen if you want, precisely what you're not seeing).

if this image is too small, click the link below.

https://ibb.co/LPfWLqr

 

Edited April 11, 20215 yr by vesalius
image too small

Vesalius,

Thanks for your reply.

I am not at all familiar with Ortho and in fact somewhat confused by it.

For instance, in the Forkboy Australia Read Me. I get the following instructions.

Step 1

1 unzip to temp and download the contents of the scenery folder into the Custom Scenery folder. 

2. OK, that folder contains

yOrtho4XP_Overlays

Ortho Australia - Northern, -NSW, -Queensland, -South, --SydneyHD, -Western and a .DS_Store.  

All of these I have copied into my XPlane11 Custom Sceneries folder ... No problems

It goes on to say :

"The newer packages contain multiple versions of the yOrthoXP overlays file. You will just pick one of them.  You can delete the ones you decide not to use, or save them for later in case you change your mind.

yOrtho4XP_Overlays_XP11 - Default XP 11 roads, trees and buildings (will only work with XP11 only)
yOrtho4XP_Overlays_XP10 - Default XP 10 roads, trees and buildings (will work with XP10 or XP11)
yOrtho4XP_Overlays_HDv4 - HD v4 roads, trees and buildings by Alpilotx (will work with XP11 only)
yOrtho4XP_Overlays_HDv3 - HD v3 roads, trees and buildings by Alpilotx (will work with XP10 or XP11)

You can try the different overlays to see what works best for you.  In general, the HD files will be higher quality, but might impact frame rates."

The PROBLEM is that  I have none of these overlays and I have downloaded the latest version of Forkboys Ortho. My "yOrtho4XP_Overlays" only contains an Earth data folder and a .SD_Store file 

Therefore, that step/instruction, makes no sense to me and, further, I cannot find any of the overlays by googling.

Step 2.

"Update your scenery_packs.ini file and add entries with the name of the new folders. 

These should be the last two entries, unless you have other global scenery packages installed, in which case these would probably go above the other global packages.

For example (this is only an example):

SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/yOrtho4XP_Overlays/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/zz_Ortho_Australia--SydneyHD/"

This confuses me because I have the overlays plus 6 Ortho Australia folders, and NOT the two stated in the instructions.  This however, may have been stated as such, in the interests of brevity.

I then typed into the scenery_packs.ini  the following.

SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/yOrtho4XP_overlays/

 SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/zzOrtho_Australia-Northern/

SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/zzOrtho_Australia-NSW/

SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/zzOrtho_Australia-Queensland/

SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/zzOrtho_Australia-South/

SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/zzOrtho_Australia--SydneyHD/

SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/zzOrtho_Australia-Western/

These entries no comprise the last 7 entries (not two)

It goes on further to state   "You will need to enter the folder names exactly as they are presented on your file system."  which is what I believe I have done.

The end result is as stated in my original post    "YBCS looks like almost the entire are is flooded with no detail at all and there are no buildings at the airport but all the runways and taxiways are there in quite good detail."

Can you tell me where I have done something incorrectly.

Regards

Tony

Hello Tony,

Could you provide me a link to where you've downloaded this scenery from?

I came across this...
Australia Complete Photoreal Scenery for X-Plane 11 (flyawaysimulation.com)

KR.

vesalius,

That is the one mate.

Tony

Oh dear... download @ 240KB/s because I'm a guest. ETE 4 days. That's not gonna happen. I would like to help nevertheless.

- The downloaded file corresponds to approx 68.2 GB?

- Could you show me a screenshot of the content of the zip file please?

- Remove the folders/files that was instructed to put in the XP Custom Scenery folder (in short, turn back to the situation before you started)

- Start up XP, it will automaticly update your scenery_packs.ini (remove the lines which point to non existent folders)

- Unzip australia-complete-photoreal-xp11.zip to C:\VITAL\

- open up Command Prompt (type cmd in your Start menu)

- Type cd C:\VITAL and press enter

- Type dir /S >contentsofvital.txt and press enter

- Send me the file contentsofvital.txt 😉

We'll see from there what to do next.

Good luck!

The Australia ortho scenery I created is really only meant for high altitude flying as it is very low resolution.  The source I used is the only one I know of that has a license that allows redistribution.  If you want better quality, you will have to install Ortho4XP and generate your own tiles probably using Bing as source.

Forkboy,

Thank you very much for that explanation which explains my why I have a problem.  

I will endeavour to do exactly that with the Ortho4XP as I mentioned in the original post.  I am trying to come to grips with it and to sort it out now. 

Have you any idea how much storage it will take to download Australia, complete, using a zoom level of17  with major airports using zoom level 18.

Regards

Tony

Hi Tony,

Not sure for AU. But this is the result for Western Europe. ZL16 is just fine with ZL18 for airports and 1km surroundings.