Tile Proxy thread #2?

[Guest wyoming]

Might be the time to break that thread in two (or more).I'll start with an observation: my machine is not very high-end (3.2-2-256) but I get a solid 20 fps with Tileproxy (0 autogen, 0 clouds, high mesh, medium LOD, aniso etc...) even when the tiles are loading. There's just a small hesitation before they turn to crisp. How come my fps are that stable? You would think that they would dip when textures are blurry due to the extra cpu time to load them, no? More generally, I feel that something could be majorly improved here, particularly with the loading speed, although I'm too crass to even point to anything usable.KJAC, out of curiosity, this morning.

[Guest cbuchner1]

A friend of mine complained he always gets blurred textures even directly after loading a flight. I am currently investigating on a different machine with an out-of-the-box FSX reinstall. Maybe I forgot to tweak a particular setting in fsx.cfg in the installer.I agree that load time improvements will be an important issue in the future or otherwise this project may turn out to be a dead end.Regarding the blurriness:FSX appears to apply an algorithm that "stacks" the resolution levels on top of each other. If a low res layer is not currently loaded completely, it will try to complete loading this layer first. Then it proceeds to the next higher LOD to load finer details. With increasing LOD, the layers cover a smaller area around the aircraft (each LOD about half the radius of the previous). If you move too fast, the lowest resolution layer will remain "incomplete" in the direction you move. FSX will always try to load the missing areas first before proceeding to the next higher LOD levels. Therefore you have to move slowly to give FSX a chance to update the high res levels - i.e. don't fly jets ;)The large amount of tiles that make up the low resolution layer is the issue. It takes too long to load it.Christian

[GHD 21]

I'm still having problems with Rio de Janeiro. I watched the TP window whilst loading and there were no errors, however, this is what was loaded:http://www.geo-davison.demon.co.uk/Rio.jpgAny ideas?George

[Guest cbuchner1]

Hmm, loads not quite enough texture. Your disk space ran out maybe? These textures take a lot of space, you know.

[GHD 21]

>>Hmm, loads not quite enough texture. Your disk space ran out>maybe? These textures take a lot of space, you know.>I'm afraid not, there is 35Gb free: Directory of D:FSX ProgramsMicrosoft Flight Simulator XWorld1107TEXTURE01/05/2007 09:00

[GHD 21]

I re-ran FSX using the saved flight with the same results. Here is the TP output with obvious changes, note there were no fetches, presumably it thought they were already on my hard drive:Directory is D:FSX ProgramsMicrosoft Flight Simulator XTileProxy on drive D:ATTACH successful... Instance Name: Tileproxy InstanceproxyUser: will operate on drive D:proxyUser: DeviceHarddiskVolume1 ===> D:proxyUser: Configuration summary lod_distance=1000.000000 fast_mode=0 network module=libnettile module configuration=server=http://???.ortho.tiles.???|.NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506; .NET CLR 1.1.4322) max_lod=13 min_level=9 max_level=17 color_hack=1 color_level=13 bulk_extend=50proxyUser: Connecting to the filter ...TileAPI: Using network module 'libnettile'TileAPI: Network configuration 'server=http://???.ortho.tiles.???|path=CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)'server 'http://???.ortho.tiles.???'path '/tiles/a%s.jpeg?g=52'quad '0123'balance '0123'agent is 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50TileAPI: Using cache folder 'cache.service1'tileproxy.sys: Allocated ScrapMemory of 800000 bytes!proxyUser: Connected to Flight Simulator!proxyUser: Received Open eventproxyUser: New Flight Loaded! Filename: c:documents and settingsdavisonmy documeproxyUser: Coordinates from Flight file: Lat=-22.828832 Lon=-43.238926proxyUser: Simulation Started!proxyUser: Simulation Stopped!proxyUser: Simulation Started!proxyUser: Simulation Stopped!proxyUser: Trying to connect to Flight Simulator...proxyUser: Port is disconnected, probably due to tileproxy filter unloading.proxyUser: Tiles cached after connection shutdown: 0, bytes cached: 0Press any key to continue . . .I've identified the tile as 030210001133202Su.bmp, the north-west corner of this tile is at:Lat -22.818604 Long -43.242188I've searched using Explorer and DOS Dir and it is not in my World folder.I would be grateful for your thoughts.George

[meerkat 86]

Hi Christian,What it typically does on my old machine (Athlon 1800+) is as follows:First loading time is about 10 minutes. There are interchanging periods of network travel when the tiles are fetched from "Kugel Earth" (quite fast) and little processor use and long periods of 100% processor use (45% FSX, 45% TileProxy) when the TileProxy output says "FileNameInfo?", which is constantly repeated (it looks for tile requests from FSX, right?). It seems that during this periods FileProxy processes the tiles it got from the web and FSX tries to manage what tiles it needs.When flying, after some time it gets very blurry.So my conclusion is: with a faster machine I would definitely get better results. At least my internet connection or the GE servers are not the bottleneck.Could it help to download more tiles (bigger radius) with highest detail level and create more BMP files with full number of mip levels? So TileProxy would not need to create these BMPs again with more mip levels when flying along. It could be a configurable option for slower computers with a fast internet connection.Another critical thing could be the handling of more than 30000 texture files in one directory. I sure have NTFS but it took some seconds to open that TEXTURE directory in Explorer.Nevertheless and again, great feasibility study! Some optimization must be done, but maybe it would be on the ACES side? The new precompiled photosceneries in FSX work great - so how about a different texturing algorithm for online satellite data? Maybe not quarter the pixel number of 1 km2 tiles further away but double the side length of the texture tiles and keep the pixel number constant? Also, FS should be less stubborn with tiles it can't get. Anyway - if possible we will see it at the earliest in FS11.Good night now!

[Ted Striker 338]

Christian, I can not thank you enough for developing and sharing this software with the community. I can now use flight simulator for what I've always dreamed of using it for...sightseeing and exploring the world. This is awesome, takes "as real as it gets" to another level. You got my vote for freeware developer of the the year.My machine is a P4 3.0, 1 gig ram, 6800gt. I am operating with your default settings and am getting the same results that you've mentioned. With single engine planes I get detailed and crisp textures. When flying jets the resolution is reduced, with the detail behind me better than the detail ahead. However, even with the reduced resolution when flying at high speed, its still looks a lot better than the default FSX scenery. So for me I've got much improved visuals with Tileproxy and the same performance, 20 fps. Keep in mind, with my machine I couldn't turn up the display settings anyway, so I don't miss them.This is too good to be true. I think this is going to get popular real fast and just hope the Tile Servers allow it to continue. I'm really enjoying it. I wish the best of luck to you going forward with the development of this software.Ted

[Guest wyoming]

why is the cpu load low enough to give me a stability of fps, solid 20 with my mid-range system? Could some of this cpu time be used to load the textures faster? I mean, when I turn on even a few clouds, my fps go down 20%... Why is this not happening with Tileproxy?

[Guest grapesh]

I think I experience a new visual phenomenon called pre-TP FSX!:) After getting back to stock textures in FSX, they look so rough as compared to hi-res aerials, I cannot believe my eyes! :-eek=S.V.=

[Guest cbuchner1]

Tileproxy waits for FSX to request a tile, and the FSX texture thread waits for TileProxy to provide the tile. It's kind of a "pass the ball" game and it's hard to fully utilize the CPU with this loading strategy.

[GHD 21]

This is getting very weird, I've just loaded up Tokyo with "Level of detail radiuus Large" and all of the tiles display, however, I still cannot load Rio.George

[nudata 10]

Yesterday, for the first time, I was able to use the black & white photos that are colorized by your program. Excellent. They looked quite good. My criticism was the intensity/saturation of the colors was a little to high. I would also suggest a slight reduction in brightness. More subtle evaluation is better done when these base values are changed.Otherwise, on a 4mbit connection I am limited to about 30 to 50 knots. The limitation is mainly caused by my 2ghz and IDE disk system which is three years old. I defrag and move the most used files to the outer tracks on the disk using Ultimate DeFrag. This is why I suggested a batch mode on the other gigantic thread if the user is challenged by the real-time mode.Regards,Dick BoleyA PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yoke

[Guest cbuchner1]

Yeah in some areas these colorized tiles look like "aquarell" tinted and are sometimes too saturated. I also noticed the USGS tiles lack contrast sometimes. I am working in the HSV (hue, saturation, value?) color space to do the color transfer as known from many paint programs featuring a "color wheel". I use it because it gives me easy access to the color saturation value on which I can base my decision whether to colorize or not. However the HSV color space is anything but a "natural" color space to work with. I belive the YUV space would be better suited for transferring color information, as the luminance (Y) value is weighted exactly as the eye recognizes brightness.I wish there was a color space that uses a natural luminance component, combined with hue and saturation. Any experts here who know this stuff?Christian

[Guest wyoming]

right there.