11 minutes ago, Bjoern said:

Because it's frankly not possible, otherwise it would have been done long ago.

Actually, this could feasibly be done. Years ago, there was a tool called g2xpl, which was quite advanced for its time. It used the default mesh, subdivided it, and applied ortho textures without requiring pre-generated Ortho4XP tiles:

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/59170-g2xpl-get-it-in-post-1/

The downside of this approach was that certain elements, such as water, remained relatively low quality because the underlying mesh wasn’t modified.

However, I don’t think it’s worth the effort to develop new tools for this now, given that a new tile scenery system is being worked on for X-Plane, which should allow streaming.

 

I've been using Map Enhancement for a few months now, I like it very much. I'm more than satisfied with the free medium quality Google imagery: once you're a few thousand feet in the air it doesn't really matter (or well... it doesn't to me).

Flying airliners high up in the sky I prefer how X-Plane with Map Enhancement looks over MSFS. VFR is another story, but still, I find X-Plane with this satellite imagery more than adequate for the purpose.

Note that you should read the instructions thoroughly when installing. It's not plug-and-play.

On 2/11/2025 at 8:25 PM, tonywob said:

Years ago

"Years" is a bit of an understatement, considering the initial post in that thread being from 2008, i.e. basically the stone age. 😅

3 hours ago, hevokpilot said:

I've been using Map Enhancement for a few months now, I like it very much. I'm more than satisfied with the free medium quality Google imagery: once you're a few thousand feet in the air it doesn't really matter (or well... it doesn't to me).

Flying airliners high up in the sky I prefer how X-Plane with Map Enhancement looks over MSFS. VFR is another story, but still, I find X-Plane with this satellite imagery more than adequate for the purpose.

Note that you should read the instructions thoroughly when installing. It's not plug-and-play.

Can you please summarize here the basic steps to install it?

From the linked video description I could get:

Links: Map Enhancement download:... which leads to Installer 2.0.19.0.exe

Base Packages download:... which leads to "basepackage-direct-read" with an extensive list of assets.

 

 

There's full instructions online: https://github.com/derekhe/xplane-map-enhancement-release/wiki/Manual-EN

 

So, I tried it and I am enjoying the results.

Although I am on the freeware Google tiles it is still good enough for my use.

At my RL base of ops - LPMN - I do see 2 runways which actually cross because they're not correctly aligned. Don't know if this is a common problem but I didn't have it with AutoOrtho.