8 minutes ago, blingthinger said:

Sorry wut? You do realize that you just got laughed out of the conference room, right? 

Laugh all you want. What's the matter don't want to try it? After it loads bring up the reshade menu to confirm it's running! 

27 minutes ago, Mike_CFII_MEL said:

How is google getting paid from Map enhancement Pro? 

I have no idea, but to obtain streamed Google imagery the cost will vary based on plan type, there is pay as you go (pending usage this is likely to be very expensive and based on requests) along with other plans/features that range from $100/mo to $2000/mo.  Map Enhancement Pro would process the data from provider and serve to XP.

11 minutes ago, SayAgain said:

I have no idea, but to obtain streamed Google imagery the cost will vary based on plan type, there is pay as you go (pending usage this is likely to be very expensive and based on requests) along with other plans/features that range from $100/mo to $2000/mo.  Map Enhancement Pro would process the data from provider and serve to XP.

Does google allow such sub-letting of their maps? I don't believe so.

https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/terms

Edited April 29Apr 29 by Mike_CFII_MEL

This thread a little whacky.

To the OP what is recommended is making your own tiles.  ZL18 as a minimum just in your local area.  It's a lot of disk storage space but well worth it.  You'd have to watch a YouTube tutorial on how to do that.

Then I'd also use SimHeaven for overlays (kinda like autogen).

That being said...your PC is quite dated so I don't think you're going to get the best out of high res tiles because you likely run with a lower texture slider am I correct?  But maybe it works just fine.  After being spoiled by MSFS streaming imagery, even the payware version of XPME and general auto Ortho is pretty blurry imo.

Making your own tiles is the best way.  It probably wouldn't take too long if you just did your local area.

Fenix is the Airbus in MSFS, nothing to do with XP.  DCS is Digital Combat Simulator, a military sim....great software btw.

23 hours ago, blingthinger said:

I'm not convinced that's the ultimate problem. The legal rubber hits the road with constant streaming of data through the paid API without actually paying for it, regardless of what triggers the download.

I forgot that ME lets users access a commercial API paid for by its developer. The API provider probably isn't happy about that.

 

23 hours ago, blingthinger said:

WED streams ortho to the user. Pretty sure it doesn't get cached. That's an official LR tool that both uses a legal source (quality is meh) and won't drive up usage to the point of putting anyone's IP address on the naughty list leading to:

AFAIK only what you have in the viewport gets cached, as to not blow up WED's user data folder too much.

 

23 hours ago, blingthinger said:

It's been a while since I needed to build an ortho tile in ortho4xp but I do recall that google used to ban my IP very quickly.

Well, if you request a batch build of an entire continent at ZL18 with airports at ZL19 with ten concurrent connections, I'd ban your IP, too. 😂

 

21 hours ago, SayAgain said:

I would like to see LR provide an option for streaming geo similar to MSFS and I’d happily pay a monthly fee.  I have no problems with subscriptions so long as they provide a service.  This is optional, if you don’t want streaming geo then stick with current tools and get what you get.

That's not going to happen, as there is no ortho provider out there that would license its data commercially for a reasonable fee. Also show me a non-Microsoft source that offers high zoom levels, cloudlessness and consistent colors across tiles (hint: there is none).

Edited April 30Apr 30 by Bjoern

1 hour ago, Bjoern said:

Also show me a non-Microsoft source that offers high zoom levels, cloudlessness and consistent colors across tiles (hint: there is none).

There are plenty that will do color matching and cloud removal … at a cost.  However, not a show stopper as Microsoft doesn’t do this for all locations either.

1 hour ago, Bjoern said:

That's not going to happen

Can you provide a link to the source of this information?  My very brief chat with Austin at a flight sim event he indicate he had NOT ruled out streaming geo data … which makes sense to not close doors.  So I’m interested in your conflicting source.

Edited April 30Apr 30 by SayAgain

3 hours ago, SayAgain said:

Can you provide a link to the source of this information?  My very brief chat with Austin at a flight sim event he indicate he had NOT ruled out streaming geo data … which makes sense to not close doors.  So I’m interested in your conflicting source.

Well I think there is a simple reason for that. The licence costs for streaming orthos for the whole world in a high resolution are not only very high...they are horrendous. And added to that, Austin also said that he didn't like them because you'll see a lot of shadows, snow-patches and weird colours (from the aerial capturing).
What will most likely happen is that they will use these satelite-imageries to build a more simplified kind of world but most likely not stream orthos 1:1.

1 hour ago, Franz007 said:

Austin also said that he didn't like them because you'll see a lot of shadows, snow-patches and weird colours (from the aerial capturing).

From a tech POV, most of that can be removed either by source provider or via in-house modifications using a variety of AI based technologies from GAN, CIELCh, and others at source like Esri (using ArcGIS)… very effective since about 2020.  This isn’t new tech and has become considerably easier/faster to process on latest gen hardware and likely will only get more cost effective.

Like I indicated above, there is A LOT of tax payers funded imagery that is available to all for consumption and redistribution.  Global coverage wouldn’t be a necessity, could leave out the more remote regions and go with a default system (AG).

What sources do you have for the licensing costs and what were they?

33 minutes ago, SayAgain said:

From a tech POV, most of that can be removed either by source provider or via in-house modifications using a variety of AI based technologies from GAN, CIELCh, and others at source like Esri (using ArcGIS)… very effective since about 2020.  This isn’t new tech and has become considerably easier/faster to process on latest gen hardware and likely will only get more cost effective.

Like I indicated above, there is A LOT of tax payers funded imagery that is available to all for consumption and redistribution.  Global coverage wouldn’t be a necessity, could leave out the more remote regions and go with a default system (AG).

What sources do you have for the licensing costs and what were they?

The tech for cleaning up imagery isn’t really the issue. The real blocker is licensing. High‑res imagery (30–50 cm) isn’t free, and the companies that own it—Maxar, Google, Bing, Esri—don’t allow cheap redistribution to hundreds of thousands of end users. Their pricing is negotiated case‑by‑case and gets very expensive once you need multi‑user rights.The “taxpayer‑funded” datasets you mention (Sentinel, Landsat) are 10–30 m resolution, which is far too low for a flight sim. There’s no free global high‑res source Laminar could legally stream.

22 minutes ago, Franz007 said:

The “taxpayer‑funded” datasets you mention (Sentinel, Landsat) are 10–30 m resolution

Free USGS orthoimagery is anywhere from 15cm to 1m (varies by location).  I processed some of USGS imagery (2014 data) for P3D many years ago for my local area and it was exceptional detail (far better than payware and what is in MSFS), but it did consume a lot of RAM and storage space.

Distribution work around would be to not include the imagery in the “for sale” product but provide an optional free download link to the imagery that’s been processed and ready to go … kinda similar to how it’s currently being done in XP but for AG and partial ortho.

 Very feasible and would be a nice benefit to XP12 onwards.  Like I said, unless Austin has changed his mind (and I’m not pinning him to what he said to some casual person (aka me) that he talked to during a sim event), but he did leave the door open.

Edited April 30Apr 30 by SayAgain

3 minutes ago, SayAgain said:

Free USGS orthoimagery is anywhere from 15cm to 1m (varies by location).  I processed some of USGS imagery (2014 data) for P3D many years ago for my local area and it was exceptional detail (far better than payware and what is in MSFS), but it did consume a lot of RAM and storage space.

Distribution work around would be to not include the imagery in the “for sale” product but provide an optional free download link to the imagery that’s been processed and ready to go … kinda similar to how it’s currently being done in XP but for AG and partial ortho.

 Very feasible and would be a nice benefit to XP12 onwards.  Like I said, unless Austin has changed his mind (and I’m not pinning him to what he said to some casual person (aka me) that he talked to during a sim event), but he did leave the door open.

You can absolutely get great results from USGS in specific areas — no argument there. The problem is that USGS only covers the U.S., and even within the U.S. the resolution varies a lot. Once you step outside U.S. borders, there’s no equivalent free 15–30 cm source. Europe, Asia, Africa, South America… all the high‑res data is commercial.

That’s where the real issue starts: Laminar can’t build a global product on top of a patchwork of “free here, pay there” imagery. And they can’t redistribute processed USGS tiles either — even if the imagery is free, the derivative product still has licensing restrictions unless you host it yourself

23 hours ago, SayAgain said:

Can you provide a link to the source of this information?  My very brief chat with Austin at a flight sim event he indicate he had NOT ruled out streaming geo data … which makes sense to not close doors.  So I’m interested in your conflicting source.

"Streaming geo data" means anything and is certainly no indication of "we'll do exactly the same as MSFS does and provide you with free, high-res orthos for the globe". For all it's worth, he could have also meant "You can also stream X-Plane's default scenery from our servers to save disk space".

One thing I will never understand is the fixation on othos as the savour of terrain rendering in flight simulation, because the technology is from the era of dinosaurs. You drape your mesh with phototapestry of limited resolution, consuming exorbitant amounts of disk space and/or internet bandwidth in the process and (even after cloud removal and color matching) all you get is one season, with changes over the year merely made mildly visible by means of color alteration from shaders and there are no night textures. The geodata derived trees and buildings you sprinkle on top of orthos, even with X-World, never cover all of the building footprints and vegetation that you have in the images, leaving you with gaps that really start sticking out at higher zoom levels. And when you try to smartly extrude trees and buildings from the ortho to provide an illusion of 3D, the result looks like sh##. If you are a multi-billion Dollar company, you can throw enough money at the problem to put a bit of lipstick on the pig, but if you're a small outfit outside of a giant corpo machine, the issue of delivering a more believable default terrain must be approached much more smartly. And this means no orthos. Maybe placement information gathered from orthos and stored to feed a procedurally generated terrain, but certainly not shoving gigabytes of DDS files through the pipes of the internet to your PC.

 

(Nota bene: I use ZL14 orthos with X-World because even a blurry mess looks better than XP12's default terrain textures. But I expect (and dearly hope) to move away from that setup come Laminar's NextGen scenery.)

Edited May 1May 1 by Bjoern

@Bjoern, Masterly written !!!

I did license the Pro version of Auto-ortho and used it for a whole year, until march 2026. From there on I am using plain Xp12 with SimHeaven, and calmly waiting for whatever X-Plane X will bring in it's new version.

I don't expect it to be as accurate as MSFS 2024, which albeit all it's innacuracies in the way it models flight, has a tremendous erendering of real World, to the point that I use it to review flights I do in my LS1-d IRL.

 

Regarding ortho scenery, i understand Bjoern hates it, ok. However, the description of the flaws made above is quite inaccurate.

First of all, the lack of resolution varies a lot depending on the altitude and the regions. And even at its worst, it's still way better than genetic textures that look nothing like the actual place. Even with incorrect colours and slight lack of resolution, ortho textures still bring a consistency that cannot be achieved with generic textures. 

Concerning the autogen objects, yes sometimes there are a few missing buildings or houses here and there, but saying that it looks worse than "normal" default XP autogen is wild 😄 And in any case, it's not related to ortho, although a part of it was generated (not live) from ortho picture analysis for all the places where precise coverage was not available. In any case, much better than any generic stuff. 

Finally, a word about the seasons and  the "lack on night textures"... Seasons for ortho textures are indeed done by shaders: the grounf color is altered, and the autogen trees are adjusted as well. Snow is even added on top, with a nice gradual effect. What more do you get from generic ground textures here ? Nothing at all. 

And for the night textures... why would you need night textures ??? Modern graphic engines like Xp11/12 and MSFS use real light sources, the autogen objects (light poles and such) will illuminate the ground and surrounding objects where needed and as needed... exactly like your genetic ground textures (for which no "night" version exist, if I'm not mistaken. You might confuse with older sims like FS9, FSX, or P3D which did need night ground textures indeed.

 

6 hours ago, Daube said:

Concerning the autogen objects, yes sometimes there are a few missing buildings or houses here and there, but saying that it looks worse than "normal" default XP autogen is wild 😄

I've never stated that at all and you've blissfully ignored my comment in the parenthesis. Regardless of all of the involved drawbacks, ZL14 with X-World is still superior to what XP12's default scenery delivers.

 

And I will not budge from my point: Orthos are stone age tech and Laminar would be massively dumb to throw millions out of the window to license global imagery and set up a streaming infrastructure that is able to handle tens of thousands of users simulataneously, all just to imitate what another market participant is doing and call the result "NextGen". They're smarter than that.