Hi,

Wondering if anyone ever heard of Orthographic for orthophotos?

https://www.patreon.com/cw/orthographic

Never heard of this.

From what I can gather, it's aerial imagery that's been manually colour matched on seams so it looks more seamless (Although the seams are still there from what I can see). He's also taken OSM data and put textures over the top of the aerial imagery where the forests are to try to blend it with the trees that are there, covering up the nice ground detail underneath.

A lot of this stuff was done in the TrueEarth sceneries I did a few years ago, especially Florida (i.e. Baked tree/AO, and colour extraction for vegetation/houses). But in the age of AI, I imagine this process is much much easier now and can be done easier on scale, or with faster image processing libraries

2 hours ago, tonywob said:

Never heard of this.

From what I can gather, it's aerial imagery that's been manually colour matched on seams so it looks more seamless (Although the seams are still there from what I can see). He's also taken OSM data and put textures over the top of the aerial imagery where the forests are to try to blend it with the trees that are there, covering up the nice ground detail underneath.

A lot of this stuff was done in the TrueEarth sceneries I did a few years ago, especially Florida (i.e. Baked tree/AO, and colour extraction for vegetation/houses). But in the age of AI, I imagine this process is much much easier now and can be done easier on scale, or with faster image processing libraries

I would love to have True Earth quality worldwide, if this is another step i that direction, that would be great... I then see zero reason to use the other sim.

14 minutes ago, Mike_CFII_MEL said:

I would love to have True Earth quality worldwide, if this is another step i that direction, that would be great... I then see zero reason to use the other sim.

I have downloaded the demo tile but it does not appear to be corrected satellite imagery, rather procedurally generated ground polygons based on Open Street Map data (similar to the ground polygons in X-World Pro). Ground tiles are in the correct place, but the colours are faded and low resolution - I do not like the effect. Joining the Patreon appears to allow higher resolution ground tiles.

Congrats to the author for his efforts, but for me satellite imagery is a must.

I regularly try out MSFS2024, but to me the graphics look a little 'cartoony' to me after XP12 with added satellite imagery and the excellent lighting engine. If MSFS2024 modernised its lighting engine it would be a no brainer for me to switch to it, but XP12 is better looking to my eyes WITH satellite imagery.

Although I like the idea behind how orthographic works, I just don't understand why suddenly devs are in rush to release scenery solutions in the minute to midnight, just when big scenery update for XP12 is around the corner. It's like brushing teeth, then eat a cake a minute later.

After looking at the video, it gave me an idea that Lamiran is actually doing something like this, using OSM data to drop textures around the world.

Edited August 4Aug 4 by Pe11e

8 hours ago, Pe11e said:

Although I like the idea behind how orthographic works, I just don't understand why suddenly devs are in rush to release scenery solutions in the minute to midnight, just when big scenery update for XP12 is around the corner. It's like brushing teeth, then eat a cake a minute later.

It'll be backwards compatible, but I agree, this is one reason I essentially paused the work I was doing waiting on this (especially the tiling system)

On 8/4/2026 at 7:05 AM, tonywob said:

A lot of this stuff was done in the TrueEarth sceneries I did a few years ago, especially Florida (i.e. Baked tree/AO, and colour extraction for vegetation/houses). But in the age of AI, I imagine this process is much much easier now and can be done easier on scale, or with faster image processing libraries

I was just up in the REP Kodiak over TE Florida this past weekend. Still looks good - esp the shallow waters!

21 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

I regularly try out MSFS2024, but to me the graphics look a little 'cartoony' to me after XP12 with added satellite imagery and the excellent lighting engine.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder 🙂👍

I was over both TE FL and TE GB this past weekend. They’re IMHO the best XP scenery ever made (esp TE GB since it was updated for XP12). The TE series is basically the only reason I can still Fly in XP (and P3D 😉).

Tho XP has better lighting, I feel exactly the opposite in sim scenery preference. 🤙

Looks like what X-World Pro does with some polygons like golf courses and meadows (drape their polygons over the underlying terrain), but in a more extensive fashion. If available globally, this could be a more storage space efficient way to improve the scenery than orthos are.

Kudos for the quality of his Patreon posts though. They all read like professional work without any AI aftertaste, including the whitepaper.

https://www.patreon.com/cw/orthographic/posts

On 8/5/2026 at 7:03 PM, UrgentSiesta said:

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder 🙂👍

I was over both TE FL and TE GB this past weekend. They’re IMHO the best XP scenery ever made (esp TE GB since it was updated for XP12). The TE series is basically the only reason I can still Fly in XP (and P3D 😉).

Tho XP has better lighting, I feel exactly the opposite in sim scenery preference. 🤙

I Agree TE in XP12 for the UK is excellent - and that re-enforces my personal view the scenery in XP12 looks more real. A combination of the lighting, weather and SimHeaven/TE/XPME makes a more believable world. The senses get used to where you spend the most time, so MSFS looks a little 'cartoony' to me. No doubt it works the other way too.

In X-Plane unofficial subreddit the author MarStrMind responded to many questions regarding this Proof Of Concept.

He describes this as "It is a ground texture generator using photorealistic resources for flight simulator".

He has contacted Laminar, Orbx and other vendors. The idea is fascinating and looks like the current X-Plane 12 scenery is one of the limitation. The size of each tile is not going to work for me, with current hard drive price. The tech is promising and when X-Plane release the new scenery architecture, the author should be able to adopt. I fly using default scenery. I personally can't stand Ortho due to the inconsistency so this type of tech would be perfect for me.

Here is the intro video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpNNGXuzknk

Edited August 8Aug 8 by Sims Smith

Not to belittle anybody's hard work, but it's hard for me to understand the end goal with this, or why he's trying to sell the idea to Laminar and others. The idea has been tried, many times since even the XP9 days, and is a step backwards from where things are actually heading with the new tiling scenery system.

From the video, it's taking textures and drawing them on top of low resolution aerial imagery tiles, e.g. where there is a forest, it's painting over a polygon of the forest. This isn't going to work because the forest polygons just cover over the actual detail, removing lines in the forest, empty patches, variation. The data inside OSM lacks the detail to do this correctly, and it would need to be much more procedural than just filling in polygons.

The other major problem is that we still need the imagery to paint on to, so it still needs the same disk space as normal orthos would. He could achieve exactly the same effect just by draping textured polygons over the terrain like Simheaven does, with the advantage that painted polygons can have higher detail, normal maps, etc, something the aerial imagery can't have

Correcting the aerial imagery is a good one though. The idea should be to take multiple legal aerial imagery sources and blend them together nicely to get a seamless mosaic of a large area (Many providers offer imagery from multiple years). That's a lot of work, but would be the best visual pay off for this type of scenery.

13 hours ago, tonywob said:

Not to belittle anybody's hard work, but it's hard for me to understand the end goal with this, or why he's trying to sell the idea to Laminar and others. The idea has been tried, many times since even the XP9 days, and is a step backwards from where things are actually heading with the new tiling scenery system.

From the video, it's taking textures and drawing them on top of low resolution aerial imagery tiles, e.g. where there is a forest, it's painting over a polygon of the forest. This isn't going to work because the forest polygons just cover over the actual detail, removing lines in the forest, empty patches, variation. The data inside OSM lacks the detail to do this correctly, and it would need to be much more procedural than just filling in polygons.

The other major problem is that we still need the imagery to paint on to, so it still needs the same disk space as normal orthos would. He could achieve exactly the same effect just by draping textured polygons over the terrain like Simheaven does, with the advantage that painted polygons can have higher detail, normal maps, etc, something the aerial imagery can't have

Correcting the aerial imagery is a good one though. The idea should be to take multiple legal aerial imagery sources and blend them together nicely to get a seamless mosaic of a large area (Many providers offer imagery from multiple years). That's a lot of work, but would be the best visual pay off for this type of scenery.

I mean I didn't want to be the one to say it... but... 😀

Not belittling the work either. I just don't see much gain as opposed to just... using ortho?

Just saw this video, and changed my mind big time about this. It's literally like going back to FS2004 scenery tech. Low resolution textures, blurry mess all around. Yuck. Looks like a step back from a right direction. The main question is - is it better than default XP12 scenery? Maybe, just maybe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMPA-OtMLa0

I am the developer of this solution.

Of course - this is not for everybody, and compromizes needed to be made. The low-res on the ground is simply because everything is ZL16, and while my engine is capable of doing any zoom level, I am only one person, with one machine, and higher zoom levels would also mean curating higher-res pools for the textures - plus, most importantly, going from ZL16 to ZL17 alone would quadruple render times and the amount of files. Then to ZL18, yet quadrupled again... and so on.

The goal was, and is, to see how far it is possible to eliminate issues with satellite imagery... but this solution will never be able to reproduce satellite imagery to 100%. Not now, and not in ten years I am afraid... but I still believe the tech is in a presentable state.

On 8/9/2026 at 3:14 AM, Pe11e said:

Just saw this video, and changed my mind big time about this. It's literally like going back to FS2004 scenery tech. Low resolution textures, blurry mess all around. Yuck. Looks like a step back from a right direction. The main question is - is it better than default XP12 scenery? Maybe, just maybe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMPA-OtMLa0

I am rendering subtiles of a lat-long tile on ZL16, and that is then compiled into the final mesh. As just stated - ZL16 is a compromize I needed to make, as I do not have endless resources, time, and machines (yet... ?).

On 8/5/2026 at 9:43 PM, Bjoern said:

Looks like what X-World Pro does with some polygons like golf courses and meadows (drape their polygons over the underlying terrain), but in a more extensive fashion. If available globally, this could be a more storage space efficient way to improve the scenery than orthos are.

Kudos for the quality of his Patreon posts though. They all read like professional work without any AI aftertaste, including the whitepaper.

https://www.patreon.com/cw/orthographic/posts

Thanks for pointing that out. I do not use any AI for my posts, the code, and the whitepaper is also all by my hand.

Thank you all for checking it out and discussing this... approach. I know it is not perfect, and I do not know how perfect it is ever going to be. But you can be assured I am working on new ways to improve the tech when I have the time.

Clear skies!

Edited August 18Aug 18 by MarStrMind