New project: Tile server for MS FSX based on Google Map...

[Guest wyoming]

this can't be implemented somehow! At least on a limited/VFR scale. Even if it's not data-stream, the immersion is 10 times what any mesh/texture can ever hope to achieve. I just d/l Justflight's demo of their VFR work on the UK and I now feel that I can't fly at less reality than that. So much so that I will probably buy it and move my "operations" to Cardiff. They sell their scenery 40 bucks a gig, with Southern and Central UK covered with 3 gigs or 120 bucks...

[Guest loxodrome]

Christian I heard a rumour about this project from a friend today and just discovered it - it's way better than I could have even imagined! You sir, are a programming god and I salute you.Can you give us any more updates on the development progress?RegardsLoxodrome(another South African!)

[Guest cbuchner1]

I collected most of my code from various sources (SDK samples, third party libraries)... heavily modified of course. Programming gods could write the same stuff from scratch and document it properly ;) The excellent satellite and aerial images are provided by Digital Globe Inc. and others. The speedy delivery is achieved through Google's and MSN's server excellent infrastructure and connectivity. And last but not least the terrain rendering is provided by a state of the art terrain rendering engine from ACES Game Studios and DirectX 9 from Microsoft. Did I forget anyone? Right ... there's my tiny interface between all these components. Just a small piece of glue between some excellent big puzzle pieces.Some update:I quickly tested my code on a friend's PC running Vista. The UAC (User Account Control) did initially block all of the attempts to install the filesystem filter driver or communication with the filter driver. We had to manually assign Administrator execution rights to some executables before the code was able to function properly - but it actually worked...ON VISTA.I need a proper installer for my code. A manual installation takes 30 minutes and is darn complicated (particularly on Vista).Sorry, right now I am spending more time on remodelling/decorating my new appartment home than doing programming on this project. I hope I will be able to invest some more work on this project soon.It is now 4 months from the initial idea. I think 5 more months and we have can call it a baby. ;)

[Guest loxodrome]

Thanks for the update - I think what you've achieved in 4 months is just awesome and I look forward to future updates. BTW: if you're looking for some beta testers I'm sure you'll find plenty on this forum. ;) For the end product you have currently, I'll happy mess around with a 30 minute manual installation process. Happy decorating - hope to hear more from you soon. CheersLoxodrome

[Guest SIDDickDastardly]

>BTW: if you're looking for some beta testers I'm sure you'll>find plenty on this forum. ;) For the end product you have>currently, I'll happy mess around with a 30 minute manual>installation process. I'll see your 30 and raise you 90! ;) Seriously though, this is incredibly impressive work from Christian, quite possibly the coolest flightsim addon ever - can't wait to try it out.Cheers,DD

[Guest wyoming]

For the rest, the wind is going to turn. It'll pan out.

[Guest cbuchner1]

The TileProxy project will be present on the Flight Simulator Show in Forli http://www.fss-forli.com (at the Fiera Forli on Via Punta di Ferro), Italy from May 5th to 6th.I will be there to meet with Giuseppe Graziano (JPMiami forum member), and possibly I will be given an opportunity to show the software project in action running on a Windows Vista laptop. Everything strictly non-commercial and presented purely as a hobby project. Details on how and where to set up my laptop and whether a DSL line is present have not yet been fixed.If you're interested to see the thing live, this is your chance. ;)Screenshots for the non-believershttp://www.flickr.com/photos/cbuchner1Yesterday I flew the Swiss Alps near Interlaken (as Google Maps has recently added all of Switzerland in High Res). My jaw dropped - even with the default terrain mesh this was quite incredible.Christian

[Guest cbuchner1]

An update on the project progress:I have been able to separate the network access modules from the main program. So it should be possible to plug in new access modules for different types of online mapping services. Each access module can be configured individually. The modules could even become sourced, maybe also the main program. My current access module handles tile based mercator projected mapping systems with 256 x 256 pixel tiles hosted on WWW servers. The two market leaders which offer browser based (JavaScript driven) mapping services use this kind of satellite tile access.I believe it would be safe to publish this program not pre-configured to access any particular service. The final step of configuring for the desired service would be done by the end user, after clicking through a badass DISCLAIMER and after manually configuring the correct server names (URLs) to access.Remaining work items:A GUI would be nice. At minimum there should be a taskbar icon allowing the user to switch between the configured mapping services. Right now the user interface (if you can call it so) it is a very boring text console.Further work must include a cache purging scheme (both for the disk based access schemes as well as for the in-memory cache). After a few hours of flight, either your RAM or your hard drive (or your swap space) may run completely full. So we definitely need some kind of rollover cache and purging of old data.The coastline issue is still not solved. Nonexistent high resolution tiles in certain areas (water, uncovered terrain) may cause excessive retries. The programm will need to remember which tiles were inaccessible and NOT retry within a certain timespan.Making this program compatible with FS9 through FSUIPC would also be an option, although the texture resolution limit will drop to 4.75m/pixel then.I still have some stability issues, sometimes caused by the WWW access through libcurl. When network operations fail or time out sometimes curl tries to access structures which have already been freed (or worse: not even allocated yet) resulting in a crash. I might have to start looking for alternatives - however it definitely should be able to access multiple URLs in parallel from singlethreaded application.And finally, there is no installer for the program yet.Switzerland (Sion, Interlaken, etc.) is a blast when flying in Flight Simulator X. This completely beats any commercial FS9 compatible scenery addons.

[Guest cbuchner1]

"the modules could even become sourced" should say "open sourced".Sorry, I did not proof read this properly and the editing period is very short.

[Guest loxodrome]

ChristianThanks for the update! I would love to see the software live in action but Italy is a little far away for me - I live in South Africa. I shall just have to hold out till you release it! ;)Loxodrome

[Guest cbuchner1]

I am seriously considering releasing it, but I am still contemplating how much of the project to open source. Only the network access modules... or the entire project excluding the kernel mode driver ... or all of it? I don't know yet. The kernel filter mode driver is the core of the technology (the secret sauce so to speak), and by releasing it I would make it too easy for commercial vendors to copy my approach.And when I release it, I won't be able to ship it pre-configured to access any of the market leader's map tile servers to stay out of legal trouble.There will be lots of users asking questions what the right settings for using service X or Y are. And I won't be able to tell them. All I can say is "google for the URLs" ;-)Christian

[greggerm 312]

Idea: AutogenObviously it is WAY beyond the scope of your project to include any sort of autogen. Is it possible, based on the custom tiles, to use the SDK annotator to actually go in and create the autogen texture companions for a region that may have high-resolution coverage? It would take a lifetime to annotate the coverage most providers have, but say I wanted to do a few square miles around the local airports so that takeoffs and landings don't occur on a barren plain, would it be possible?(And if so, would the results be distributable!?)-Greg

[GHD 21]

Hi Christian,When I saw your first post back in October I thought it was a great idea but it would take years to come to fruition.I downloaded and ran your beta version this morning and was knocked out by the experience.Thank you very much for providing this unique product to us mere mortals.George

[Guest cbuchner1]

Erm thanks. I wanted to share the knock-out experience.

[Guest cbuchner1]

I haven't looked at the annotator yet. I don't see why it shouldn't be possible to include any sort of custom AutoGen for particular areas, even when using TileProxy.I have been thinking about whether it would be possible in an automated way to recognize buildings and trees on the tiles. But the question is: would FSX load dynamically created autogen definitions? I think FSX internally keeps a database of the scenery, which is only rebuilt whenever the scenery configuration changes.Christian