Othophotos + HD Mesh?

[Irfanahmed1979]

I visited the orthophotos page. The downloads are under heading "update for HD Mesh V4."
1. Do I have to install both packages?

2. What is the total size of the orthphotos download in GB? I've read that HD mesh is around 117GB total.

3. Does orthphotos only cover USA?

[🐉 Ðŗąçø 🐉]

Which orthophotos page did you visit?

The two most popular, Ortho4XP and HD Mesh, will not work together because they send the exact same file to X-Plane. Therefore, if you try loading both, X-Plane will only load the one higher up in scenery_packs.ini. So back to your questions...

1. If they will work with each other, which is possible, then you'll need the mesh at minimum. Orthophotos are optional, but will not work without that mesh.

2. Idk. I use Ortho4XP. A zoom level 16 tile covering 100% land takes up properly around 2.3GB. And if I have 80 of these... Some cover the sea, whilst others have a higher zoom level. Total size is ~160GB, but this isn't with the mesh and orthophotos you described.

3. Depends what the resource says. Ortho4XP covers the whole world, but it may be that the mesh and orthos only cover the US.

[Irfanahmed1979]

Originally posted by 🐉 Ðŗąçø 🐉:

Which orthophotos page did you visit?

The two most popular, Ortho4XP and HD Mesh, will not work together because they send the exact same file to X-Plane. Therefore, if you try loading both, X-Plane will only load the one higher up in scenery_packs.ini. So back to your questions...

1. If they will work with each other, which is possible, then you'll need the mesh at minimum. Orthophotos are optional, but will not work without that mesh.

2. Idk. I use Ortho4XP. A zoom level 16 tile covering 100% land takes up properly around 2.3GB. And if I have 80 of these... Some cover the sea, whilst others have a higher zoom level. Total size is ~160GB, but this isn't with the mesh and orthophotos you described.

3. Depends what the resource says. Ortho4XP covers the whole world, but it may be that the mesh and orthos only cover the US.

Here's the link: https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/36327-us-orthophotos/

[🐉 Ðŗąçø 🐉]

Originally posted by irfanahmed1979:

Here's the link: https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/36327-us-orthophotos/

Right as far as I can tell elevation data and object data has been provided already, as well as the orthophotos. So it's all there in the torrent. These orthophotos are on the public domain and cover the USoA only; else redistributing Google, Bing and other imagery is illegal.

[Captain Wolf]

Draco, I think youa nd OP are talking about different things. I could be wrong, but I would answer the three questions like this. OP, if you have it all figured out, just ignore this response. Draco, if I'm wrong, please correct me. I'm still trying to wrangle this all up.

1) Yes, you should download those mesh files you are talking about. These are new overlay folders that he created when HD Mesh V4 came out. When you create ortho tiles in Ortho 4XP, it asks you how you want the overlay folders to be rendered. I think this is step three, and I sometimes use HD Mesh V4 for this--sometimes default scenery is better. This is not the same is using HD Mesh for your underlay (zzz_hd mesh). This is a y_overlay folder instead. If you don't download it, you will just have orthophotos wih no buildings (flat as a pancake).

2) Since you are downloading someone else's work (forkboy), we can't tell you how big the files are going to be--pretty big though. Cali in particular is tremendous. Each folder will contain different number of ortho tiles and be different sizes. It should say how big they are.

3) The link you are using includes half of the US and growing by the month. However, if you create your own ortho tilles, you should be able to get any place on Earth within reason.

With all of this said, I would advise anyone to just make their own tiles once they get on the orthophoto bandwagon. The reason is because you can control the exact areas and zoom level. So I don't have all of Forkboys cali because I didn't want to buy a new hard drive. I have San Fran, LA, and San Diego at ZL 18 and the area betweent them at ZL 17 and 16. For the mountainous Eastern Cali, I don't use Ortho tiles at all because I don't need to see real life pictures of sand. My whole cali folder is a fraction of the size as his, and it is better for what I use it for.

[Irfanahmed1979]

Originally posted by CaptainWolf2002:

Draco, I think youa nd OP are talking about different things. I could be wrong, but I would answer the three questions like this. OP, if you have it all figured out, just ignore this response. Draco, if I'm wrong, please correct me. I'm still trying to wrangle this all up.

1) Yes, you should download those mesh files you are talking about. These are new overlay folders that he created when HD Mesh V4 came out. When you create ortho tiles in Ortho 4XP, it asks you how you want the overlay folders to be rendered. I think this is step three, and I sometimes use HD Mesh V4 for this--sometimes default scenery is better. This is not the same is using HD Mesh for your underlay (zzz_hd mesh). This is a y_overlay folder instead. If you don't download it, you will just have orthophotos wih no buildings (flat as a pancake).

2) Since you are downloading someone else's work (forkboy), we can't tell you how big the files are going to be--pretty big though. Cali in particular is tremendous. Each folder will contain different number of ortho tiles and be different sizes. It should say how big they are.

3) The link you are using includes half of the US and growing by the month. However, if you create your own ortho tilles, you should be able to get any place on Earth within reason.

With all of this said, I would advise anyone to just make their own tiles once they get on the orthophoto bandwagon. The reason is because you can control the exact areas and zoom level. So I don't have all of Forkboys cali because I didn't want to buy a new hard drive. I have San Fran, LA, and San Diego at ZL 18 and the area betweent them at ZL 17 and 16. For the mountainous Eastern Cali, I don't use Ortho tiles at all because I don't need to see real life pictures of sand. My whole cali folder is a fraction of the size as his, and it is better for what I use it for.

So Ortho4xp is a utility and not a scenery pack?

HD Mesh is a scenery pack or bunch of tiles, right?

In that case I'll stick with HD Mesh provided I remain within my ISPs data cap. I can spread the download (torrent) over 2 or 3 months just to keep enough room in the monthly usage limit for other stuff.

BTW is there any airport for Barrow, Alaska in the game or available as freeware?

[Captain Wolf]

The best I can explain it is Ortho4XP is a script designed to d / l photoimagary as jpegs, convert said images to dds files, and create an overlay folder (optional) to have some 3d houses and trees over your photoimages. So Ortho4XP itself is definately not a scenery pack. A lot of scenery packsa will contain "orthophotos". In this case, expect photoreal lanscapes and larger file sizes.

HD Mesh is harder to explain for me. It seems to take extra data and merge it with the data already contained in XP. This creates a whole new base layer that looks better than default. The roads are more accurate. The lakes and canals look better, and in the correct locations etc...I think someone will come in and explain this better, but HD Mesh is not a scenery pack or a bunch of tiles as you proposed. And I d / l all of the US via torrents in a few hours--not months.

You can search for any aiport you want at x-plane.org. Little, dinky airports are usualy free. Big intricate ones will cost dinero because they take a long time to make.

[freakoid1966]

so what should i use to get the most realistic look in xp11, ortho4xp or hd mesh?

[🐉 Ðŗąçø 🐉]

Originally posted by freakoid1966:

so what should i use to get the most realistic look in xp11, ortho4xp or hd mesh?

HD Mesh if you want good placement of buildings, trees etc. and good mesh. Uses default textures. Ortho if you want Google maps in your sim, i.e. real photos of the Earth.

[Captain Wolf]

if you equate realistic with photographic than go ortho. But my best advice is to take a small area that you like to fly in--let's say Miami. Do a couple flights with default scenery, then a couple with HD Mesh V4, finally with some ortho tiles below.

You can then choose what you consider to be the best choice for you based on hard drive space, computer speed, and how much of a videophile you are. This exercise will also force you to learn how to organize your custom scenery folder which is not simple for new people to learn how to do.

Before anyone dismisses this as a lot of work, consider how customized your airspace can be after you get this all figured out. It's a welcome trade-off for me even if I had to learn what a draped polygon was. Also remember that the default scenery is quite nice, and everything we are discussing is really above and beyond what is required to enjoy the game. Scenery is just something I enjoy messing with--I'm an artist / pilot / videophile. This game hits all of those spots for me.

[opjose]

Here is a great comparison below, but bear in mind that Ortho4XP does a terrible job at building placement in the Americas.

In Ortho4XP many areas show up as deviod of buildings because the OSM data it uses does not include a lot of info for the US and Americas.

In contrast OSM data is very dense for the EU and building placement looks great.

I would love to have HD Mesh V4 (which includes default autogen and OSM data) buildings, the HD Mesh meshes and the Ortho4XP photoscenery all work together...

See:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z67VS1-vb44

[Captain Wolf]

in step three of Ortho4XP, you can point it to HD Mesh to create the overlays. There is a field in step three to point it to the zzz_hd mesh directory. I do this sometimes and other times use the default scenery to make overlays. I still agree that the building placement is not ideal, but not too bad imo. I'm not sure if this is what you meant.

[opjose]

Originally posted by CaptainWolf2002:

in step three of Ortho4XP, you can point it to HD Mesh to create the overlays. There is a field in step three to point it to the zzz_hd mesh directory. I do this sometimes and other times use the default scenery to make overlays. I still agree that the building placement is not ideal, but not too bad imo. I'm not sure if this is what you meant.

Hmm... Thanks I will try that. I don't think I have.

"Learn something new"...

Good tip.

[Captain Wolf]

cool, be sure when you do it, watch step 3--I messed this up the first couple times and thought wouldn't work...

--click on the blank field in step 3
--double click on the zzz_hd mesh folder in your cs folder, don't be tempted to click on the subfolders---it should just say zzz_hd mesh in there or it goes screwy.

It's fun to experiemnt with different overlays and or combine them with others...I'm not conviced the HD mesh overlays are always better though as far as accuaracy.

[opjose]

Were you able to do batch tile generation this way?

[Captain Wolf]

Sure, I used this method for a single ortho tile and up to 6 ortho tiles. I never run a batch with more than 6 tiles (even that's too much) because I like to check everything out as I go. I don't like flying into dds vacuums and crashing my game. That's beside the point.

Also, Step three is independent of the first two steps. Step 3 only takes about 20 seconds to make the whole overtlay file. I think that Steps 1 and two must have been done once for this to happen so fast though.

I guess I'm saying this because you don't have to make all new tiles to try this new overlay method out--just run Step 3.