GeoConvert Tiles and Level (9 through 14) Management

  • I have been making higher resolution inserts (1 meter per pixel inside of larger area of 2 mpp inside of larger area of 4 mpp) using GeoConvert and realized that I really needed to find out where the edges of tiles for a given level (9,10,11,12,13,14) are so I don't have any mask TTCs that screw up the overall appearance at the edge of a insert. I also was interested in how the levels were managed by FS2. When I saw that we could generate, via options to the TMC file for GeoConvert, the actual raw images in PNG format, I decided to do that for a test area in Washington state and then replace the PNGs for a given level with a 2048x2048 tile of a given color for that level and then add a black border so I could see the edge of a tile. Then I just used the Content Converter to remake the TTCs for scenery\images. So here is a sequence from starting at 20K feet descending towards a small airport that I made called Harvey north of Seattle. You can see the next level popping in where a previous level was (as many as 4 tiles pop in where there was one). My choice of colors was as follows (Red =9, Orange = 10, Yellow = 11, Green = 12, Blue = 13, and Indigo = 14).The area that I modified was about 100 kilometers from east to west. I have included the Grid Test TTC files (very small since they compress easily) so you can try it - place in scenery\images\GridTest NOTE: I can't seem to get the photos in the right sequence (_s1 is first, s2,...s5) Also, I only did level 12,13,14 for the single Yellow tile (level 11) that had my airport in it.

    Dave W.

    GridTest.zip

  • Hi Dave,

    Good job ! that's exactly the right method to exactly figure out how FS2 is working and how the various compilation levels are being used.

    I remember having done this by the past with FS9, to try and figure out what would influence the nasty blurries we were experiencing - the colors would highlight places where the best MipMap level would fail to load and how various parameters could influence it.

    I have in my plans to do similar tests with GeoConvert, but with larger BMPs, each colour compiled in specific level. Unfortunately I had no time this summer to work on it.

    Cheers

    Antoine

    Config : i7 6900K - 20MB currently set at 3.20GHz, Cooling Noctua NH-U14S, Motherboard ASUS Rampage V Extreme U3.1, RAM HyperX Savage Black Edition 16GB DDR4 3000 MHz, Graphic Card Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 8GB, Power supply Corsair RM Series 850W, Windows 10 64 bit.

  • Antoine and Jozef,

    Note that I included my test area to be loaded into C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\Documents\Aerofly FS 2\scenery\images\ so you can see it change for yourself. The airport (I didn't include the model for it) called "Harvey" is at 47.907144, -122.103220 and is the tile where I did levels 12,13, and 14. Fly around it maybe in the F-15 so you can get around fast.

    GridTest.zip and here is the Harvey TSC file (optional) Harvey_Gridtest.zip


    Dave W.

  • Dave,

    Would you give us a recap on your choice of download levels for the really large areas, like the state of Washington? and then the approx. size of the selected areas for better resolution, size, download level, then 12-13??, then the actual airports areas for best resolution - download level, typical area size and then 13 - 14 ???

    Best regards,

    Ray