When you make small highly detailed areas like airports, do you run Geoconvert at levels starting all the way at level 9, or do you just do the run at level 14? This is assuming that less detailed Geoconvert scenery is already installed for the surrounding area.
Making small high detail areas
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The best practice here is to run geoconvert with levels 9-15 (or 14 if you don't want higher quality flying at lower altitudes).
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I would but it wouldn't make a whole lot of difference.
I believe that many people omit level 10 because level 10 wasn't included in the tutorial on the wiki.
The only thing that you would notice by eliminating level 10 would be a quick flash seen when zooming in on the location map.
When we make DLC scenery we use all levels 9-15
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So, always run from 9-14. OK.
Do you recommend level 10? Many people seem to omit it.
Since there's no clear adjustable display priority but compilation level, I would recommend not to omit level 15 for your local AD background. As far as I could notice so far (trial and error), this ensures your local AD tile to display on top of your geoconverted scenery if the later was compiled up to level 14. This is especially useful if both are not the same material, which is for instance typically the case when adding something to the Swiss DLC based on aerial photography material of the early 90's.
Level 10 doesn't bring too much as far as I could notice. Level 9 is displayed at very far distance and, pretty soon, level 11 gets loaded and smoothly displayed.
My 2 cents
Antoine
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Depending on the size of the airport area, you can build a 9 - 14 area and a smaller, separate level 15 for just the takeoff and landing area to save a few hundred tiles needed for level 15 for even a fairly small area.
Regards,
Ray
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I just want to make sure that I get coverage that doesn't wink in or out. I have enough disk space for a few hundred extra tiles here and there.
9-15 then would be your best result then.
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I just want to make sure that I get coverage that doesn't wink in or out. I have enough disk space for a few hundred extra tiles here and there.
It would not be “a few hundred extra tiles here and there”, it will be “all those level 15 tiles that you may never see if you are making rectangles for yours Airports and only flying along the approach path until you are close in to the runway”
Having the storage space is certainly a key part of the equation. Having the time to wait for the GeoConverter to download all those super HD tiles and then having the time to wait for GeoConverter to actually crunch them. This will be for every airport that you choose to add the scenery.
I found that I need 2 computers to do this work because just about any competition for the cpu will choke GeoConverter and it is usually the first program to stop running. The other option was to either fly or GeoConvert but not both at the same time.
Maybe you can jot down some times and total file sizes to compare a 9 - 14 area of say a 10 nm square with the same area at 9 - 15. More than double or more would a my guess for both total file size and the amount of GeoCrunch time. Then we can multiply that by the number of airports we wish to add HD scenery.
It would then only be a matter of prioritizing our available non-flying time. I would do this now but I am on vacation and only have an iPad with me.
Regards,
Ray
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I was only interested in whether I should do low res tiles for small hi res areas.
I typically cover larger areas at level 12 tiles (using levels 9, 11, and 12) or for really big areas at level 11 tiles (using level 9,10, and 11). I only do level 14 tiles around airports or points of interest. And I have never done anything at level 15. I find that level 14 satisfies me. This saves both time and space.
If the scenery coverage is only compiled up to level 12, then yes your AD background compiled up to level 14 should definitely display on top, no need for level 15 in this case if level 14 resolution is ok.
If the raw photo material is exactly the same for your scenery and for the AD tile, then no need to recompile the levels 9-12 for the AD tile since they're already featured in the ground scenery. You just locally add upper levels 13 and 14.
You should also check the border between the level 12 scenery and your level 14 AD tile. As the case may be an intermediate area compiled up to level 13 could soften the transition.
Cheers
Antoine
