AeroScenery Beta - Help With Testing Required

Quote from TomSimMuc

Can you also incorporate a limit, how many tiles shall be geoconverted at once?

The exact amount before geoconverter crashes seems to be depending from memory sise and tile size.

It's not totally straightforward, but I'm looking at something like that...

When the tile download and stitch is done I have the stitched images and coordinates for one (or more) level 9 AFS tiles.

The stitched image sizes don't match the AFS grid, they had to be just a sensible multiple of 512px.

I'm setting the coords of the level 9 square in the TMC and GeoConvert figures out how many tiles to make based on the specified levels (11 and 12 in your case).

To get GeoConvert to process less in one go, I'd need to generate several TMC files with the Level 9 grid coords subdivided.

Of course the extreme option is to run a new GeoConvert process for each tile.

If GeoConvert can always handle 16 tiles, that would look something like this:

Level 9 - 1 tile to process

Level 10 - 4 tiles to process

Level 11 - 16 tiles to process

Level 12 - 64 tiles to process (split into 4 GeoConvert runs)

Level 13 - 256 tiles to process (split into 16 GeoConvert runs)

Level 14 - 1024 tiles to process (split into 64 GeoConvert runs)

Level 15 - 4096 tiles to process (split into 256 GeoConvert runs)

It's a shame that their tool seems so flaky and this is necessary.

I'll do some testing this weekend.

Quote from Trespassers

How do you stitch images before geoconverting ? Are you maybe stitching them into too big images? A size compromise must probably be found...

Geoconvert can handle a multitude of smaller images, you just need an AID file for each of them.

The smaller the source image, the smaller the size of the mask at the image edge...

Thanks.

I think the stitched image size is a factor. In the next version (0.4) I've made that user configurable and also tweaked the default image size down to 8000px square.

I tested GeoConvert with that size for a few hours last night. I can't make it fail outright, but it still has its quirks.

The number of output tiles seems to have an effect. The higher, the more likely things will go wrong.

Sometimes it completes the run then goes back to the beginning and does it all over again for no reason. (Others have reported this).

Sometimes it writes files but doesn't report any progress on the UI and seems 'stuck'.

Doing smaller runs is probably the answer, but it's not so easy to achieve.

GeoConvert doesn't actually exit after a successful run, it stays open showing a success message. I'm going to have to poll the GeoConvert log to know when it's exited.

The "Do smaller GeoConvert runs" feature will probably be in v0.5 and will be a user setting as it might not affect some users.

Quote from Gooseno1

Has anyone from the IPACS team approached you about this wonderful tool of yours and offered assistance in getting it off the ground?

Would imagine IPACS have to keep at arms length any projects that use Google and Bing orthophoto servers. Their T&Cs do have exemptions for downloading images for personal cache, but it's a grey area.

That said, if anyone from IPACS reads this, there are a few simple tweaks to GeoConvert that would really, really help me out. Feel free to message me

cc drhotwing1 (IPACS)

Version 0.4 is now released.

https://github.com/nickhod/aerosc…s/tag/v0.4-beta

In this version

• Default stitched image size reduced
• Option to set stitched image size
• GeoConvert options (generate raw files, write masks)
• Version check on app start
• Bug in tile stitcher fixed

TomSimMuc 0.4 should fix the problems when stitching.

I've also made the default stitched image size smaller. This is now configurable in settings.

GeoConvert seems to handle this better. I was able to do several successful runs of level 12,13, 14 etc

If you experience the same GeoConvert issues with these smaller stitched images, please attach the tm.log file from the GeoConvert folder.

Quote from ACelis

Thanks for this great tool, 0.4 version worked great, no problem running actions. It didn't install scenery into AFS2, but I moved the folder and had no problem loading it. Now I'll check how to add vegetation and objects.

Thanks

Alex

Hi Alex,

That's great to hear. I haven't written the "Install scenery action" yet, it'll be in the next version.

Quote from KJKsimmer

I'm trying out this tool for the first time now, usually use geoconvert helper. A quick question, since it does not send files to AFS2 directly, where will the map files be located so I can find them and move them manually? So far I can't find them!

It creates an AeroScenery folder in your Windows Documents folder. If you go Settings (in the toolbar) it's the first item, "Working Folder". You can set it to where you want. The grid squares you've worked on are in there under AFS2 type names.

In the toolbar above the map there's a "Open Image Folder" button. This will take you to the folder of the selected grid square (if there is one) for the current orthophoto source and zoom level.

I'll be writing some docs and doing some tutorial videos when I have some time next week.

Quote from KJKsimmer

Not a good result unfortunately. Textures misplaced upon the topography. I tried to do the Inverness, Scotland area. Loch Ness is on the mountaintops instead of in the valley. Too tired to try again tonight, will give it another go tomorrow and see what happens. I tried four tiles, might just do one instead. Thanks for your efforts.

Thanks for trying. I haven't done much testing with multiple squares at once, so yes, please try just one.

Misalignment with the height map is either a coordinate issue on my side or the default Aerofly heightmap not being accurate enough to create pleasing results.

Edit: My AID file coordinates appear to be accurate down to the pixel, so it's either the "steps_per_pixel" value or the default Aerofly heightmap that's letting things down.

Can you let me know which grid squares you were working on so I can test myself?

Hopefully I'll be able to get the heightmap feature into AeroScenery pretty soon.