Hi guys,
I've downloaded 0.5m/pixel images with FS Earth Tiles (level 0 in FSET). The Aerofly WIKI mentions that level 15 corresponds with roughly 0.5m/pixel.
Does that mean that I should add an extra entry to the tmc-file for level 15 when I want to convert with Geoconvert? Or is the default tmc-file with levels 9, 11, 12, 13 and 14 sufficient?
Hi Mickey123,
this is my personal opinion:
You can easily stay with level 14 as highest level.
The amount of data increases by 4 with a higher level, so it may create performance problems on less powerful systems.
Geoconvert reads your 0.5m image and converts it into the levels specified in the TMC.
Rodeo
Thanks for your reply, Rodeo.
I agree, level 15 takes a very long time to process and results in very large files.
I'm not sure I understand the levels system correctly. Does level 14 result in Aerofly showing a max resolution of 1m/pixel, even if I'm converting 0,5m/pixel images? If that is the case, is there any benefit in converting 0,5m/pixel instead of 1m/pixel images?
Thanks for your reply, Rodeo.
I agree, level 15 takes a very long time to process and results in very large files.
I'm not sure I understand the levels system correctly. Does level 14 result in Aerofly showing a max resolution of 1m/pixel, even if I'm converting 0,5m/pixel images? If that is the case, is there any benefit in converting 0,5m/pixel instead of 1m/pixel images?
If you are using FSET, in many areas you can actually get 0.25m resolution (-1), then convert it at level 14 produces amazing results. But, like you said, it will take some time to convert everything.
Jeff, will level 14 limit the final conversion to 1m, even though the source resolution we get from FSET is 0.25cm? In that case will it be meaningless to use the source resolution of 0.25m with level 14 and we should increase it to level 15?
If you are using FSET, in many areas you can actually get 0.25m resolution (-1), then convert it at level 14 produces amazing results. But, like you said, it will take some time to convert everything.
For performance reasons no one should go above level 14. Flying over a scenery made by FSET at 0.25m (-1) and level 14 in the TMC in VR it looks as if you are actually flying over the area. I can't stop anyone if you wanted to try level 15 but we can't support anyone if they complain about bad performance. I can tell you though, if you have an i7 PC with a GTX 1080 or above you won't see any problems at the moment.
I have a GTX 1080. It's not about framerate, but the question is whether there is any sense to grab the 0.5m or even 0.25m source map with FSET, if level 14 will finally limit it to 1m?
For performance reasons no one should go above level 14. Flying over a scenery made by FSET at 0.25m (-1) and level 14 in the TMC in VR it looks as if you are actually flying over the area. I can't stop anyone if you wanted to try level 15 but we can't support anyone if they complain about bad performance. I can tell you though, if you have an i7 PC with a GTX 1080 or above you won't see any problems at the moment.
I did some testing to see what the difference would be when adding level 15 to the tmc file.
Attached are two screen shots flying over Santa Barbara at 1000 ft AGL. The scenery is 0.5 m/pixel downloaded from Virtual Earth. One shot is with max. level 14, the other with level 15 added to the tmc.
My conclusion is that level 14 shows less detail than level 15. At level 14 the scenery looks to be reduced to 1 m/pixel.
This means that, in my opinion, it is useless to download large areas in resolutions of 0.5 m/pixel or higher when using max. level 14. Of course you could add level 15 to the tmc, but for large areas that would mean a very long calculation time in GeoConvert and huge file sizes. And GeoConvert would probably run out of memory and crash...
Wow does look sharper but yeah not practical.
So I wonder if there is any point downloading resolution 0 in FSET? Converting levels 9-14, is there any difference in the final result whether use res 0 or 1, I wonder?
Wow does look sharper but yeah not practical.
So I wonder if there is any point downloading resolution 0 in FSET? Converting levels 9-14, is there any difference in the final result whether use res 0 or 1, I wonder?
The difference is seen more if you are in VR. For VR, you want the highest resolution/quality possible. However, there is also a balance of quality vs. performance. Everyone has different opinions about this so it's left to just the user's preference here.
Always be mindful about performance though.
Gotta be in VR, anything less just dont butter my bread.
I did some testing to see what the difference would be when adding level 15 to the tmc file.
Attached are two screen shots flying over Santa Barbara at 1000 ft AGL. The scenery is 0.5 m/pixel downloaded from Virtual Earth. One shot is with max. level 14, the other with level 15 added to the tmc.
My conclusion is that level 14 shows less detail than level 15. At level 14 the scenery looks to be reduced to 1 m/pixel.
This means that, in my opinion, it is useless to download large areas in resolutions of 0.5 m/pixel or higher when using max. level 14. Of course you could add level 15 to the tmc, but for large areas that would mean a very long calculation time in GeoConvert and huge file sizes. And GeoConvert would probably run out of memory and crash...
Thank you Mickey123! Your test clearly shows the difference. It's a pity we can't use level 15 because of the insane processing time. But I did quite some 0.5m scenery with FSET for FSX, and it's much faster, and no need for user to input different levels in the TMC file. So I guess GeoConvert does have room for improvement.
I think that if you cautiously use Level 15 for airports and parts of cities (other specific areas of interest), it might work out OK. I like my airport surfaces to be at least 0.25m/pixel so that I don't need to model the taxiways. For most flying above 500 feet (however wait until we have a Heli!), 1 meter/pixel imagery made from 0.5 meter/pixel imagery should look pretty good.
