Posts by nickhod

Quote from crispy136

Have attached some screen shots of the output so you might get a better idea of the problem.

Thanks Chris,

Frustratingly, it is some very slight discrepancy between the way GeoConvert is calculating grid square coordinates and the way I'm calculating grid square coordinates.

I tried increasing precision to 8 decimal places and it made worse, there were more masks.

I tried rounding down in all cases, but there was still the mask you got

My calculation seems to be correct, some / most of the time because I haven't noticed this before.

Without porting the exact code that IPACS uses, or having their list of coords for each grid square, it's hard to know how to improve this one.

Is the FSET conversion tool you use an IPACS tool, or from someone on here?

In the meantime, remember that in the settings you can turn off the use of masks, which will do the job apart from shore line regions.

Quote from kenventions

Nick, any issues/limitations with downloading multiple squares or processing multiple through GeoConvert? I noticed a single square download occupied ~12GB of space so you have to make sure you have the storage room if you try a bunch of squares.

The only issue at the moment is that I can't detect when to close GeoConvert so you'll end up with multiple open GeoConvert instances all running in parallel. That probably isn't the most efficient way to run GeoConvert, but there's no specific reason why it wont work.

Other than that you're just limited by disk space.

(Remember that once you're done you can clean up image tiles, stitched images and GeoConvert raw images if you want to. AeroScenery needs to do a better job at asking whether to do that at the end of a run).

Quote from crispy136

... spilled over to another tile. It looks like the level 14 tile in AeroScenery and FS2 might be a slightly different size.

Google and Bing tile divisions don't necessarily fall on the AFS grid, so when stitching we have to use whole Google and Bing tiles then let GeoConvert crop as it wants. Seeing overspill in the "stitched" folder is therefore expected.

The aim is that we feed GeoConvert exact AFS grid square coordinates so there wont be any masks (apart from for real transparency).

What you're seeing might be because I have to give GeoConvert rounded coordinates in the TMC file. I was always concerned about the accuracy of this and whether GeoCovert snaps to the nearest grid square coordinate.

I think later versions of GeoConvert can handle non-rounded coordinates but as it stands I have no way of checking the GeoCovnert version easily (sigh).

Anyway, if you hit the "Open in Map" toolbar button above the map for the grid square in question and send me the link, I can always have a look and see if I can reproduce and fix the issue. I could make "use accurate GeoConvert coordinates" an option if that fixes it.

Quote from crispy136

Also tried running download, stitch, generate aid/tmc and geocovert all as part of the one selection. This combination of selections failed in ver 0.4, but ran perfectly in ver 0.5.

Good to hear that it's working well in this release.

Quote from kenventions

Does anyone have any suggestions how to fix the tile merge issue below (shoreline)? I ran AeroScenery with MASK = ON and generated level 9-12 tiles.

AeroScenery should handle water edges better than FSET because it adds transparency for you where it can't download a tile from Google / Bing.

(I don't know much about FSET, but my understanding was that it adds black where there's no image available due to it being water).

I'm confused by the texture missing icons that Aerofly is showing. Aerofly obviously thinks this isn't water and should have scenery or it would be adding in its default water texture.

Maybe the Bing / Google's definition of the shoreline and Aerofly's is different here.

If you give me a Google maps link I'll give it a try and see what I can come up with.

Using level 14 sizes selection squares to download an airport at image detail level 20.

Version 0.5 is now released

https://github.com/nickhod/aerosc…s/tag/v0.5-beta

In this version

• Smaller selection tiles allowing you to download airport sized areas in very high detail
• FSCloudPort airports now can be shown as a layer (thanks to Spit40 for allowing this)
• "Choose for me" button for AFS level selection
• Better logging and error handling
• Lots of bug fixes and stability improvements, ready for the next phase of development

Quote from kenventions

Nick, regarding how to detect when GeoConvert finishes, can you monitor CPU activity (10 sec avg) to detect the big drop when GeoConvert is done?

You could, but it would be pretty inexact. Someone could be running something else that eats up CPU so we'd never know. GeoConvert might dip between levels and we close too early. Nightmare to test if people are complaining that things don't work.

My initial assumption was that there would be a GeoConvert log line written, something like "all tasks completed", and I could poll the log for that. Unfortunately not.

I believe the guys at IPACS are looking at ways they can improve GeoConvert in this regard, so fingers crossed.

Thanks for the bug reports regarding why 0.4 sometimes crashes on startup. Saves me time hunting for things I haven't been able to reproduce.

Version 0.5 will fix this, which, if I can find some time, should be out this week.

Quote from Trespassers

Not sure to follow you on this : it is the very same downloaded raw material that will be used for geoconverting all levels of your scenery, for instance 9, 11, 12, 13 and 14.

Current version (0.4) only lets the user download level 9 sized map images. Next version (0.5) will let them download level 9, 13 & 14 sized map images. This means you can download an airport at level 20 in a sensible amount of time.

If you try to run level 9 with only level 13 size raw images, you'll end up with a mask. (I was wrong that it scales it up).

For that reason the minimum GeoConvert level allowed will correspond to the size of map images downloaded.

Quote from Sauracy

Okay thank so for the suggestion.

That leads to another question. If I convert say levels 11 and 12 and put them in the images folder to try, can I then run geoconvert again to convert 13 and 14 and then put the .ttc files in the images folder and have everything’s work alright?

Yes, separate ttc files will be made for each level.

Quote from Sauracy

I have read some of the geoconvert tutorials on the ipacs wiki but I still don’t quite understand the relationship between the levels and zoom settings. Is there a better zoom setting to use with certain levels that you choose in AeroScenery?

The next version (0.5, coming soon) has a "Choose For Me" button next to the levels. This implements my understanding of IPACS recommendations based on several factors.

If in doubt for now, run 9, 11, 12, 13 & 14 for zoom levels up to and including 17, plus 15 for zoom levels 18+.

As Trespassers mentioned, running say level 11 or 12 first and checking you're happy with the output can be a good idea, then spend the time doing the rest.

In response to the other few posts that are on the same theme ( @pkaser  Sauracy) and anyone else reading this later:

I'm very much hoping that IPACS will implement a tweak to GeoConvert so that I know when it's finished and I can ask what the user wants to do with the generated files.

Until then, click the grid square you downloaded in the map, click "Open Image Folder" in the toolbar, browse into the folder structure and find a folder ending in "-ttc". These files then need to go into your Aerofly scenery folder or user folder (as others have detailed above).

Quote from Trespassers

I'm afraid it isn't a really good idea.

You're missing that this is if the user has selected to download a square that is only level 14 in size (possible in the next version). Scaling this up to level 9 would give terrible results.

Quote from TomSimMuc

So my conclusion is to keep the masks on in your program

Great! I'm pleased you got there in the end. In v0.5 I will keep masks on.

Zoom levels and AFS generation levels aren't related 1:1. You could download zoom level 20 for instance, then generate a level 9 tile from it. It would be pointless, but you could.

In the Wiki, IPACS recommend Level, 9, 11, 12, 13 & 14 for something level 9 size. The zoom level is going to govern the quality of imagery of those 13 and 14 tiles.

In v0.5 I'm making it so that if you choose a, say, level 14 selection size you can only choose Level 14 and 15 to GeoConvert.

I don't know anything about FSET because I only opened it once, took a look at the UI and stared writing AeroScenery

Quote from TomSimMuc

Can you use an Alpha Layer to cover the missing parts and then iclude those tiles for a complete conversion?

Hmm. This where the lack of docs on GeoConvert has me confused.

In input files are PNGs so there's transparency already in the file. If GeoConvert has [write_images_with_mask] [true] does it then process that missing square properly?

The coords I input into TMC files are always snapped to the AFS grid, not orthophoto tile edges. In theory it shouldn't therefore be creating any other masks.

If it is, it could only be due to the rounding of lat lon coords in this these (which I read have to be 2d.p., but that might have changed)

<[vector2_float64] [lonlat_min] [-2.81 51.73]>
<[vector2_float64] [lonlat_max] [-2.11 51.30]>

TL;DR: Could you set [write_images_with_mask] [true] in the tmc, run GeoConvert from the command line and let me know what happens.

Quote from TomSimMuc

Hello Nick,

I was able to overcome my Geoconvert dieing problem:

Great to hear! I knew a sudden crash like that had to be RAM related, but hard to pinpoint.

Currently got a list of bugs in 0.4 to work through, hoping to get 0.5 out next week sometime.

One bug to be aware of in 0.4 is that if you go back and click around in the map while AeroScenery is processing, it will crash. The next version prevents users going back to the Map tab.

Two cool features I'm also working on now:

• Automated download and processing of USGS elevation data.
• Markers and download links for FSCloudPort airports

Quote from pkaser

So I did a single square, went all the way through Geoconvert, and then nothing. No errors. But no scenery either.

Thanks for testing. Can you confirm that you're using v0.4 (top right of the app). 0.3 and before just didn't work.

Click the square, then "Open Image Folder" from the toolbar. Browse through the folders in there. Did the image stitching work OK? Any GeoConvert raw files?

Lastly in the GeoConvert folder there's a log file named tm.log. If you rename that to tm.txt you can attach it here.

Quote from Hartman

Hi Nick.

Are you familiar with this download site:

http://zonephoto.x-plane.fr/Cartes.php

Do you think it will be possible to use this orthophoto for Aerofly FS2?

Yes, I saw that site. I believe the data is already in X-Plane scenery format rather than raw images.

Technically it would be possible to extract it back to raw images, but in practice it's not really worth it.

Most of the tiles are quite old (2012) and only go to level 16, which is pretty quick to download with AeroScenery anyway.

Quote from Jak61

About two hours later it says:

Hi Jak,

Sorry you're having issues. It might be because you have two grid squares selected in one run. It should be supported but I've not done enough testing of that scenario.

In the folder that you're running AeroScenery from you'll see a file called aeroscenery.log. Could you rename it aeroscenery.txt and attach it here. I'll take a look what's going wrong (and I can paste the German into Google translate!)

If you try it again, please try with just one grid square selected at a time for now.

Quote from Jak61

How big can an area in one piece (I mean in km x km) selected in "AeroScenery" be downloaded and converted?

AeroScenery works on the size of AFS grid squares for ease of use.

Currently you can select level 9 squares, which is around 40km . The next version, 0.5, will allow smaller tiles to be selected for getting very detailed images of airports for instance.

You can select as many of these tiles as you like for one "run" though, so as big an area as you need.