What this value does (0.01 or 0.001) is shrink the coordinates of the Aerofly tile boundaries slightly.
If the tile boundaries are exact coordinates, rounding errors can mean that GeoConvert creates extra tiles, adjacent the the one you actually want, that contain almost nothing. This results in what looks like gaps in the scenery.
I really must write some documentation for AeroScenery. 
Typical developer ... likes coding, hates writing docs. 
I'll try tonight to play with the value of this "Shrink TMC grid squares" option. I'm not sure to understand what that option means but I really hope it is the key to explain my extreme slowness.
To be clear If your PC uses a dot as a decimal separator (not a comma), and you're seeing 0.01 in the settings, changing to 0 wont improve anything.
If your PC uses a comma as a decimal separator, and you're seeing 1 in the settings, changing it to 0 might improve things.
When the next version AeroScenery is out and this bug is fixed, you'll probably want to set it to 0.01 again.
The setting 0.01 works fine. It avoids this strange loading in patches: AeroScenery made scenery loading in patches
Yep, 0.01 is the optimal setting.
The issue is that the decimal separator is a comma on some non English language PCs and it was getting converted to 1 for some users, causing issues.
I just suggested 0 as it will avoid this issue, and turman can test any speed improvement.
When I changed the settings for "Shrink TMC grid squares" from 1 degrees to 0.01 degrees, the processing time reduced from 10 hours for one Level 9 tile (ZL 17, AFS Levels 9, 11-14) to 3 hours.
turman Yes, this is a bug in AeroScenery that affects non English language Windows users. (Fixed in the next release).
In Settings > GeoConvert > Shrink TMC grid squares try setting it to 0
Thanks for the kind words on AeroScenery. 
GeoConvert is a temperamental bit of software. A single level 12 / zoom level 18 tile should build in a few minutes at most.
As you have noticed GeoConvert will often freeze while still taking up full CPU. Another issue is that it will process the same tile over and over in a loop, indefinitely without telling the user.
What I've found is that any user input to Windows generally seems to cause this or make it more likely to happen. Particuarly moving the GeoCovnert window, minimising it etc.
Try starting the AeroScenery / GeoConvert process and not touching your keyboard or mouse and see if finishes in a sensible amount of time.
Make sure you have the latest SDK (June 2019).
These issues have been reported to IPACS. I hope they find the time to improve GeoConvert at some point.
The link you've posted fails but the download link on this page works
aerofly.com/community/filebase/index.php?file/2/https://www.aerofly.com/community/file…p?download/116/
http://dl1.aerofly.com/aerofly_fs_2_s…ls_20190625.rar
(Yours is an https link)
Regarding the UK its all based on a very outdated "Wireless Telegraphy Act".
It's a bizarre and somewhat amusing law, where merely listening to something being openly broadcast could, (only in theory of course), see you get a criminal record. You could literally put an AM radio on auto-scan and commit a crime.
Even stranger is the this part of the law:
"This means that it is also illegal to tell a third party what has been heard in a transmission a person has listened to illegally".
Presumably you could commit two 'crimes' unknowingly. One for listening and one for telling your cat about it.
I think people have been moaning to OffCom since 2000 about this (there are quite a few forum posts when I looked) and they aren't inclined to move an inch on it.
Interestingly, I read that some people did try putting feeds up of UK airports and OffCom went legal within a few days. So, big brother is watching
Unfortunately I have no idea if this would work at all.
Definitely could be made to work. Plugins exist for other sims and the Aerofly API has the ability to read / write the COM frequencies.
I'll add it to my list of Aerofly stuff to do someday.
I like the de-smurfify feature 
I know users always want more and are never happy, but...
If only this could be set via the API, I could write a plugin to hide the hands (or greatly increase transparency) after a period of inactivity.
As I mentioned before, I hang the controllers up when flying with the yoke and grab them when I need. Others must do the same if they have a yoke and VR.
There they sit, half embedded in the aircraft controls, looking like some ghostly "Thing" from the Addams Family.
A plugin that plays these based on the set radio frequency and / or geographic location would be cool. 
Wish they would change the law here in the UK so that UK airports could broadcast. I'm just down the road from Cardiff airport and would set up a station.
Hi Ray,
Are you planning on adding airports to the package or offering them as an additional add on?
Jet-Pack (IPACS) Thanks for the info.
Seeing as I have your ear ... the plugin API seems like it's frozen since 2017. A few additions would open up so much cool stuff.
Reading and writing weather is one of course.
Being able to add and position an aircraft or other model could bring AI airport traffic, VATSIM support, AI moving vehicles etc.
Hopefully one day anyway.
I believed there were more symbols because I could see some passing by which had unknown IDs.
There's only "Simulation.Visibility" documented at the moment.
I'd expect to see
Simulation.Wind.Direction
Simulation.Wind.Strengh
Simulation.Clouds.[etc]
if there was any direct way to set those.
What I suspect is happening is that the sim is built such that it needs to restart (the simulation bit, not the entire app) in order to change the weather, so that doesn't lend itself well to being set via a plugin.
I checked if it was possible to write to the main.mcf file while the sim is running, and for those changes to take effect (as I'm sure you did), but it only seems to be read on app start.
Shame, as that would have been an acceptable work around.
I'll second the request for some documentation regarding the weather API... obviously.
It's not that there's no documentation, it's that the weather API doesn't exist
The messages in the C++ plugin example are the only messages Aerofly sends / receives to registered plugins.
Perhaps I'm mixing canaries and rutabagas, but how did the Lukla scenery handle these sorts of elevation issues?
When you create an airport, the runways, taxiways and aprons are given a much higher degree of mesh smoothing than other terrain.
In the Canary Islands scenery there are no airports, so people are effectively taxiing the plane over what is, to the sim, normal ground.
Well, it's been a whole year since I last moaned enquired about these improvements.
I'll limit myself to one post a year so as not to be tiresome
GeoConvert
Make GeoConvert give an unambiguous "all done / all complete" message in the log when it's done all tiles and the green text is shown.
Currently in AeroScenery I have to screenshot (yeah, I know, right) the GeoConvert window every second and scan each pixel for green text. It's crazy.
TGI Files
Either open up the binary TGI file format or give us a DLL to write them. The text TGI format is already known as MCX writes it.
An export DLL apparently exists as it was given / offered to Arno, who I spoke to on the subject.
Being able to fully write TGI files in code would open up so many possibilities.
I get that IPACS might want to be able to change the format and that's harder when it's open, but an export DLL would be no better or worse than the Max and AC3D plugins in that regard.
API Messages
Be able to read and write all weather details with the C++ message API. A plugin to automatically set conditions based on METAR data and location would be great, but currently not possible.
Since last year we now have a 3DS Max 2019 plugin, so huge thanks to IPACS for that
Promise I wont mention these again until 2020 
I think you're correct with some criticisms and overstating others.
In terms of user content:
Ortho Scenery
Can be done in a few clicks with AeroScenery
Cultivation
Use ScenProc and search for Crispy's script. You can get a nice result in a few clicks if the OSM data is there.
Airports
AC3D is $99. It does the job. The airport creation process is fairly simple. There are various tutorials to follow. (Check out Rodeo's YouTube series). Several people on here have created some nice airports with AC3D.
Unlike other sims, Aerofly only loads 3D models for the airport. It's important to understand this difference. There's no runway, taxiway and markings definitions for it to draw an airport from. The advantage of this is it gives complete flexibility to the modeller to recreate an airport in as much detail as they want.
It's a design decision IPACS have made, and it's realistically not going to change.
I'd rather IPACS improve the sim than spend years trying to build their own 3D modelling package for airports.
Aircraft
You do need 3DS Max for this, yes, it's complex and the documentation could be better.
What I do agree with
- IPACS should open the file formats so the community can create plugins for any 3D software.
- The wiki needs an overhaul and more resource needs to be pumped into documentation
- IPACS should engage with the community better and give a road map
The Index does look interesting. Those controllers look pretty 'sizeable' coming from the Oculus world, but the rest of the specs seem great.
HTC Vive Cosmos also has my interest, especially if they brought it in nearer to an Oculus Rift S price point (given that you don't need lighthouse sensors).
It's pretty much what the Rift S should have been.
I kind of feel that mounted sensors are on their way out at this point, so I'm loathed to have to buy them for the Index.
I think I'll wait until the reviews come in for both before putting some cash down.
Looking forward to second gen VR with Aerofly though.
May I remind you of the Locale issue with Shrink TMC grid squares for non-English users?
Yep, thanks. It's already fixed and will be in the beta.
Any predictions of when the beta will be released?
I've added several orthophoto sources in this build.
Unless there's some complexity that I'm not seeing at the moment, probably 1 - 3 weeks.
One more question - I was trying to download images of Yosemite, and tried both Google and Bing, but neither matched the existing terrain, and there were harsh squares around it now. How do people merge downloaded tiles with the existing scenery in FS2?
You don't really, as you don't have the source images for the existing scenery.
However the Aerofly image source is likely to be USGS, so you could download and blend into that.
(The coming beta of AeroScenery will support USGS).
The easiest approach, if you're using AeroScenery, it to just keep downloading squares to cover the area that you want to fly VFR and push the harsh transitions where you don't see them.
