Posts by Ian C

  • Putting scenery on another drive

    I understand that this is done by modifying the main.mcf file. Currently I'm doing this .....

    <[string8][extra_user_folder][F:\scenery]>

    ..... but it doesn't seem to work. What am I doing wrong? Do I need to replicate the complete file structure? (I only have "images" and "places" within the "scenery" folder on the F-drive.) Do I need "F:\steam library\steamapps\common\etc etc"?

  • AeroScenery Beta - Help With Testing Required

    Quote from Jetjockey10

    I would really appreciate a couple of more size choices. Especially, the one that is 4 times larger than your Small (grid 13). Not sure which way the numbers go. But, between the Small and Large.

    Just to second that. I'm a bit unusual in that I cover my whole territory with level 15 tiles. (A level 10 area would be good for me.) The level 9 area is too big for level 15 processing, and levels 13 and 14 are too small unless some way is found of running geoconvert sequentially rather than simultaneously. (In that case I could have multiple (more than 6) small tiles selected - which would be a reasonable workaround.)

  • AeroScenery Beta - Help With Testing Required

    Quote from nickhod

    Thanks for reporting this.

    Hi Nick

    Many thanks for all the work you're doing. AeroScenery is far more user-friendly than FSET - and about twice as quick by my reckoning.

    I have a spreadsheet that calculates lat-lon co-ordinates from tile numbers. It will also tell you which tile you are in if you input co-ordinates. I don't know whether that was the kind of thing you meant? It originally came from Rodeo - though I have modified it a bit myself.

    Cheers

    Ian

  • AeroScenery Beta - Help With Testing Required

    A few days ago lenidcamper and I identified a problem with the tile numbering in AeroScenery. I also noticed that there was a problem with the placement of the level 9 & 13 squares on the map. Since then I've played around with it a bit more and got it a bit clearer in my mind. This is my latest thinking on the subject:

    If you select a level 9 area on the map the tile number to the right of "grid square" above the map is wrong. What you see there is the number of the next level 9 tile to the north of the one selected. i.e. The latitude number is greater than it should be by 80 in hex (128 in decimal). The longitude number is OK. This incorrect number is also used as the title of the folder generated by AeroScenery. Furthermore the placement of the level 9 square on the map is also wrong. It is one level 14 tile too far north of where a level 9 tile should be. However the geoconverted tiles in the folder are "correct" in the sense that they are the ones that you would expect to find in the more southerly level 9 area.

    If you select a level 13 area on the map the tile number to the right of "grid square" above the map is again wrong. Again, what you see there is the number of the next level 13 tile to the north of the one selected. i.e. The latitude number is greater than it should be by 8 in hex (or decimal). The longitude number is OK. This incorrect number is also used as the title of the folder generated by AeroScenery. The placement of the level 13 square on the map is again wrong. It is one level 14 tile too far north of where a level 13 tile should be. Again, the geoconverted tiles in the folder are "correct" in the sense that they are the ones that you would expect to find in the more southerly level 13 area.

    If you select a level 14 area on the map everything works fine. The tile number above the map is correct, as are the folder title and the placement of the square on the map. This of course means that the level 14 squares on the map are out of alignment with the level 9 and 13 squares, but you will only notice this is you look at the tile numbers. As I wrote in a previous post, to see this you need to select level 9, 13 & 14 areas all with a common SW corner. They should all have the same tile number - but they don't.

    I have encountered a couple of other problems with geoconvert which may, or may not, be related to the above:

    1. If I geoconvert a level 13 area I get 1x level 13 tile, 4x level 14 tiles and 8x level 15 tiles. I should get 16x level 15 tiles.

    2. If I geoconvert a level 9 area with tiles up to level 13 I only get the correct numbers of tiles if I go with the suggested levels (viz 9, 10, 12 and 13). When I tried to generate level 9, 11, 12 and 13 tiles I got the wrong numbers of tiles (too few). This may be a feature rather than a bug - I'm not sure.

    Processing a level 14 area (generating level 14 and 15 tiles) works perfectly.

    Perhaps I should add that I set geoconvert so as not to generate any masked tiles. According to my understanding there shouldn't be any anyway provided you are either away from the coast or - if you are near the coast - you have processed the stitched images so as to fill in any blanks. And, of course, provided you only generate tiles equal to or smaller than the area you have selected.

  • AeroScenery Beta - Help With Testing Required

    Hi Stu (and Nick)

    It's funny you should post the above - I was about to post exactly the same. By my reckoning the level 9 tiles on the AeroScenery map appear south of where they should be according to their latitude number. A further complication is that where they're drawn on the map isn't exactly one whole level 9 tile too far south in latitiude - the displacement of the level 9 square on the map is one level 9 tile minus 1 level 14 tile to the south. Since the level 13 tiles align with the level 9 tiles on the AeroScenery map, the level 13 tiles must likewise be displaced. I haven't yet got my head around whether the level 14 tiles numbering is right.

    This ties in with Stu's image above, which shows a discrepancy of 80 in the hex tile number, corresponding to 128 in decimal. Since all level 9 tile numbers are multiples of 128 this is a shift of one tile.

    What alerted me to this was the fact that I'd already worked out the tile positions using info from Rodeo - and there was a disprepancy between these calculated positions and the AeroScenery tile positions.

    I wonder if this has anything to do with another problem I'm having ..... When I select a "small" area (i.e. level 13 tile area) in AeroScenery I find that I end up with only 8x level 15 tiles within that area. There should be 16. However I think the AeroScenery level 14 tiles are numbered correctly. This is consistent with the fact that, when I select the "smallest" area (i.e. level 14 tiles area) I get the right number of level 15 tiles within that area (i.e. 4 tiles).

    Just as an experiment, try selecting a level 9 area on the map - and then level 13 and 14 areas - all with the a common south-west corner. You will notice that their longitude tile numbers are the same - which is as it should be - but their latitude tile numbers differ. For example I have level 9 = ab80, level 13 = ab08 and level 14 = ab04. In my opinion they should all be either ab00 or ab80 - both of which are divisible by 128 (in decimal). I think the level 14 tiles are actually in the right place for their tile number. It's the level 13 and 9 tiles that need shifting in latitude.

    Ian

  • AeroScenery Beta - Help With Testing Required

    HI Ray

    You say the levels are not the same in AeroScenery and Aerofly - but I would have thought the end product (i.e. the tiles) is the same? In which case there should be 16 level 15 tiles in one level 13 tile (and not 8).

    EDIT: I've just tried selecting a level 14 area (the smallest) and now I do get the right number of tiles - viz 1x level 14 and 4x level 15 - which is reassuring.

    Cheers

    Ian

  • AeroScenery Beta - Help With Testing Required

    I've installed AeroScenery and had a brief play with it. It's great and certainly a lot better than the old FSET method. One thing puzzles me however ..... I selected a Level 13 area to download, but geoconvert has only produced 4 level 14 tiles and 8 level 15 tiles. Surely it should give me 16 level 15 tiles?

    Any thoughts?

  • Location dependent crashes - User-created scenery

    I've returned to Aerofly after several months away, and now find that it crashes (or fails to start) in some geographical locations, but not others. Roughly speaking - it runs OK in southern England, but crashes in the north. Often this can be cured by setting graphics quality to "low" - however I don't want to do this as it spoils the appearance of my scenery.

    I'm at a loss to explain the above because all the locations I've tried have home-made scenery with level 9 to 15 tiles (excluding 10) - so there's no difference in that respect. It can't be the cultivation either, because some of the places where it crashes have less dense cultivation than the places where it runs OK. I thought at first it might be because I'd divided the UK up into different regions and put the tiles in different regional folders - so I took them out of the regional folders and put them directly into the "world" folder. That made no difference unfortunately.

    Any ideas? (I'm flying in VR BTW.)

  • Very Basic Questions About Project Size and Management

    Quote from Oldar

    Wow, 50 days! I was going to ask you how long it takes you to complete an area like the one you showed. Now I know!!

    I am impressed with your work ethic and commitment to quality.

    I've got into a rhythm with it now. The FSET downloading is about 7 hours overnight. The geoconversion is about 5 hours while I'm out of the house during the day. I use use other odd times to nibble away at the coastline or the defective areas.

    There are probably about 12-15 areas such as the above needed to cover the entire UK - but a lot of them are mostly water, so they won't all take 50 days. I guess we're talking at least a year for the entire country and somewhere between 1 and 2 TB.

  • Very Basic Questions About Project Size and Management

    Quote from pmb

    Wow - that's impressive, albeit labor-intense. Thanks for sharing.

    X-Plane's Ortho4XP has a nice config file setting where you can define an alternative ZL for usage around airports where you need higher accuracy. This certainly dosn't allow your fine-grained approach but does the job it does automatically. It would be great if Geoconvert could get such feature at a point, too. This obviously does require Geoconvert to know where airports are situated. I believe Ortho4XP takes these data from OSM (but not sure about that).

    Kind regards, Michael

    Thanks Michael. It is indeed labour intensive, but for me scenery creation is something that I'm happy to spend weeks on! (I would estimate about 50 days for a Level 7 tile consisting entirely of land.) I didn't know about the Ortho4XP config file - in fact this is the only scenery creation I've ever done.

  • Very Basic Questions About Project Size and Management

    Hi Bill

    I've attached a spreadsheet image to show the way I work on scenery. The whole spreadsheet area is basically a Level 7 tile, the small squares are Level 12 tiles, and the intermediate-sized bold squares are level 10 tiles. The co-ordinates shown on the axes are for the SW corners of the Level 12 tiles.

    My procedure is as follows:

    1. Geoconvert the the whole spreadsheet area with Levels 9 & 11 using FSET resolution 4 (Virtual Earth).

    2. Mark in blue all the Level 12 tiles that are completely sea. I do this by going to the AF2 "Location" tab, clicking on places around the coast and reading off the co-ordinates from there.

    3. Geoconvert smaller areas (usually 4 x 5 = 20 small squares) with levels 12, 13, 14 & 15 using FSET resolution -1 (Virtual Earth). Before doing this I carefully check each area for clouds and colour casts by zooming in using the AF2 "Location" tab. Since I've already used Virtual Earth to geconvert the whole area, these defects will be defects in the VE images. Any Level 12 squares with defects are colour coded as shown. They will be geoconverted using Google Earth images (assuming the latter are better). For coastal tiles I use GIMP to colour in the white areas on the BMPs using a bluish-green sea colour, saving the images as TIFFs before geoconverting them.

    Whatever area I geoconvert I always add 0.01 deg all round so that I'm absolutely sure of having tiles filling the whole area. This is necessary because the co-ordinates shown are only approximate (to 2 dp) so you need a little overlap to be sure. I always set geoconvert to reject masked tiles.

    The letters "TA" etc are only relevant to cultivation in the UK using the Ordnance Survey. They mark the SW corners of the Ordnance Survey grid areas.

    Ian

  • Cultivation from photoscenery?

    Hi Stu - thanks for that. This is now getting quite sophisticated!

    I've had a similar problem to you with lakes - which sometimes have a dark greenish tinge and can end up with trees in them if you're not careful. If you then eliminate those pixels you're also losing a bit of lake-coloured forest somewhere else. With a lake (but not really with shadows) you could simply colour it in with a different colour. Images edited with Gimp and saved as TIFs still work with Geoconvert, so I imagine they would also work with Scen Proc? I need to try it some time. I suspect many lakes would actually look better if they were coloured in. Any kind of fixed texture or pattern on water destroys the VR illusion. Until moving waves come along, a block of uniform colour is arguably preferable.

    The variation of vegetation with altitude is a great refinement.