Thanks guys for your suggestions.
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.
In my case I need a gain much bigger than you had Lucky1960 because ~x3 faster still means ~15 hours for a single level 12 tile (zoom level 18). But I set to 0 (instead of 0.01) I hope the gain will be even bigger..
I'm trying a new build of a single tile of AFS level 12 at zoom level 18: the process has begun 36 hours ago... and it's not finished ! 
Am I the only one to suffer from this extreme slowness?
Other people are using Geoconvert on Windows 7?
default mesh over eu is not really far away of 30 m resolution; it is not bad in my opinion;
Hello Abbiati,
I'm surprised because from what we've seen the default mesh in AFS2 is level 7 so with a resolution which cannot be more than ~150 meters / pixel (cf. the Vogel69's post here).
And over the Southern Alps I can see a big difference with my mesh based on tiles from J. de Ferranti (embeded SRTM 30m).
But on your screenshot it's not really the case, the default mesh looks great 
I'm also surprised that thread has been moved into sub-forum for general & aircraft development instead of the one for geoconvert development.
It's nice to see that the life project is still alive 
And also for Aerofly FS 2 please ! 
Oops I was talking about viewfinderpanoramas.org, I don't know why I wrote viewpathfinder.org !
SRTM 1" means resolution of 1 arc second, so it means ~30 meters (at the equator), not 10 meters.
I really don't think there is a free DEM with a resolution of 10 meters which covers all the Alps.
But the 30m DEM of J. de Ferranti are very good even if the resolution is not very high. And from I've seen there are already cleaned of void pixels, except for the oversea area (so only 3 tiles should be concerned: N43005, N43006, N43007).
Thanks for your advice.
It sound a bit crazy to have a software being such sensible to user input. This kind of software should not even have a GUI !
The SDK I've downloaded in June was not the latest one so I've installed it but sadly the result is the same.
I did not move a finger, I even blocked my breathing, but nothing works, it's always extremely slow
Note that my previous trick works only to fill void pixels over the sea (by setting the value to 0). But I'm pretty sure than QGIS power users (that I'm not) can do also some interpollation in a few clicks to fix void pixels over the ground...
Sorry, I got you wrong. I will do the alps mesh and made a positive test with N47e015. Also, SF40 for Mauritius was fine.
Ok, N47 is the north of the Alps without see. As said in the other thread you can have water fall for the southern Alps if you don't clean the DEM from J. de Ferranti.
That's also the case with SRTM tiles from USGS but only with few void pixel in comparison with the ones from de Ferranti where the entire oversea area has void value.
Both can be easily fixed but if the area you want to build is available on viewpathfinder.org (it's the case for the whole Alps) it's better to use files from J. de Ferranti because from what I've seen the quality of the DEM is much better (even both are based on SRTM 1 arc).
What are the right levels for the meshs?
- querty42 tells in his tutorial, that we should convert the levels 12-14, when we work on a 10 m mesh.
- abbiati50 created his italy mesh (19 m) with the levels 8-11 (incl. 10)
- Taburets canary islands (5 m) are done with 8, 9, 11, 12 (excl. 10)
- OrbX uses for its meshes the levels 10 and 11.
- Vogel 69's Martinique (1 m) is done with 11, 13, 14.
- Rodeo's Washington (? m): Level 10.
- Aerofly produced the levels 7, 10, 11 for the meshs with different meters/pixel.
I can't see any system in the above examples. I would like to create a 10 m mesh for the Alps. Can anyone help me? Which levels should I produce?
Nice summary !
For your 10m mesh I would say level 9-11 or maybe 8-11 knowing that the level 11 in AFS has a resolution of 9.54m / pixel.
Can I ask you what is this DEM of 10m you have for the Alps ?
After my other thread about mesh building I open a new thread for the aerial images (for sure I'll open another one for the overlays/objects).
First I have not yet had the opportunity to do so I congratulate and thank Nick for his Aeroscenery, that's a very nice software ! 
In fact my issues are not really concerning Aeroscenery but Geoconvert which is is so slow on my computer: it takes more than 2 days for building a single tile of level 12 ! My computer is a bit old (Core i5-4590@3.3 GHz) but I guess it is NOT normal, right ?
And even more annoying: it freezes very often! The CPU stays high and stable, indefinitely. When it occurs at 94% of completion after monopolizing my CPU for 48 hours it does not please at all 
Note that I've never seen a such freeze when Geoconvert is building meshes but in that case the process is much shorter.
I was talking about your try with the tiles from J. de Ferranti (viewfinderpanoramas.org).
Well my attempt with a graphical tool like Gimp was disatrous but I find a handfull way to do it with QGIS.
In QGIS just go to Process > tool box > SAGA > Reclassify values and then in the bottom of the dialog box just uncheck "replace other values", and that's all !
So now I have a cleaned DEM of J. de Ferranti for my tile and I don't have anymore the Interstellar water wall in AFS
And I forget to say that everything is running well even if I reactivate the base mesh ! I don't have any idea why but I'm happy
I tried it again with another source: http://viewfinderpanoramas.org/dem3.html#alps%E2%80%8B
Which tiles from J. de Ferranti have you used exactly ?
I'm asking that because I have some issues with N43E007 (in that another thread).
Hmm sadly the values of the image are encoded in 16 bits
I need to find some time the look up the potential void pixels...
Personally I use only helicopters so I don't care about slopping airport. But it's not a good reason to not learn to use Gimp a bit
It is a good point ! A problem of encoding on the height seems to me more credible than a problem of void area. I hope this is the case because I have never used Gimp and I do not see myself correcting these possible empty pixels by the hand
You mean Geoconvert has generating 100% of the tiles but there is nothing in its output folder ?
In that case maybe you have set wrong coordinates in your TMC file (or even in the TWF file) ? The minlatlon and maxlatlon fields can be disturbing....
Oops sorry I haven't read well your second sentence so I'll give a try with Gimp to check it...
In AFS the spikes are "everywhere" but the void area cannot be "everywhere" in the TIFF because the rendering in QGIS looks very fine (unless it's very very smart and can interpole the whole DEM with only few valid pixels).
Futhermore I've understood that the SRTM tiles from J. de Ferranti (as well the ones from CGIAR-CSI) had been cleaned and thus without any void area. But maybe it only takes a few void pixels to mess up Geoconvert...
Nono... i have my SRTM data for the Czech Republic from there.
Oh I haven't realized that DEM outside of US were available on USGS ! Not for all dataset of course but it's true it is the case for SRTM 1" so I'll give a try during the WE, thanks for the info.
I imagine however that the DEM for the Alps from J. de Ferranti are "better" even if they're also based on SRTM 1".
Not exactly, let's summarize :
Mesh DLC activated + DEM5m activated = spikes
Mesh DLC deactivated + DEM5m activated = spikes
Mesh DLC activated + DEM5m deactivated = no spikes
Mesh DLC deactivated + DEM5m deactivated = didn't try, but sure no spikes
Ah ok, it is less crazy like that
Regarding the masks, the boolean switch obviously only works for ground texture tiles, not for mesh.
I was thinking the concept of mask could apply also to the elevation images, but it's not the case ?
Geoconvert automatically generates masks when creating meshes so for me it was exactly the same concept than with orthophotos: it creates mask to "complete" elevation images which don't fill totally AFS tiles.
When I did my mesh the spikes were from no data pixels.
Which you cant see on Qgis but can clearly see when opened in GIMP as white dots.
But from what we can see in QGIS there is no visible void area as in AFS the spikes are "everywhere".
well, no secret, it is in the elevation tutorial:
Aaah ok you were talking about the USGS portal, but sadly it's for USA only !
I've tested successfully a mesh creation based on IMG filed exported from that site, I haven't seen a export directly in TIFF was possible, good to know.
Basically I was very surprised and excited because I understood that there was info on mesh creation in the official AFS wiki because you had talked about "IPACS-wikipages". But unfortunately I think that IPACS has never published official information about mesh creation, except in the forum to say that it could be "dangerous".
