What does FSX and Yahoo have in common?

[Lionheart]

Hey guys,

Thanks for the HU, Bill:ernae:. Only reservation that i'd have using this software is the following recommendation... "Before starting anything you should disable your virus software and any active firewalls. I can't emphasize this enough. These often stop tiles from loading for many users"


Kilo Delta

I didnt disable firewalls or protections, so I dont know.

It took almost an hour to load it the first time.

Navy Chief

I have high speed cable internet, about the fastest, so I was able to have a faster download speed. Remember that terrain that is downloaded the first time is put in Cache. Thus the next time, it should display very quickly compared with the first time. Its pretty much like GoogleEarth. If you can roam through GoogleEarth at good speed, this will be similar. Just keep in mind that this is doing a ton of work, changing JPG's into Bitmaps, placing them in FS 'as you are flying'.

I think a router firewall will protect you just fine.

Bjoern

I also have a Router, which has probably saved me a few times, but I realise others dont, but I must say, I didnt turn anything off.. I installed it, fired it up, and off I went. No fixing of files, etc. There is a second download, 2 INI files, one for FS9, one for FSX. I installed the one I was going to fly (dropped it in the main TileProxy folder in FSX) and I was off flying in real world scenery.

And commenting Tileproxy: No autogenos, no vuelos. :d

Bjoern

I am an AutoGen FREAK! (I went years without AutoGen in FS2004, and when I finally got it and maximum settings as well, I swore I would never do without it again).

But, I must say that with AutoGen on in FSX with TileProxy running, I couldnt find AutoGen objects, lol.. The photo real terrain seems to cover them or mask them.


Slow for Some...
I think that this will be overly slow for people with slow download time and older computers. You will need to do 'first runs' to gather the Cached bitmaps, then you can run normal flights afterwards.

Reload Time and Fuzzies....
I had to wait perhaps 5 min's at times to reload scenery. This is just like Mega-Scenery packages. Once the terrain goes fuzzy (from going to spot-plane and back into VC views), you will have to wait a bit for the fuzzies to clear up. If you hit Refresh Scenery, its at least 5 min's. But the wait for me was worth it. This makes FSX worth it for me.

Black Tiles and Errors....
I found some black tile zones in Germany last night. Some sections were missing, etc. I have purchased and downloaded alot of payware and freeware German scenery though, so it is surely something to do with those.

Low Resolution zones....
If you have been on Google Earth before, you will have seen the area's that are 'not' high resolution. The green will look horrible, etc. That is something that just isnt available yet. The surrounding area' of Innsbruck is like this, unfortunately, so you just have to use this for area's that 'do' have high resolution.



I hope the info helps. I am pretty impressed. I flew through the mountains of Southern Colorado last night, and somehow let several hours escape as I was mesmerized by the shear beauty of the mountains, trails, forests, small towns, etc. The ability of FSX to run these textures was incredible. I also flew over the deserts of the Four Corners (Colorado/Utah/Arizona border) and just the desert is pretty darn awesome.


Main drawback is fuzzies and reload of scenery time involved. But if you pause your plane for a bit, the scenery re-sharpens....

I wish there was a way to have resolutions work better so that fuzzies didnt take so long to go away..



Bill

 

[Lionheart]

Does anyone know how to delete 'select' zones of tiles?

I loaded FS9 and flew over the Islands around Cape Cod. The graphics are very low quality and I wish to check them out in high rez with FSX but it appears Cache stays loaded and selecting them in Map and clicking Delete Tiles may delete 'all' tiles.. I dont want to mess up Colorado and Arizona.



Bill

 

[stiz]

just rember, not all the satalite imageary of the world is at the crispness of the more populated areas, US, UK, France etc

 

[Bomber_12th]

Thank you for the information on this Lionheart! Until now I suspected that it would be a tough program to install, but it was really quite simple. After having dreamed of somebody like Megascenery doing a photoscenery release for my neck of the woods, it almost seems surreal to be flying over high quality photoscenery of my city and surroundings, and I can actually look down and spot my house and even my car! Fortunately the airports that I have flown from so-far are really almost dead on with the photo-scenery, with the exception of some taxiways here and there. I spent my lunch break flying around my home, and then later this evening around <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1:City w:st="on">Cambridge</st1:City>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">England</st1:country-region> and <st1lace w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Aspen</st1:City>, <st1:State w:st="on">Colorado</st1:State></st1lace>. It will be fun to continue 'exploring' the world, now with complete photo-coverage - I also had some fun flying around the coast of <st1lace w:st="on">Greenland</st1lace>, and there is nothing quite like it. I have noticed that the more times you load up a flight in a specific zone, it not only goes faster but the scenery ends up looking better.

 

[Lionheart]

Hey Bomber,


Roger that. I too was afraid it would be a bit difficult. With them supplying preset INI files, its quick and done.

I freaked on the mountains in Colorado. Totally breathtaking man.. I flew the little Bucker Jungmann from Durango, east through the mountains till I got to the plains on the other side. Spotted lots of probable mines in the mountains, cool trails, little towns..

I'll have to check out England.


I have found a glitch. If you fly in FS9 mode, you keep the FS9 lower resolution tiles in the Cache, which 'is' reused. Thus, when you fly in FSX, the same zone is horrible in resolution. I am trying to find a way to delete certain zones without deleting all zones. I am also trying to find a way to save zones to seperate files (which they warn you not to do) but if I copy them, I might be ok, then place to Addon Scenery, and activate, then delete all the others, reset, and have 2 versions.. One for FS9 and one for FSX.

Thats the plan, anyways...


I checked out all of Catalina Island off the coast of LA today. Nice... :d



Bill

 

[Marlin]

Well I gave it a shot but couldn’t get it to work dang it.

I was trying to run the cache and world photo folder off of my second drive, and it installed it alright but when I fired it up it would not connect and kept telling me that there was a time out error on all of the files.

Therefore when the sim started all I got was a big black emptiness of nothing. Even after I went to the Avsim site to try and find out what I did wrong, I couldn’t figure it out.

So I uninstalled it and deleted everything. Maybe I will try it again with a new download. I have no idea what went wrong. Are you guys running the “library” and cache on a second hard drive or on your primary drive?

By the way Bill, if you fly south a bit from Durango you'll go near my place.
This thing looks to good to pass up on or not get get working!

 

[Bjoern]

I also have a Router, which has probably saved me a few times, but I realise others dont, but I must say, I didnt turn anything off..

Well, that's the way it should be!


But you don't have a software firewall, do you?

 

[Lionheart]

Are you guys running the “library” and cache on a second hard drive or on your primary drive?

Yes. You kind of need to run it from C drive or else go all through the various setting files and recheck everything for your alternative Cache source location. You can change the names of them, but I dont know about Drive

For now, if you want to test it, try just running it on 'stock' file locations and see how it does. Then you can migrate and or delete bits later.

By the way Bill, if you fly south a bit from Durango you'll go near my place.
This thing looks to good to pass up on or not get get working!

South would be LaPaz County woudnt it? Thats where I took off out of. I fly there alot in faster planes out of Phoenix. I love that area. It would sure be nice to live there or at least have a little cabin in the woods East of Durango.

One of the best locations for a Saturday morning breakfast is at the old 1800's hotel restaurant, just accross from the Narrow Gauge Steam Locomotive railroad yard right in the first part of town where you come around the corner in Durango. The view of the mountains all around is just plain AWESOME...!


Bill

 

[Marlin]

Yes sir Bill. Actually I'm right in between N19 and KFMN. That would be about 45 minutes away from Durango by car.

Thanks for the heads up on using the default locations to get it going, that is exactly what I was thinking. Too good to pass up, thanks for the encouragement.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>

 

[Lionheart]

New Discoveries

Hey guys,


I have made some interesting discoveries on this awesome software, thanks to Ed Truthan.

DELETING AREAS
First, if you have a region that you dont like and wish to delete, you can easily do this on the map browser that comes with TileProxy. Go to your Main 'control' TileProxy folder in FSX, click on the 'ServiceCacheBrowser.exe' program, the world map shows up with gray and black zones popping up where you have TileProxy tiles downloaded at, (locations saved). You can then make a surround rectangle (select area with mouse) and wait for the area to fully select all bitmap tiles. If you have alot of bright white ones, then it will take a moment to load them all up. When the memory counter stops, you have all in that selection rectangle selected. You can then click 'Delete Tiles' and they are then deleted.

If you dont see any tiles, then at the top left, click 'Service Name' flyout and select each one at a time until you find the right one. If you have installed the 'sample' INI file, then you are most likely 'Example 3' setting for Service Name. You should then see all the gray zones popping up.

ZONES AND RESOLUTIONS
Zones on the map are in different shades of gray. Black will be over an entire area, nearly the size of a state. That is the lowest resolution tiles, or LOD's, (level of distance, if I am correct). The brightest white is the highest resolution zones, ones that are maximum zoom level aerial photography. Those are high in memory also.

That helps you to maintain and track your photo scenery. If you downloaded some poor scenery, say in Germany for instance, and you find out that Google Earth or Virtual Earth has actual or better aerial photography, you can then delete that zone from your TileProxy Cache via the map browser, and then switch out your Service Name, then start up TileProxy, start up FS, and go back to that same area and re-fill the Cache with that zone.

CHANGING A 'SERVICE NAME' ONLINE PHOTOGRAPHY SOURCE
Changing the service provider of scenery is terribly easy. Open your 'ProxyUser.INI' file with Notepad. Scroll down to the following area;


# The currently active service is configured here. Only ONE active source please.
# The other source statements should be commented out.
#source=Acme Globe Service
#source=Service Example 1
source=Service Example 2
#source=Service Example 3
#source=Service Example 4


Note that the sentence that doesnt have a '#' sign in front of it is the 'active' Service Name. To switch out the source of the 4 choices, simply switch the pound sign to a different one. You can see which ones are which if you scroll down farther.

NOTE: Acme Global Service is a fictional 'what if' service and only used as an example. If you have this as your service setting, then you need to switch it out to one of the four examples.

Here is the one that is Virtual Earth. You can tell which it is by reading the address location;

[Service Example 1]
cache_folder=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\cache.service1
network_module=libnettile
module_config="conn=20|rate=2.0|verbose=0|server=http://a*.ortho.tiles.virtualearth.net|path=/tiles/a%s.jpeg?g=%v|quad=0123|balance=0123|useragent=Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)"
min_level=9
max_level=17
map_version=174
#level_mapping=9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17
#level_mapping=9,10,11,12,14,14,15,16,17 more radius HQ (13->14)
#level_mapping=9,10,11,14,14,14,15,16,17 even more radius in HQ (12,13->14)
color_hack=Yes
color_level=13
bulk_extend=50


That shows you then how to change out the services, so if you find better scenery, you can now delete that region, switch to the better service, and refill that area Cache, and done deal.. Ready to go.


Last night, I found that Google Earth had better scenery tiles for Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, so I deleted that region then switched to Google Earth, and refilled it. I am terribly glad I did. But, Google stalled the downloading several times, requestion a human input by asking me to fill in the letters and numbers from a Bitmap photo of distorted letters and numbers. I did, and it would resume, and on FSX, I would click 'Continue Flying' and the process would resume.

OFFLINE MODE
There is a setting so that you can fly without downloading tiles. You would be running in Cache mode, which is what you would run anyway if you already downloaded the highest zoom area's. To go to 'Offline Mode', open your ProxyUser.INI file and find the following;

# Offline Mode - No network access will occur (Yes/True/On to enable)
offline_mode=No

Change the No to Yes and you are done. Save and closeout. Change it back to No later when you have area's you wish to download and save to Cache.


RESOLUTION LIMIT SETTING
You can change the amount of zoom to a lower setting to reduce the huge size of files that are coming in. You can also increase the Zoom setting (resolution) if memory on your HD is not an issue. To change it, open your ProxyUser.INI' file again with Notepad. Navigate to this location;

# Resolution limiter: 17 = 30cm/pixel, 16 = 60cm/pixel, 15 = 1.1m/pixel, 14 = 2.3m/pixel, 13 = 4.75m/pixel
# Lower resolutions load faster, but are visually less appealing. The 30cm resolution may only be feasible
# if you have at least 2GB of system memory.
max_lod=15

Change the '15' at the bottom to a diff setting that you like. Mine is at 17 presently. Note that you can also change the lower zoom setting (in the INI file also) from 9 to a different setting, such as 10. That way your lowest resolution will be a tad higher.

NOTE: High resolution will take long periods of time to download, so if you dont have high speed internet..... you could get gray hair doing this... Lots of gray hair. You can change your high resolution to a lower setting to speed things up, such as a setting of 12 or 14.

MAPPING AN AREA TO HIGH ZOOM
You 'can' just fly in this mode and not worry about how things are saved. Its a very simple system and easy to use. But, if you want to 'map' a region in total high zoom resolution, then get a very slow plane, such as the FSX ultralight, and fly at say half throttle, about 1500 feet AGL, and slowly make a grid of back and fourth flights over area's about a mile or two wide. When the ground isnt extremely clear, pause and or 'clear' (Refresh) your scenery in FS. You must assign a key to refresh (reload) your scenery. Go to Options/Settings/Controls and find the keyboard entry line for Refresh Scenery. I use 'C' on my rig to reload scenery. This will not 'reload' all the tiles in that area, but will load the high zoom settings to be visible. When its doing this, it will usually pick up the highest zoom resolution tile you are directly over. So if you are doing a city, you will download all the area's surrounding you when you high Refresh Scenery, insuring you that you have that entire area definately 'in' your Cache.


That should help you guys out with tuning your photo scenery with this program.



Bill

 

[chinookmark]

I have a question -- At the moment I have a super slow internet connection. I realize whole world photoreal is a completely unrealistic expection right now.

Can I run Tileproxy and load up a small area, say around my house, and use that along with the default FS world? Or is Tileproxy and On or Off affair?

 

[Lionheart]

I have a question -- At the moment I have a super slow internet connection. I realize whole world photoreal is a completely unrealistic expection right now.

Can I run Tileproxy and load up a small area, say around my house, and use that along with the default FS world? Or is Tileproxy and On or Off affair?

Hey ChinookMark,


You can run the system and get your scenery you want, and then you can retrieve the BGL files and create a Addon Scenery folder, then a scenery folder in that, then 'copy' the files to that location and activate 'your' scenery.

I havent tried this, but supposedly it is doable.


For running in basic 'offline' mode, just go into your UserProxy.INI file and change the following to Yes and it will run on Cache only.

# Offline Mode - No network access will occur (Yes/True/On to enable)
offline_mode=No





Think of it this way.. If you can run Google Earth, then you should be able to run this.

I believe (I havent really tried it yet) that you can hold your plane in Slew mode, which isnt 'pause' and your scenery should continue to load in that area. When I say load, the system loads layers of zoom data, which in FS lingo is LOD's. Low viz for long distance, med viz, and then high resolution when you are right over the area.

Hope that helps.


Bill