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MSFS [GUIDE] How to create custom aerial scenery

Messages
7
Country
us-texas
Does anyone have an idea how much the average time to compile the final XYZ tiles takes? I am doing a 4x3 (4096x4096 each tile) sized render and its has been "processing algorithm" for over 12 hours now and its only at 37% is this usual?
 
Messages
24
Country
poland
Something must be wrong - I did a 5x4 (also 4096px) and it didn't take more than 5 minutes. Zoom level 20.
 
Messages
7
Country
us-texas
Something must be wrong - I did a 5x4 (also 4096px) and it didn't take more than 5 minutes. Zoom level 20.
I cancelled and tried again and yup took about 3-5 minutes. Thanks for that. I was wondering how people did bigger scale projects if my little one was taking all that time! haha.
 
Messages
23
Country
germany
Meanwhile I created aerial sceneries (for personal use only, due to google origin) for several German military Airports which are not in FS2020. Compilation in the SDK gernerates a package containing a CGL file for each of them.
ETNT, located in the north of Germay, has "sai201.cgl"
ETSN, located in the south of Germay, has "sai221.cgl"
ETSB, ETHF, EDSS (Zellhausen Glider Site), and EDLP (Paderborn, Aerosoft Freeware), all these located somewhere in the middle of Germany, have "sai203.cgl".
Multiple aerial sceneries with the same CGL name generate a conflict in the community folder. This conflict results in not showing the aerial in the Sim or in a nerver ending loading process.
I tried to rename the CGLs to unique names, also the reference in the .json file. No success, After renaming the aerial didn't show up.
Up to now I did not recognize a kind of 'rule' according to which the compiler determins the CGL name.
Any Ideas?
Next I'll try will be Stuttgart.
 
Messages
15
Country
belgium
I'm looking into that, since when you export the TIF images from Ortho4XP, they actually have the cordinates for where to go, same goes for using the SbuilderX solution.
I unfortunately don't have alot of experience with QGIS so Im almost as lost as you guys sometimes haha.

If it helps, you can select a different reference map. Take a look at the newest version of the guide. v1.1, where i mention this. It is attached to the first post of this thread :)

can you look at this , pls ?
 
Messages
269
Meanwhile I created aerial sceneries (for personal use only, due to google origin) for several German military Airports which are not in FS2020. Compilation in the SDK gernerates a package containing a CGL file for each of them.
ETNT, located in the north of Germay, has "sai201.cgl"
ETSN, located in the south of Germay, has "sai221.cgl"
ETSB, ETHF, EDSS (Zellhausen Glider Site), and EDLP (Paderborn, Aerosoft Freeware), all these located somewhere in the middle of Germany, have "sai203.cgl".
Multiple aerial sceneries with the same CGL name generate a conflict in the community folder. This conflict results in not showing the aerial in the Sim or in a nerver ending loading process.
I tried to rename the CGLs to unique names, also the reference in the .json file. No success, After renaming the aerial didn't show up.
Up to now I did not recognize a kind of 'rule' according to which the compiler determins the CGL name.
Any Ideas?
Next I'll try will be Stuttgart.

I am having exactly the same issue.
Hoping that Asobo will find a solution for that.
 
Messages
23
Country
germany
I am having exactly the same issue.
Hoping that Asobo will find a solution for that.
EDDS Stuttgart has the same CGL name as ETSN Neuburg. Seems there are only a handfull CGL names for Germany.
Is Asobo aware of that? Who will tell them?
 
Messages
859
Country
australia
Does anyone have an idea how much the average time to compile the final XYZ tiles takes? I am doing a 4x3 (4096x4096 each tile) sized render and its has been "processing algorithm" for over 12 hours now and its only at 37% is this usual?

I had that happen as well, not sure why but zoom 21 took several days and got to 1TB before I canceled, it was only for a small airport area too.
 
Messages
7
Country
us-texas
I had that happen as well, not sure why but zoom 21 took several days and got to 1TB before I canceled, it was only for a small airport area too.
I ended up cancelling the inital compile and re did just that part and bam done in about 3 mintues. It was ZL19 though. For some reason the first time I did it the program tried doing ZL, 19,20,21,22,23 and thats what took forever, even though I only had 19 as max and min.
 
Messages
859
Country
australia
Ok, some things I have learned. You can't compile above Zoom level 20, it'll compile in sim but won't show up (even on a very small test area, so 15cm per pixel is max resolution it appears).

Your projection needs to be Geographic WGS84 Meters for your tiles.

If you render below Zoom 20 you will see the Bing imagery show through once you get down on the deck, it's an LOD thing.

I don't use the tools mention to snag the imagery and find that Global Mapper, QGIS and other data sources are much better to get imagery legally freely (i.e. not from Google/Bing/Yahoo Maps) that can be distributed, your home country likely has a GIS WMS or REST server you can pull imagery from freely. Primarily it's one step from Global Mapper, load in your source imagery (either from one of the online sources or your own offline georeferenced imager), then export as web format, choose bing, zoom level 20 (14cm) and type in 1 for levels of detail (it defaults to 5), make sure it's in PNG format, JPG doesn't work.

Then you just have to drop the files into the CGL\aerial imagery folder in your project and compile.
 
Messages
1
Country
unitedkingdom
Thanks for the tutorial. However when I use Ortho4XP & double-click on the yellow box, Exit and select the ZL window nothing is showing (see attached image). Can you please advise what I am doing wrong?
 

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Christian Bahr

Resource contributor
Messages
951
Country
germany
From my side, the very best thanks for the easy to understand tutorial about the steps how to bing an othophoto in the MFS. Everything worked out very well!

mfs_bahrometrix_edle_3.jpg


Following on from this, the question of whether the aerial photo tiles must be present in the Pseudo Mercakator Projection. Or may it also be a different projection? For example ETRS89 (EPSG: 25832). Perhaps the compiler of the SDK will automatically recognize an existing projection and convert it into a projection that is better for the MFS, such as WGS84 (EPSG: 4326):

nrw_ortho_dop10_epsg_25832.jpg


The picture shows the Open Data service of the NRW government (State of North Rhine-Westphalia government). The tiles are DOP10 RGB tiles, they are in the ETRS89 projection.
 
Messages
10
Country
unitedstates
I cannot get my scenery to show up in MSFS. I had no problems creating an image with Ortho, geo referencing with QGIS or using tiles2bing. Its seems to be compiling fine. Even if I put it in the SimpleAerial project and build it, it still doesn’t show up.

Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks
 
Messages
859
Country
australia
I cannot get my scenery to show up in MSFS. I had no problems creating an image with Ortho, geo referencing with QGIS or using tiles2bing. Its seems to be compiling fine. Even if I put it in the SimpleAerial project and build it, it still doesn’t show up.

Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks

What zoom level are you using?
 
Messages
859
Country
australia
20. I tried with 19 also, and that didn't work either
Sounds like a borked image file. If there's a corrupted image or one missing it can cause issues, also how many tiles did it generate? If there's too many tiles it will choke and not display in sim
 
Messages
10
Country
unitedstates
Thanks Hollywood

At zoom 19 - 550 files
At zoom 20 - 2107 files

What is the limit?
 
Messages
859
Country
australia
Hmm, that number of files should be more than fine. I'd also recommend Zoom 21 as zoom 20 will lead to bing imagery showing once you're close to the ground.

Not sure what's happening with your compile. It's been over a week since I messed with it.
 
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