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Photoreal tiles not loading around aircraft

L

Lane Pulcini

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8
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us-florida
So the title says pretty much all. I'm testing out some photoreal bgl files creating using Google Tiles and SBuilderX and it seems as though all of the tiles around the airplane are missing, as soon as I fly forward, the tiles that were not there load and the new tiles "around" my airplane disappear. It doesn't seem to do this if I use textures that are zoomed way out.

Surely someone can answer this fairly quickly?
 
Hello:

In FS, display of ground tile texture resolution Level of Detail (aka "LOD") is controlled by one's distance from ground tiles (as a function of both vertical and horizontal distance away).

Assuming you have set the FSX GUI slider setting for Texture resolution at 1 Meter per pixel (...or 'higher' in cm), if you do not download and/or otherwise use custom aerial imagery tiles which have at least a LOD-13 (QMID-15) resolution when compiling your custom photo-real imagery BGL via FSX SDK Resample, the span of texture tile LODs will not be regarded by the FS rendering engine as 'greater than' the FS default land class textures within the FS rendering engine terrain texture land class scheme.

Thus, the FS default land class textures would be shown on top of other available aerial imagery texture tiles which have either a less than default texture resolution (including custom aerial imagery), or a smaller total FS terrain grid span size of less than a full LOD-13 quad in extent ...in the area immediately surrounding the aircraft.

When seen in the top-down view, this may appear as a general "diamond" shaped group of ground texture tiles surrounding the user aircraft, which is different than the areas farther out away from the user aircraft.


This type of scenario may be remedied by one's work-flow method in SBuilderX, and being certain to utilize a "Zoom" level of at least 14 when defining a 'grid' of ex: Google Maps aerial imagery tiles to download via the tile down-loader 'Add Map from Background' dialog box GUI.


If the area you have zoomed to in ex: Google Maps satellite tile server does not have aerial imagery at a zoom level higher than 13, then special procedures will be required that involve editing the *.INF file output by SBuilderX after initially compiling the first output BGL of selected aerial imagery tiles at ex: zoom level 13 or lower.


NOTE: On some (non-Google) satellite tile servers that use a slightly different spatial world globe ground texture mapping scheme, in the SBuilderX 'Add Map from Background' tile download dialog, one may need to select / use tiles with at least a Zoom level of 15 to achieve display of aerial imagery tiles in FS without editing the INF file output by SBuilderX to "force" display on top of underlying default land class ground textures.


Feel free to attach or link to a screenshot of what you see in FSX at run time in a top-down view, and let us know if your scenario is different than as interpreted / described above.

And if this explanation has thus far solved your issue, please let us know how things worked out for you. :)

GaryGB
 
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hi there, I'm getting the same issue, I downloaded the image with sbuilderx using virtual earth satellite at zoom 13 is there a way to solve this by editing the inf file and compiling again?


fsx 2016-07-24 06-56-00-54.jpg
 
Hello:

Assuming you do not also have OrbX FTX Global or Flight1 Ground Environment X (aka "GEX") installed and set 'active' in the FS scenery library, you may be able to simply edit the INF file which SBuilderX (internally) submits to FSX SDK Resample for compilation of a custom aerial imagery BGL.

The 'current' working copy of your INF file is located at:

[SBuilderX314 install path]\Tools\Work\Photo01.INF

Try setting "LOD = Auto,13" in the [Destination] section in your Photo01.INF file, and re-compile the selected area.:idea:


BTW: Sometimes additional considerations may apply ...as discussed here:

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/photoscenery-texture-problem.436547/

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/sbuilder-error.432452/


If the above recommended change to "LOD = Auto,13 as a parameter value in your Photo01.INF file does not resolve the scenario as described above, feel free to reply with a further description, and screen shots as needed, to request additional troubleshooting. :)

GaryGB
 
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That is a very nice explanation of how things work, Gary. I have always done this intuitively but now at least I know why things show or not show as I wanted to.
Thanks a bunch.
 
I appreciate the kind words, Roby. :)

Hopefully others will also see the potential benefit of using this option to 'force' lower-resolution custom photo-real aerial imagery BGLs to show on top of underlying default land class terrain textures in all areas outside the very small areas immediately adjacent to airports where one is flying at the lower altitudes required to even see LOD-13 resolution textures.

IIUC, many users may be trying to avoid making huge working data sets of high resolution source imagery because either they don't want to do all the repetitive manual work in the SBuilderX "Add Map From Background" dialog, the resulting working data set is too large for SBuilderX and/or FS SDK Resample, and/or the FS rendering engine will 'choke' on the resulting huge aerial imagery BGL size.


One need only select higher resolution aerial imagery tiles for smaller areas where one will actually be flying at low altitude.

Otherwise, one will be at such a high altitude that the LOD / MIPMAP mechanism of FS will not even allow the large data sets of high resolution imagery to be seen at the user aircraft position. ;)

Exceptions, of course may apply where one is purposely flying "low and slow" to view the scenery in greater detail at locations farther away from airports, so thus one might need / want to utilize all available LODs including those at LOD-13 and higher throughout one's entire photo-real coverage area. :pushpin:

GaryGB
 
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