Consider this Additional Option to FT's Orth4XP Conversion Tool?

[Torbin]

Hi guys,

From what I understand and have seen so far, even if the apparent issues of the FT Ortho4XP Conversion Tool 1.14 are resolved, the following limitations will still exist:

1. The tool does not support multiple zoom levels anywhere within the tile, which does not allow users to apply higher zoom levels around neighboring airports (a great Ortho4XP feature!).
2. Users that have a custom mesh at other airports within the same tile of a FlyTampa airport cannot use them (?)
3. Users cannot use customized curv_tol settings or mesh sources outside their FlyTampa airports.
4. The images over draped Polys load slower and/or have a "shallower" draw distance than a typical Ortho4XP tile

Alternate solution:

It would be great if you could provide the additional option for the many Ortho4XP users out there that would be a "localized FlyTampa LAS mesh" that takes advantage Orth4XP 1.30's Patch file solution.

X-Plane airport developers such as Short Final Design, VerticalSim Studious, Nimbus, and some freeware scenery developers have been providing patch files that allows us end users to simply drop airport specific patches into Orth4XP's Patch folder, then rerun their existing tile. This results in a seamless integration of the airport developer's mesh into the corresponding Ortho4XP tile's mesh, and also allows the end user's multiple zoom level imagery to exist harmoniously with the airport developers photo scenery and mesh! Additionally, if multiple custom airports exist within the same tile, each can have custom mesh and ortho if desired.

This video shows the steps of a patch being applied in Ortho4XP and the before/after results:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cd203ohy5zz7e ... o.mp4?dl=0

I think this would be great for this FlyTampa scenery!

[09tir98]

I agree. FlyTampa has made this way harder than it needs to be. A patch file would be so much easier and would get rid of the issue with the slow loading of textures.

[Yannis[flytampa]]

Hi, our meshes so far are quite complicated. The patch cannot emulate the final result you see now. Also, Using our HD raster dem file as custom mesh in ortho4xp with low curv tol in settings, does not give the expected result as well. Thats why we created the conversion tool from the very first FT scenery in X-Plane ( Corfu) , providing a solution to people with Orho4xp tiles. The Vegas tile ( +36-116) proved to be quite heavy for drapped polygons ( land allover the whole tile, plus very demanding scenery). Hold on, we are working on another solution just for Vegas ;)

[Torbin]

Hi Yannis, since you're looking into how to solve this, I figured I'd point out and additional thing to consider in maybe the near future... I am assuming you probably follow the progression of Orbx True Earth (TE) for X-Plane? If they continue to develop the series of scenery packages, one might assume there will be a TE package being released in this area given that their SoCal release covered through 35-116. Hopefully when that becomes a reality, there is a way to integrate your Las Vegas with their TE!

[jsnapp]

Hi, our meshes so far are quite complicated. The patch cannot emulate the final result you see now. Also, Using our HD raster dem file as custom mesh in ortho4xp with low curv tol in settings, does not give the expected result as well. Thats why we created the conversion tool from the very first FT scenery in X-Plane ( Corfu) , providing a solution to people with Orho4xp tiles. The Vegas tile ( +36-116) proved to be quite heavy for drapped polygons ( land allover the whole tile, plus very demanding scenery). Hold on, we are working on another solution just for Vegas ;)

Hi Yannis, while I appreciate that you have made an awesome mesh for this scenery (and the mesh for the airport does truly look great), I think you are incorrect in your assumption about patch file capabilities in Ortho4XP. Your reasoning seems dated/limited to only the most basic patch file capability of the very original Ortho4XP. In your case I believe the clearly correct (and probably not too technically tough) approach is an OBJ8 based patch file for Ortho4XP to splice in your existing mesh you have generated.

Some resources for your consideration:

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/f ... nt-1070617
https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/f ... nt-1074788
https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/f ... ch-header/

Example of this in use:
https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/f ... -ortho4xp/

Nimbus credits the Maps2XPlane (dot com to find their website) folks for help. Between Oscar Pilote who is an incredibly friendly and helpful guy and the Maps2XPlane, and Nimbus and Vertical Sim folks. I have full faith in your ability to easily produce a suitable OBJ8 based patch file.

For performance in Vulkan XP 11, this is the only practicable solution and will pay huge dividends with upcoming ortho imagery releases by Vertical Sim and OrbX almost surely in the cards. Otherwise you force users to forgo their excellent 1/3 arc second data meshes they have built and to stare at miles and miles of stock ground textures. Unless people plan to just sit at the airport and helicopter up the strip or fly only at night. :-)

Really love the airport and the city and what you have done to bring it to life in our sim!

[Yannis[flytampa]]

viewtopic.php?f=34&t=14125
There is nο need to use the conversion tool for drapped polys any more just for Vegas. The ortho4xp dds's are now natively integrated into the vertices of our original mesh ( .ter files). You only need to copy textures from ortho4xp folder into our new mesh's textures folder (or make a link).