EspanaPete Posted February 28, 2019 Share Posted February 28, 2019 Hello, I have only just purchased X-Plane 11 and am interested in adding better scenery for both the UK and Spain. I understand (vaguely) that scenery from different suppliers falls into two camp, based on real photographs, or computer generated, probably wrong, but something like that. Also that you cannot mix the two????? I want ORBX for the UK which I understand needs a particular MESH and I also want to install Spanish scenery, which requires another Spanish Mesh. Will the two work alongside each other OK or will one mess the other one up? Sorry if this sounds really stupid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob Abernathy Posted February 28, 2019 Share Posted February 28, 2019 Hi Pete, All questions are good questions, as they show an interest in learning! If you get the 3 True Earth Great Britain products you will not need anything else, like a mesh. It's all included in the product. I'm pretty new to XP myself so don't know anything about scenery or mesh for Spain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Clarke Posted March 1, 2019 Share Posted March 1, 2019 11 hours ago, EspanaPete said: Hello, I have only just purchased X-Plane 11 and am interested in adding better scenery for both the UK and Spain. I understand (vaguely) that scenery from different suppliers falls into two camp, based on real photographs, or computer generated, probably wrong, but something like that. Also that you cannot mix the two????? I want ORBX for the UK which I understand needs a particular MESH and I also want to install Spanish scenery, which requires another Spanish Mesh. Will the two work alongside each other OK or will one mess the other one up? Sorry if this sounds really stupid. As Rob says regarding TEGB you won't need mesh, although TEGB North doesn't have 10m mesh unlike TEGB Central and South. All the Mesh you need for almost worldwide coverage is available at the link I give below.... freeware. If you look under the heading of Downloads on the site you will also see there is a special coverage area in UHD as well. I use both and the results are amazing. They work fine. Remember that any "homemade" Ortho4XP photo scenery you make will come with it's own mesh so the downloaded mesh from the linked site become irrelevant for that scenery. http://www.alpilotx.net/downloads/x-plane-11-hd-mesh-scenery-v4/ Regarding Spain, there is already a photo scenery on offer, again freeware (ain't XP great !!) which will include a UHD mesh. Here is the link for that: https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/29595-spain-ultra-high-definition-photoscenery-spainuhd/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wain71 Posted March 1, 2019 Share Posted March 1, 2019 http://www.alpilotx.net/downloads/x-plane-11-hd-mesh-scenery-v4/ covers a lot including most of Europe, not sure if this is what you mean... posted at the same time as above... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EspanaPete Posted March 1, 2019 Author Share Posted March 1, 2019 34 minutes ago, jjaycee1 said: As Rob says regarding TEGB you won't need mesh, although TEGB North doesn't have 10m mesh unlike TEGB Central and South. All the Mesh you need for almost worldwide coverage is available at the link I give below.... freeware. If you look under the heading of Downloads on the site you will also see there is a special coverage area in UHD as well. I use both and the results are amazing. They work fine. Remember that any "homemade" Ortho4XP photo scenery you make will come with it's own mesh so the downloaded mesh from the linked site become irrelevant for that scenery. http://www.alpilotx.net/downloads/x-plane-11-hd-mesh-scenery-v4/ Regarding Spain, there is already a photo scenery on offer, again freeware (ain't XP great !!) which will include a UHD mesh. Here is the link for that: https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/29595-spain-ultra-high-definition-photoscenery-spainuhd/ Thank you JJ for the links. To be honest, I cannot fathom out what "meshes" are and how they are different from TEGB South that I am at this moment downloading. Can you point me in the direction of an idiots guide? Another question I have is that my screen resolution is 1920 x 1080 which I believe is just HD so should I find just HD downloads or UHD downloads as you suggest for Spain? Sorry for all of the questions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EspanaPete Posted March 1, 2019 Author Share Posted March 1, 2019 42 minutes ago, wain71 said: http://www.alpilotx.net/downloads/x-plane-11-hd-mesh-scenery-v4/ covers a lot including most of Europe, not sure if this is what you mean... posted at the same time as above... I am not sure either Wain, I will get the hang of it eventually :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Clarke Posted March 1, 2019 Share Posted March 1, 2019 7 minutes ago, EspanaPete said: Thank you JJ for the links. To be honest, I cannot fathom out what "meshes" are and how they are different from TEGB South that I am at this moment downloading. Can you point me in the direction of an idiots guide? Another question I have is that my screen resolution is 1920 x 1080 which I believe is just HD so should I find just HD downloads or UHD downloads as you suggest for Spain? Sorry for all of the questions The meshes will define the details of in particular mountains. You will get highly detailed mountain peaks etc. In the world of flight sim, mesh is the underground detail, scenery then sits on top of mesh, and then buildings, airports etc sit on top of scenery. I will show you what mesh does in a couple of pics here of my photo scenery. You will see the detail of the hills and mountain peaks and troughs. If there 3 pics are with the mesh that forms part of the photoscenery. The 4th pic shows mesh from the site I gave you the link for (not the Spain link) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dadtom65 Posted March 1, 2019 Share Posted March 1, 2019 Jjaycee1 that looks spectacular. I think I have a lot of downloading to do to get mine looking like yours as all I have is the TrueEarth series at the moment. Derek. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EspanaPete Posted March 1, 2019 Author Share Posted March 1, 2019 Thanks JJ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Longranger241 Posted March 1, 2019 Share Posted March 1, 2019 10 hours ago, EspanaPete said: Another question I have is that my screen resolution is 1920 x 1080 which I believe is just HD so should I find just HD downloads or UHD downloads as you suggest for Spain? Sorry for all of the questions The HD and UHD classifications have nothing to do with your monitor resolution it was only compared with the Data that was in the Default Mesh.This Data was always limited due to the DVD size and originally due to the 4 GB limit of the first versions of X-Plane 10. AlPilotX was a volunteer that delivered the data to X-Plane and he simply knew what he had and what X-Plane 10 had. So after X-Plane was able to handle more than 4 GB (with X-Plane 10.20) he offered an HD Mesh for download, with the real data that he had. It had in some places a better height profile but more importantly he was able to increase the number of landclass tiles which allowed a much better differentiation of the AutoGen and the landclass textures no longer looked so repetetive. At a later data he tried to put everything through Renderfarm (the Programm that generates the mesh directories for Laminar) what he had. He saw that this amount of data was bit to much for cities but in the mountains it brought the ground textures to a complete new level while the performance was even under X-Plane 10 quite good if you had 16-32 GB of RAM and there were no big cities involved. In X-Plane 11 there were several improvements behind the scenes. The scenery loading is much faster while the DSF size was reduced significantly ,without any data loss. And the added detail was no longer real problem for the renderer. So while the amount of raw data has increased significantly the performance is better. The UHD mesh v4 has more or less the same the performance that the HD Mesh v3 had. In my experience the UHD Mesh v4 of the olympic mountains is in fact better than the ortho versions of this area. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmb Posted March 1, 2019 Share Posted March 1, 2019 I would also stress there's a fundamental difference: While "Mesh" (like Pilot's/Holger mesh) in the FSX/P3D world strictly means height data, "Mesh" in the XP world (like the HD/UHD mesh mentioned above) includes hight data as well as landclass information. Kind regards, Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Clarke Posted March 2, 2019 Share Posted March 2, 2019 10 hours ago, pmb said: I would also stress there's a fundamental difference: While "Mesh" (like Pilot's/Holger mesh) in the FSX/P3D world strictly means height data, "Mesh" in the XP world (like the HD/UHD mesh mentioned above) includes hight data as well as landclass information. Kind regards, Michael Good point Michael. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craigeaglefire Posted March 2, 2019 Share Posted March 2, 2019 hi @jjaycee1 & @pmb, i am very impressed with your knowledge & am new to XP11 with lots of Orbx TEGB XP11 products... could you please advise me on a good strategy to deploy the alpilotx HD & UHD meshes you both mention - without conflicting with what Orbx has in the roadmap... i must say that i would very much like to avoid BitTorrent solutions - i have a good internet service... obviously, i will need to take care of my scenery.ini format... just deployed a 4TB 860 Evo to get the most out of XP11 & P3Dv4.5 (when it arrives)... btw, anywhere global is of interest to me & however, i like quality deployments which is why i am steering clear at the moment of generating my own OrthoXP tiles... XP11.31 Steam is my platform with ASXP & XVision (using Aerobask Epic E1000 G1000 to explore & very impressed with Short Final Design KLAX + have heaps of Aerosoft XP11 airports to deploy from recent sale)... your considered advice would be most appreciated... cheers, craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmb Posted March 2, 2019 Share Posted March 2, 2019 To begin with, I am all but an X-Plane expert. However, here are some points I learned elsewhere or tried myself. 1. I would suggest getting a good organizer. https://store.x-plane.org/xOrganizer-v2_p_943.html is sort of a standard. It went payware recently but is worth the money and works excellent. This allows you to switch on/off sceneries you actually use without hand-editing the scenery_packs.ini. The idea is similar to SimStarter for FSX/P3D. 2. If I use the ORBX TE sceneries, I deactivate all other stuff, including the HD/UHD mesh, as it's not required. The only additional addons are airports. 3. I rarely fly in the HD/UHD mesh. I start to get weary of the landclass-based sceneries. As a pure VFR pilot, I prefer photo sceneries. 4. Outside the GB, I use orthophotos. There are two ways to get them. You either can download them. Make a search under http://x-plane.org/, there are plenty available for the US and other places; ZL17 (which characterizes the resolution) or even ZL16 should be sufficient. Another option is to look under https://www.xpscenery.net/ (Initial free period for using, monthly small fee afterwards for usage.) 5. There are regions and countries (like Japan, where I like to fly) where there are no free Orthophotos available. In this case I create them myself using Otho4XP (https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/90469-ortho4xp/ freeware, look in Oscar's signature and use the most recent version). This needs a bit of learning, but isn't really hard either. And this is where Aipilot's HD/UHD mesh enters the game again. Ortho4XP needs either data from the default XP installation or (preferred) from the HD/UHD mesh to create overlays (roads and such). Thus, when flying, e.g., in Japan, I don't have the HD/UHD mesh itself active but the otho sceneries I created in advance, which however include (in a separate folder) Overlays created out of the HD/UHD mesh. 6. Orthophotos alone don't contain buildings and such. Thus, you should add some OSM-based scenery and landmarks, where available. Google will help here. As an example, X-Europe and the VFR landmarks which you can download from Simheaven (http://simheaven.com/) are good solutions for Europe. That's in short the way I am doing it. Others may differ. While the latter approaches work quite well, an integrated solution like TrueEarth can't be beaten, of course, as it all fits together just perfectly. And a final remark: A lot of these tools are freeware - they are well worth making a donation towards them. Kind regards, Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Clarke Posted March 2, 2019 Share Posted March 2, 2019 I agree as usual with Michael regarding the 2 meshes at airpilotx they are indeed of great value and I suggest installing them. They will reside right at the bottom of your scenery.ini and will not interfere with any mesh that Orbx applies to TEGB Central and South as the Orbx mesh is in a higher layer than the HD/UHD mesh. Note that TEGB North has no 10m mesh. @pmb I cannot find decent japan ortho either from Bing or GO2. Do you have a source? There are just too many colour variations or clouds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Longranger241 Posted March 2, 2019 Share Posted March 2, 2019 56 minutes ago, craigeaglefire said: could you please advise me on a good strategy to deploy the alpilotx HD & UHD meshes you both mention - without conflicting with what Orbx has in the roadmap... i must say that i would very much like to avoid BitTorrent solutions - i have a good internet service... Well the BitTorrents made a lot of sense right after the release and especially with the older/bigger versions. In first release of the HD Mesh the downloads crashed flightsim.com and even aerosoft had trouble when they first offered the files. But now they are no longer as big and the servers are faster. I think the complete UHD Mesh v4 is smaller than OrbX TrueEarth Great Britain North and the HD Mesh v4 is only slightly bigger than the default X-Plane installation. So it isn't to hard to load them down from Aerosoft for example. AlPilotX tried to describe the installation as careful as possible near the end of the main webpages like http://www.alpilotx.net/downloads/x-plane-11-uhd-mesh-scenery-v4/ for the UHD Mesh files. The zzz_UHD... and zzz_HD... directories that you have to create will have to be the last entries in your sceneries_packs.ini file, the UHD mesh above the HD mesh, then everything should work ok if have written the name of the "Earth nav data" folder correctly and took care that you unpacked the files correctly into the "Earth nav data" folder. If you don't see the entries in your log simply reread carefully through the direction of AlPilotX. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craigeaglefire Posted March 2, 2019 Share Posted March 2, 2019 Thank you all very much for this valuable information... Orbx TE XP is brilliant & is tempting just to wait for future releases... However, i will consider all your advice & venture further (cautiously) into XP11 Global... Cheers, craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmb Posted March 2, 2019 Share Posted March 2, 2019 46 minutes ago, jjaycee1 said: @pmb I cannot find decent japan ortho either from Bing or GO2. Do you have a source? There are just too many colour variations or clouds. I use Bing ... that's the least bad I could find so far... Kind regards, Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmb Posted March 2, 2019 Share Posted March 2, 2019 12 minutes ago, craigeaglefire said: Orbx TE XP is brilliant & is tempting just to wait for future releases... craig That's for sure. Even where I got good results using the named approach, it doesn't come close to True Earth in coherence and beauty. Notably there are only few regions where you get good landmarks and POIs. Aside the fact it's not everyone's cup of tea to tame Ortho4XP. Kind regards, Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fizzelle Posted March 3, 2019 Share Posted March 3, 2019 On 2/28/2019 at 7:40 PM, EspanaPete said: Hello, I have only just purchased X-Plane 11 and am interested in adding better scenery for both the UK and Spain. I understand (vaguely) that scenery from different suppliers falls into two camp, based on real photographs, or computer generated, probably wrong, but something like that. Also that you cannot mix the two????? I want ORBX for the UK which I understand needs a particular MESH and I also want to install Spanish scenery, which requires another Spanish Mesh. Will the two work alongside each other OK or will one mess the other one up? Sorry if this sounds really stupid. I'm a long-time visitor to the Canary Islands and, in my opinion, you can't beat the ultra-high scenery here: https://www.spainuhd.es/p/descarga.html Just click on the tiles you want. Based on the orthos, I've decided to try Gran Canaria in 2 weeks. Normally I go to Lanzarote and do my Cesar Manrique pilgrimages. Flying from Tenerife Sur across the sea to Gran Canaria, and seeing those high mountains rise up in front of you out of the mist, is enough to give anyone goosey-burmfs! If you need any help with anything, just holler. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gabe777 Posted August 16, 2019 Share Posted August 16, 2019 On 3/2/2019 at 11:31 AM, pmb said: To begin with, I am all but an X-Plane expert. However, here are some points I learned elsewhere or tried myself. 1. I would suggest getting a good organizer. https://store.x-plane.org/xOrganizer-v2_p_943.html is sort of a standard. It went payware recently but is worth the money and works excellent. This allows you to switch on/off sceneries you actually use without hand-editing the scenery_packs.ini. The idea is similar to SimStarter for FSX/P3D. 2. If I use the ORBX TE sceneries, I deactivate all other stuff, including the HD/UHD mesh, as it's not required. The only additional addons are airports. 3. I rarely fly in the HD/UHD mesh. I start to get weary of the landclass-based sceneries. As a pure VFR pilot, I prefer photo sceneries. 4. Outside the GB, I use orthophotos. There are two ways to get them. You either can download them. Make a search under http://x-plane.org/, there are plenty available for the US and other places; ZL17 (which characterizes the resolution) or even ZL16 should be sufficient. Another option is to look under https://www.xpscenery.net/ (Initial free period for using, monthly small fee afterwards for usage.) 5. There are regions and countries (like Japan, where I like to fly) where there are no free Orthophotos available. In this case I create them myself using Otho4XP (https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/90469-ortho4xp/ freeware, look in Oscar's signature and use the most recent version). This needs a bit of learning, but isn't really hard either. And this is where Aipilot's HD/UHD mesh enters the game again. Ortho4XP needs either data from the default XP installation or (preferred) from the HD/UHD mesh to create overlays (roads and such). Thus, when flying, e.g., in Japan, I don't have the HD/UHD mesh itself active but the otho sceneries I created in advance, which however include (in a separate folder) Overlays created out of the HD/UHD mesh. 6. Orthophotos alone don't contain buildings and such. Thus, you should add some OSM-based scenery and landmarks, where available. Google will help here. As an example, X-Europe and the VFR landmarks which you can download from Simheaven (http://simheaven.com/) are good solutions for Europe. That's in short the way I am doing it. Others may differ. While the latter approaches work quite well, an integrated solution like TrueEarth can't be beaten, of course, as it all fits together just perfectly. And a final remark: A lot of these tools are freeware - they are well worth making a donation towards them. Kind regards, Michael Hi. Found this very interesting. Thnx. One question. Is it OK to have more than one set of overlays in the scenery file ? Does XP just render the highest layer ? Reason I ask is that X Europe ovetlay needs to be active, even if using TrueEarth in case you fly outside the region. Also, can non UK ortho be installed, agsin, in case you fly across the channel etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Clarke Posted August 17, 2019 Share Posted August 17, 2019 @Gabe777 To answer your questions: 1. Yes you can have as many overlays as you want as long as they are related to the ortho files you also have. 2. X-Europe is a very good overlay for all the european countries you may have Ortho4XP imagery for and therefore no additional Overlay files are needed for the large amount of Europe as X-Europe seves that purpose. 3. Yes any non Uk ortho can remain or be installed with overlays (as a separate file). I have all of western Europe in Ortho4xp with X-Europe as the Overlay. I have TEGB North, South and Central but these are placed higher in the scenery_packs.ini so have no effect on the ortho files for Europe. You do need to make sure that your X-Europe folders are placed well below your TEGB files and above your Ortho files. If you have any queries regarding your ortho/TEGB set up i am more than willing to help you set up your scenery_packs.ini in the correct layering sequence to make sure you enjoy the full benefit of both the TEGB and your Orth4xp scenery. If you reply to this post make sure you address your response to @jjaycee1 as i may not return to this old topic otherwise, or you can PM me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Venema Posted August 19, 2019 Share Posted August 19, 2019 SpainUHD is free for a reason. It just uses the default XP11 overlay and has a lot of issues: Personally I think people are too used to flying over sub-par scenery if you call this "superb". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dadtom65 Posted August 19, 2019 Share Posted August 19, 2019 I hope JV Orbx will get round to doing Spain someday but feel it will be awhile yet. Derek. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biagio Cacciatore Posted March 4, 2020 Share Posted March 4, 2020 A few weeks ago, I installed digital X-Plane 11 on my new iMac with an intel i5 6 core CPU, 4GB VRam and 32 GB Ram memory. I updated X-plane default scenery by down loading UHD Mesh. I think I believe I understood the instructions. In Custom Scenery,, I created a new folder zzz-uhd-global-scenery4/, than a subfolder Earth nav data Then I dropped the West 1 and West 3 scenery folders +30-110 and +40-110 into Earth nav data. Opening the new UHD Scenery folders, I can see all the dsf files. I placed the zzz-uhd-global-scenery4/ folder at the very end inside the Custom Scenery folder. Then I ran X-plane and quit. Went to the log.text and deleted the scenery_packs.ini file and restarted X-plane. I still do not see the zzz-uhd-global-scenery4/ in the log text file. So, I am pretty sure the UHD Mesh is not loading. I noticed there is an Earth nav data sub-folder for the Global Airports folder. I assume I should not not place the zzz-uhd-global-scenery4/ here. I would appreciate any help you can offer. Thank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Clarke Posted March 4, 2020 Share Posted March 4, 2020 3 hours ago, Biagio Cacciatore said: A few weeks ago, I installed digital X-Plane 11 on my new iMac with an intel i5 6 core CPU, 4GB VRam and 32 GB Ram memory. I updated X-plane default scenery by down loading UHD Mesh. I think I believe I understood the instructions. In Custom Scenery,, I created a new folder zzz-uhd-global-scenery4/, than a subfolder Earth nav data Then I dropped the West 1 and West 3 scenery folders +30-110 and +40-110 into Earth nav data. Opening the new UHD Scenery folders, I can see all the dsf files. I placed the zzz-uhd-global-scenery4/ folder at the very end inside the Custom Scenery folder. Then I ran X-plane and quit. Went to the log.text and deleted the scenery_packs.ini file and restarted X-plane. I still do not see the zzz-uhd-global-scenery4/ in the log text file. So, I am pretty sure the UHD Mesh is not loading. I noticed there is an Earth nav data sub-folder for the Global Airports folder. I assume I should not not place the zzz-uhd-global-scenery4/ here. I would appreciate any help you can offer. Thank you. I am sorry but these forums are for support for customers with problems regarding Orbx addons in XP. It is not a general XP support forum. I would suggest that you post your issue at the XP forums here: https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/ However, I do not understand what the problem you are referring to is. With UHD mesh, you download the file and install it in XP/Custom Scenery. You make sure it is subsequently layered at the very bottom of the scenery_packs.ini. That is the end of the installation. You do not open it and then start adding files or data into the Earth Nav folder. For any further help post your problem on the XP forums at the link I have given. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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