Aerial imagery not working at ZBAD

[mottoth]

Hi,

I wanted to get my hands on Beijing Daxing, a huge miss in default MSFS.
First, aerial imagery is needed: it's used as a blueprint for laying down the airport, and it will correct bing imagery in the surroundings where many villages have been razed since.
This is the first sketch I made to myself before importing the imagery:

As I said, a larger than usual selection due to all these villages that are now history between Daxing and the military airfield on the west.

Due to the huge targeted area (11+ kms from west to east) I opted for ZL18 instead of the usual ZL19.
Then I split are aera in 2 since FS didn't went so well on the first compile attempt (it froze after compiling).
Here's the western part:

Western part loaded in the sim, so far so good (*):

Now the eastern part, here in QGIS:

This part compiles fine, but each time it's loaded in the sim it CTD. I tried to compile smaller eastern subsets with the same CTDs again and again. NB: I disabled western imagery just in case, as 2 cgl assets in the same area used to confuse the sim and make it stuck on loading. So the issue is not conflicting saixxx.cgl files. I also re-done the referenced eastern geotiff with different reference points in case QGIS screwed something on the first try (it took way much longer to generate XYZ tiles than usual), but again no luck.

I'm pretty sure I ruled out all errors I could have made: do you have any idea what could have gone wrong that I may have forgotten ?

Also, I'm starting to think that the blame could be on the sim itself. Take a look at this screenshot of the default terrain:

See that blurred texture east of the terminal (yes asobo have simple reditions of many missing airport terminals !) ? There's another one farther south, and both of them are in the troublesome area where I can't get my aerial stuff to work. Also notice that the bing imagery stops exactly at the same longitude than my working 'western' imagery, and that no imagery at all is displayed east of it.
May this be related to my problem ? Should I report this to zendesk ?

(*) EDIT: not so good actually, a closer look to it shows that the easternmost part of the imagery is not displayed in the sim, it stops at exactly 116.4100000°E.

 

[Kenny Chen]

Report to Zendesk, try turning off internet in sim may help but not a long term solution.

 

[mottoth]

I did a report to Zendesk, even pointing them to this thread with all the screenshots.

 

[Mazzar]

Did you worked it out? I am working on ZBAD too, I can do the compile and load the ariel into the sim (need to born at ZBAA, and use developview move to ZBAD), Looks from the air, everything fine, but if I zoom in to ground, I will got a CTD.

 

[mottoth]

I haven't tried since lest november, but if you still get that CTD now that means that asobo haven't fix the terrain yet.
IIRC the CTD happens when you zoom in close enough to trigger the displaying of aerial at LOD19 (lower LODs are OK while you are farther). It's bound to those bogged very blurred tiles in the red boxes (another one is just under the eastern part of the terminal).

If you compile an aerial only west of the green line (116.4100°E) it will be fine, but each time you try to add something farther east it somehow conflicts with those tiles and CTD.

Now that ADE for MSFS went public you may work in ADE without the need of that aerial, then you'll just have to throw in grass aprons to hide the default terrains between your runways. I leave it to you, good luck that that huge project.
Btw a payware project for ZBAD is being developped: https://fselite.net/news/star-atlas-announces-beijing-daxing-international-airport-for-msfs/

 

[rhumbaflappy]

Google cheats with it's aerial imagery. the level 20 is usually just a level 17 or 18 that is zoomed to a higher level. We can zoom it ourselves by making a geotiff, and tiling that at level 20.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

This ZBAD thing has bothered me for a while. The problem is that MSFS is unable to process the size of the package. The solution is to make a few smaller packages. I used QGIS to make the XYZ tiles. Before I made the Bing tiles using tiles2bing, I split the original "20" folder contents (numbered sub-folders) into 4 "20" folders in 4 separate packages.

My ZBAD.bat renames and distributes the tiles to the right folders:

@echo off
echo Example file to show usage for tile2bing quadkey translation

rem usage: tiles2bing [input-root-folder] /o [output-folder] /y TMS

"D:\Programs\MSFS_Stuff\tiles2bing\tiles2bing" "D:\MSFS_Projects\ZBAD\Source01" /o "D:\MSFS_Projects\ZBAD\ZBAD\PackageSources\CGL01\aerial_images" /y google

"D:\Programs\MSFS_Stuff\tiles2bing\tiles2bing" "D:\MSFS_Projects\ZBAD\Source02" /o "D:\MSFS_Projects\ZBAD\ZBAD\PackageSources\CGL02\aerial_images" /y google

"D:\Programs\MSFS_Stuff\tiles2bing\tiles2bing" "D:\MSFS_Projects\ZBAD\Source03" /o "D:\MSFS_Projects\ZBAD\ZBAD\PackageSources\CGL03\aerial_images" /y google

"D:\Programs\MSFS_Stuff\tiles2bing\tiles2bing" "D:\MSFS_Projects\ZBAD\Source04" /o "D:\MSFS_Projects\ZBAD\ZBAD\PackageSources\CGL04\aerial_images" /y google


pause
exit

Now to figure out why I get CTDs when flying over this aerial scenery.

 

[Kenny Chen]

This ZBAD thing has bothered me for a while. The problem is that MSFS is unable to process the size of the package. The solution is to make a few smaller packages. I used QGIS to make the XYZ tiles. Before I made the Bing tiles using tiles2bing, I split the original "20" folder contents (numbered sub-folders) into 4 "20" folders in 4 separate packages.

View attachment 69006

My ZBAD.bat renames and distributes the tiles to the right folders:

@echo off
echo Example file to show usage for tile2bing quadkey translation

rem usage: tiles2bing [input-root-folder] /o [output-folder] /y TMS

"D:\Programs\MSFS_Stuff\tiles2bing\tiles2bing" "D:\MSFS_Projects\ZBAD\Source01" /o "D:\MSFS_Projects\ZBAD\ZBAD\PackageSources\CGL01\aerial_images" /y google

"D:\Programs\MSFS_Stuff\tiles2bing\tiles2bing" "D:\MSFS_Projects\ZBAD\Source02" /o "D:\MSFS_Projects\ZBAD\ZBAD\PackageSources\CGL02\aerial_images" /y google

"D:\Programs\MSFS_Stuff\tiles2bing\tiles2bing" "D:\MSFS_Projects\ZBAD\Source03" /o "D:\MSFS_Projects\ZBAD\ZBAD\PackageSources\CGL03\aerial_images" /y google

"D:\Programs\MSFS_Stuff\tiles2bing\tiles2bing" "D:\MSFS_Projects\ZBAD\Source04" /o "D:\MSFS_Projects\ZBAD\ZBAD\PackageSources\CGL04\aerial_images" /y google


pause
exit

View attachment 69007

View attachment 69008

View attachment 69009

Now to figure out why I get CTDs when flying over this aerial scenery.

Do you mean you can get close to ground without CTD?

 

[mottoth]

Now to figure out why I get CTDs when flying over this aerial scenery.

Already split the aerial in 2 to avoid the compiler to choke. This was working. Btw zeenyoo is compiling a much smaller area (excluding the mil airport on the west side) which is doing fine in only one piece.

As I already pointed the CTD probably comes from those bogged blurred tiles, as hinted by tile debug in developper mode:

 

[rhumbaflappy]

I compiled level 20 which might be too much for that large area. I did do a computer 'sfc /scannow' and it did find system errors, but did not stop the CTD (which goes away when I remove the ZBAD aerial).

 

[rhumbaflappy]

Well I did learn a few things. It's true that it matters little what resolution you use for tiles, as level 20 is what the compiler will create. Also, there is some kind of bug near ZBAD that causes a crash when using an aerial addon. It might just be those blurry images. Perhaps a failed tile in the streaming causes the problem. This means an airport can be created, but no aerial used. perhaps aprons can do the job?

 

[mottoth]

This means an airport can be created, but no aerial used. perhaps aprons can do the job?

Now that ADE for MSFS is available this may be possible. I haven't tested it yet, but if it's possible to import aerial imagery as background image in ADE as it used to be for older versions, then it's a green light. It will indeed requires more apron work to cover stuff between the 'real aprons'.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

Yes, you can import imagery. But ADE for MSFS is a 32-bit program, so you may need multiple images over sessions or lower resolution to keep ADE within memory limits. But it can be done. Also, ADE doesn't yet allow import of the airport XML file... it just reads BGLS from MSFS. So working back and forth between ADE and the DEV Mode is a problem.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

I can move the imagery (by using a different .TFW file) to a different area of the world and it compiles fine... but I discover if the compilation extends over more than one SAI file, then the project should be split into separate packages so there is one SAI to each package. Otherwise, not all the imagery will display. Doing this, I find the size of the aerial imagery seems not to matter. I get no CTDs. So I see this as another bug in MSFS aerial imagery.

 

[Mazzar]

It works，I compile without the blurred area，no CTD.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

If you go into the MSFS Options | data and turn off the online streaming imagery, you can use the Aerial Imagery. That allows you to use the imagery as a background for the Dev Mode to build the airport in-sim.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/...rashes-with-add-on-airports-or-scenery/364649

Apparently, the Bing streaming data now crashes the sim at any addon airport using CGL aerial imagery. Oddly, the moderator closed the thread. If you complain loud enough, the Asobo solution is to silence you. 👎

 

[toprob]

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/...rashes-with-add-on-airports-or-scenery/364649

Apparently, the Bing streaming data now crashes the sim at any addon airport using CGL aerial imagery. Oddly, the moderator closed the thread. If you complain loud enough, the Asobo solution is to silence you. 👎

I didn't find it odd at all, I followed that thread from the beginning, and I would have closed it well before it approached 500 posts. Most were just repeating 'yes, disabling bing worked for me' or 'crashes at XXXX', and a lot of it was misinformation, regarding what caused the problem and how to 'fix' it. The post I liked best was the one which basically said 'well, I didn't read any of the posts so far, but it is obviously caused by the scenery\global\scenery\Modellib problem.' (Not verbatim, I know...)
This particular thread got me thinking about how careful we need to be when offering advice. I know it's great to be able to help, but saying 'this is what to do' when offering a solution can make a mess for some people. Here at FSDeveloper the majority of us have a reasonable knowledge of FS, and by definition (as FS developers) we are more likely to know whether an 'expert' telling us how to do something is really helping. But at the MSFS forum, I would think that there are thousands of people without major tech skills, just looking for help. All those posts about removing CGL files were presented as a valid solution, but it is very clear that most users would just end up with a mess if they followed this advice.
The other thing which annoys me (while I'm on a roll...) is the number of posts which repeat the 'fact' that we all need to remove everything from our Community folder before updating the sim. This just doesn't make any sense, but it had become a defacto solution for everything.
So rather than 'this is what you should do', we should try something like 'this is what works for me, and here are the reasons why. However it won't work in all circumstances, so try this only if you understand my solution, and are prepared to handle the consequences if you end up in a mess.'
By the way, leaving a thread with 483 posts is not silencing anyone.
Sorry, wrong place/time, but I needed to get this off my chest.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

Closing the thread did not solve the problem... which seems to have gotten worse over time. So I'll disagree about that. Regarding aerial imagery, the sim is broken, and Asobo apparently has gotten the message (483 times).

 

[toprob]

This is what works for me -- I submitted a bug report to Zendesk. MS and Asobo have made it pretty clear that this is the way to report any bug, rather than via what is effectively just a discussion forum. Ok, maybe they haven't made it as clear as they should, but that's another story.