MSFS [GUIDE] How to create custom aerial scenery

[PhobosDesigns]

That makes me so sad. I'm trying to see if there's a zendesk request to give us options to exclude photogrammetry at the moment. What a bummer.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

Are you using multiple small exclusion polygons? That might not work, as the TIN photogrammetry uses multiple instances, and their origin points may be somewhat removed from your exclusions. Generally, one huge exclusion polygon does the trick.

 

[PhobosDesigns]

Are you using multiple small exclusion polygons? That might not work, as the TIN photogrammetry uses multiple instances, and their origin points may be somewhat removed from your exclusions. Generally, one huge exclusion polygon does the trick.

I'll give that a try, but my assumption was that it was not TIN data that was causing the issue due to

• This post saying CGL can overlay TIN as of SU9
• When I turn off Photogrammetry, all of my CGL suddenly shows up

So it seems that photogrammetry in this area around KBDU is limiting my CGL space to a very small area around the airport.

Was hoping someone had found a way around this, but it essentially looks like there's no solution?

 

[rhumbaflappy]

This worked for me;

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<FSData version="9.0">
    <Polygon altitude="0.00000000000000">
        <Attribute name="UniqueGUID" guid="{359C73E8-06BE-4FB2-ABCB-EC942F7761D0}" type="GUID" value="{D4B4A06A-9C6E-439C-B1DF-A5D64ED9DCA3}"/>
        <Attribute name="FlattenFalloff" guid="{5548FDB5-2267-4328-8E6F-FD0A45ADEC8F}" type="FLOAT32" value="0.000000"/>
        <Attribute name="LandClassRemap" guid="{0A685EB0-0E01-44FE-B9EF-BFFFBC968ADE}" type="UINT8" value="2"/>
        <Attribute name="ExcludeTIN" guid="{18B58CBF-AE02-4A19-8AA9-3809E8E73400}" type="UINT8" value="1"/>
        <Attribute name="Layer" guid="{9E2B4C3E-7D84-453F-9DCC-B6498FF46703}" type="UINT32" value="1"/>
        <Attribute name="WaterType" guid="{3F8514F8-FAA8-4B94-AB7F-DC2078A4B888}" type="UINT32" value="0"/>
        <Attribute name="TreeBrightnessFactor" guid="{63040596-0B21-48FD-8B5F-A9E84A5B7BC9}" type="UINT32" value="124"/>
        <Vertex lat="40.02498263046691" lon="-105.32496835251642"/>
        <Vertex lat="39.94294359325389" lon="-105.25535482798192"/>
        <Vertex lat="39.98196705754882" lon="-105.15497372092349"/>
        <Vertex lat="40.08408201002807" lon="-105.16270017312637"/>
        <Vertex lat="40.09617432449672" lon="-105.28696078313470"/>
    </Polygon>
    <Airport groupIndex="1" groupID="1" groupGenerated="FALSE" state="Colorado" city="Boulder" name="Boulder Muni" ident="KBDU" lat="40.03936674445870" lon="-105.22608876228300" alt="1609.95299999999997" magvar="348.000000" trafficScalar="1.000000" airportTestRadius="10000.00000000000000" applyFlatten="FALSE" isOnTIN="FALSE">
        <Aprons/>
        <PaintedElements/>
        <ApronEdgeLights/>
    </Airport>
</FSData>

 

[PhobosDesigns]

This worked for me;

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<FSData version="9.0">
    <Polygon altitude="0.00000000000000">
        <Attribute name="UniqueGUID" guid="{359C73E8-06BE-4FB2-ABCB-EC942F7761D0}" type="GUID" value="{D4B4A06A-9C6E-439C-B1DF-A5D64ED9DCA3}"/>
        <Attribute name="FlattenFalloff" guid="{5548FDB5-2267-4328-8E6F-FD0A45ADEC8F}" type="FLOAT32" value="0.000000"/>
        <Attribute name="LandClassRemap" guid="{0A685EB0-0E01-44FE-B9EF-BFFFBC968ADE}" type="UINT8" value="2"/>
        <Attribute name="ExcludeTIN" guid="{18B58CBF-AE02-4A19-8AA9-3809E8E73400}" type="UINT8" value="1"/>
        <Attribute name="Layer" guid="{9E2B4C3E-7D84-453F-9DCC-B6498FF46703}" type="UINT32" value="1"/>
        <Attribute name="WaterType" guid="{3F8514F8-FAA8-4B94-AB7F-DC2078A4B888}" type="UINT32" value="0"/>
        <Attribute name="TreeBrightnessFactor" guid="{63040596-0B21-48FD-8B5F-A9E84A5B7BC9}" type="UINT32" value="124"/>
        <Vertex lat="40.02498263046691" lon="-105.32496835251642"/>
        <Vertex lat="39.94294359325389" lon="-105.25535482798192"/>
        <Vertex lat="39.98196705754882" lon="-105.15497372092349"/>
        <Vertex lat="40.08408201002807" lon="-105.16270017312637"/>
        <Vertex lat="40.09617432449672" lon="-105.28696078313470"/>
    </Polygon>
    <Airport groupIndex="1" groupID="1" groupGenerated="FALSE" state="Colorado" city="Boulder" name="Boulder Muni" ident="KBDU" lat="40.03936674445870" lon="-105.22608876228300" alt="1609.95299999999997" magvar="348.000000" trafficScalar="1.000000" airportTestRadius="10000.00000000000000" applyFlatten="FALSE" isOnTIN="FALSE">
        <Aprons/>
        <PaintedElements/>
        <ApronEdgeLights/>
    </Airport>
</FSData>

View attachment 85498

Holy cow Dick you figured it out - so there must be something going on with the TIN data that's preventing the CGL, even though Asobo said the TIN data shouldn't matter?

I'll be looking into this tonight - my appreciation, seriously... this has been a multi-week struggle for me.

 

[PhobosDesigns]

Welp that was it... one gigantic polygon simply with "Exclude TIN" and it works. No clue why Dev Support said TIN no longer affects CGL as that's obviously not the case. Seems that you can forcedraw the automated buildings as well and it'll still work... bonkers.

Thank you - I owe you a digital beer.

 

[Shaun]

Is there any way to have auto LOD/zoom like the resample had?

I have 60cm/pix ortho that I can't get to show up over the really old but higher res streamed photogrammetry which is lod/zoom 19.

the reample bgl always allowed higher priority.

 

[FoxtrotScenery]

I think the only way to do this is to sample your data at a higher resolution maybe? So export the xyz tiles at zoom level 19 despite it not being that high a resolution

 

[rhumbaflappy]

What I do is to use QGIS to make a GeoTiff of the imagery. I can then create a batchfile to automate the processing of the GeoTiff to a project output.
C59_Aerial.zip

Just double-click on CompileGeotiff.bat and wait for it to finish. The GeoTiff image appears in a field east of C59. I made minimum 13 and maximum as 20.

rmdir .\TestTiles /s /q
rmdir .\Packages /s /q
rmdir .\PackagesMetadata /s /q
rmdir .\PackageSources /s /q
rmdir .\_PackageInt /s /q

tools\GTiff2Tiles\GTiff2Tiles.Console.exe --input art\Hello.tif --output TestTiles --minz 13 --maxz 20 --tms FALSE -c mercator

tools\tiles2bing.exe TestTiles /o PackageSources\CGL\aerial_images /y google

xcopy "tools\CGLBuilderConfig.xml" "PackageSources\CGL\"

tools\fspackagetool.exe C59AerialProject.xml

pause

The batchfile uses GTiff2Tiles to make the Google tiles, and tiles2bing to make those tiles compatible with MSFS. The tools are included in the link. Just edit the batchfile and your project's XML to get your aerial from a geotiff.

 

[Shaun]

Thanks, but if I use QGIS to export my 60cm/pix geotiff as level 20, it's 44000 tiles and the file will be over 4gb. It's a huge area, and doesn't need to be any more than 60cm/pix.
I can exclude TIN and it gets rid of half of the older ortho, but not all.

As shown the red ortho is the level 19, which disappears once sufficiently far away. I can't exclude all of it with the no TIN poly. Only some for some reason.

 

[Shaun]

Here is it with the No TIN poly removed. It is an absolute mess. If I could just use my BGL from P3D and AUTO LOT it, it'd be fine. I can't fix this without making 400mb of tiles compile to LOD 19 and becoming 4.5gb!?
The area highlighted is my Layer 19 ortho, which does overlay the red ortho.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

If you want to overlay an area with LOD19 or 20, each tile is still 256x256. If your area is huge, then the compiled package will be huge. There isn't any way around that. That's why Asobo came up with the idea to stream tiles, rather than have the whole world as a compiled package.

 

[Shaun]

Indeed, but the streamed ortho at LOD 19 is very old and red looking, not having the ability to override it with native LOD 18 (as is the most recent) without forcing upscaling doesn't make sense.

 

[Shaun]

Is it necessary to add LOD 13 min in addition to LOD 19. even on a small area, MSFS just hangs.
With only the LOD 19, it's over in a minute or so. All the resultant tiles are added to one folder in CGL.

The SDK literally has one line on CGL creation.

Also will it make a difference if I remove all empty/black tiles? Or are these simply not compiled into the package?

 

[rhumbaflappy]

I routinely remove the black tiles, as they are completely transparent. You can make the Min and Max as 19. I had a problem with far distance viewing in a project, and setting the min to 13 resolved that. But you might not need 13-18.

I use Paint.net to edit the geotiff, if it needs work. On export as tif, it retains the geotiff characteristics. I think Gimp also can also save geotiff.

 

[jgarnold]

Try and try again but I could not get preview in Ortho4XP to do anything.

Selected the tile in 'world' and a yellow box is draw around the tile area, double click on it, click on the 'multicoloured ZL' icon and ensure Source is set to OSM and Zoom level is set t0 13, click on Preview and waited for more than 2 minutes and nothing appeared.


[added later]
SOLVED but so very annoying. I watched a video tutorial explaining using Ortho4XP (with X-Plane but that isn't important here).
The author of the video stated the following which is NOT in the PDF tutorial-
When selecting the area, the world map, press Shift left mouse click (and then double mouse click) however I am not sure if this matters BUT
In the 'preview>custom zoom levels (after clicking on the multicoloured ZL icon, ENSURE that SOURCE is set to the same as was selected in the 'world view'. Ortho4XP defaults to different sources.
How annoying that this ion not covered in the tutorial or is the reader expected to check this?
Maybe the tutorial could be improved.

 

[spatialpro]

I routinely remove the black tiles, as they are completely transparent. You can make the Min and Max as 19. I had a problem with far distance viewing in a project, and setting the min to 13 resolved that. But you might not need 13-18.

Is there a way to automate their removal?

 

[rhumbaflappy]

I just use windows explorer. Sort by size, view as large icons. Make a good guess as to where the black tiles end, then shift-select and delete. Double check the end result in the sim.