I'm glad, dude. It's important that we all have super sexy looking sims to fly around in :)

I think i understand what you are saying. You are meaning that it automatically creates the shortcuts by using the method you stated? Or is this where it puts the finished tiles? If so, awesome tip! I never worked that out before :P Also, i'm glad that you are back on the Ortho4XP wagon :)

It creates the shortcuts for you. It doesn't place the tiles there, so no copy / wait time. :) You can also use it judiciously to turn off scenery that you're not using which can reduce loading times, but I've found that the wait doesn't bother me too much. I start flight planning while waiting. ;) Thanks again @AliOnGames!

Dude, that is an amazing tip. The ability to just turn off a tile is something I already have through using xOrganiser, but if I can do it just by doing what you said through Ortho4XP... THAT IS AWESOME! Thanks for sharing that shiny nugget of knowledge. Also, load times... you learn to love them, am i right? :P

You're welcome. I'm glad it helped. Shortcuts are certainly a great time saver :)

You're very welcome. I'm glad you are getting it all sorted :) I'm not sure I would call it a serious. I have two of the advanced videos and a w2xp tutorial... but i'm out of ideas as to what else to do that is ortho related. I kind of assume that because i know stuff, everyone does so it makes it hard to know what information would be useful to people :P If you have any other suggestions or information needs, let me know and I can probably put a video together for it :)

Thanks for yr quick response .....well You ve gone quite deep so ...I would not know what to suggest else....but I have one thing I was puzzled by....I understand the new version of Ortho4XP now automatically finds heightmaps to get data from whereas earliers in versions you had to create from height maps first....now here comes my pr

question I created now a great deal of Europe in photoscenery with all X plane 11 overlays working ....but when I started creating overlays for Hawaii islands ,all of a sudden I get a constant message " no file to sniff from" meanwhile I follow the same path to the global scenery folder" I don t get it why it suddenly didn t work anymore, do you have any suggestions? thanks again

It is possible that there isn't any OSM data... at least any that XP11 has. there are some parts of the world that don't have much in the way of coverage. OSM is an open platform and it's people who create the database that allows scenery like in XP11. I would recommend checking out my w2xp tutorial. It tells you where you can find first hand data from an OSM source and how to obtain the data to create your own overlay. It's how I make my own and I've never looked back at any others out there. It's worth learning for sure so that you don't have to rely on potentially incomplete/out of date overlay asset placement.

There's always two tiles that are totally white for me when i use BING. They cover the areas that you are mentioning. I just use Arc as the ortho source. It's not perfect, but it's orthophoto.

Also, sorry for the late reply. I've been dealing with some stuff.

Thanks Ali I will give it a whirl

Do you mean you use ARC for the north of Scotland H&Is

Mike Greenaway nope, just for the inverness tile and one next to it. I forget which one. Everything else is bing for my scenery in the UK.

I'm glad the video helped :) Shortcuts for me have saved so much time!

Flip Fluitkachel but... as I mentioned in this video... not everyone has their xplane sim installed on a HUGE hard drive. So for those who are making the whole world, this is not at all a practical solution. however, you are right... for those who do want their tiles on the same hdd as their sim. this is something that was also covered in the basics video though. as I said in this video... if you haven't seen it, it would be wise to watch it and this advanced video doesn't cover the building and placing of the actual finished tile for it to be run.

Thanks , but i just meant ... that ortho4xp can save the tile where ever you want , people just need to direct it to the download folder they want . people can select this at the ' custom build-dir ' box . so if you want them in an other drive , select it there . But you are right , if you put them on an other drive then it is wise to just make shortcut's !

I haven't even gotten round to nailing the removal of the roads myself so all the best with that. I'm glad you enjoyed the video :)

It's been a busy couple of days.. I've nailed the custom zoom level option.. I also figured out how to remove the roads but it creates more problems than it's worth, so I'm just leaving it for now. Thanks again for the tips.

I personally like the roads from xplane. I don't like the idea of coming down low when the roads are absent and see the sharp vehicle assets on a blurry road from the orthophoto lol

It also removes the street lights and the 3d bridge models are either white or black. I also played around with changing the colours of the roads to blend into the Ortho tiles but there is a 'problem' with how the junction 'plug' texture is used which messes it up.

Thanks very much. I'm glad it was of some help to you.

You will indeed need to delete the tile that you have just built, yes. But, when you build it again, you will still have the orthophotos that you downloaded before on your HDD and so when you come to download different ZL for different areas the application will only download the extra tile photos that it doesn't already have. So, if you for example built you original tile in ZL 17 and you decided "hey, i want ZL 18 around the airport, and ZL 16 in the wilderness"... you would just delete your old tile, sort out your ZL zones in ortho4xp, rebuild and you will find that ortho4xp will only download the photos for the ZL16 and ZL18 areas as the ZL17 photos will just be reused where applicable. As for your other question about the traffic, I used a problem called World2XP. I actually have a tutorial on it on my channel.

FriendlyFentonVeasey I’m actually watching that tutorial now!! Thanks for the reply. So basically don’t delete the whole folder, just hit “delete tile,” choose my custom ZL, and then proceed right to step 3: build tile? Thanks again so much for this tutorial!

@@desr2395 yeah, that's basically it. :) I might be making a tutorial for newer version of ortho4xp soon too... When I find a moment to do it. :P Just a note... You will have to repeat steps 1 and 2 as you rebuild your tile. You can't skip those steps, but they will be done faster. I personally rebuild meshes and OSM data each time but everyone is different.

I have a w2xp tutorial on my channel too. You might want to look that one up.

I'm glad you liked the tutorial and it was of some use to you. I will try and answer those question in order. 1. I forget which version, but assuming you have the latest version of ortho4xp this should be an automatic process. It was never always a features. There is also the possibility that it isn't able to get it automatically for your area... for whatever reason. In that case, i would just download it manually. I gotta say though i have never had a problem with that feature. 2) I never touch that window. I did once... i broke something. Never again :P 3) If you are using ortho for water, I wouldn't bother. I always have my water ratio at 1.0. that means full water, no ortho. And i never use ortho for the sea. It's really jarring to look at i find. If you have issues know who to work out your ratio, you can find a breakdown of the main tile building functions in my BASICS video. It's a bit older, using an older version... but what you are looking for works in exactly the same way and the information i give in that video is still valid in relation to the water ratio bit... as well as a lot of other bits. I hope that helps in some way :)

Thanks for the quick reply! I already watched your basic tutorials but I think I'll watch them again. Lots and lots to take in and learn but great fun at the same time ☺️

Nailed it. I would add the little detail of making sure the base ZL (on the main config screen) is the same as it was when you first built the tile, and then add your custom zoom levels. But that is pretty much everything. One thing I should mention is that you can't (as far as I am aware) do custom zoom levels of a batch build. The batch build take the config from the main screen and will only do the base ZL. this is good of course for the initial tile builds before you go back over them again with the Custom ZL's individually.

Ahhhh.. Important.. So 1st time batch build then build manually for custom ZL 1. Purge osm data 2. Build vector data 3. Build Base mesh 4. Build masks 5. Build tile.

Nikolaj Andersen that'll do it :)

... and all you guys who watch these tutorials learn a lot... hopefully. :P

Custom overlays are great for scenery if only for the reason of ensuring your get up to date OSM data into your sim. Houses, roads, bridges... all that lovely stuff look super nice if it's in the right place and so building your own is a good idea with tools like w2xp. I have a tutorial for that in my channel also if you want to know how to use it and where to get the relevant information in a step by step format. as for your second question, there isn't really a different as long as your ortho4xp is looking in the right folder. This is in the more complex global settings somewhere, i forget off of the top of my head as to where. But you point to a directory which contains overlay information (in the same way you would if you only wanted it for 1 tile) and it will read for the relevant tile when going through the batch. your 3rd question is answered in my basics tutorial as it's a lot to write. This is why i said that you should watch that first. In that video i detail where your heightmaps data is stored for ortho4xp to read it. But, if you don't download your heightmap files manually, then the ortho4xp should just download the files automatically from viewfinderpanoramic.

Sounds like a good plan. I personally haven't had any issues with custom ZL's in ortho4xp since doing it the way I explained in this video. I know there are many who aren't so lucky though and I can't figure out why that would be. Enjoy your deep dive into ortho4xp. Watch out... once it bites you, you won't leave your seat for hours cos of the need to tinker :P

Thanks , no problem i already spend more then 60 hours on it :-) but i did it on my main pc , in a few days i will do it on my second pc , so if something goes wrong there , it doesn't matter . this way i can test all i want :-)

Well, PORT 80 is your internet connection, or the server's. One of the two. Either way, there is a connection issues which is preventing you from getting the requested information (your orthos) from the server. It happens. Google is the worst for it as it blacklists people for about 24 hours when they download a lot of data from their map service. Arconline could have a similar thing. ARC itself is a subscription service for the majority of it's tools so I would be surprised. I personally don't use ARC, or at least haven't so far, for any of my scenery, except one tile in the UK, because BING let me down a bit. But, I could be wrong here. They could genuinely be having server issues.

Batch files do not do custom ZLs for tiles. If you want custom ZL for airports, you need to do the tiles that include the areas that you want to have as custom individually. Then just do the rest of the tiles in batch mode.

Yeh, living with it is about the only option. You would need to edit the ortho photos themselves. A lot of people who can do it through photoshop with some pretty good results.

Ah, yeh. I came across this issue. Sadly, there isn't really much that can be done about it as it's down to the photos that were taking from space. No all of them are perfect you see. It is possible to doctor it on Photoshop, but that's one hell of a job. I'm pretty good with Photoshop but I shudder to think about that kind of challenge. Sometime orthophotos are a mish mash of different photos taken from satellites, and then the best parts crammed together to make the complete picture. It sucks, i know.

If you mean that you elevation is all flat, that sometimes happens when you let ortho4xp download the heightmap file itself. I personally download them manually from viewfinderpanorama's website and then get ortho4xp to use those files instead. I don't trust the auto download version so much.

Not really. The Earth map thingy in the ortho4xp app takes information from the TILES folder within the app itself. If you don't have tiles there, they won't show up on the map. OR.... you could maybe use shortcut folders of the previous tiles you made and put them in the ortho4xp on the new HDD? That is a complete shot in the dark as I haven't really needed to deal with this issue.

Removing all of the trees is quite easy. Just don't make an overlay using ortho4xp. Instead, use World2Xplane and edit a config to eliminate trees from the overlay. I have a tutorial on that btw. If you want to edit colour, i would always say photoshop. But an easier option would be to choose a different map source to see if there is a better provider for the area that you are trying to create.

The thing is that I want trees where they belong but not over a race track....

You need to download the newest version of the app. That being 1.20b.... at least it was the last time i checked. Also, if you are new to this, i would highly recommend watching the BASICS tutorial as there is a lot in there that is not covered in this tutorial.

Placing the airport above the scenery for Ortho4XP in your .ini should do that for you as the airport will have a higher priority when the sim loads. All airports should be close to the top of the .ini anyway.

AliOnGames thought it might just be that, thank you! Great tutorials btw

You create the base tile, then delete it... but only the tile and not the orthophotos (which are in a different folder in Ortho4XP's installation.) Then rebuild the tile in the main page, using your custom ZL's, and all should be well when you put it into you sim. Hope that helps :)

AliOnGames thanks mate that makes sense much appreciated

Yes it can. If you haven't already, please watch the basics tutorials as it has information and links on where to get more accurate heightmap information and how to use it for more realistic land altitudes in your sim. :)

FANTASTIC!!! I have decided to switch to x-Plane at the end of the month and in the meantime, I am ticking off a few checkboxes :0. Many thanks.

I have no idea. I tend to test it on the maps website for the provider. So, i would go to bing maps (for example), look at where i want to get scenery for... and then zoom in as far as I can. If it start to get really very pixely, i can safely assume that the area doesn't have very high ZL ortho available at this time.

I am pretty sure that BI has zoom 19 ! i'm also working / flying around the canary islands and i have all these tiles at zoom level 19 ( it's 11 tiles for the canary islands , and around 100 GB total )

I have a TIP for you (and others) on www.spainuhd.es/ they have (untill now) 2 amazing and beautiful Canary airports all in zoom 19 !!! 1. GCGM ( La Gomera ) 2. GCHI ( El Hierro ) Just download these 2 airports or look for more BUT don't download the tiles ! They look very nice but the Ortho4xp tiles @ zoom level 19 and bing ( BI ) looks even better !!! I think ( in the future ) they will make all of the Canary airports @ Z19 , so check this www.spainuhd.es/ website once a week ! Cheers ! Btw , if your doing the Canary islands like me , you should also do Madeira ( LPMA ) it's nice flying around these islands !

Oh ... and here is also a VERY VERY nice airport for the canary islands , Gran canaria ( GCLP ) .... forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/35516-gclp-gran-canaria-canarias-spain/ Here you will find more canary airports like Tenerife south and Tenerife north ( GCTS and GCXO ) or Lanzarote ( GCRR ) or Fuerteventura ( GCFV ) or La Palma ( GCLA ) and also Madeira ( LPMA )

Wow ! very nice indeed ! Thank you !

I don't think I quite understand your question. Are you wanting to just do a small part of a tile or something? Could you reword?

AliOnGames normally when you do the ortho4 you get the entire island but, can you get the photoscenery to extend out into the sea?

Sadly not, because Xplane doesn't look for archived/compressed files when loading the scenery. It looks for .dds files and the files related to that .dds.

You can turn down the settings in your sim, in the Render settings. There is a section in there for trees :)

Sadly, no. You cannot just build tweak an existing tile. You need to delete the old tile and rebuild it. If you don't... ortho4xp will change nothing as the .dds files that it creates have the same filenames and as a result will just be skipped. I personally don't delete my orthophoto folder because THIS is something that can just be used over and over again. They may take up some space but I would recommend never deleting any orthophoto until you know that you have your tile the way you want it. That way, when you come to rebuild and there are sections of the orthophotos that aren't changing, they can just be reused, saving time on downloading. In your case, keep what you already have (unless you deleted it already) and then ortho4xp will download ONLY the orthophotos needed for your ZL18 and 19 sections. It saves a good deal of time. Then, once you have built your tile and you are happy with it... delete your orthophotos as you will not need them again and you can free up some space. As I said, I personally never delete my orthophotos but each to their own.

Thank you for your reply sir much appreciated for your guide.

As stated in the video... you CANNOT batch build and use custom zoom level at the same time. If you are using Customer ZLs you must do the tiles one by one using the main screen of the application.

Alright thanks :)

The only problem im struggling with is when i want to make a tile for a place i want, and the airport is close to be outside that tile. so i have to make 2 tiles for that. And doing custom zl level for that will be hard.

That's what I would do. I'm sure, from what you have said, what might have gone wrong. Just a fresh install is always a good idea. Just copy over what you need from the old install after you have done that and you should be ready to go :)

Thanks Ali, do I need to reinsatll Python or should be ok as is?

not at all. In fact, python isn't even required since version 1.18. At long as you run the .exe in the bin folder, it will work right out of the box. :)

You know what, I tried running it again this morning with the original install and its working. The difference I think maybe that I am running the application direct from BIN vs a shortcut I created??? Anyway, thanks for the responses. Does the old manual apply or is there an updated one. I notice in the new download which I have not installed that the manual says vs 1.11. There must be a new one??:?

Flip Fluitkachel because for xplane 10, which is what I was using when I made this.... the osm data is very much out of date, and wasnt really accurate when it was new. I use w2xp myself, but a lot of people use hdv3 scenery and its more accessible to most people.

Flip Fluitkachel also, I just realised that this is the advanced video where I didnt actually do an overlay :P but, I did cover it in the "basics" video. if you are at all interested in getting more full osm coverage for roads and houses and stuff, I do have a w2xp tutorial as well :)

No idea... i haven't touched that area yet. I would just try different sources and spend the time to see what looks best. You will thank yourself later :)

Jonfrederick Lilley I have never tried decimal numbers personally, but the higher the number is, the wider the mask. Mask = transition from land to xplane sea at coastlines and inland (if you check the inland mask box). If memory serves, 1 = 10m. So, 4 would be 40m, and 0.1 would be 1m... assuming decimal values here actually work. Make sense?

Ohhhh, I have been doing 0.5 because I thought that meant that the "water_transition" is 0.5 water and 0.5 orthophotos, therefore 1 would be only water. Thanks for clearing things up :) - except I now need to redo Europe and western America... kek

Maybe it is so like you said that some providers doesn't deliver zoom level 18 or 19 , But how do we know which provider delivers zoom 18 or even 19 ? i always use BI . but still this doesn't add up for my problem , like you can see in postimg.org/image/h9ykl2lur/ i used zoom 16 , 17 , 18 and 19 , but none off those shows , just the basic zoom level . i think that when have build custom zoomlevels ( like i did on that photo ) i should see it the moment i go back in ortho4xp to that tile , or not ?

Leave this with me. I haven't had a chance to get to my PC much over the past few days. Tomorrow or Wednesday I shall get round to building this tile the way you are trying to and I'll see what happens. I don't think I have built that one yet anyway so I might as well get it done :P

i will cross my fingers for you :-)

Hi there. I would recommend that you watch the ORTHO4XP basics video that I made. It will answer that question for you.

I saw it! But it's an old version of Ortho4xp. Now it's different and I've tried everything. But I can not get out of Xplane water. Do you have any link to a tutorial?

Sorry my english!

Mauro Marquet what version are you using?

I have the 1.2, the last one. I put the water option in 1 to be able to use only the xplane water. But nothing!! The water stil been the ortho.

Hey, glad you liked the video. Sadly, there is no function to zoom in on the preview map. However, if you set the preview to ZL13, you will get it as big as you are able to in preview. What I like to do is have bing or google maps open as well as just used that at more of a zoomed in level. That way I can find landmarks or something in the area that I was to cover with a custom zoom level a little clearer and perhaps try to find them on the Ortho4xp preview. It's not often that I find this totally necessary as I usually use roads/coastlines as my boundaries and they can quite easily be seen from the preview at ZL13. I hope that helps dude. Hopefully a zoom function will be added, but at the same time it would look super pixely.

Glad that you are so quick to reply, I found that there is no such zoom function. I am doing LOWS this airport, only the box selected. Hope to bring us more good video, Thank you.

I will do my best. My plan with the channel is to do a variety of simulations stuff. A lot of Xplane of course but other sims too, including space sims. Anything that requires a "hands-on" approach. As always, video requests are always taken on board (hence these tutorials) and I will do what I can to make them happen :)

I take it by "flat" you mean that there are no buildings or anything like that. That would be because the OSM data that you have isn't complete, or that the data for that area is bad. I would recommend making your own overlay. I made a tutorial for w2xp which allows you to make your own overlay with the most up to date information. It's about 40minutes long and includes everything that you would need to know in order to fill up the shetlands nicely... like I have in my sim. :)

I mean there supposed to be mountains at where the flat part is.

Oh, that's down to your heighmap file. Ortho4xp can download it automatically, but it can be very hit and miss. Make sure to download your heighmaps MANUALLY from the viewfinderpanorama website and use the files with ortho4xp when you come to build the tiles. For more information on how this is done, make sure to check out my BASIC tutorial on tile building. Also, sorry for the late reply.

Oh nvm, I figured it out. I had to add some DEM files, before it works

Some good questions there! Let me answer them in order for you. 1) The tile is removed from the folder where it was originally created in when the tile was built. By default, this is the "tile" folder in the ortho4xp installation. It doesn't effect the custom scenery folder at all, unless you have change the default directory for where ortho4xp puts tiles to the custom scenery folder for XP. Assuming you haven't done that, you have nothing to worry about in the custom scenery folder. The removing of the tiles and OSM also doesn't effect any shortcut folders that you use in the Custom scenery folder which is why they are so handy to use. :) 2) This is an easy one. If you have selected a tile in your batch by accident, all you need to do is go to that tile on the map, hold SHIFT and left click on it again. The tile should not longer be red on the map and will be removed from the batch of tiles to build. 3) If you are building overlays using ortho4xp, they are located in the "yOverlays" folder than ortho4xp makes. My best advice here is to make a shortcut folder for this too and put it into the Custom scenery folder. That way, whenever you make any new overlays for other tiles in ortho4xp, you don't need to copy, paste or move anything because you already will have the shortcut folder point to the master yOverlays folder where the new overlays will be located. It just keeps everything nice and simple, not to mention organised. This is done in the same way as you would make a shortcut folder for a tile, except you only ever need to do it once because all ortho4xp overlays are built into one folder, as opposed to actual tiles which have separate folders for each tile. I hope that makes sense. 4) This isn't actually able to be done. You either build a full tile, or you don't build any tile. It's an all or nothing kind of thing so you will need to build the mexico side as well. I know there is a lot to read there but I hope it helps. Let me know if I have confused you anymore than you already were and i'll see what I can do :)

AliOnGames ..... hummmm, very interesting. So, should​ I assume that I can run Ortho4XP from another (storage) drive by replacing the Tiles & the overlay with a shortcuts pointing to the Orth4XP Folder which is in the Storage Ortho4XP dedicated Drive, if it's so, any other shortcut needed, like the OSM, Photos, etc ??

You can assume that, but there is no need to carry over the OSM or photos over with shortcuts to the custom scenery folder because xplane doesn't use them, only ortho4xp does. All you need to shortcuts for in the customer scenery folder is your content of your TILES folder (each numbered tiled folder needs it's own shortcut) and your yOverlays folder. Then... that's it. You don't need to worry about the shortcuts ever again, except from when you build new tiles that weren't built before and therefore haven't had a shortcut made for them yet. Does that make sense?

... u just solved my storage problem :-) ... no need to worry about replacing my 120GB SSD, I can have all Ortho4XP Tiles stored on my 3ed HD which 1TB WD & point a shortcut to it ..... that is awesome .. tnx u so much .. I'll keep following you Videos, I like your introductions and explanations ..... Cheers

I have no idea what you are talking about... but i'm glad you liked the video :)

SpearHead1011 nope. They are in the "basics" video. It was mentioned at the start of this video that it was assumed and recommended that the basics video is watched before this one.

ok thx man

Hi I have the Global scenery V3. Will Ortho work with this? Do I insert it like this? Below the Global scenery? I 1000 Version SCENERY SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/KLAS Las Vegas Mc Carran/ SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/KATL - Atlanta - Butnaru/ SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Nimbus Simulation - KMCO - Orlando/ SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Aerosoft - EBBR Brussels/ SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Aerosoft - EDDF Frankfurt/ SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Aerosoft - EDLP Paderborn-Lippstadt/ SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Aerosoft - EGLL Heathrow/ SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Aerosoft - LFMN Nice Cote d Azur X/ SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Aerosoft - LFPO Paris Orly/ SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Aerosoft - LPFR Faro/ SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Aerosoft - LSGG Genf/ SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Global Airports/ SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/KSEA Demo Area/ SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/LOWI Demo Area/ SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/zzz_hd_global_scenery3/ SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/INSERT_ORTHO_SCENERY_HERE/

SpearHead1011 no. You cant use ortho4xp and hdv3 at the same time as hdv3 is also a mesh. Please refer to the basics video to see how to extract the overlay from hdv3 so you can use it with the ortho4xp mesh and textures. Again, I did say that the basics video is required knowledge and would easily answer these questions for you.

So long as your shortcut folder are in the Custom Scenery folder, your actual tiles are in your tiles folder, they should be working fine. If you aren't already, use xOrganizer. It's a fantastic tool for sorting this kind of thing out.