Looking for Photoscenery

[Colin S]

I live in BC, Canada, with some stunning mountains and valleys and son and so forth. Are there any orthoscenery packs hiding on the interwebs out there (sort of like a french orthoscenery provider that I only just found out about?) Even if it's payware I'll pay the price, but I love where I live and I hate having to head south for any orthimagery. I want to be able to see the rivers and the cliffs and the lakes that XP10's dreadful base scenery system didn't include. G2XPL is out of the question for reasons I don't want to explain, and Google hasn't turned up any results (yet) and I've been searching since 2007. Already have Inside Passage. Anyways, let me know if you know anything that I don't.

Mr. Phrog

[Jim Kallinen]

G2XPL was the greatest thing to happen to X-Plane for me. I have over 300gb of ortho scenery from G2XPL stored inside my computer to fly around in.

Here are a few samples to drool over.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have thousands of of photos like these saved and hours of video.

[RealScenery]

Beautiful shots, Jim!

[chris k]

Very Nice indeed!

 

Gotta get me some of that =)

[ryancz]

(PICS 5 and 6)

is this the default Stinson?

Edited December 3, 2012 by ryancz

[MdMax]

Awesome pictures Jim !

[Jim Kallinen]

(PICS 5 and 6)

is this the default Stinson?

Yes, it comes with a couple paints.

[ryancz]

Yes, it comes with a couple paints.

In V9?

[-TheoGregory]

I may be wrong here but I thought you can't get G2XPL anymore?

[Jim Kallinen]

In V9?

Yes, but i just tried again today, and nothing works after downloading 3gb worth. This was with Bing maps.

 

 

I may be wrong here but I thought you can't get G2XPL anymore?

 

No Idea, have not talked with Robert in a couple years. He is from Poland. But I have received updates from him over the past few years after financially  helping him.

 

WOW,open this email from Robert this morning with a new G2XPL update to 10x. Have yet to give it a try.

 

Hello,

 

Please find included the latest full ver of G2xpl. The most popular services have been already preconfigured in g2xpl.ini file. Yahoo maps have been removed (they redirect to ovi maps now).  

CUDA patch files have been tested only with NVIDIA GPUs 5xx and 6xx cards families.

See included readme files for detailed instructions.

 

Installation

Extract compressed files in any folder of your choice. The password for the archive is:

qwerty

(unrar it with Winrar which can be downloaded from http://rarlab.com/ )

Only 2 conditions must be met:

- g2xpl.xpl AND g2xpl_64.xpl files must be placed DIRECTLY under your X-Plane\Resources\plugins\ folder (do not create separate folder for it!)

(I am not using FAT plugin system to keep compatibility with older X-Plane 9 and 10 versions)

- all remaining files must be placed in 1 single folder (X-Plane plugin will ask you for location of g2xpl.exe file during X-plane start-up is it is not located under plugins folder). Of course it is also possible to extract all files altogether directly under plugins folder.

CUDA patch files should be extracted to the same folder as g2xpl.exe.

 

Main new features

For complete list of changes see included release notes. The main features since last stable ver 6.17 are:

- support for X-Plane 64 bit (via g2xpl_64.xpl)

- support for CUDA NVIDIA acceleration (extract files from CUDA_path_2.2.rar into g2xpl.exe folder, make sure that you have CUDA compatible NVIDIA GPU)

- significant improvements in night (LIT) textures creation algorithm. It is still far from being perfect but at least it should not generate so many unrealistic glaring areas as in previous versions.

- view current map coverage on your web browser per each service from within G2xpl plugin (by hitting the service buttons in Internet Settings plugin’s menu)

- performance speedups (I tried to minimize the number of disk access)

- help tip messages in plugin UI

- countless fixes and other improvements

 

Known problems

Reloading G2xpl sceneries from within X-Plane might not always work as expected and sometimes restart of X-Plane is necessary to “force” X-Plane to load the recently created G2xpl scenery.

I am aware of this problem but this is something out of my hand which requires a fix from X-Plane developers, who noted my request for this feature.

 

A piece of advice

If you have strong machine with decent GPU I’d encourage you to use together with G2xpl sceneries:

1. UrbanMAXX Extreme V2 3D http://maxx-xp.hiking-pa.com/?page_id=189

UrbanMAXX is an enhancement to default X-Plane 10 scenery, particularly useful for urban areas.

Please remember that since the sceneries are normally loaded according to alphabetical order & G2xpl sceneries modify base mesh so nothing “after” them is loaded into X-Plane. Therefore G2xpl sceneries should be called z_G2xpl or similar.

1. OSM2XP http://www.osm2xp.com/

OSM2XP is a free tool for generating autogen (building) data from OSM. Of course it enhances X-Plane scenery in the areas which offer decent OSM building data coverage (currently mainly Western Europe, but it is improving rapidly)

1. Using SSD disks for storing X-Plane and orthophoto sceneries improves loading times in X-Plane significantly.

 

Don’t hesitate to contact me if you encounter any problem, have feature requests etc.

 

Enjoy!

Rob

Edited December 4, 2012 by Jim Kallinen