Basic Setup
This page will explain some general setup procedures and considerations for getting started with Ortho4XP.
Users can choose from a number of orthophoto providers and the quality of the imagery will largely vary depending on the area. For example, some orthophotos will have regions where the images include shadows from clouds or transition "lines" where imagery was used from different sources or taken on different days. The easiest method to determining what source to use is to providers website map to see the imagery. It's important to note that the quality of orthophotos can widely vary depending on the zoom level, so when using the providers website map, zooming in to load the different levels of orthophotos is necessary. Users should be aware that some providers may ban a user from their service if they are downloading a large amount of imagery. This is completely up to the providers. By default, Microsoft Bing (BI) imagery is used but this can be changed in the Ortho4XP main window using the "Imagery" dropdown.
Which zoom level use is completely user preference as it's a balance between storage capacity, system performance and image quality. Orthophotos can quickly fill up hard drive space so many users will prefer to use external storage solutions for their X-Plane scenery, which is discussed further in the following paragraph. A comparison of zoom levels can be found on simHeaven's website. In general, ZL16 is commonly used as the default with ZL17 and ZL18 being only around airports or areas where lower altitude flying is expected. The default is set to ZL16 but this can be changed in the Ortho4XP main window using the "Zoomlevel" dropdown.
When creating tiles, Ortho4XP will download data from external providers and convert that data into tiles used by X-Plane. The largest amount of storage space used will be the latter, the tiles used by X-Plane. However, the orthophotos downloaded from external providers will also taken up a large amount of storage space. While these can be deleted after the tiles are built, users may want to keep them if planning on making changes to re-build the tiles without having to re-download the orthophotos. Orthophotos and tiles are stored in the "Orthophotos" and "Tiles" directory located in the main Ortho4XP folder.
The "Base Folder" setting in the Ortho4XP main window specifies where the tiles will be stored when they're built. As a reminder, these are the scenery files used by X-Plane. There are generally three ways a user might specify this setting:
- Store tiles in the default "Tiles" directory located in the main Ortho4XP directory. In this case, this field is left blank.
- Store tiles directly in the X-Plane Custom Scenery directory. Set this field to the X-Plane Custom Scenery directory.
- Store tiles in a separate location. Set this field to the directory where tiles will be stored.
X-Plane will search for scenery data in the Custom Scenery directory, so if the tiles are stored directly in the X-Plane Custom Scenery directory (option 2 above), then no further configuration is necessary. If tiles are stored in a location other than X-Plane's Custom Scenery directory (option 1 or 3 above), symbolic links (symlinks) will have to be created to the location of the tiles created by Ortho4XP. If tiles are stored
Ortho4XP has a built-in feature that allows users to quickly create symlinks from the user interface. To use this feature, the location of X-Plane's Custom Scenery directory has to be specified in the Ortho4XP Config window "custom_scenery_dir" field (e.g. /Users/pilot/X-Plane 12/Custom Scenery).
Once you have created tiles, they will appear in the Tiles collection and management window as black rectangles with the orthophoto provider and ZL used (BI 16 in the example screenshot below). By holding Control on the keyboard and mouse clicking (left) a tile, a symlink is created in the X-Plane Custom Scenery directory which is indicated by the text within the tile rectangle turning bold. To remove the link (use default X-Plane scenery for that tile), simply Control click the same tile.
Overlays are a type of tile that superimposes content over another tile, such as adding buildings or other structures. Ortho4XP will need to extract the existing overlays as a part of the tile building process, so the "custom_overlay_src" in the Ortho4XP Config window must be specified. In most installations, this is set to the "X-Plane 12 Global Scenery" directory located in "X-Plane 12/Global Scenery" (e.g., /Users/pilot/X-Plane 12/Global Scenery/X-Plane 12 Global Scenery).