The new Tile Proxy....! Wow....!

[Lionheart]

Hey guys,


Dang.. Tile Proxy has really come a long ways. I thought I would download the newest Beta tonight and check it out. I flew it in FS9 mode first in Washington. Nice...! Loadup time was amazing.

Then...... I tried it in FSX mode. Got the Kodiak and went on an adventure. I ended up transferring to Arizona from Washington, flew up to Flagstaff, down to Prescott, over to Jerome, backup North to Williams, over to Flag again, then up to Meteor Crator, down to Payson. over the mountains to Scottsdale, then back to Deer Valley....

Goodness man!


No more black tiles...
Terrain loads as fast as you come up on it....
No more waiting for tiles to load as you are hovering over them..
Fast frame rates yet high resolution...


Phenomenal.... I am way impressed...


Got to bond with my girl too.

For those of you that dont know Arizona, there is this large shelf called the Mogillon Rim, (pronounced Mo-gi-on) which is a spectacular sight. A shear cliff that plateaus into an upper land area, like half the Grand Canyon. On the top is beach sand and cactus and small sea shells.. Very bizzare land formation. You can see a glimpse of it in the photos.

Also, I almost wet myself. I was flying along towards Flag along Interstate (highway) 40 and I notice a semi truck travelling along beside me below. I thought.. ok.. I am hallucinating... I am not in a real plane.. That cant be real.. Tile Proxy doesnt show moving traffic....! and I realised, it was FSX AI ground traffic... lol.. oops..

:faint:

Screenshot 1 is Meteor Crator.. small compared to the one that they found in the Gulf of Mexico. You can find metal debris all over around that site.
Screenshot 2 is where the semi was following alongside me on the highway, lolol.. very cool.
Screenshot 3 is near Prescott, turning towards Scottsdale
Screenshot 4 is the Mogillon Rim. There is a great road that drives along its top edge called 'the 300 Road'. Brilliant drive in a good 4X4.
Screenshot 6 is LH pattern into Deer Valley (KDVT) on base, I-17 on the other side of that small black little volcano vent thing.



Bill

[SirBenn21]

Looks GOOD Bill.

I wish you the best of luck with her. I'm sure the boys already have the wallet handy!

Ben

EDIT: Excuse me for my ignorance, but will there be a "Glassless" cockpit with standard gauges for the Kodiak?

[Lionheart]

Looks GOOD Bill.

I wish you the best of luck with her. I'm sure the boys already have the wallet handy!

Ben

EDIT: Excuse me for my ignorance, but will there be a "Glassless" cockpit with standard gauges for the Kodiak?

Hey SirBenn,

Negative. It would be nice, but totally fictional. The factory doesnt want me to depict 'anything' that isnt what they sell, so my hands are tied on that one.



Bill

[harleyman]

The Tile Proxy does look nic these days for sure...


But we needs a Kodiac.......:faint:

[datter]

That does look nice, but as I understand it tileproxy (and other photoscenery) require that you completely turn off autogen is that right?

[lifejogger]

Looks good Bill, I tried tileproxy for a while and it was totally unstable on my computer, took a half hour to load into FSX and then I would have freeze ups and occasionally FSX would crash.

[MSW]

I tried it with FSX (I don't have FS9) and never could get it to work. It would load the correct tiles to the cache from the services but it would never load the tiles to FSX. I tried reinstalling several times, removing all firewalls and virus protection but no good. I later had to reformat the computer so I tried it with a brand new install of XP SP2 and FSX with no other addons and still the same problem.

Others are having simular problems. So for me Tileproxy is useless.

Mike

[cheezyflier]

interesting thought i just had.

fsx does not model the lines scratched into the earth by the aztecs. i bet they would show up with tile proxy though, yes?

[spotlope]

That does look nice, but as I understand it tileproxy (and other photoscenery) require that you completely turn off autogen is that right?

Unless they've come up with a magic technology for adding in autogen based on the tiles downloaded (which would be great, but I don't think exists yet), the photoscenery will be autogen-free. I doubt you have to turn anything off, as autogen is automatically eliminated in un-annotated photoscenery.

[n4gix]

Bill, the Kodiak is looking really, really nice...

...except for that &(*@# "shine" on the tires. Kill the specular on them. Tires are normally very flat, unless someone has used ArmourAll® on them...

...even then, no one is silly enough to use it on the tread... :gossip:

[datter]

Unless they've come up with a magic technology for adding in autogen based on the tiles downloaded (which would be great, but I don't think exists yet), the photoscenery will be autogen-free. I doubt you have to turn anything off, as autogen is automatically eliminated in un-annotated photoscenery.

That makes sense, and I suppose you lose out on any sort of alternate seasons as well.

[spotlope]

Yep, and you'd have no night textures either. I think it's great as a technology preview, and for some people it's a lot of fun. Having incorporated aerial imagery into my sceneries though, I know that acquiring the images and getting them into FSX is the easy part. It's all the hand-work to blend, do seasons, add water, and night textures that takes time.

[Lionheart]

That does look nice, but as I understand it tileproxy (and other photoscenery) require that you completely turn off autogen is that right?

Hey Datter,

It automatically doesnt show (nothing to adjust). When not running TileProxy, all Autogen shows up. Run TP, and Autogen doesnt show. Auto-switches it on/off.

Bill, the Kodiak is looking really, really nice...

...except for that &(*@# "shine" on the tires. Kill the specular on them. Tires are normally very flat, unless someone has used ArmourAll® on them...

...even then, no one is silly enough to use it on the tread...
__________________
Bill

Hey Bill,

Yep.... Still finishing up the materials for the Kodiak. I was hoping no one would notice those 'Armour All' dipped, wet, ultra sleek, teflon coated, latex tires....

Looks good Bill, I tried tileproxy for a while and it was totally unstable on my computer, took a half hour to load into FSX and then I would have freeze ups and occasionally FSX would crash.

LifeJogger

Hey LifeJogger,

If you have a bad link or a link to Google (you have 4 optional sources you link to in the INI setup file), then that will cause exactly what you described. These photos were taken using the MS Earth source. The first flights were with Mozilla, which didnt work right. (Poor resolution, so I changed over to 2 other sources, one at a time). When trying Google (just to try it) it locked up at 39% for 15 min's, which told me that Google is indeed locking us out. The others though loaded up very fast. (very very fast).


Bill

[Lionheart]

For those of you that wish to try it, and for those that didnt have much luck on earlier versions, here is a link to a main thread on this at AVSIM with a link to the Beta 8 download;

http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=234680




Some small notes on how to work this;
* To run it, go to the main TileProxy folder in FSX (where it installs to), and click on TileProxy.exe to start it. Then start up FS and go into a flight. Thats it...

* To tune the INI file for other 'sources' of graphics, such as MS Earth and Mozilla, you go to Start/Programs/TileProxy and open 'Edit INI'. Then go to this section;

# The currently active service is configured here. Only ONE active source please.
# The other source statements should be commented out.
#source=Acme Globe Service
#source=Service Example 1
#source=Service Example 2
source=Service Example 3
#source=Service Example 4

Note that above, 'Example 3' is active. If I put a # in front of a 'Source' string, then its inactive. To activate a different source, just switch out the # sign with the service you wish to have active. The list of services are at the bottom of the INI file.

* During installation, you can alter settings for super high resolution on FSX. I used the base setting to start with. I do not know how to change the settings precisely, so I would assume I can just re-run the Beta 8 installer and select high resolution settings the next time around.

* If you get some bad terrain showing up (non-high-resolution), then shut down FS, shut down TP, go into your TP INI setting file, set up a different 'source' setting ( # sign in front of the string) and then start TP again, then start FS and restart your flight once more and check your terrain.

I am pretty certain Google has shut us off from using their service, but there are others, so no worries. They arent the only ones with Earth...

Have fun!


:rapture:



Bill

[DaveKDEN]

Tile proxy sure looks great, but I've got two strikes against me now. I know it's likely user error, but I just can't get it working. I'll wait until he cleans things up a bit before the third pitch.
On another note, my guess is the basic premise of tile proxy is where MS is likely to take FS (after axing Aces). A free download for the basic program, and subsciption based service with more frequent updates using a server fed scenery engine. Think about it for a second. A $5.00/Mo subscription fee (reasonable for most of us) for a server based program would net MS 3 to 4 times the revenue stream that the current installed version(s) of FS nets (based on a 2 -3 year update cycle). The technology is already in place for a server based system, and the likely result is a continual slowly evolving product, rather than one that incorporates more radical changes over an infrequent and more lengthy period of time.